CHAPTER

six

Rain pelted down on the Southeast Expressway. Windshield wipers clacked like a metronome, and I found myself wondering whether Malcolm and Sylvie had done it. Did you decide one way or the other, Teddy? Malcolm was drop-dead handsome then, dark and brooding, and he had a reputation for that kind of thing. When he acted, they said he slept with any available starlet. When he directed, he moved up to leading ladies. Would he have drawn the line at an editor, or jumped in the sack with her?

A more relevant question: How had Caroline gotten her hands on a tape that should have been safely stowed in the office? Did you make a copy and take it with you to the Cape? I peered into the Bloomie’s bag and checked the tape’s label. It looked like the original, so consider yourself scolded for lifting it without telling me. God, Caroline could have tossed it in the trash on a whim.

Now that I’ve scolded you, let me also praise and bless you. The tape made me remember how I loved the sound of your voice, Teddy, that deep bass-baritone with the growl around the edges, and how grateful I was that you’d taped the out-of-towners first. If I’d needed to board an airplane, interview La Duchaine in Paris, track down Malcolm’s friends and colleagues in Los Angeles or London, I don’t know what I’d have done.

The bus to Hyannis was bad enough.

I sat bolt upright on the padded seat and calmed myself with a silent recitation of facts: Caroline hadn’t canceled the lease, so I had a place to stay. I knew my way around the Cape. One of my few fond childhood memories is of a house—a shack, really—near Truro. Not because of the people I was with, one foster family in a long string of them, but because of the wild beauty of the dunes and the surging ocean.

I’m not sure how old I was, but my knowledge of beaches was restricted to TV simulacra, smooth white stretches of sun-warmed sand. The Truro beach proved television wrong. Brown and chilly, its grainy sand lay buried under a sharp layer of pebbles. The swarm of local kids wore hard rubber beach shoes. My foster father yelled and called me a baby when I complained that my feet hurt.

Once I had painfully waded deep enough, it was heaven to lie back, float, and imagine what a wonderful life I could have led as a fish. With my ears underwater, I assumed it would be understood that I couldn’t hear anyone calling my name. It was blissful, the quiet fish-world peace. I felt utterly alone, but free and unenclosed. I wanted to stay in that world, dwell there forever. My foster father splashed through the waves to carry me out, which seemed like a reasonable alternative to stepping on sharp pebbles at the time. He wasn’t drunk then, not yet. The sharp crack of his slap across my face was still to come.

The Peter Pan Bus Line runs down to the Cape. Maybe that’s what made me think of childhood. For years, vacation to me meant stones cutting into my feet, fear of tracking blood on the floor.

The bus lurched and belched alarmingly. With a start, I realized I hadn’t finished examining the contents of the Bloomie’s bag. I reached into its depths and pulled out a book of matches, two business cards—one from a realty firm, one from a legal office—and two partially chewed pencils.

I’d have noticed the notebook right away if it had been turned right side up, but it lay facedown, its yellow pages obscured, its cardboard backing a close match to the bottom of the brown bag. I jiggled it loose, found the binding ragged with remnants of torn-off pages. At first, I thought the remainder of the book was blank.

A page near the back crawled with letters and numbers, quickly and carelessly written as though you’d been taking notes or doodling during a phone call. One sequence could have said “JULY,” or maybe “JFLY.” Another looked like “HMB,” a third said “2nd BST BD.” The numbers were large, with comet trails of zeroes: 11,000,000.00, 48,000,000.00, 118,000,000.00.

Expert as I was in deciphering your handwriting, I struggled with the letters and numbers. July meant nothing to me; it was April. Had you meant to rent property on the Cape in July? Was the Realtor’s card connected to the month? I fingered the business cards. Picarian Realty. Not the firm I’d dealt with on the rental and you hadn’t said anything to me about July. The lawyer’s card read: RUSSELL, AMES, AND HUBER. I quickly folded it and jammed it in my pocket.

“HMB” rang no chimes, nor did the astronomical numbers. I was stumped and puzzled by the figures. They couldn’t be dollars, but what about lira? Had you gotten a foreign offer for the book? Accepted the “second-best bid”? Why didn’t I know about the first one, about either of them? One worry led to others, spreading, deepening. Yes, Caroline hadn’t canceled the lease, but what if she’d persuaded the neighbors not to let me in? What if no snug picket-fenced house awaited, no bedroom where you’d slept, no couch with the indentation of your body, no desk where I might sit, knowing you’d sat there, too? The prospect drained the heat from my body, and not till we’d crossed the icy ribbon of the Cape Cod Canal, passing over the metal span of the Sagamore Bridge, did I convince myself that my plans remained solid.

Caroline had expensive tastes. Caroline needed the next installment of the advance almost as much as I did. Caroline wouldn’t jeopardize the book. She wouldn’t interfere.