SIXTEEN

Is there anything a man don’t stand to lose?/
When the devil wants to take it all away?

New York had tasted its first snow of the season, and the streets of Brooklyn were filthy with wet brown slush. Sandy drove slowly to avoid skids, but Daydream’s wheels still sent up a spray as she wound her way home. The hour was late enough so that few pedestrians were abroad, but one bag lady on Flatbush Avenue, splashed by his passage, hurled curses after him. “Welcome home,” Sandy muttered.

He parked the Mazda in his rented garage, opened the hatchback to remove his suitcase, and started the two-block trudge toward home. The slush soaked through his boots and left his feet wet and cold, so he hurried. He had been driving all day; exhaustion had set in, and he wanted to be home. It seemed as though he had been away for years.

The brownstone was dark. Sandy set the suitcase just inside the door and fumbled for the light. The hallway looked strange at first. There was a new rug, he saw dully, and Sharon had moved the tall bookcase that used to stand in the living room, moved it to the hall and filled it with glass figurines. He wondered what she’d done with all of his paperbacks. Tossed them in some box, probably. She’d frequently complained that the cheap paperbacks made the living room look tacky.

“Sharon!” he called. “It’s me.” He started up the stairs. Near the top he took them two at a time, turned to their bedroom, flicked on the lights. She’d heard him call. She was sitting up in bed. So was the man next to her.

Sandy blinked, sighed, tried to keep his composure. “Hello, Don,” he said.

The man was thick-bodied, blond, florid. Lots of hair on his chest. A fortyish jock just beginning to go to fat, but a real up-and-comer in the realty business, Sharon said. Sandy was still annoyed. He’d thought she had better taste.

“Uh,” Don said. He turned a little redder than he was already. “Uh, hello, Sandy. How was your trip?”

“More fun than fucking a monkey,” Sandy said, a little too sharply.

Sharon picked up her glasses from the nightstand and put them on. Her hair was rumpled by sleep, and the lace nightgown she was wearing had bunched up on her. She smoothed it out, frowning. “No need to get sarcastic with Don,” she said to Sandy. “We’re not monogamous, you know, and you didn’t even give me a hint as to when you’d be home.”

“I didn’t know,” Sandy said. “And I’ve been distracted.”

“I’ll bet,” Sharon said dryly. “You could have called ahead, you know. Say from Jersey. Given me a little warning.”

“Yeah,” Sandy said. Hey, Penelope, this is your old man Odysseus coming home at last, time to clear out the suitors, he thought. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Well, what now?” he asked. “Anyone for a game of Monopoly?”

Sharon turned to Don. “You better go home, honey,” she said. “Sandy and I have a lot of things to settle.”

“I understand,” Don said. He crinkled up his face with what Sandy thought was excruciating cuteness, kissed Sharon on the tip of her nose, and got up to dress. He wore striped boxer shorts and had flabby thighs, and somehow that made Sandy even angrier. Neither he nor Sharon spoke until they heard the door close downstairs. Then Sandy pulled off his boots and turned to face her, crossing his legs and leaning back against the foot of the bed. The brass bedpost dug into his back.

“Well?” said Sharon. Her face was very composed. She made no effort to touch him.

“What can I say?” Sandy said. “I suppose I ought to be grateful that he hasn’t moved in yet. Christ, though. Don! Of all people!”

“Don’t pass judgments, Sandy. You have no right. He’s an attractive, intelligent man. He’s attentive and responsible and we have a lot in common.”

“Do you love him?” Sandy asked.

“Not especially, but I’m comfortable with him, which is more than I can say about you. You’ve been away a long time, Sandy. You didn’t write, you seldom called. I’ve had a lot of time to think about us.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Sandy said. “Please, Sharon. Not right now.”

“Waiting won’t make it any easier. I want to get this over with. Let’s make it clean and civilized if we can.”

Sandy suddenly had an awful headache. He rubbed his temple. “Sharon,” he said, “don’t do this to me now. Please. I’m asking as nice as I can. The trip, the story … it’s turning into some kind of fucking nightmare. It’s surreal. I need to talk to you about it. I can’t handle any more grief at the moment, you know? I need you right now. I need somebody who cares.”

“But I don’t, Sandy,” she said calmly. She didn’t even have the grace to look sad. “You need somebody, but it isn’t me. We have to face the truth. It’s over between us. It’s been going bad for a long time. I think it’s only been inertia keeping us together.”

“You’re mad at me for taking off like I did—” he started.

“I was,” she admitted, “but not for long. That was the problem. When you’d been gone a while, I wasn’t angry anymore. I was … I just felt nothing. I didn’t miss you, Sandy. Not at all.”

“Terrific.”

“I’m sorry if I’m hurting you, but this has to be said. How many women did you sleep with this trip?”

“One and a half,” Sandy said. “The half I don’t remember. Seems to defeat the whole point. Why?”

Sharon shrugged. “I just wanted to know. To see if I’d care. I don’t. When we started with the open relationship, back in the beginning, I always cared. I tried not to be jealous, but I always was, just a little. Nothing I couldn’t control. I think I liked it a little, knowing that you were attractive to other women and still came home to me, but that tiny bit of insecurity was still there. Now it’s gone. You could have said fifty and I wouldn’t have given a damn. I don’t hate you, Sandy. I don’t dislike you, even. There’s not enough feeling left to dislike you. You just don’t matter.”

Sandy winced. “You have a great touch for this kind of thing, lady. The least you could do is tell me I’ll always be a cherished friend.”

“But you won’t be, Sandy,” she said. “Lovers get together for the weirdest reasons, like we did, but friends have to have something in common. You and I live in different worlds. We march to different drummers.”

“Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys,” Sandy said sullenly.

“What?” Sharon frowned at him, then sighed. “No, Sandy. It was Thoreau or Rousseau or somebody like that. See what I mean? We don’t speak the same language and we don’t sing the same songs. And we won’t, ever. I don’t love Don, but maybe I could, eventually. I want to give the relationship time to grow.”

“Fuck,” said Sandy. He thought he ought to cry but he had no tears left. Maybe he’d used them up on Slum and Butcher Byrne. More, he knew that Sharon was right. It had been a hard trip, but not because he’d missed her. He’d hardly thought of her. Still, that didn’t prevent him from feeling abandoned. “Do you have to be so damn cold about it?” he said accusingly. “We meant something to each other once. We could at least end it with a little passion.”

“To what end? I’m trying to keep this civilized. We’re both mature adults who tried something and it didn’t—”

“Screw maturity,” Sandy said. He stood up and scowled. “I have had it up to here with maturity. Goddamn it, call me a shithead, throw something at me, yell! Cry, damn it! We’ve been together for almost two years. I deserve at least a few fucking tears, don’t I?”

“I don’t want to cry,” Sharon said briskly. “Let’s take care of the sticky details, shall we? You’re just back from a long trip, so you can stay here tonight. I’ll go over to Don’s. But I’d like to keep this house, if you don’t object. I’ll buy your half. At a fair price. We both know how much the place has appreciated. I can only give you ten thousand dollars right now, but I’ll pay the rest in installments. How does that sound?”

Sandy wanted to scream. “I don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “We made love half a million times. We shared … laughs, dreams, all that shit. That’s what matters. Cry, dammit!”

“You don’t care about the money now, but you will,” Sharon said. She got out of bed and crossed the room, began to dress. When she pulled her nightgown over her head, Sandy found himself looking too hard at a body he would never hold again. There was something about the fact that she was lost to him that made her more attractive than ever. As she dressed it was as though she was armoring herself against him, covering her last vulnerabilities. She pulled on a pair of pale blue panties, slipped into a matching bra, fastened it. Then faded jeans and a pristine white tee shirt. Blue and white. Like ice.

“Sharon,” Sandy said, in a voice faintly edged by desperation, “you’re scaring the hell out of me. I had a dream about this. Your face turned to ice. You’re making it come true. Don’t. Please. Leave me if you want, go to Don, but don’t do it like this. Show some emotion. Please. I’m begging you!”

She pulled out an overnight bag and began to pack her work clothes. “You’re being juvenile, Sandy,” she said without looking up. “I don’t care about your dreams.”

He had to make her cry, he thought wildly. He had to make her rage. “Remember the time we made love in the bedroom of that boring party on the Upper East Side? And the guy came in to get his coat? Remember?”

She ignored him and went on packing.

“Remember the week in Mexico? The party I threw for you when you turned thirty? Remember how we both bawled like kids when E.T. phoned home?”

Sharon zipped shut her bag, shouldered it, and gave Sandy a brief look, a chilly look with only the faintest hint of emotion in it. And that emotion was pity. She started for the door.

Sandy followed her downstairs. “Remember the kitten I bought for you? The one that got run over after he got out through the open window? Remember the ERA rallies we went to together?” Sharon took her coat off the hook. “Remember when your father was sick? I stayed with you then. All the funny gifts you used to get me? You have to—”

But she didn’t have to. She didn’t even care enough to slam the door. It closed with a small, terribly final click, a click like the sound an icicle might make, falling to shatter on the ground.

Blue-white, and frost on her glasses, Sandy thought.

He stood on the stairs for a long time, too tired to walk back upstairs, too uncertain to go elsewhere. Finally he wandered into the kitchen. Two six-packs of Schaefer were stacked in the refrigerator. He started to pull loose a can, then thought better of it. Instead he grabbed both six-packs and lugged them into the living room.

Sharon had been playing the stereo. The dust cover was still up. He had told her a hundred thousand times to keep the dust cover down, but she never listened. Suddenly furious, he took her Donna Summer album off the turntable and flung it across the room. It bounced off the wall hard, leaving a deep gouge in the plaster.

He didn’t think he could handle the Nazgûl right now. He searched through his record collection, pulled out some early Beatles, and placed one disc carefully on the turntable. He set it to repeat indefinitely, and turned the volume up. Then he stretched out on the couch and cracked the first beer.

The next morning he woke up with an awful headache, a litter of beer cans all around him, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo still singing their hearts out, over and over and over. He winced, pushed himself off the couch, killed the music. He didn’t remember falling asleep.

He showered, made himself some strong coffee, drank two big tumblers of orange juice and ate a stale jelly doughnut that Sharon had left in the fridge. He tried not to think. Upstairs he found himself staring at the clothing in his closet. He had been wearing the same clothes repeatedly for so long, washing them in so many dingy coin Laundromats, that he’d almost forgotten that he owned anything else. It seemed a stranger’s wardrobe. Finally he chose a pair of black cords and a comfortable, faded cotton shirt with a camouflage pattern. Maggie had given him that shirt, he remembered.

Sharon had piled all his mail on his desk in his office. Sandy rifled through it desultorily until he came to the letter from Alan Vanderbeck. It could have been a royalty check, of course, but somehow he knew that it wasn’t even before he opened it. He ripped off the end of the envelope and shook out the letter.

Dear Sander,

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to our association of late. In view of the directions that your literary career is now taking, I’m no longer sure that I’m the proper man to represent your interests. It might be best for both of us if

Sandy crumpled the letter in his hand and lofted it toward his wastebasket. It missed and rolled across the floor to join a pile of discarded pages from his novel.

Page thirty-seven was still in his typewriter. He rolled it out. The paper was permanently curled by now. Sandy flattened it ineffectually and put it in the box with the rest of the book. He took the box downstairs with him, donned his heavy blue peacoat, and headed for the subway with the novel under his arm.

Hedgehog had its offices in the Village, just off Washington Square. Sandy paused on the stairs, looking at the door he had passed through so many times. This used to be home once. And now?

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked when he stepped inside. She was no one he’d known, nor did she recognize him.

“I used to edit this rag,” Sandy said. “I want to see Jared.”

“Who shall I say—”

“Don’t bother,” he interrupted. “I know the way.” He went up the stairs, ignoring her protests. He ignored Jared’s personal receptionist as well, and walked right into his office.

It had been years since Sandy had seen Jared Patterson in the flesh. There was a lot more flesh. Jared was sitting behind a big desk, looking through some layout sheets. He was wearing a navy-blue leisure suit, an open-collared pastel shirt, and three gold chains around his neck. Already the suit was too small, binding visibly under the arms. Jared had always been overweight, but now he was gross. He looked up at Sandy, startled, and then smiled. “Sandy!” he said, pushing his work aside and leaning back in his huge swivel chair. “What a treat! How long has it been?”

“About seventy or eighty pounds,” Sandy said. He crossed the room and sat down. The receptionist came in, but Jared waved her away. “I want to talk to you about the Nazgûl story,” Sandy said. “It’s bigger than we could have imagined, Jared.”

“You mean the Lynch story, Sandy old chum, and you’re too late. We’ve already done our thing on that. I warned you.” He leaned over and punched his intercom. “Betsy, bring in the issue before last, willya honey? You know, the one with that hinky painting on the cover, all the hobbits and shit.”

She brought it in and gave it to Jared. Jared smirked and handed it across the desk to Sandy. “Sorry, pal,” he said, “but you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I really wanted you to do this one for us, Sandy, but you had to go and be stubborn. Like you can see, we hadda cover it without you.”

The front page of the tabloid, under the Hog logo, had an old photo of Jamie Lynch superimposed over a garish fantasy landscape. Hobbits clustered around his feet, and overhead record albums sailed the pink skies like a flock of flying saucers. The caption read, “Who Killed Sauron?”

The story developed that theme. The staff writer had learned that Hobbins had called Jamie Lynch “Sauron,” and he’d taken that and run with it, right into the ground. Pages of Tolkienesque bullshit. Maine became the Shire, Paul Lebeque an unlikely Frodo. Sandy was awestruck. “I can’t believe you’d run this shit,” he said.

Jared Patterson shrugged. “Hey, when you finked out on us, we needed something fast. Don’t blame me, Sandy. It’s on your own head.”

Sandy kept his temper with an effort. “Jared, listen to me. This moronic tripe doesn’t begin to tell the real story.”

Jared smiled. “All right already, tell me the real story.”

“First, Lebeque didn’t do it. I’m positive about that. I suspect the real killer was a radical goon named Gortney Lyle, but I can’t prove that yet. Whether it was Lyle or not, the killer acted at the command of one Edan Morse, of the old Alfie high command.”

“Sounds juicy, if you got facts,” Jared admitted. “So why’d the Alfies want to kill Lynch?”

“Not the Alfies, just Morse.” Sandy hesitated. “It’s crazy, Jared, but I believe it. God help me, but I do. It all has to do with the Nazgûl. They cut an album called Music to Wake the Dead just before West Mesa. You remember it?”

“Platinum,” said Jared. “Sure I remember, I’m no dummy. This is my business.”

“Morse wants to wake the dead,” Sandy said. It all came out then. He started talking about each cut on the album, and what it meant, and about tides, and about visions coming true. Jared listened with a broad smile on his face, and suddenly he could hold it in no longer. He laughed. He laughed again. He began to roar with laughter, clutching at his gut, shaking in his big swivel chair. Sandy waited it all out patiently; he had known it was coming. Finally, when Jared had subsided and was wiping a little trickle of saliva from his chin, Sandy said, “That was in the vision, too. You, laughing. Will you let me write the story?”

“And you call our piece shit?” Jared said. “Sandy, you need a shrink. I can recommend a few good ones, if you can handle their fees.”

“You won’t print it?” Sandy said with iron certainty.

“Does the pope shit in the woods?” Jared said. “Fuck no, we won’t print it. This ain’t the National Enquirer, Sandy. You’re talking libel, besides. That dumb Canuck’s the killer.”

Sandy stood up. “I knew it was hopeless before I came here, but I had to try. Funny thing about seeing the future. At first you try like hell to change what you’ve seen. And then you kind of get worn down, and you find yourself just going through the motions, tracing out the patterns. The Nazgûl are getting back together, Jared. Wait and see. The Nazgûl are getting back together and they’re going to play ‘The Armageddon Rag,’ and God help us all.” He started for the door.

“Hey, Sandy,” Jared called after him.

Sandy turned. “Yeah?”

“You’ll be the first one we call when the Martians land!” Jared promised, guffawing.

Sandy frowned and waited for him to finish. “I’m glad you’re in such a good humor,” he said finally. “Until I walked in here and saw you, I thought the blue whale was an endangered species.”

He walked down the stairs and out into the slush. He had no stomach for the subway now, and besides, there was one penultimate gesture to make. He hailed a cab and gave his Brooklyn address.

As they were speeding across the Brooklyn Bridge, Sandy opened the box in his lap, rolled down the window, and fed the first page of his novel to the cold wind. “Hey!” the cabbie protested.

“Drive,” said Sandy. “If we get stopped for littering I’ll pay the fine and double your tip.” He let go of page two. Page three. And on and on. Page thirty-seven he hesitated over. It was still a little curled. Sandy reread the final sentence, still half complete. Then he shrugged and flipped the page out the window. As he’d expected, the wind got hold of it. Instead of skittering along the ground like the other pages, it rose and rose, higher and higher, until it vanished somewhere against the gray sky and the rooftops of Brooklyn. Sandy watched it climb through the rear window.

“You must be a writer,” the cabbie said.

Sandy laughed. “Yeah,” he admitted.

“I knew it. Scattering pages to the wind and all that.”

“Only a gesture,” Sandy said. “I have a carbon copy at home in my drawer.”

“Oh,” said the cabbie. That seemed to stop conversation.

Back in his office, he found a message on his answering machine. Sharon had phoned. If he was ready to behave like an adult, she was prepared to meet him to discuss the terms of their separation. Sandy erased the tape, sat down, thought for a moment, and then placed a call to Davie Parker in Maine.

“Listen to me,” Sandy said when he got the deputy on the line. “You’re my last fucking chance. Lebeque is innocent.”

“Notch don’t buy it, Blair,” Parker said.

“I talked to Edan Morse,” Sandy said. “He is behind it. Believe me.”

“I told you to stay away from Morse,” Parker replied, annoyed. “We’ve got our own investigation under way and you’re going to foul it up.”

“Morse has an alibi for the night Lynch died, but I’ll give you odds I know who the real killer was. A man named Gortney Lyle, acting on Morse’s orders. I don’t know where you’d fly to get to Maine, but you ought to check with the airlines. Gort probably flew in from LA and rented a car. I hope he did. If he drove all the way, it’d be hell to prove. But if he flew, even under an assumed name, you’ll find people who remember him. He shaves his head and wears a gold earring and he’s got a terrible sunburn. Now maybe he was covered with hair when he killed Lynch, and maybe he didn’t put on the earring and get the sunburn until after, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll still remember him. He’s big, Parker.”

“Lots of big men out there, Blair,” Parker said dubiously.

“Not like Gort,” Sandy said. “We’re talking well over seven feet, and wide, too. We’re talking jumbo-sized Mean Joe Greene. Hell, we’re talking Mighty Joe Young. I bet he flew first class. I don’t think a guy his size could fit in a coach seat. If he did, the guy next to him had one goddamned memorable flight.”

“Interesting,” Parker said. “Strong, you figure?”

“He looks like he could arm wrestle a steam shovel.”

“Hmmmm,” said Parker. “That would answer some questions. It isn’t easy to pull a man’s heart out of his chest. You have to get through the rib cage. Surgeons cut the ribs, I think, but our killer just smashed them. Gortney Lyle, you say?” He sighed. “Notch is going to have kittens, but I guess I better check this out.”

“You do that little thing,” Sandy said. “After that, you’re on your own. I won’t be calling anymore. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this much, except that I made you a promise. I’ve got a thing about promises.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“You wouldn’t be willing to bust a guy in Denver for me, would you?” Sandy asked. “It’s a child-abuse case. The child’s about thirty-five.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t think so,” Sandy said. “Well, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about all of this. For starts I’m going to try and figure out what side I’m on. And Parker …”

“Yes?”

“Don’t get too attached to this decade. It may end sooner than you think.” Sandy placed the receiver carefully back in its cradle.