Acceptable Losses (19 page)

“Can we have lunch?”

“Wherever you say.”

“Same place. One o’clock.”

“I’ll be there,” Oliver said.

Oliver was waiting for her in the restaurant just a few blocks from the school when Sheila arrived. He rose from his chair and kissed her cheek and then stepped back and looked hard at her.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I look awful.”

“Let’s not say awful,” Oliver said, as they sat down facing each other across the small table. “Let’s say, just not up to your usual level.”

“It’s been a rough week,” Sheila said.

“I can imagine,” said Oliver. “I get some of the flak in the office, too.”

“Like what?” Sheila asked.

The waitress came over and took their orders. When she went off, Sheila asked again, “Like what?”

“Well, he sits at his desk like a zombie. He hardly says hello in the morning,” Oliver said. “He brought what looks like a photographic album into the office, and he takes it out again and again and opens it and keeps looking at one page for what seems like hours. Once I had to go over to his desk with a memo, and he covered the page with his hand as though I was trying to steal a military secret from him. Do you have any idea what he’s looking at?”

“I haven’t seen any photographic albums around the house for ages,” Sheila said.

“When he’s not doing that,” Oliver went on, “he puts the album away in the bottom drawer of his desk, the only one he keeps locked with a key, and takes a letter, a statement, any piece of paper, and stares at that. Usually he and I have lunch together two or three times a week. Since Monday a week ago, he just stands up around one o’clock and goes out and that’s it. The same thing for drinks after work. We’re lucky if he says good night before he’s out the door. And during the day if you ask him a question, he doesn’t answer for the longest time or he doesn’t seem to hear, and you have to ask him again before he sort of shakes himself and looks at you as though he’s waking up from a dream.”

Sheila nodded. “It’s the same at home with me. Have you any idea of what it’s all about?”

“No.”

“He didn’t say anything about a telephone call?”

“No.”

“Does the name Zalovsky mean anything to you?”

“Never heard it.”

“Well, if you’re going to be able to help, it’s time you knew what it’s all about,” Sheila said. “It all began ten nights ago, when I was away for the weekend. At about four in the morning, while he was sleeping, he told me, the telephone rang. Somebody who said his name was Zalovsky threatened him, said he was from Chicago, that he’d been a bad boy, that was what the man said, bad boy, and now he had to pay for it. He said he was waiting for him on the corner of our street. He said it was a matter of life and death.”

“Jesus,” Oliver said, his pale face grave. “Did Roger go?”

“No. He hung up. I told you when we had lunch how weirdly he behaved after that, and you told me about the gun.”

“Well, at least he hasn’t gotten a gun yet, as far as I know. The form’s still on his desk. Did this man, this Zalovsky, call again?”

“Once,” Sheila said. “Four nights ago. He left a message on our answering machine.”

“I didn’t know that you had an answering machine,” Oliver said, surprised.

“Well, we have one now.” She told Oliver what the message was.

They remained silent while the waitress served them with the food they had ordered. When she left the table, Oliver said, “I sure as hell would act peculiarly too if I got calls like that in the middle of the night. Do you have any clue who it might be? And why he might be calling?”

“Not the slightest,” Sheila said. “And if Roger suspects, he’s not telling me. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. There must be some secret there that never shows in public.” She picked at a roll, puzzled and unhappy. “He’s such a likeable man. Wherever he goes, people always seem so glad to see him when he comes into a room. Of course, it might be some woman I’ve never heard of. Even now, when he’s a pretty old man. He doesn’t ever show that he’s conscious of it, but he seems to
exude
sex and that’s one sure way of starting trouble. From the first time I saw him, even all trussed up in a hospital bed, I felt it. Wherever he goes, the ladies still congregate around him. And conscious or not, he wasn’t above taking advantage of it from time to time. I’ve known all along, of course, and I’m sure you did, too …”

Oliver tried to smile, but it was a sickly grimace that he produced. “Well,” he said, “from what I’ve seen, he’s refused more offers than he’s accepted.”

“Faint praise,” Sheila said. “Anyway, I’ve made my peace with it. And for the last few years there’s been none of
that
, at least. I’ve tried to convince him that the calls didn’t mean anything, some crank who picked his name out of the telephone book and called as a diseased joke. But I can’t make him believe that. Somewhere in his past there’s something that happened, somebody who wants him to suffer, and he knows it and that’s why he’s acting the way he is …” She stabbed at her food without appetite. “I thought maybe you’d know something that I didn’t know, enemies I’ve never met or ever thought about.”

Oliver squirmed uncomfortably. “Well,” he said, “he came into the office after lunch—late—he’d been out most of the morning—he was pale and had a bandage on his forehead, and when I asked about it, he cut me off and naturally I suspected somebody had hit him, but it was none of my business …”

Sheila nodded. “He lied to me about it. He said he’d bumped his head on his desk lamp and Miss Walton had put the bandage on.”

“We don’t even have a Band-Aid in the office,” Oliver said. “And when he came back that afternoon late, long after lunchtime, he had on different clothes from the ones he was wearing in the morning.”

“I just got them yesterday,” Sheila said. “When I went to the cleaners to get back a sweater of mine, they said they had a jacket and a pair of pants my husband had left there last week. He always leaves things like that up to me. I didn’t even know he knew where the cleaners were.” She looked sharply at Oliver. “Anything else?”

Oliver hesitated. “I don’t want to be disloyal to Roger,” he said. “If he doesn’t choose to tell you what’s on his mind, I don’t want to be the one to break the news.”

“What is it?” Sheila said sternly. “If he can’t help himself, we’re the only ones who
can
help him.”

Oliver sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Well, two days ago, when he went out to lunch, I had to get a letter we received from a client out West that he told me he wanted me to answer. It wasn’t like him. When a letter is addressed to him, he usually answers it himself immediately, but for the last few days …” Oliver left the sentence unfinished. “And ordinarily he keeps his desk as orderly as an accountant’s statement. But it was all messed up, papers everywhere, scraps of addresses, authorizations unsigned, one thing piled any which way one on top of the other. I had to hunt to find the letter and finally I found it and picked it up and there was an open notebook under it. I’d noticed that he’d been staring at it all morning, then pushed it away as though he was irritated with it.” He stopped uncomfortably “Really, Sheila, if he thought it was something you ought to know, he’d tell you himself.”

“You’ve been married more than ten years, Oliver,” she said, “and you still don’t know fuck-all about marriage. What sort of notebook?”

“The one he always carries around in his pocket,” Oliver said reluctantly, “things to remember, ideas for magazine pieces, addresses, things like that. Well, it was open. There were no addresses or notes on the pages.” He took a deep breath as though to fortify himself for what he was going to say. “On one page he’d written,
Possible enemies—professional.
On the other page there was,
Possible enemies—personal.
And then some names under each of the entries.”

“What were the names?”

“I could only read one of them,” Oliver said. “On the professional side. Machendorf. You remember—Roger testified against him in that libel case.”

“Roger would testify against his own mother if he thought it had to be done,” Sheila said. “What about the others?”

“I couldn’t make them out.”

“Why not?”

“They were caked with blood,” Oliver said.

The reverberations of Oliver’s last words seemed to echo between them, troubling them both and reducing them for several moments to silence.

Then Sheila spoke. “There’s either nothing more to be said or there’s a great deal more to be said. What do you think?”

“A great deal more,” Oliver said.

Sheila nodded, then put up her hand to stop him from talking because she saw a woman, holding the hand of a little girl, approaching their table, smiling.

“Mrs. Damon,” the woman said, “I see you know the same restaurants I do. I’m delighted to see you. Phyllis”—she tugged at her daughter’s hand—“say hello to Mrs. Damon.”

“I saw her all morning,” the little girl said. “I said hello already.”

Sheila laughed and said to Oliver, who was standing, waiting to be introduced, “Phyllis is one of the pupils in the school. One of the best pupils, aren’t you, Phyllis?”

“Mummy doesn’t think so,” Phyllis said, glaring up at her mother.

“Phyllis,” the woman said, “I don’t know where you ever got that idea.”

“From you,” Phyllis said.

Sheila laughed again, then introduced Oliver to the woman, whose name was Gaines. When the introductions were over, Mrs. Gaines, tugging at her daughter’s hand, started away, then turned back. “Oh, I’m sorry I missed you the other night. I would have liked you to meet my husband.”

“Where was that?” Sheila asked.

“At the concert. I saw Mr. Damon there during the intermission, and I suppose you went to powder your nose or something.”

“What night was that?” Sheila asked.

“Friday. When they played Mozart’s Requiem. Wasn’t it marvelous?”

“Marvelous,” Sheila said.

“Say good-bye nicely to Mrs. Damon, Phyllis.”

“I’m going to see her tomorrow morning,” the little girl said.

“Phyllis,” Sheila said, smiling, “isn’t one for excessive formality. I’ve noticed before.”

Mrs. Gaines shrugged helplessly. “The logic of children. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Gabrielsen.” Then she led the little girl to a table at the other end of the restaurant.

“Smart little girl,” Sheila said. “I hope she turns out not to look like her mother.”

After a pause, Oliver said, “The way you said ‘marvelous’ to that lady was funny.”

“Was it? It may have been. Because I wasn’t at the concert on Friday night. And Roger didn’t tell me he was going, either. He called and said he had to have dinner and go see a rehearsal with one of your clients.”

“Now,” said Oliver, “why would he do anything like that, do you think?”

“It might be because of Mozart,” Sheila said.

“What would that have to do with his making up a story to tell you? A concert isn’t like having an assignation with another woman.”

“This particular concert,” Sheila said, speaking slowly, “might be like having an assignation. Mozart’s last work, the Requiem, contracted for by Count von Walsegg-Stupach to be sung for a Mass for his dead wife.” Sheila’s voice sank to a whisper. “
Dies Irae. Lacrimosa.
Another kind of assignation. Remember, Roger was born a Catholic, even if he hasn’t done much about it since.”

Oliver ran his hand over his face, covering the almost invisible white eyebrows, the pale troubled eyes. “What bad luck,” he said, “running into that woman here.”

Sheila shrugged. “She lives in the neighborhood and the school is nearby, and she was probably too lazy to make lunch. Anyway, assignations are usually discovered finally, one way or another. I could use a drink.” She waved to the waitress. “I’m going to have a Calvados,” she said to Oliver. “I had a lover who fought in Normandy during the war, and he introduced me to Calvados. He said he used to fill his canteen with it, it made the war bearable. It rained most of the time and there was plenty of water. What will you have?”

“The same,” Oliver said.

“Two Calvados,” Sheila said to the waitress. They finished their coffee while waiting until the waitress came back with the two glasses. “Salut,” Sheila said, raising her glass, as the waitress went off. “If Roger is making lists of his enemies, maybe it would be a good idea if we made one of our own. Bloodstained or not.” She smiled wanly. “I have one candidate. In my own family. A nephew, a son of my sister’s. His name is Gian-Luca Sciacca. He had a bad time in Viet Nam and was badly wounded. When he came back, he was on heroin. His father threw him out of the house, and he went to a clinic to break the habit. He was in for more than a year. Then one day he showed up at our door. He swore he was off the stuff, but he needed a place to stay while he was looking for a job and he was broke. I talked it over with Roger, but we were having that bad time financially, and we couldn’t afford to give him the money to pay for a hotel, and Roger suggested that we let him stay with us until he found a job. It was a nuisance, because our spare room doesn’t have a real bed in it. Just a couch. Damon uses it when he has work to do at home or he has letters to write. Gian-Luca had to sleep on the couch. He was all right for a couple of weeks, although he was never pleasant to have around the house all the time. He’s a sulky, messy young man with a huge chip on his shoulder and an enormous grudge against the world. He got a job as a shipping clerk, but he was fired when he got into an argument with the foreman and hit him with a monkey wrench.” Sheila shook her head sadly, as she remembered the strain that Gian-Luca’s presence had put on her marriage. “After that, he stopped looking for jobs and I suppose began hustling on the streets. I suspected that he was shooting heroin again and I imagine Roger suspected it too. Then things began disappearing from the apartment—a silver coffee pot, some old china, a silver platter that Mr. Gray gave us as a wedding present, a long carving knife with a bone handle … other things.” She sighed. “For a while Roger didn’t notice that things were missing. Things were bad enough as it was, and I didn’t have the courage to tell Roger that my nephew was stealing us blind for his daily fix.”