Boundaries (7 page)

"I’m not talking about that, Mr. Case. I’m talking about their . . . commitment to each other. Was it strong? Would you say that they loved each other very deeply?"

David said nothing.

"Mr. Case?"

"Yes," David whispered.

Kenner said, "Yes, they were deeply in love with each other?"

David said aloud, "They loved each other as much as two people can. It was obvious to anyone. If they had walked together outside that house then people would have pointed at them and smiled and said how nice they looked, what a beautiful couple they made." He paused, looked away, again as if in reflection. He looked back, nodded. "Yes, Mr. Kenner. They loved each other." He shook his head a little. "It went beyond love, I think." He looked away again. Kenner could see that David was being swept by emotion, so he decided it was a good time to push on.

"And do you believe that Mr. Fisher murdered your sister?"

David didn’t answer for a moment, then he said sharply, "Yes. Of course." He stopped. His breathing had suddenly become heavy and ragged with emotion. He looked away and continued, "I don’t know." He shook his head. His eyes watered. "I don’t know," he whispered. Another pause. "Yes." He was still looking away. "He could have murdered Anne. Of course he could have murdered Anne."

"Thank you, sir," Kenner said.

~ * ~

In the room it was daylight and the dust had gathered itself together and had become a man.

K
aren Duffy felt ill at ease, alone in Christian Grieg’s house. She had no concrete reason for it. It was not an uncomfortable house; it was small, tastefully furnished, and it had that welcoming, lived-in air that so many houses lacked. She had, in fact, spent more than a few happy hours in it with Christian. But lately, when he left her alone there, it was as if he left some part of himself behind to watch her. And she had no concrete reason for feeling that way, either, because she had always thought of Christian as an open and generous man who cared little for possessions, per se, and who was clearly happy to share whatever he had with his friends. Still, she felt ill at ease. And today, while he was gone, she stayed in the living room and read a book while she waited for him to return.

After a while, she decided that she did not know Christian as well as she thought she had, and that was the reason for her discomfort. She imagined that there was some facet of himself that he kept hidden, that possibly it was something dark. But, soon, she decided that she was merely trying to find a reason for her discomfort, and that giving Christian a "dark side" was as good a reason as any.

She wondered suddenly if his personality had altered in the last couple of months? It was hard to say; she didn’t know. He did not seem to have a tight rein on his temper anymore. Ever since she’d known him, he had seemed to be a man who kept his anger in check. There was the time, for instance, when a man who had been tailgating Christian had run into him at a stop sign. Christian had merely shaken his head resignedly, gotten out, and politely exchanged all the necessary information with the man. Karen wasn’t sure what the Christian she knew now would do under the same circumstances.

His treatment of David was odd, too. So judgmental, so lacking in understanding and good will. He and David had been friends for many years, and the old Christian—the Christian she had met four years earlier and had grown to love; though, she thought, perhaps only in a platonic way—had shown himself in many ways to be David’s closest friend and confidant. But now—

She put her book down and looked appraisingly about the room. There was little of Christian in it, she thought. The books—there were several hundred of them in two large bookcases—were an eclectic assortment that, Christian had once told her, reflected his changing tastes, inclinations, and concerns over the years. If there was anything to tie them together it was a tendency toward the darkly philosophical—Camus, Kierkegaard, Sartre. But there was Mickey Spillane, too, and Sherlock Holmes.

Christian had no hobbies. He claimed that his work—his writing—was his hobby as well his profession. So there was nothing in the room to suggest a side of him other than his writing, although even that—he had authored nine books—was not much in evidence. There were several copies of his first novel—
Greed
—stuck in a lower corner of one of the bookcases, but all his other books were scattered about the house as if he didn’t much care if anyone saw them. He didn’t seem to take a lot of pride in what he did. He didn’t talk about it, he shunned interviews with local news reporters, he was constantly invited to literary receptions and conventions, but rarely went. "Writing is simply a job," he said once.

He wrote about people falling in love, people falling out of love, about people who were in some long and ghastly process of dying.
Greed
had, in fact, encompassed all three areas, and had done it so successfully that the book had launched his career. But none of the books that followed had been as successful. Each had sold only marginally well. They had enabled him to make a living at writing, but he had not yet garnered any sort of real fame.

Karen thought that it was not a goal he hoped fervently to reach. She thought that he did not like people enough for it, or that he did not know himself well enough for it, did not feel that he had enough of substance to say.

He had told her as much. He had been half drunk and in a confessional mood: "Who am I to do calculations about other people?" he had asked. "I write about people and that means I write about myself. But when I look inward I don’t see anything. Not myself. Not the reflection of myself. I see the dark." Then he had shrugged and said that he was babbling and quickly got onto another subject.

He read to her now and again from his own books. He seemed to enjoy it and she did not discourage him because he was a good reader—his voice full and deep and dramatic, almost
Burtonesque
. It was as if he were putting on a show for her, as if he were drawing, from somewhere deep within himself, living and breathing characters which, to that point, had existed only on paper.

His characters were often unlikable, seedy; he referred to them as "ne’er-do-wells," and explained that he had sympathy for them, even if many of his readers did not. It was, in large part, these characters which had kept him from gaining more popularity as a writer. "You know what these people are?" he once said to Karen, in his own defense. "These are the people that all of us want to be, under the skin. The properly dressed and courteous assholes that populate the world?
My
people live
inside
those people. You want to know why? Because from the moment we’re born we realize, in our heart of hearts, that
other people
are in competition with us for survival. We act courteously, we dress properly, we smile, we say ‘Have a nice day,’ but it’s all just to keep
them
at bay, to keep
them
—my people, the people inside us, the
naturalness
inside us—from gobbling us up.

He liked most to read from his first novel,
Greed
, the story of a love affair that was doomed because the people involved had let themselves become "too civilized . . . too polite," until, at last, the passion within them was gone and they realized it, mutually, and tried to correct it, at last, in an orgy of regret and violence. They had sacrificed their "real and gritty and passionate and natural" humanness for the sake of civility, out of
selfloathing
and fear, and in an effort to regain that humanness they self-destructed.

"‘Beverly looked at Stephen,’ " he read, " ‘and she saw a monster, something with a huge, misshapen head and bulbous eyes and a long, greedy tongue. She loved what she saw.
This
was her Stephen, and she knew that he was seeing her the same way, for the first time, and that he loved what he was seeing, too. Loved every repulsive, slavering, greedy,
human
part of her.

"‘Two monsters fucking. It was
real
, it was
good
, it would
last
.’ "

And although these monsters were present only at the conclusion of his first novel, they filled all the pages of his succeeding novels, and they doomed him to a career that seemed always on the verge of getting started.

~ * ~

Karen decided she would like some coffee. She went into the small kitchen that adjoined the living room and put some water on to boil.

~ * ~

The dust which had gathered itself together and had become a man left the room and went out into the countryside. It was the beginning of a search. The man had no idea what he was searching for, only that he
needed
to search, and so he started.

There was light, and the countryside was still. There were smells in the air, and the man sniffed them and smiled because they were reminiscent, though he could not think what they were reminiscent of.

He was puzzled a little by the tug on him from above, by the fact that as he walked through the fields he could feel no pressure on the soles of his bare feet, only the softness of the earth beneath him and the slight touch and tickle of the grasses.

He was unaware of his nakedness because he had no idea that he should be clothed.

Eventually he came up over a rise and saw houses clustered together.

As he watched, people came out of the houses and ran to him smiling, and took him back to the cluster of houses, where he was clothed by many hands, welcomed, and caressed.

He had a meal. It too was reminiscent, though again he could not think what it was reminiscent of.

After the meal, darkness came and the people stayed inside their houses and they slept.

The man slept, too.

He dreamt of people he did not recognize.

He heard their names, but he did not know what the names meant.

He heard them talk, but did not recognize their voices.

He felt sadness.

When he woke, he had no recollection of the dream.

D
avid was being held for observation in the psychiatric wing of Syracuse General Hospital. He’d been told it was standard procedure in cases of attempted suicide, and he hadn’t argued with it. "Yes, you’re right, of course," he said, which, calculatedly, seemed reasonable, because he wanted very much to seem reasonable, wanted very much to avoid being shut away in a locked ward.

He was not put in a locked ward. He assumed an appearance of being puzzled and remorseful at his "attempt at self-destruction," and so he was put in a room that was down a corridor which was looked after by a tall, middle-aged and very officious-looking RN who sat stiffly behind a desk.

There was a man sharing the room with David. The man was self-committed. He was depressed, and lonely, and was afraid of what he might do to himself. He talked to David quite a lot, and the idea David got was that the man not only despised his past, but lived in it, too. Hence his despair.

"So many faces, David," the man said. "So many names and faces and smells, and they all get crowded into here"—he pointed to his temple—"and they make me crazy."

David said, "I’m sorry," because it was clear that the man was in misery. The man was very thin because, he explained, food had not interested him in a long time; and his huge hazel eyes carried a constant look of sadness, though he smiled often. It was clearly a nervous smile.

The man explained, "There are aunts, uncles, cousins, David, and acquaintances, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. They all come and go in here." He pointed again at his head. "And even cats and dogs. Gerbils, too. And a parakeet who has no name. I remember them all. All of them, David. They’re in here." He pointed. "They’re gobbling away in here toward the inside of my skull and one of these days they’re going to burst out."

David said again, "I’m sorry," but he had problems and needs of his own, and they were not being approached here, in the psychiatric wing of Syracuse General Hospital.

"Now there’s you, too, David.
David
. You’re in there with some other
Davids
. Half a dozen, I think. Like David Attenborough, the actor. He’s in there, of course, because he was a part of my life—"