Duplicate Keys (26 page)

When she got out of the shower, she looked out the window at Henry’s apartment. He hadn’t called after Susan’s departure. She had known he would not and now the telepathy didn’t work as it had. No lights came on; he would be asleep, fortifying himself for grafting trees or pruning them or something else equally guiltless. She went naked into her bedroom and picked up the phone, but then put it down. It was not until then that she began to wonder about the practicalities of Susan’s act, about the practical side of the act itself. She had been there, she had even walked around, but in a daze, seeing only the spectacle, unable to comprehend the scene. No wonder Honey had been exasperated. She thought of Susan with him, self-assured, unimpressed. Did Honey find it as easy as Alice did to imagine Susan carrying out the details of her plan: purchasing the weapon, arranging gasoline for the car, covering her entrance into the city and her exit with the anonymous comings and goings all around her, using her very familiarity with the apartment and with the habits of Denny and Craig as her most deadly weapon. Or did that vision only come with years of experiencing her friend, watching how neatly and patiently she arranged things, the deftness of her fingers, and her plans, always precise and unhurried, unfidgeted, unaffected by frustration or boredom, so that she could unpick a complicated seam two or three times and still hum to herself, so that she could arrange nearly a whole window full of clothes, and then change her mind and do it over without wanting to smash the
glass. And could Susan actually have bought and held and finally fired such a gun, a gun that created the mess that Alice found? Alice tried to imagine the feeling of that black-edged thing coming into her hand but she could not. Into Susan’s hand? Yes. Susan’s hands were as big as hers, and wider, stronger, although perhaps you didn’t have to be particularly strong to fire one, only to have the intention of firing one.

She sat down on her bed, then slumped backward, thinking of the last party she had given in this very apartment. Everywhere she looked she had seen an intimate. Susan, Denny, Craig, Ray, Noah, Rya, distributed about the gathering like ripe peaches, a richness, comfortable, handsome, interesting. Craig had brought her some daffodils, snitched from the park or someone’s private bed, but yellow and sweet. Denny had smacked her on the butt. Were any of the others less lost than these dead ones? She felt herself being sucked friendless into the future, against her will, almost as she had felt when she first realized Jim would leave her for Mariana, except that in this case there was no promised relief, no wound for time to heal. These difficulties were both drier and more permanent, and they made her feel older than mere betrayal had, permanently older. But who cared about that? This she hated about herself, this sea of self-absorption, out of which her intelligence rose only sometimes, like a periscope. After a long numb interval, she stood and began to dress.

There was still no seeing Noah. The unknown officers at the Twentieth Precinct didn’t even know where he was, or said they didn’t. Honey would be in touch with her, they thought. She left her name and phone number.

A
T WORK
she was not unhappy. She was sure the evidence against Noah, however it might distract Honey, could not be sufficient for a conviction. Against Susan there was no evidence, only a feeling on Alice’s part borne of confusing conversations and 3 a.m. hallucinations. Every time she thought of the
scene, of the motive, of the opportunity, nothing told against Susan, no fact damned her, nothing about her threw all the fragments into alignment. Although Alice’s conviction of Susan’s guilt remained unshaken, everything ameliorated it. After work she ran into Henry on the corner of Eighty-fourth and West End, and he embraced her as a matter of course and kissed her with perfect self-confidence, as if he expected his kisses to be welcome. They were, but only in retrospect. She felt him notice her coldness and elect to ignore it. To make up, she put her arm around his waist, but resolved not to go back to his apartment with him. There she would be unable to think at all.

“I wanted to call you last night, but we had to take down part of a tree. It was enormous, and we had to do it after the garden was pretty much cleared out. I didn’t get home until one. Your windows were so peacefully dark that I didn’t have the heart. Just wait until November, though. Nine to five, I swear, and lots of days off for exploring the countryside and finding specimens.”

“Will that matter in November? November is a long way away.”

“It will be life and death to you in November, my dear. Haven’t you noticed my fungal personality?”

“You intend to grow on me?” Alice laughed in spite of her mood. “Disgusting.” But she resisted his pressure toward the silver and glass door of his apartment building. He noticed that, too, but only paused for the briefest second before continuing down the street toward the dusty green of the park.

“And how was your week? I missed you. The irises are beginning to bloom.”

“Did they remind you of me?”

“Everything reminds me of you.”

Now she stopped. Henry stopped, too, kindly, affectionately, adorably. Resolute, Alice said, “Can we not see each other for about a week?” but as she said it, desire overwhelmed her, and she could feel her pulse throbbing in her neck and temples. “Why do you have this effect on me?”

“What effect is that?”

“I won’t answer. I didn’t intend to say that.”

He turned to face her and put his open hand under her hair, over her cheek and ear. “What effect?”

“Someday you’re going to be intolerable, Henry. You lean on me, you push me around. I’m used to being alone. I like being alone, with lots of space around me. And I have a whole other life besides this one!”

Henry’s hand dropped. Alice wondered if she looked as aghast as she felt. He turned away, saying, “I’ll call you later,” and stalked down the street. The renewal of Alice’s longing and desire was immediate and inevitable, like the resumption of music after a rest. She chased him and grabbed his elbow. “Henry, listen, I’m not going to talk, because I can’t predict what I’m going to say, but the effect is one of intense desire. Whenever I see you, I start dying to be with you.”

“Have you had dinner?” His voice was carefully neutral, and the difference piqued Alice in spite of herself. “No, let’s!” she said, brightly, falsely. She could sense that the bulkheads separating the murder from Henry from her job from her parents were beginning to crack and leak, and in unexpected ways. She clutched Henry’s arm tightly. Why not tell him the whole story? Why not say, I have something to confide in you, Henry, or Listen to this! She did not have to begin with the perfect phrase, it would not be an artistic exercise. But even the remote possibility of speaking seemed to close her throat and stop her breathing. Henry was hurrying toward Broadway. She said, “Henry, I am falling in love with you. I always react badly when I’m falling in love.” This she had not meant to say, since it might not be true, and when he made the desired response, of unbending and taking her under his arm, of smiling warmly and kissing her on the hair, she was so irritated as to actively dislike him. Turning down Broadway, she burst into tears of frustration. Henry stood her on the corner and surveyed her, proprietary. “You’re a mess,” he said. “I’m going to Zabar’s to get some food. You stand right here. After that we’ll go back to my place and eat and take things one at a
time, all right?” Here was her invitation. Alice nodded. Henry disappeared through the always promising doors of the delicatessen, and Alice stood among the umber-strollers and the passers-by, the future unreeling before her as palpably as the frames of a movie. Henry would lead somehow to Honey which would lead, of course, to the machinery of courts and laws. No decisions would seem to have been made—the two of them would talk about only possibilities and nuances, theories and likelihoods. It would be a relief. It was a relief already, just to think about it. Everybody slowed as they passed Zabar’s, if not to notice the bargains or the lady grinding out red pasta, then to ogle the slices of chocolate torte in the newly opened bakery. No one seemed to pay attention to the good weather any more, perhaps because it had changed imperceptibly from good to tedious. Alice bent down and wiped her eyes on the hem of her skirt, wishing she were the sort of person who always carried a handkerchief, or at least a wadded Kleenex. And approaching from the south was Susan, the smile of pleased recognition already fixed on her face. Inside the store, Alice thought that she could just make out Henry’s head at the end of a long line for the cashier. She hoped that the five people in front of him all had baskets full of little items. She raised her arm and waved to Susan.

Susan kissed her. “Did you see Noah, then? I called you a couple of times this afternoon, but you were away from your desk.”

“No, they wouldn’t let me. I talked to Honey, though.” She said it rather quickly.

“What’s happening? They can’t just hold him there.”

“He was arraigned this afternoon.” That’s what Rya had said, at any rate.

“Is he getting out on bail? Does he have a lawyer? Does he know a lawyer?” Susan had settled herself in, and it became apparent to Alice that she thought they would go home together. Henry, thankfully, had made little progress in his line.

“I didn’t ask that. And I can’t remember if Rya said her boss
got him a lawyer, or offered. Maybe we should call him. What’s his last name?” “Don’t ask me. Levine? Loewy?”

“What a bitch she is!” exclaimed Alice. Two people stood in front of Henry. He hoisted and shifted his basket. It was piled high. Fifty dollars’ worth of stuff, maybe.

“I think we ought to call her up and make her come back.”

“Would it be worth it? She’d be around all the time.”

“Even so—”

Henry moved closer to the counter. “Listen,” said Alice, taking Susan’s arm and turning her away from Zabar’s. “There’s more. This is too crowded. Walk down the street with me.” She glanced back; Henry was at the counter, arm raised to point out rolls and croissants. She sighed. In a moment he would be out on the street, looking for her. She propelled Susan down Eighty-first Street. “What?” said Susan. “What? I have to work tonight. I was going to go in and get some cheese.”

“No, listen. We’ll come back. Just walk around the block with me, I have something to tell you.” She looked behind. No Henry, indignant, out of love, followed them. She said, “It’s solved. He did it. He confessed and Honey’s convinced.”

“You’re kidding.”

Alice peered into Susan’s face, trying to detect the exact degree of surprise and elation there. The other woman was impassive. Alice pressed her. “I’m not kidding. And Honey says he has direct evidence.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Really? thought Alice. But disbelief was a condition Susan often expressed. “Me, neither, actually,” she said.

“But then why would he confess?”

Alice coughed, pretending to think of Noah, but really preparing herself to lie again. Finally she said, “Maybe he’s just trying it out. Maybe he thinks it’s a way out of something. But maybe he did do it. He could have.”

“He could have stood up to Craig?” Susan smiled.

“Everyone has depths, don’t you think? On the face of it, yes, it seems unlikely, but who can say?”

“He never stood up to Craig. In twelve years of playing music, he just took orders, even when they were contradictory, wrong, spiteful, or stupid. He never even argued.”

Alice forced conviction into her voice. “It could accumulate. Honey thinks he did it, anyway.”

“He’s convinced?”

In vain Alice looked for something telling in Susan’s face, listened for something revealing in her voice. There was no relief, no budding gladness. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?” answered Susan. “It looks to me like we’re done doing.”

They had turned the corner of Eighty-second Street, and were walking back toward Broadway. Alice walked without speaking, listening to the confident rhythm of Susan’s clogs on the pavement, back to Broadway and then toward Zabar’s again. “Wait here,” said Susan. “Then you can walk me back to work. Want anything?” Alice shook her head. Henry was long gone, or maybe only briefly gone, but a miss was as insulting as a mile, wasn’t it?

She looked down at her shoes, Top-Siders, the lace knotted where it had broken, and even as she looked she seemed to grow distant from them. She lifted her eyes and fixed them on the Zabar’s window, and then she turned her head and looked across the street. Everything had grown smaller, more distinct, and Alice marvelled that she wasn’t afraid, only wildly, violently annoyed. A man bumped her, nicely dressed, preciously dressed in tight jeans and the sort of imported cotton shirt that Susan sold. Alice wanted to destroy him. She watched him step into Eighty-first Street and disappear into the crowd and wanted to shout, “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you excuse yourself? You bumped me! You slob!” Her anger seemed to lift her off the ground. She closed her eyes and put her hands on her head. She was perspiring at the hair-line and breathing hard. She wondered why anger didn’t
break people, split them open like figs, explode them. At her elbow, Susan said, “You look awful. Why don’t you open this and have some.” Into Alice’s grasp she put a large cold bottle, sparkling cider. Alice touched the bottle to her forehead. Everything resumed its normal size. “Are you hot?” she said. “I think this weather is awful. Maybe I’m coming down with something.” She closed her eyes and took another deep breath while Susan struggled with the cap to the cider. “I’m sure I’m sick. It must be the flu. We’ve been leading such a strange life. It would obviously make you more susceptible to things.” Susan handed her the bottle and she put it to her lips. The sharpness of the carbonation was startling, delicious and repellent at the same time. A sense of panic that had ignited within her was quenched for a moment. She wiped her mouth after a long drink and handed the bottle back to Susan. Susan. Susan held out a piece of Brie cheese to her, then a large ripe strawberry. Susan who was familiar, kind, competent, habitually loved. Alice ate the strawberry, then another hunk of cheese, this one balanced on a cracker. “Feel better?” said Susan.