Duplicate Keys (31 page)

I
N
H
ENRY’S
apartment, the lights went on, one, two three. He did not appear, but the knowledge that he was there filled her with such sudden longing and desire that her throat contracted. She sat silent in the kitchen, watching, staring after him, but he didn’t appear, not even the top of his bushy head. He obviously had no interest in her apartment. After a few minutes, his lights went out, one, two, three. Alice wanted to cry.

The intensity of her feeling surprised her, abolishing all her thoughts of only a minute before. The evening with Susan and her nagging worries about Ray faded to insignificance beside the fact that Henry had not even glanced out his window at her, had not even checked to see if her windows were dark. For a moment, she thought that she dared not go over to see him. It was nearly twelve, he would already be in bed, but even as she thought it, she was struggling with her jeans and looking for a casual but attractive shirt. Keys? Keys? Keys were on the dining-room table.
Did she need anything else? She ran back to her bedroom for flip-flops, and in a few moments was on the street.

It was another fragrant night, but warmer, the twenty-third of May. Sometime in the previous week, in the round of identical, ideal days, the boundary of summer had been crossed. Summer in New York. It was almost threatening. But the breeze off the river, though warm, was dry and refreshing, evocative not of flowers but of truck gardens—tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers. Her fingers found the button beside the name “H. Mullet,” and pressed.

Henry was wearing his terrycloth robe, tightly and modestly tied around the waist. He did not step from the door when she got off the elevator, nor did he greet her. The elevator doors closed behind her, and in the silence between them there fell only the sound of whirring gears and clacking cables. It occurred to her for the first time that he might have someone in the apartment with him. That issue they had not had time to clarify. If an innocent curious voice were to call out “Henry?” she could—

“What’s up?” said Henry. Serious and closed, his face was not as handsome as she remembered, not young, the sort of face that had belonged to the fathers of her friends when she was a child, would belong to Henry in Brooklyn, when he was a father of little girls. She said, “I saw your lights go on and off. I wanted to see you.”

He waited for her to go on, his determination not to help her, and his anger, apparent.

Unable to help herself, she said, “You angry at me?” and her own voice sounded annoyed, although she didn’t think she was annoyed in the least.

Henry bristled, pulling his belt tighter with a jerk, and then saying, “Irritated, but not for long.”

“What do you mean by that?” Aghast, Alice sensed the hardness of her tone, but it seemed to float away from her, out of reach. Her hand, that should have gone over her mouth, thrust aggressively into the pocket of her jeans.

Henry said, “I don’t understand you. You give me the run around
in the street yesterday, then call me up in the middle of dinner just to turn me down for the evening, and then you stomp over here at midnight, and glare at me. This I do not understand.”

“I’m not glaring at you!”

“You’re glaring at me.”

“Don’t tell me what I am doing!” Finally she closed her mouth with a snap, tight over her uncontrollable tongue. If she was lucky, Henry would take a deep breath and start them over again, invite her into his welcoming apartment, elicit the cause of her temper. Yes, he looked old, but wonderful. Warm and solid and insulted. A hank of hair on the crown of his head was standing straight up, blond whiskers glinted over his chin and cheeks. It was possible that she did love him.

He did not smile or step back, which would have been invitation enough. The slightest, most casual question would do for an opening, but his lips were closed. She said, “I know what I’m doing! I’m not glaring at you!” words that were somehow tied to their conversation, but not to her thoughts. Henry’s face grew perceptibly more distant. She saw in the change how receptive he had been only a moment before, how trivially conciliatory the proper words might have been when she stepped off the elevator. He had gone from being annoyed with her to thinking she was boorish. He retreated a step. Appalled, Alice remained motionless, the glare, for that’s what it was, she admitted, still plastered across her face. Hardworking, passionate about his profession, interesting to be with, solid, wonderful in bed. The door closed in her face, and she heard his bare feet retreat down the short hallway, the bedsprings creak. She turned and poked the elevator button, thinking of Susan, then waited quite a time, staring at her face in the wavy glass, reflected off the empty darkness of the elevator shaft.

13

I
N THE
morning Ray told them through wired jaws that he was selling his co-op and going back to Minnesota. His father was considering going into the solar energy business. Ray was interested in that. He winced when he talked, and they sat to his left. “I’ve been thinking about it for a month,” he said. “This has made up my mind.”

Susan had come reluctantly, and Alice could see that Ray’s injuries did little to soften her resentment. She responded to his announcement with a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Are you going to marry some nice girl and settle down? Come on.”

“It’s unlikely but not impossible.”

“Won’t you miss the old gang?”

“I’ll miss Noah and Alice.”

“Not our old gang.”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it.”

“The passion, the danger—”

He spoke carefully. “I don’t know what I’ll miss. I don’t know
anything. I’ve got to try something else. Don’t you know that all of us have reached the point where every choice is a compromise? That would be better than this. Anyway, it’s none of your business.”

“Ray,” said Alice. “Do you need some magazines?”

Ray shrugged. Alice leaned toward Susan and took her hand. “There’s a newsstand downstairs.” She lifted her eyebrows. Susan scowled, but then nodded. Ray said, “There’s money in the drawer.” Susan went out without taking it. Before the door swished closed, they listened to the click of her heels in the corridor, then there was silence. Ray squirmed painfully in his bed and then winced. Alice said, “I shouldn’t have brought her. I’m sorry.”

Ray lifted his hand and dropped it.

“Is there anything you need from outside for the next few days? I can come back this evening, maybe.”

Ray lifted his hand again, dropped it again, and then, after a moment, turned on the television, checked two or three channels, and turned it off. At last he said, “Alice, I feel very badly that I got you mixed up in this. Especially after you said—”

“Better my doorstep than a stranger’s.”

“For my sake, yeah.”

“It’s okay, I’m just glad—”

“It isn’t okay.”

He was about to say something awful or frightening. Alice sighed. Sure enough, he said, “My former friend Jeff duplicated the keys to your apartment. He gave them to me, but I’m not so sure that he didn’t make some for himself.”

“Why should he? I don’t have anything of value.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything. A person shouldn’t have keys out, that’s all.”

“I can have the locks changed.”

“You could.”

“I was going to anyway.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. Spooked, I guess. This stuff has spooked me. Last week I thought someone was following me in the stacks, and then later I thought I saw—uh—traces that someone had been in my apartment one night when I was out.”

“Which night?”

“I don’t know. Some night. Wednesday, I guess.”

“What kind of traces?”

“Nothing. Some shoes that I thought were one place were another. Stuff like that. It was stupid.”

“No, it wasn’t. That was me. I was in your apartment Wednesday night. I let myself in with the duplicate keys.”

“What for?”

“I wanted to borrow something, but you had it with you.”

“What did you want to borrow, Ray?”

“I didn’t borrow it and I didn’t hurt anything, and Jeff stayed outside, so let’s just forget it, all right?”

“I don’t want to forget it! What did you want that you couldn’t ask me for?”

With his good hand Ray pushed the sheet down and then pulled it up again. Alice exclaimed, “Don’t be so mysterious! If there’s something going on, and in my apartment, I deserve to know what it is!”

“I wanted your keys to Susan’s apartment. Remember she made the rest of us give ours back suddenly, and there was no way I could avoid it.”

“Why did you want the keys to Susan’s apartment?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I wanted to go over there while she was at work one day and look for something.”

“The cocaine?”

“Well—” Ray nodded. “I had to just make sure that the police had it. Looking for myself was the only way.”

“But I had my keys with me, so you didn’t get to look, and somehow that’s related to your getting beaten up, isn’t it?”

“A couple of guys want either their drugs or their money.”

“Ray, how could you get into this?”

“Actually, it seemed like a good deal at the time. Everybody felt very lucky.” His lips spread in a clenched-teeth grimace.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I should make plenty from selling the co-op. I bought it four years ago, and the couple below me know someone who’s already interested.”

“Are they going to wait that long? The people who want their money?”

“Someone they know is a realtor.”

“Oh.”

The door opened and Susan came in. She was carrying an
Esquire
, a
Gentlemen’s Quarterly
and a
People
. She set them down on the nightstand. She was breathing heavily. “Ray—,” she began.

“Well,” said Alice, standing up. “We had probably better be going!”

“Sit down,” said Susan. “I’m going to say what I have to say anyway.” Ray looked at her fearfully. The tirade had obviously been readied and polished while she was going for the magazines. Ray turned his head, winced, and slowly turned it back to where it had been before. “I—,” Susan began. “Oh, screw it!” She grabbed her purse and clattered out of the room.

When Alice caught up with her, she said, “Is there any good place to eat near here?” and Alice felt reprieved.

She ordered wine with her shrimp salad, and when it came, golden and dewy, she was moved by the esthetic perfection of her green meal on the beige tablecloth. Once she had begun, though, she realized her mistake, for everything was warring. The effects did not take place in her stomach; there was no nausea or pain. In her bloodstream and her head, though, there was a series of alternating sensations—elation and exhaustion—that made her hands tremble and her lips twitch while she ate. She was starving. She couldn’t not eat. Susan said, “Are you all right?”

“It’s been a bizarre weekend.”

“To say the least.”

“I’m glad you didn’t berate Ray. You have every right to be—”

“Madame had to wait on a customer herself yesterday. She was positively shocked. This slender gray-haired woman who practically swam in the sixes came out of her dressing room and handed Madame a pile of things and told her to go look for smaller sizes, and while Madame was marshalling her English to say no without losing a sale, the woman went back into her dressing room and handed out another set that she didn’t want and said that Madame needn’t bother with those, they were hideous, and would she please—”

“He’s gotten himself into an incredible mess and—”

“Hurry, as she was due somewhere in half an hour. It was masterful. And then she bought one little handkerchief for thirteen dollars and said everything else was just so badly made and the whole time she was writing out the check she had to stand on her toes to get her elbow onto the counter. Madame tried to explain that we don’t take checks, but the woman—”

Alice sighed.

“Kept interrupting her with remarks about how she never carried cash in the city and the credit card companies always cheated you and a check was the only way, and Madame was so flustered that she took the check without asking for identification, and she couldn’t remember any English for about ten minutes after the woman left.”

“Yes, I realize that you don’t want me to talk about Ray any more.”

“He always did everything Craig ever wanted him to.”

“If he hadn’t gotten them the cocaine, they would have gotten it through someone else.”

“I know.” But Susan said it reluctantly, loath to relinquish her resentment.

“Did Honey ever approach you about it?”

“Actually, I approached him. I told him it had been there when I left, and that I thought Ray had been the contact.”

In spite of herself, Alice was shocked. Some residual reflex was alarmed at the notion of confessing any knowledge of drugs to a policeman. Susan eyed her a second, then laughed. “I know. It was a week before I could bring myself to say anything. But really.” She frowned. “Isn’t it awful? I hate that lingering hippy shit.”

Alice offered, “Then you’re pretty sure that it was friends of Ray?”