The Fourth Hand (26 page)

on, at least until Sarah Wil iams came to his room. Maybe she would watch the news with him; they seemed to agree that the coverage would be unbearable. It’s always better not to watch a bad newscast by yourself—let alone a Super Bowl. Yet as soon as he was back in his hotel room, he could summon no further resistance. He took off his wet bathing suit but kept the bathrobe on, and—while noticing that the message light on his telephone was flashing—he found the remote control for the TV in the drawer, where he’d hidden it, and turned the television on.

He flipped through the channels until he found the al -news network, where he watched what he could have predicted (John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Tribeca connection) come to life.

There were the plain metal doors of the loft John junior had bought at 20 North Moore. The Kennedys’ residence, which was across the street from an old warehouse, had already been turned into a shrine. JFK, Jr.’s neighbors—and probably utter strangers posing as his neighbors—had left candles and flowers; perversely, they’d also left what looked like get-wel cards. While Patrick felt genuinely awful that the young couple and Mrs. Kennedy’s sister had, in al likelihood, died, he detested those people groveling in their fantasy grief in Tribeca; they were what made the worst of television possible. But as much as Wal ingford hated the telecast, he also understood it. There were only two positions the media could take toward celebrities: worship them or trash them. And since mourning was the highest form of worship, the deaths of celebrities were understandably to be prized; furthermore, their deaths al owed the media to worship
and
trash them al at once.

There was no beating it. Wal ingford turned off the TV and put the remote back in the drawer; he would be on television and a part of the spectacle soon enough. He was relieved when he cal ed to inquire about his message light

—only the hotel itself had cal ed, to ask when he was checking out.

He told the hotel he would check out in the morning. Then he stretched out on the bed in the semidark room. (The curtains were stil closed from the night before; the maids hadn’t touched the room because Patrick had left theDO

NOT

DISTURB sign on the door.) He lay waiting for Sarah Wil iams, a fel ow traveler, and the wonderful books for children and world-weary adults by E. B. White. Wal ingford was a news anchor in hiding; he was deliberately making himself unavailable at the moment the story of Kennedy’s missing plane was unfolding. What would management make of a journalist who wasn’t dying to report this story? In fact, Wal ingford was shrinking from it—he was a reporter who was putting off doing his
job
! (No sensible news network would have hesitated to fire him.) And what else was Patrick Wal ingford putting off? Wasn’t he also hiding from what Evelyn Arbuthnot had disparagingly cal ed his
life
? When would he final y get it?

Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love. Upon meeting Mrs. Clausen, Patrick could never have envisioned a future with her; upon fal ing in love with her, he couldn’t imagine the future without her.

It was not sex that Wal ingford wanted from Sarah Wil iams, although he tenderly touched her drooping breasts with his one hand. Sarah didn’t want to have sex with Wal ingford, either. She might have wanted to mother him, possibly because her daughters lived far away and had children of their own. More likely, Sarah Wil iams realized that Patrick Wal ingford was in need of mothering, and—in addition to feeling guilty for having publicly abused him—she was feeling guilty for how little time she spent with her grandchildren.

There was also the problem that Sarah was pregnant, and that she believed she could not endure again the fear of one of her own children’s mortality; nor did she want her grown daughters to know she was having sex.

She told Wal ingford that she was an associate professor of English at Smith. She definitely sounded like an English teacher when she read aloud to Patrick in a clear, animated voice, first from
Stuart Little
and then from
Charlotte’s Web,

“because that is the order in which they were written.”

Sarah lay on her left side with her head on Patrick’s pil ow.

The light on the night table was the only one on in the darkened room; although it was midday, they kept al the curtains closed.

Professor Wil iams read
Stuart Little
past lunchtime. They weren’t hungry. Wal ingford lay naked beside her, his chest in constant contact with her back, his thighs touching her buttocks, his right hand holding one, and then the other, of her breasts. Pressed between them, where they were both aware of it, was the stump of Patrick’s left forearm. He could feel it against his bare stomach; she could feel it against the base of her spine.

The ending of
Stuart Little,
Wal ingford thought, might be more gratifying to adults than to children—children have higher expectations of endings. Stil it was “a youthful ending,” Sarah said, “ful of the optimism of young adults.”

She sounded like an English teacher, al right. Patrick would have described the ending of
Stuart Little
as a kind of second beginning. One has the sense that a new adventure is waiting for Stuart as he again sets forth on his travels.

“It’s a boy’s book,” Sarah said.

Mice might enjoy it, too, Patrick guessed.

They were mutual y disinclined to have sex; yet if one of them had been determined to make love, they would have.

But Wal ingford preferred to be read to, like a little boy, and Sarah Wil iams was feeling more motherly (at the moment) than sexual. Furthermore, how many naked adults—

strangers in a darkened hotel room in the middle of the day

—were reading E. B. White aloud? Even Wal ingford would have admitted to a fondness for the uniqueness of the situation. It was surely more unique than having sex.

“Please don’t stop,” Wal ingford told Ms. Wil iams, in the same way he might have spoken to someone who was making love to him. “Please keep reading. If you start
Charlotte’s Web,
I’l finish it. I’l read the ending to you.”

Sarah had shifted slightly in the bed, so that Patrick’s penis now brushed the backs of her thighs; the stump of his left forearm grazed her buttocks. It might have crossed her mind to consider which was which, notwithstanding the size factor, but that thought would have led them both into an altogether more ordinary experience.

When the phone cal came from Mary, it interrupted that scene in
Charlotte’s Web
when Charlotte (the spider) is preparing Wilbur (the pig) for her imminent death.

“After al , what’s a life, anyway?” Charlotte asks. “We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with al this trapping and eating flies.”

Just then the phone rang. Wal ingford increased his grip on one of Sarah’s breasts. Sarah indicated her irritation with the cal by picking up the receiver and asking sharply, “Who is it?”

“Who is
this
? Just who are
you
?” Mary cried into the phone. She spoke loudly enough for Patrick to hear her—

he groaned.

“Tel her you’re my mother,” Wal ingford whispered in Sarah’s ear. (He was briefly ashamed to remember that the last time he’d used this line, his mother was stil alive.)

“I’m Patrick Wal ingford’s mother, dear,” Sarah Wil iams said into the phone.

“Who are
you
?” The familiar “dear” made Wal ingford think of Evelyn Arbuthnot again.

Mary hung up.

Ms. Wil iams went on reading from the penultimate chapter of
Charlotte’s Web,
which concludes, “No one was with her when she died.”

Sobbing, Sarah handed the book to Patrick. He’d promised to read her the last chapter, about Wilbur the pig,

“And so Wilbur came home to his beloved manure pile . . .”

the story of which Wal ingford reported without emotion, as if it were the news. (It was
better
than the news, but that was another story.) When Patrick finished, they dozed until it was dark outside; only half awake, Wal ingford turned off the light on the night table so that it was dark inside the hotel room, too. He lay stil . Sarah Wil iams was holding him, her breasts pressing into his shoulder blades. The firm but soft bulge of her stomach fitted the curve at the smal of his back; one of her arms encircled his waist. With her hand, she gripped his penis a little more tightly than was comfortable. Even so, he fel asleep.

Probably they would have slept through the night. On the other hand, they might have woken up just before dawn and made intense love in the semidarkness, possibly because they both knew they would never see each other again. But it hardly matters what they would have done, because the phone rang again. This time Wal ingford answered it. He knew who it was; even asleep, he’d been expecting the cal .

He’d told Mary the story of how and when his mother had died. Patrick was surprised how long it had taken Mary to remember it.

“She’s dead. Your mother’s
dead
! You told me yourself!

She died when you were in col ege!”

“That’s right, Mary.”

“You’re in love with someone!” Mary was wailing. Natural y Sarah could hear her.

“That’s right,” Wal ingford answered. Patrick saw no reason to explain to Mary that it wasn’t Sarah Wil iams he was in love with. Mary had hit on him for too long.

“It’s that same young woman, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. The sound of Sarah’s voice, whether or not Mary actual y heard what she said, was enough to set Mary off again.

“She sounds
old
enough to be your mother!” Mary shrieked.

“Mary, please—”

“That dick Fred is looking for you, Pat.
Everyone’s
looking for you! You’re not supposed to go off for a weekend without leaving a number! You’re not supposed to be
unreachable
! Are you trying to get fired or what?”

That was the first time Wal ingford thought about trying to get fired; in the dark hotel room, the idea glowed as brightly as the digital alarm clock on the night table.

“You
do
know what’s happened, don’t you?” Mary asked.

“Or have you been
fucking
so much that you’ve somehow managed to miss the news?”

“I have
not
been fucking.” Patrick knew it was a provocative thing to say. After al , Mary was a journalist. That Wal ingford had been fucking a woman in a hotel room al weekend was a fairly obvious conclusion to come to; like most journalists, Mary had learned to draw her own fairly obvious conclusions quickly.

“You don’t expect me to believe you, do you?” she asked.

“I’m beginning not to care if you believe me, Mary.”

“That dick Fred—”

“Please tel him I’l be back tomorrow, Mary.”

“You
are
trying to get fired, aren’t you?” Mary said. Once again, she hung up first. For the second time, Wal ingford considered the idea of trying to get fired—he didn’t know why it seemed to be such a glow-in-the-dark idea.

“You didn’t tel me you were married or something,” Sarah Wil iams said. He could tel she was not in the bed; he could hear her, but only dimly see her, getting dressed in the dark room.

“I’m not married or anything,” Patrick said.

“She’s just a particularly possessive girlfriend, I suppose.”

“She’s not a girlfriend. We’ve never had sex. We’re not involved in that way,”

Wal ingford declared.

“Don’t expect me to believe that,” Sarah said. (Journalists aren’t the only people who draw their own fairly obvious conclusions quickly.)

“I’ve real y enjoyed being with you,” Patrick told her, trying to change the subject; he was also being sincere. But he could hear her sigh; even in the dark, he could tel she was doubting him.

“If I decide to have the abortion, maybe you’l be kind enough to go with me,”

Sarah Wil iams ventured. “It would mean coming back here a week from today.”

Perhaps she meant to give him more time to think about it, but Wal ingford was thinking of the likelihood of his being recognized—LION GUY ESCORTS

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN TO ABORTION MILL, or a headline to that effect.

“I just hate the idea of doing it alone, but I guess it doesn’t sound like a fun date,”

Sarah continued.

“Of course I’l go with you,” he told her, but she’d noticed his hesitation. “If you want me to.” He immediately hated how this sounded. Of course she wanted him to! She’d asked him, hadn’t she? “Yes, definitely, I’l go with you,” Patrick said, but he was only making it worse.

“No, that’s al right. You don’t even know me,” Sarah said.

“I
want
to go with you,” Patrick lied, but she was over it now.

“You didn’t tel me you were in love with someone,” she accused him.

“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t love me.” Wal ingford knew that Sarah Wil iams wouldn’t believe that, either.

She had finished dressing. He thought she was groping for the door. He turned on the light on the night table; it momentarily blinded him, but he was nonetheless aware of Sarah turning her face away from the light. She left the room without looking at him. He turned off the light and lay naked in bed, with the idea of trying to get himself fired glowing in the dark.

Wal ingford knew that Sarah Wil iams had been upset about more than Mary’s phone cal . Sometimes it’s easiest to confide the most intimate things to a stranger—Patrick himself had done it. And hadn’t Sarah mothered him for a whole day? The least he could do was go with her to the abortion. So what if someone recognized him? Abortion was legal, and he believed it should be legal. He regretted his earlier hesitation.