and didn't like what he saw. But he knew he was particularly sensitive to nuance at the moment. His whole body hurt as if he had been in a rough game and just had a ton of linebackers use him for a playing field. His flesh felt bruised in places he hadn't known existed.
But maybe the bruises didn't exist. Rick couldn't tell. All day he had had trouble identifying the sources of his pain. This was new. As an athlete, he had had to know where it hurt so he could compensate and go around the end zone of his physical weak spots. Now he couldn't tell whether the pain he felt came from his body or his mind, which made it difficult to know how to handle it. He had that queasy feeling that came after a really crippling migraine, when his clarity of thinking had returned but he was aware that some crucial period of consciousness was missing. At such times, he wasn't exactly sure what had occurred when the system broke down, and he was afraid nausea might make him vomit without warning, or crash out again.
He kept turning to Merrill, wanting to tell her how awful it was without her. He couldn't believe she wasn't coming back in a minute, breathless and apologetic for taking so long. But she wasn't coming back. Someone had killed her. Someone had reached into the very center of his life and ripped his heart out. The police said Merrill had been stabbed in the neck. It was inconceivable. It made him sick to think about it. He couldn't imagine how such a thing could happen. He just couldn't envision a situation in which Tor was not in control. Tor had been in control of everything. Rick had seen him in tight spots more than once. The threat of a mugger, even one with a gun, would not have caused Tor to lie down and die. There had been no mention of a gun, or a struggle. Why not? Something was wrong, and they weren't telling him the real story. But why not? Rick didn't get it. He felt dead, destroyed—and yet he was alive—dazed and puzzled at the same time.
Jokingly, Merrill used to tell him that dazed and puzzled were the two reactions actors had when stinking reviews came in. He and she had received some pretty stinking reviews when they got married, but the hate was never murderous, never struck at the heart.
Snide remarks on either side of the color line were like graffiti on city walls. It was everywhere. They saw it, they didn't like it, but it wasn't going away. So they'd had to get used to it.
They had told each other having to defend their reasons for being together made them stronger. What had made them vulnerable was the inability to have children, for which no doctor could find a medical reason. That flaw in their life was what had kept them from feeling normal, from feeling right as a couple. Rick had believed it was his fault; Merrill had believed it was hers. Now they would never see their love mirrored in other faces. Al Merrill's battles were over. Rick thought about that as his partners stared at him with disbelief.
'Don't you know what's going on? Haven't you seen the news?' Mel echoed incredulously.
Rick shook his head. Two cops had given him the news at four in the morning. He didn't need to hear the uninformed versions.
Chris Richardson, a man who had his suits and everything else including his underwear made at Sulka and who trained in a gym for three hours every day after the market closed, was still slim enough to bend at the waist. He leaned forward and put a hand on Rick's knee. 'This is going to get ugly,' he said ominously. 'Really ugly.'
Dan Rothhaus was a small wiry man with intense blue eyes, curly white hair, and a long thin nose the nostrils of which he constantly teased with a pinkie. Rothhaus radiated anxiety. Rick shot him an inquiring look, then stared at his other two partners as if he had never seen them before. Both were wealthy, well-fed men whose only adversities were having to endure spoiled first and second wives, spoiled and aimless children, and frequent turbulence in national and world markets.
Now the three men were galvanized with what they seemed to see as a real problem, were catching each other's eyes and isolating him with their concern. Rick took a few moments to get a grip on himself. It was going to get ugly? It was already ugly.
He drifted back into his own thoughts. Earlier in the day, Patrice had given him the feeling Merrill's murder hadn't been a random act. Now he was distracted by the word 'ugly,' and other, familiar irritations like the way his partners made a point of waiting for the restaurant staff to leave before saying anything of importance. All four men in the room had a stake in Liberty's Restaurant—all had a part ownership. But the other three considered it Rick's thing. They considered some of the patrons, and all of the staff, aliens, from another planet. Rick had the feeling that secretly they believed blacks were Martians. He had to stop thinking about that.
He thought about Merrill's face when he'd gone to identify her body. It seemed to rebuke him with its emptiness. Her eyes and mouth were permanently closed, had no comment about what was going on, couldn't tell anyone what happened to her. Now, hours after he had left her there, he found himself trying to remember something else about Merrill other than her color.
For the first time, her color seemed an unbearable offense. She had been frighteningly white at the medical examiner's office, as were the walls of the closed viewing room that he hadn't been allowed to enter. Rick had seen his dead wife through a window and was shaken by how white and alone she was. When he touched the window, that, too, was cold.
'I want to go in,' he'd said. He didn't want to leave her there with no crowd of mourners, to be dissected alone. It was so cold, so very cold. He was shaking all over.
'Is that your wife?'
He didn't look to see whose voice was asking, could not have said afterward which cop it was. He just knew the white corpse on the table wasn't his wife. No. his jaw and fists clenched. He looked at her for a long time. No, it was not his wife. Not Merrill. Then, finally he nodded.
He did not encounter Daphne Petersen, was not shown Tor's body to identify. He felt as if the two were set apart somehow. He wanted to see Tor but was afraid to ask. No police person told him what really happened last night. Rick wondered if they would ever tell him. It hit him at that moment that he would not be able to rest until he knew exactly what happened. And then he was hustled out. They wouldn't let him go in and say good-bye to Merrill. Someone said something about everybody's having to suit up before getting anywhere near the dead these days, wear masks with respirators, as if all corpses carried the AIDS virus or TB, or something even worse. Or were they afraid death itself was catching?
And everything had been white. A white sheet was tucked up around Merrill's ears so he couldn't see any more of her than her face, white under the harsh lights, unmarked in any way, frozen in an expression he'd never seen. It almost felt as if she'd been killed by whiteness itself, bled of her spirit, bleached into nothingness. He noticed that the large diamond studs she always wore were not in her ears. He had heard that the police stole jewelry, watches, and money of victims, also the property of people who were arrested. But Rick didn't think to ask about Merrill's diamonds.
He was too shaken, for white had never been the color of death to him. He'd seen the dead, many dead in his childhood. His mother, grandmother, sister, and he used to visit all the families of the dead in their congregation. They'd prayed over the dead in church and sung them into heaven. The women probably still did. The dead went to heaven in golden chariots, sung there by the choir. They crossed the river to the other side. They were sung all the way on their journey to Jesus, who'd always loved and cherished them no matter who they had been or what they'd done with their lives. The lives may not have been very precious, but the souls were golden treasures to Jesus. That was what they believed. And the treasures were always black. Rick had never seen a dead white person until he saw his wife on—he couldn't even tell what she was lying on. She was covered with a sheet, and there was another sheet under her, draped to the floor.
He admitted the body was hers, but nothing about the thing he saw through the window was like the Merrill he had known. And what was there was not going to heaven in a golden chariot. Merrill was going to be cut up with saws and scalpels and her tissues examined under a microscope. Sitting now with his partners in the borne he had shared with Merrill, Rick's body was tense, but his eyes hid his fury. It was already very very ugly.
'Listen to me, Rick,' Chris said earnestly. 'You have to focus. Do you know what they're saying on TV? Do you know what's going on downstairs? Downstairs there are half a dozen of those vans with star wars on top. Two of those crews almost knocked me down, fighting to get a microphone in front of my face.'
Merrill's family was waiting for her body so they could have a funeral. They wanted the funeral in Massachusetts where she'd grown up, and he'd agreed that was best. His family was on the way. After her body had been cut up and examined, they would take her back to the New England town she came from and bury her there. He sucked his breath in, trying to keep control.
'What?' Mel said, cupping his ear.
