40
Clare was at the table when I got home, finishing her breakfast and looking through the real estate listings. I hadn’t seen much of her in the past few days- she’d been all over town, and Brooklyn too, looking at apartments- but she’d waited up for me on Sunday night, rigid and white-faced on the sofa when I came in.
“There was news on TV,” she’d said. “A guy shot in Wilton.” She slipped her hands under my shirt. They were smooth and freezing. “They didn’t give his name.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“Your guy, though?” I nodded. “I had a feeling, I don’t know why. Did you…?”
“I was a witness.” I put my face into her pale hair. Soap, perfume, and underneath, something warmer. “I should’ve called you,” I’d said.
“I wasn’t asking,” she’d whispered.
“Still…”
Clare tapped the newspaper- the Metro section- and slid it across to me. “Another thing about your thing,” she said.
I scanned the article. It was the fifth story that week, and mostly a rehash of other reports: another portrait of the Williamsburg Mermaid as a troubled young hipster, actress, and failed playwright, and liberally seasoned with rumors of sadomasochistic sex tapes. Cassandra Z was mentioned yet again. I looked at my backpack, sitting in the corner and bulging with DVDs and backup disks.
“You want to come to Brooklyn?” Clare asked. “Check out some apartments?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got chores.”
I spent the afternoon erasing Holly’s backups and breaking DVDsnot easy to do with splints on. In between, I fielded phone calls. The first was from Ned.
“I’ve followed the story in the papers,” he said.
“They’re getting it about half right.”
“It sounds like this Holly was quite a disturbed person.”
“She was a lot of things,” I said. “Disturbed was one of them.”
“David’s lucky this worked out. He’s lucky he had you to help him. He owes you a huge thanks.”
I laughed. “I’m sure he’ll get around to it.”
“He hasn’t-”
“Don’t worry about it. Is he back at work yet?”
Ned was quiet for a moment. “He didn’t tell you?”
I sighed. “Tell me what?”
“David is taking a leave of absence. Six months.”
“Whose decision was that?”
“I thought it would be a good idea, and Stephanie agreed.”
“And David?”
“He came around eventually,” Ned said, and I laughed again. “Speaking of which, I’m hoping you’ll come around too- literally, I mean. Your nephews miss you, and so do Janine and I.”
“Sure, Ned, once things settle down, we’ll see.”
“I want to do more than see, John. I want you to come over.”
I took a deep breath. “Sure,” I said, and hung up.
Chaz Monroe called me not long after. He, too, had been following the stories in the papers, and there were sly undertones in his raspy voice. “I didn’t think you were really a buyer,” he said. “But not to worry, I forgive the lies. And at least yours were in the line of duty or something.”
“I’m relieved.”
“Indeed.” He chuckled. “So, it turns out she was an actress. Well, that’s no surprise, and neither is the fact that she was a playwright. I’m just amazed she never had more conventional success- she was fucking remarkable.”
“She had other things on her mind, I guess.”
“Apparently. And so do I, of course. These stories have brought buyers out of the woodwork, and I guess it’s more than Don Orlando can handle- or wants to handle- because my phone’s been ringing off the hook. So, if you know of anyone looking to sell-”
“I thought you knew all the owners of Cassandra’s works, or knew of them.”
Monroe hesitated. “I was thinking more of undocumented workanything you might have stumbled across… Prices are only going up.”
I almost laughed. “I’ll keep an eye out,” I said. I hung up and snapped another DVD in two.
I was erasing the last of Holly’s backup disks when Orlando Krug called. He sounded old and tired, and his accent was more pronounced. “It was really her brother-in-law?” he asked.
“It was,” I said.
“The police are sure? It wasn’t Werner?”
“It was Herbert Deering, Mr. Krug.”
“But why? The papers hinted at some sort of affair…” I didn’t say anything, and Krug got the hint.
“I understand, you can’t speak of it. It’s just that I read the newspapers, and the person they describe…it’s not the Holly I knew.”
“They don’t know her. They have column inches to fill, so they write things.”
I heard Krug sip at something. “I’ve wondered lately just how well I knew her myself.”
“You’re the one who told me that she wasn’t easy to know. She was complicated- not just one thing.”
“She was very unhappy,” he said.
“And angry, and lost.”
“And cruel, Mr. March. Not to me- never- but what she did to those men…”
“She was talented, too- maybe brilliant. And driven.”
Krug’s laugh was bitter. “ ‘Obsessed’ is a better word, or perhaps ‘mad.’ She just couldn’t let go.”
“She told Jamie Coyle there was a story she wanted to tell, and questions she wanted to answer.”
“Do you think she found her answers?”
“I’m the wrong guy to ask about closure, Mr. Krug. But I think, sometimes, for some people, the questions come to loom less large. The answers don’t matter so much.”
He sipped his drink again. “I wonder if Holly would have reached that point,” he said.
“She was happy with Jamie, I think. Maybe she was getting there.” It was the only comfort I could offer. We rang off.
I didn’t know if it was the fallout of Krug’s sadness and fatigue, or my own string of sleepless nights, or simply the dull light in the low, beaten sky, but a tidal weariness swept over me and filled my limbs with lead. I listened to the whirr of the disk drive- Holly’s work being whisked away- and looked at the shiny plastic shards in my garbage pail. Holly, Wren, Cassandra- all that anger and sadness, all that cruelty and control, all the searching, and for what? I lay down on the sofa, and as my eyes fell shut, I thought of something else Jamie Coyle had said: “Everybody does their own time, and they do it their own way.”
As I had every day since Sunday, I dreamed of Deering’s body. He was lumpy and twisted on the bricks, like a gutted scarecrow, and there was a terrible intimacy to the sound he made as he hit the floor. His face was deserted; the fear and surprise and everything else packed up and gone. Nicole’s words were the only lyrics-“It’s taking too damn long”- but the voice in my head was Holly’s.
Clare’s voice woke me. She was in the kitchen, talking on her cell phone and putting takeout in the oven. She spoke softly, but firmly.
“I said I’d think about it, Amy, and that’s what I’m doing.”
I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, and when I came out she was off the phone. “Your
