'What congress have you had with them?' he asked.
I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. I hadn't laughed in so long that once I got rolling I had a difficult time stopping. Maybe if I'd had more recent congress it wouldn't have been so funny. Corben stared at me in shock. It got me going even harder. Then I thought of Gabriella and the noise died in my throat.
'I came to talk about Gabriella, not any of your nonsense.'
'It's not nonsense and you know it!' He reached for something else to throw but there was nothing handy so he hurled his glass. It bounced off the sofa and landed right side up on the floor without breaking. 'We heard the stories about this place when we were children.'
'We heard stories about every building in the city. The only reason you're so scared of this one is because you live here now. If you were over in Trump Tower you'd be acting the same way.'
He shot to his feet, grabbed another glass, poured more bourbon and splashed some on the floor. He hadn't been able to hold his liquor in college and wasn't doing any better now. His voice was already losing its sharpness. 'You mock me.'
'I ought to mock you just for saying 'you mock me', asshole. People really let you get away with talking like that?'
He ignored me. He'd started to slip away. 'I can't rest. They don't let me sleep. They work their way into the pages and ruin whatever I'm writing. Isn't it the same way with you? Tell the truth. How can you find clarity with all the noise? All the tension and weight of their bearing and closeness.'
Even if I had the pity to spare I wouldn't throw any his way. 'You've got a beach house out in Southampton, a mansion in Beverly Hills, and a villa in Italy, right? So why don't you leave and go spend some time someplace else? Take a trip right after you tell me where your wife is.'
'I can't leave, Will. I'm not sure I can ever leave here again. Stark House won't let me go.'
'What happened to Gabriella?'
He dropped back into his chair and sat there blankly, withdrawing further into himself, gulping his drink. The ice rattled loudly. He snorted like a pig. A part of me wanted to beat the hell out of him and force him to talk, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. I wasn't going to get any answers from him. He was willing himself to shut down.
'Lay off the sauce,' I told him. 'I want you clear-headed. I've got more questions and you're going to answer them. We'll talk again soon.'
'What was her name?' he asked.
'Who?'
'The one you took away from me in college. Mary? Maggie? Melanie?'
'I don't remember.'
'She visits me too,' he said. 'She's dead but she asks about you. She doesn't remember your name either.'
The next afternoon, on the second floor, I saw a young handsome man and a beautifully delicate woman walking up the corridor, holding hands. I'd never seen them before. He was in a tux and tails, and she wore a lace dress that looked straight out of the 1920s. They came toward me and the hair on the back of my next rose. A warm, comforting draft swept across my throat. They both smiled and nodded to me. I couldn't quite get my lips to work but I managed to nod back. I wanted to ask if they'd seen Gabriella but the words wouldn't form. They went to the stairway and began to move down it. I held myself in check for about three seconds and then started after them. I knew what I would see by the time I got there. No one would be on the staircase.
I was wrong. They were still slowly proceeding down it. They murmured back and forth. He said something and she tittered mellifluously. It was a warm and enduring sound. They walked across the lobby floor and out the front door onto the street. Something touched my ankle and I nearly yelped.
Mojo stood at my foot and said, 'Ook.' The chain that had connected him to Ferdi was gone. He held a piece of paper up to me. I took it.
It was blank.
He chittered and grinned and shoved his cup out against my shin. I tossed him a quarter and he danced back to Apartment 2C.
I went downstairs and stood out on the stoop listening to the world chase itself. Four rapes and two murders had happened in a five-block radius of the building in the last month. There were plenty of suspects but no leads.
I should be looking for Gabriella. I should be beating the piss out of Corben. But I went back to the screen and forced out more sentences. What I wasn't making up I was dredging up. I called up my most shameful moments and laid them on my characters. They all loved Gabriella, they all wanted to smash her husband. I made apologies too late. It was a third-rate redemption at best. I waited for a man made of aluminium foil to climb out of the closet. When it happened I didn't want to jump out of my skin.
I started awakening in the middle of the night to see my old man sitting at the foot of the bed. He always faced away from me, but I recognized his shape, the heft of his hand. When I dared to call to him he hitched his shoulders and began to turn to face me. It was a turn never completed.
Of course he couldn't face me, he was dead. He's been dead most of my life. He wouldn't even recognize me now. I was nine the last time he saw me. Now I look just like the way he did. The heft of my hand is the same. Imagine him now, finding himself at the foot of a stranger's bed, a man he's never met before, who might call out to him, 'Dad?' No wonder he vanishes. If it was me, looking back at me, seeing me, a live me facing me, plaintively urging some unknown request of me, I'd run too.
Who the hell wouldn't.
The phone rang and no one was there. It happened more and more.
I kept bleaching the bloodstain and finally it faded enough so folks could walk over it again. I got another royalty check, this one for $12.13, In a moment of spite I grabbed the end of it and flicked my lighter. The corner started to brown but I dropped it before there was any real damage. There was no point in ruining what little of mine they were actually sending through. I should be happy the Danes or the Portuguese or whoever the fuck were reading my books. We all make our deals with the Devil.
A private investigator hired by the parents of one of the rape victims came around asking questions. He eyed me up good. A handyman with no set hours, no clock to punch. He'd asked around and found out about the murder. He tried to brace me and I held onto my dwindling cool. He lacked subtlety and hoped to push my buttons, whatever they were. He ran out scenarios where I couldn't get laid so I waited in dark hallways and leaped down onto teenage girls. I let him talk the talk because it was for a good cause. I wanted him to hunt down the bastard in the area.
I awoke to laughter outside the basement window. Mojo pressed his face to the glass and waved to me. I saw the feet of boys and girls go by. A breeze blew the stalks of weeds and wildflowers against the pane. I got dressed, took the back door, and went out to the garden.
Ferdi and the kids were following Mojo around, all of them in a line and sort of dancing the Conga. They went around and around while I watched. Mojo's little bag around his neck, stuffed with the pad and pen on a string, bounced as he jumped onto the vines and the lower limbs of a couple of gnarled trees bursting up from brick.
I turned and saw a man with eyes like a dull metal finish. He whispered something I didn't understand. It wasn't English. I thought maybe it was German. My stomach tightened but I could feel myself smiling. The mysteries of life and death, baby, and everything in between.
A sweet moist aroma wafted from him, and suddenly I knew what the Rhine Falls must smell like.
'Nobody uses ice-picks anymore,' I said. 'So he lied. So what? He just wanted to meet girls.'
Dr Lauber held his hands up to show me they were empty. He seemed eager to explain to me that his intent was friendly and forgiving. He said something else I couldn't understand. I approached and the sunlight shimmered off him.
I said, 'It wasn't you?'
Dr Lauber firmed his lips. He shook his head. He reached out to touch me but the touch never came. He had a lot more he wanted to say. The words poured out of him. He had admissions and apologies and declarations to make. We all did. I knew I would die before making all of mine too. It seemed nobody could do any differently. I listened, thinking about Gabriella. By the time the chain of children came around again he was gone.
