Four Past Midnight

just the goddam June, 1980, issue of EQMM; it was almost all his manuscripts, both those which had been published and those which were incomplete, it was most of his first editions, his foreign editions, his contributors' copies. Oh, but that was only the start. They had lost their books, as many as four thousand volumes. All of Amy's clothes would have burned, if the damage was as bad as she said it was, and the antique furniture she had collected - sometimes with his help, but mostly on her own - would all be cinders and clinkers now. Her jewelry and their personal papers - insurance policies and so on - would probably be okay (the safe hidden at the back of the upstairs closet was supposed to be fireproof), but the Turkish rugs would be ash, the thousand or so videotapes melted lumps of plastic, the audio-visual equipment ... his clothes ... their photographs, thousands of them ...

Good Christ, and the first thing he'd thought of was that goddam magazine.

'No,' Amy was saying, answering the question he had almost forgotten asking in his realization of how enormous the personal loss must be, 'she couldn't tell what kind of car it was. She said she thought somebody must have used a Molotov cocktail, or something like that. Because of the way the fire came up in the window right after the sound of breaking glass. She said she started up the driveway and then the kitchen door opened and a man ran out. Bruno started to bark at him, but Patty got scared and pulled him back, although she said he just about ripped the leash out of her hand.

'Then the man got into the car and started it up. He turned on the headlights, and Patty said they almost blinded her. She threw her arm up to shield her eyes and the car just roared out from under the portico ... that's what she said . . . and she squeezed back against our front fence and pulled Bruno as hard as she could, or the man would have hit him. Then he turned out of the driveway and drove down the street, fast.'

'And she never saw what kind of car it was?'

'No. First it was dark, and then, when the fire started to shine through your study window, the headlights dazzled her. She ran back to the house and called the fire department. Isabelle said they came fast, but you know how old our house is ... was ... and ... and how fast dry wood burns ... especially if you use gasoline . . .'

Yes, he knew. Old, dry, full of wood, the house had been an arsonist's wet dream. But who? If not Shooter, who? This terrible news, coming on top of the day's events like a hideous dessert at the end of a loathsome meal, had almost completely paralyzed his ability to think.

'He said it was probably gasoline ... the fire chief, I mean ... he was there first, but then the police came, and they kept asking questions, Mort, most about you ... about any enemies you might have made ... enemies ... and I said I didn't think you h-had any enemies ... I tried to answer all his questions . . .'

'I'm sure you did the best job you could,' he said gently.

She went on as if she hadn't heard him, speaking in breathless ellipses, like a telegraph operator relating dire news aloud just as it spills off the wire. 'I didn't even know how to tell them we were divorced . . . and of course they didn't know ... it was Ted who had to tell them finally ... Mort ... my mother's Bible ... it was on the nightstand in the bedroom ... there were pictures in it of my family ... and ... and it was the only thing ... only thing of hers I h-h-had . . .'

Her voice dissolved into miserable sobs.

'I'll be up in the morning,' he said. 'If I leave at seven, I can be there by nine-thirty. Maybe by nine, now that there's no summer traffic. Where will you stay tonight? At Ted's?'

'Yes,' she said, sniffing. 'I know you don't like him, Mort, but I don't know what I would have done without him tonight ... how I could have handled it ... you know ... all their questions . . .'

'Then I'm glad you had him,' he said firmly. He found the calmness, the civilization, in his voice really astounding. 'Take care of yourself. Have you got your pills?' She'd had a tranquilizer prescription for the last six years of their marriage, but only took them when she had to fly ... or, he remembered, when he had some public function to fulfill. One which required the presence of the Designated Spouse.

'They were in the medicine cabinet,' she said dully. 'It doesn't matter. I'm not stressed. just heartsick.'

Mort almost told her he believed they were the same thing, and decided not to.

'I'll be there as soon as I can,' he said. 'If you think I could do something by coming tonight - '

'No,' she said. 'Where should we meet? Ted's?'

Suddenly, unbidden, he saw his hand holding a chambermaid's passkey. Saw it turning in the lock of a motel- room door. Saw the door swinging open. Saw the surprised faces above the sheet, Amy's on the left, Ted Milner's on the right. His blow-dried look had been knocked all aslant and asprawl by sleep, and to Mort he had looked a little bit like Alfalfa in the old Little Rascals short subjects. Seeing Ted's hair in sleep corkscrews like that had also made the man look really real to Mort for the first time. He had seen their dismay and their bare shoulders. And suddenly, almost randomly, he thought: A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had

'No,' he said, 'not Ted's. What about that little coffee shop on Witcham Street?'

'Would you prefer I came alone?' She didn't sound angry, but she sounded ready to be angry. How well I know her, he thought. Every move, every lift and drop of her voice, every turn of phrase. And how well she must know me.

'No,' he said. 'Bring Ted. That'd be fine.' Not fine, but he could live with it. He thought.

'Nine-thirty, then,' she said, and he could hear her standing down a little. 'Marchman's.'

'Is that the name of that place?'

'Yes - Marchman's Restaurant.'

'Okay. Nine-thirty or a little earlier. If I get there first, I'll chalk a mark on the door -'

'-and if I get there first, I'll rub it out,' she finished the old catechism, and they both laughed a little. Mort found that even the laugh hurt. They knew each other, all right. Wasn't that what the years together were supposed to be for? And wasn't that why it hurt so goddam bad when you discovered that, not only could the years end, they really had?

He suddenly thought of the note which had been stuck under one of the garbage cabinet's shake shingles - REMEMBER, YOU HAVE 3 DAYS. I AM NOT JOKING. He thought of saying, I've had a little trouble of my own down here, Amy, and then knew he couldn't add that to her current load of woe. It was his trouble.

'If it had happened later, at least you would have saved your stuff,' she was saying. 'I don't like to think about all the manuscripts you must have lost, Mort. If you'd gotten the fireproof drawers two years ago, when Herb suggested them, maybe - '

'I don't think it matters,' Mort said. 'I've got the manuscript of the new novel down here.' He did, too. All fourteen shitty, wooden pages of it. 'To hell with the rest. I'll see you tomorrow, Amy. I

(love you)

He closed his lips over it. They were divorced. Could he still love her? It seemed almost perverse. And even if he did, did he have any right to say so?

'I'm sorry as hell about this,' he told her instead.

'So am I, Mort. So very sorry.' She was starting to cry again. Now he could hear someone - a woman, probably Isabelle Fortin - comforting her.

'Get some sleep, Amy.'

'You, too.'

He hung up. All at once the house seemed much quieter than it had on any of the other nights he had been here