Patience didn’t seem to mind the question. “We had ‘plenty,’ as Mother endlessly reminds me, but not rich, no. My parents own a pig farm in Elkhart, Iowa.” She said it in the tone of a nineteenth-century gentlewoman admitting to a fallen sister or an idiot child.
“Good honest work,” Anna remarked mildly.
“The place smelled of pigs. All my clothes, my hair, the boys I dated, the food I ate, smelled of pigs. I can’t remember not wanting something better. Even when I was tiny, I had this little kid’s vision of heaven. You know those ornate white iron lawn chairs-the ones that look as if they’re welded from fat vines?”
Anna nodded.
“Somehow that was the height of class in my little pea brain. I’d fantasize for hours about sitting in a lawn chair like that, wearing something chiffon, and snubbing boys that had manure on their boots.” She laughed. “Silly. But the dreams got me out of there. That’s what I needed them for.”
“What do you dream of now?” Anna asked.
“Bigger lawn chairs, finer chiffon, and tycoons to snub.” Patience unfolded herself from the armchair. “Dead soldier,” she announced and carried away the empty bottle. Anna stayed where she was, enjoying the moonlight on the fog, enjoying the buzz of the wine. Another pop, more gurgling: Patience was opening a second bottle.
“I’m working in the morning,” Anna protested.
“Not to worry.” Patience brought the wine and two fresh glasses. “This is the good stuff. Too good for me, I kept telling myself, but this talk of pigs has driven me to open it. Once in this life I will have the best. You lucked into it by sheer accident. Here.”
Anna sipped. It was the best; the best she had ever had. A red wine, though it showed black with only the moon for light, rich and so warm Anna finally understood all the effete talk of sunshine and hillsides and aging in wood.
They drank without talking. The wine was the event. In silence they finished the bottle. Patience said goodnight by a simple touch on Anna’s arm. Anna lay in the moonlight a while longer enjoying the solitude. She picked up the wine bottle and turned it in her hand. The stuff was excellent. On an NPS salary Anna doubted she’d ever have the money to buy a vintage that fine. The bottle looked the worse for wear, the label wrinkled and faded. Something was vaguely familiar about it. Anna thought of turning on the lamp but moonlight and alcohol won out over curiosity.
Tonight, it was enough that it had gotten her high.
Regardless of the quality of the wine, Anna had had too much. Near two in the morning she awoke with the jitters. The bit of moon had continued on its wanderings and the channel was now in shadow. The island was so still she could hear the faint creaks as the apartment building talked to itself.
Alcohol poisoning and the cold hour of the night crowded in. The world seemed a sordid place; people a cancer that was spreading, killing the earth; killing one another.
Wishing she were a cat or a shadow or at least sober, Anna lay on the sofa and stared into the dark until unconsciousness finally took pity on her and returned.
When she awoke again it was light but fog hid any trace of the coming sunrise. She looked at her watch: 5:40 a.m. A dull ache at the base of her skull and a parched feeling told her she would be getting no more rest for a while. Giving in to her hard-earned hangover, she got up and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water.
The wine bottles were gone and the glasses set tidily on the counter near the sink. Patience must have had as bad a time as she, Anna thought, creeping about her apartment in the dead of night doing domestic chores. Anna drank off half a glass of water standing at the sink, then refilled the glass. Theoretically, rehydration helped a hangover. Theoretically a lot of things helped a hangover. In reality only the passage of time worked out the poisons. Anna looked at her watch again: 5:42. It was going to be a long day.
Molly would be up at six. She always was. A woman of strong habits, Anna’s sister rose with coffee and a cigarette to watch the six o’clock news and went to bed with Scotch and a cigarette and
Anna killed twenty minutes standing under a hot shower. At 6:05, wishing she had coffee but lacking the courage to rummage through Patience’s kitchen, she dialed her sister’s number in New York. Molly picked up on the first ring. “Dr. Pigeon,” she said curtly. The formality threw Anna for a moment.
“It’s me, Anna,” she said. “You sound further up than five minutes. Are you okay?”
“Had a rough night.” The sounds of crockery and metal rattled behind Molly’s words.
“Making coffee?” Anna asked enviously.
“Second pot.” There was a clicking on the line. “Hold,” Molly said. “I’m expecting another call.” She was back within seconds. “False alarm. Nobody there. Phone must be acting up.”
“Migraine?” Anna asked. Her sister had suffered migraines since her twenties but she’d not had one in a while.
“No. That’s for later if this clenched feeling behind my eyes means anything. I lost a patient last night. I thought you might be the police. Lots of questions. I’ve got answers that satisfy them. None that satisfy me.”
“Suicide?” Anna asked. Molly had only had two in twenty years of practice. She’d taken both of them hard for a psychiatrist. Anna loved her the better for it.
“Not exactly. At least I doubt that was the primary motivation. Remember my crazy connoisseur?”
“The disgruntled food writer?”
“Him. He climbed the outside of a three-story building in Brooklyn Heights last night. The man is-was-in his late fifties with the figure of a confirmed food worshiper. He hadn’t climbed more than stairs in the past ten years and never those if there was an elevator nearby.”
“Jumped?”
“The police thought jumped at first, but he fell. All the windows were locked on the inside. He had to have climbed up.”
“Do you know why? I mean, did he live there or something?”
“No. He was trying to get to the food lab and kitchens of his rival. I think he figured if he could get in, he could find something to prove the Great Discovery was a hoax.”
“Jesus,” Anna breathed. “You’d think anybody who can afford you would hire someone to do their stunt work.”
“Not this man. I should have seen it coming. The obsessions amused me, Anna. Amused me. I thought it was funny. I just didn’t see it as something that could drive anybody to do something that desperate. The last couple of sessions he talked of revenge, said the yellow braces weren’t enough. He talked of plans to mock, to expose, even to kill his rival. The plans were all overblown-comic book stuff. You know: plastic explosives on the violent end and intricate Rube Goldberg devices to deliver a public pie in the face on the silly end. Boyish. I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve got that article coming out in
“I’m sorry,” was all Anna could say. Molly was never to be comforted when she believed she had failed. People found it hard to love a woman to whom they could give nothing. The pain would pass and Molly would never let it happen again, at least not in the same way.
Again there was a clicking on the line. This time it was another call: the hospital where Molly’s client had been taken. Molly rang off abruptly, leaving Anna with the depressing feeling that she should have done something more, said something wiser. Just once she wished Molly would need something that she was equipped to deliver.
Like what? Anna mocked herself. Need someone arrested for camping out of bounds in Central Park? A horse shod or a boat engine tuned for her Park View practice?
Anna promised herself she would call again soon and make a point to listen more than talk. She had to satisfy herself with that.
When she looked up from the phone, Patience was standing in the hall between the living room and the bath. Her face was twisted, as though she couldn’t decide whether to come ahead into the front room or retreat back to the bedroom.
“It’s all right,” Anna said. “I’m off the phone.”
Patience gave her a hard look, angry-or so it seemed through the medium of a hangover.
“I used my credit card,” Anna said, feeling childish.
