over the possibilities. “Mr. Mulholland and I have an understanding. He trusts me.”
Again there was that snuffle of suppressed amusement. “But you hadn’t told him about Dylan Riley.”
“I would have,” Glass said, still in that dulled, dogged tone.
“Sure, Mr. Glass. Sure you would.”
When he had put down the receiver he sat for a long time drumming his fingers on the desk and gazing unseeing before him, trying to think. His mind was still fogged with the after-traces of last night’s unremembered dreams. He picked up the phone again and called Alison O’Keeffe and asked if she would have an early lunch with him. She said she was in the middle of work but he pressed her and in the end she gave in, as he had known she would. He telephoned for a table at Pisces, a little fish place down at Union Square that had been a favorite haunt of theirs in the early days of their affair. Like Mario’s, it was becoming depressingly fashionable, and Glass worried that someday Louise would come in with one of her someones in tow and find him and Alison all snug and cozy at their accustomed corner table. That would be awkward.
He had not spoken to Alison since yesterday. He did not like to think of her being involved, however peripherally, in the business of Dylan Riley’s death, and was sorry he had mentioned Riley to her in the first place. He still could not think how Riley might have found out about him and Alison; he supposed he was naive for having imagined that New York was big and impersonal enough to allow him to carry on a love affair without anyone knowing.
In the restaurant he sat at the table with his back to the wall and watched the door, impatient with himself for his nervousness. So what if Louise should appear and find him with Alison? They were not children, they knew about each other’s lives. Probably if she did come in she would merely sweep the room rapidly in that way she did and let her glance glide over the happy couple and then change her table to one as far from theirs as possible.
In his honor Alison had exchanged her painter’s smock for a skirt and a blue silk blouse. When she kissed him he caught behind her perfume a faint whiff of acrylics; the smell always reminded him of brand-new toys at Christmastime. He waited for her to mention Dylan Riley but she did not; she must not have seen the news of his death. She wore her hair drawn tightly back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck with an elastic band. She touched his hand, smiling, and asked what it was they were celebrating. “Nothing,” he said. “Us.” She nodded, skeptically, still smiling with lowered eyelashes; she knew about Glass and spontaneity.
They ate Chilean sea bass and green salad, and Glass ordered a bottle of Tocai from Friuli, even though Alison had said she wanted to work in the afternoon and would drink only water. He downed the first glass of wine in two long draughts and poured another before the bossy waiter had time to wrest the bottle out of his hand. Alison, watching him, frowned. “Why are you so edgy?” she asked. “You’ll be drunk in a minute, and I’ll have to carry you home to your wife.”
She was right: the wine had gone straight to his head already. As he looked at her, seated there before him with the crowded room at her back, she appeared to shine, in her blue blouse, a living, bloodwarm creature. It seemed to him he had never noticed her ears before, these intricate, whorled, funny and lovable things attached at either side of her dear face. He wanted to reach across the table and touch her. He wanted to hold her head, that frail and delicate egg, between his palms and kiss her and tell her he loved her. Tears were welling in his eyes and the back of his throat was swollen. He felt ridiculous and happy. He was alive, and here, with his girl, in the midst of the cheerful clamor of midday, and it was spring, and he would live forever.
“By the way,” she said, “do you know someone called Cleaver?”
He blinked. “What? No. Who?”
She gave him a frowning smile that made her nose wrinkle at the bridge. “Cleaver,” she said. “Wilson Cleaver.” She shook her head. “What a name.”
He was having some difficulty with his breathing. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“He’s a journalist, I think. A reporter. He telephoned me yesterday, just after you did. He wanted to talk to you. I thought it was odd.”
He stared at her. The tipsy euphoria of a minute ago had evaporated entirely. “How did he get your number?”
“I think he knows that fellow you were talking about yesterday. What’s his name? Someone Dylan? No-Dylan someone.”
“Riley.”
“That’s it. Dylan Riley. What was it you called him?”
“The Lemur.”
8
THE SHEEPFOLD
They had arranged to meet by the Boathouse in the Park. On the telephone Glass had listened intently to Wilson Cleaver’s voice but had not learned a great deal from it. Black, he thought, from the jivey bounce in the tone and the way he dealt with certain sibilants. Self-confident, too, with an overlay of easy, almost languid, amusement. If he had been a friend of Dylan Riley’s he certainly did not seem to be in mourning. “Good of you to call, Mr. Glass,” he had said, with a lordly, laughing air. “I know your stuff, of course. Been a fan of yours for years.” There had been no mention of Riley or his death. All very businesslike. The Boathouse, noon. “See you there, Mr. Glass. Look forward to it.”
At twelve on the stroke he came striding along by the water, smiling and with a hand thrust out while he was still five yards off. “Mr. Glass, I presume?” he said. “Cleaver. Howdy do?” He was a young man, thin and tall with a sharp face and a big, exaggerated smile. His hair was cut close and he sported a sort of beard that was just two narrow black lines running down past his ears and along the jawline to meet underneath the notched chin. He wore a striped seersucker jacket tightly buttoned and a blue bow tie with red polka dots. Glass noticed his shoes, impossibly long and narrow patent-leather sheaths, the laces knotted into stiff and perfectly formed figure eights. There was something about him of the professional performer, but one from another age, a sixties stand-up comedian, maybe, or even one of those old-time zootsuited jazzmen with a horn in one hand and a reefer in the other. He was all movement, flexing his knees and shooting his cuffs and tugging at his tie, as if he were controlled by an internal clockwork mechanism, oiled and intricate. Having shaken hands with Glass he smoothed the wings of his sleek pencil moustache rapidly downward with the tips of a thumb and forefinger. “Let’s walk,” he said.
The day had a bluey-green tinge and the coming of spring was everywhere in evidence. The trees quivered and there were fresh gusts of wind among the budding boughs, and the lake water shone like a knife blade. Glass loved this park, so grand, so generous, and so unexpected. Today, as always, there were joggers everywhere, and young mothers airing their children, or perhaps they were not mothers but minders, and the usual complement of crazy people and shuffling down-and-outs.
“How that book of yours coming along?” Cleaver asked.
“What book?”
Cleaver had a high-pitched, hiccuppy laugh. “Oo, you so coy!” he crowed.
“How do you know me?” Glass asked coldly. “How did you come to have Alison O’Keeffe’s number?”
“I thought it was your number, man. Old Dylan, he liked to think he was real organized but he sure could get his data mixed up.”
“You knew him, then, Dylan Riley?”
“Yeah, I knew him, the poor cracker.”
“What do you do, Mr. Cleaver?”
“I do what you do, Mr. Glass.”
“You’re a journalist?”
“Paid up and bona fidee.”
Glass had understood from the start that the Dixie slang and the cornpone accent were put on. Cleaver was making fun of him.
