She nodded, her eyes aimed at the glass in her hand. 'I was glad when you called, Matthew. I didn't think you were going to.'
'I tried to get you last night. I kept getting a busy signal.'
'I had the phone off the hook.'
'I know.'
'You had them check it? I just wanted to keep the world away last night. When I'm in here with the door locked and the phone off the hook and the shades down, that's when I'm really safe. Do you know what I mean?'
'I think so.'
'See, I didn't wake up with a clear head Sunday morning. I got drunk Sunday night. And then I got drunk again last night.'
'Oh.'
'And then I got up this morning and took a pill to stop the shakes and decided I'd stay away from it for a day or two. Just to get off the roller-coaster, you know?'
'Sure.'
'And here I am with a glass in my hand. Isn't that a surprise?'
'You should have said something, Jan. I wouldn't have brought the vodka.'
'It's no big deal.'
'I wouldn't have brought the Scotch, either. I had too much to drink last night myself. We could be together tonight without drinking.'
'You really think so?'
'Of course.'
Her large gray eyes looked quite bottomless. She stared sadly at me for a long moment, then brightened. 'Well, it's too late to test that hypothesis right now, isn't it? Why don't we just make the best of what we have?'
We didn't do all that much drinking. She had enough vodka to catch up with me and then we both coasted. She played some records and we sat together on the couch and listened to them, not talking much.
We started making love on the couch and then went into the bedroom to finish the job.
We were good together, better than we'd been Saturday night.
Novelty is a spice, but when the chemistry is good between lovers, familiarity enhances their lovemaking. I got out of myself some, and felt a little of what she felt.
Afterward we went back to the couch and I started talking about the murder of Barbara Ettinger. 'She's buried so goddamn deep,' I said.
'It's not just the amount of time that's gone by. Nine years is a long time, but there are people who died nine years ago and you could walk through their lives and find everything pretty much as they left it. The same people in the houses next door and everybody leading the same kind of life.
'With Barbara, everybody's gone through a seachange. You closed the day-care center and left your husband and moved here. Your husband took the kids and beat it to California. I was one of the first cops on the scene, and God knows my life turned upside down since then. There were three cops who investigated the case in Sheepshead Bay, or started to. Two of them are dead and one left the force and his wife and lives in a furnished room and stands guard in a department store.'
'And Doug Ettinger's remarried and selling sporting goods.'
I nodded. 'And Lynn London's been married and divorced, and half the neighbors on Wyckoff Street have moved somewhere or other.
It's as though every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. I know Americans lead mobile lives. I read somewhere that every year twenty percent of the country changes its place of residence.
Even so, it's as though every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. It's like digging for Troy.'
' 'Deep with the first dead.' '
'How's that?'
'I don't know if I remember it right. Just a second.' She crossed the room, searched the bookshelves, removed a slim volume and paged through it. 'It's Dylan Thomas,' she said, 'and it's in here somewhere.
Where the hell is it? I'm sure it's in here. Here it is.'
She read:
'Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.'
'London's daughter,' I said.
'As in the city of London. But that must be what made me think of it. Deep with the first dead lies Charles London's daughter.'
