Flesh And Blood

“Oh,” he said. His eyes narrowed, and one fist inched closer to me. “Now I’m on the couch. This is bullshit.”

I reached for the doorknob.

“Wait! You can’t bop in here like this and expect me just to capitulate-”

“I don’t expect a thing,” I said. “And frankly, right now, your peace of mind isn’t paramount to me. I just spent some time with a woman who’s been living a nightmare for over a year. Knowing but not knowing. Just like you told me the first time: ‘the ultimate parent’s nightmare.’ And guess what? She has something in common with you, Gene. You both despise the word closure. You think it’s pop-psych crapolsky, but she has a much greater understanding of the term’s inadequacy-”

“Alex, please-”

“She doesn’t expect a miracle, Gene. But she would like to say good-bye, visit her daughter’s grave from time to time, maybe leave some flowers.”

He bowed his head again, covered his eyes with his hands. “Oh, Jesus – Yeah, I wanted you to chase it. I guess – I don’t know what the hell came over me. I wasn’t planning to say a goddamn thing, and then you started telling me about that other girl – whom I really didn’t know, that’s the truth, Alex. And synapses just started clicking – memories, it’s been sitting here, all this time” – touching his belly – “but still, what the hell was I thinking? ’Cause I remember you from grad school. The bulldog, they called you behind your back – jokes about your being a goddamn obsessive-compulsive. You never let go of anything. What the fuck was I thinking!”

Tearing at his hair. When he stopped I said, “Maybe you weren’t thinking. Guilt’s a great motivator. Maybe you were just feeling.” Knowing he had something else in common with Agnes Yeager. The great void. Holes that couldn’t be filled.

“Shit,” he said. “The police already know?”

I nodded. A lie, but he didn’t deserve better. And those big hands could do damage in close quarters.

“I didn’t – Okay, look, just give me a chance to explain. This is what happened: An accident, a goddamn stupid accident, okay?”

I stood there.

“Fuck. You can be a sphinx.”

“I’m listening, Gene.”

“Right.” His Adam’s apple took a joyride. His armpits had grown sodden, and pink scalp shined where he’d raised furrows in his hair. “Yeah, I was – we were having a thing. And don’t preach to me about that. She came on to me – Sure I could’ve resisted but I didn’t. Didn’t want to. Why would I resist? Marge and I never – Forget excuses, you don’t want to hear them. The truth is she was the hottest thing I’ve ever come across. I’ve been married twenty-three years, and I’ve been basically faithful. But this girl – Shawna – she was something else. Gave off a heat – She was the girl every guy wants in high school but can’t get unless he’s a… No need to get into that. We had a thing, it was mutual, she was madly in love with me – said she was. I knew that was horseshit, this was a fling – once she figured out I wasn’t going to leave Marge she’d end it. But in the meantime… she could do things with her… Also, she was smart as hell, not just a body. We could talk – Even at her age, she had things to say. Number one in my class, so there was no conflict of interest, no trading grades for-”

He choked on his own saliva, endured a paroxysm of coughing, filled his mug with cold coffee and swallowed.

“We’re talking a month, five weeks tops, Alex.”

“Right from the beginning of the quarter.”

“Soon after, yeah. The second time she came in. Little white dress. Like a tennis outfit – She had this fresh clean smell – this perfume of youth. It happened, I can’t change that. But after that I was discreet. Meeting her only off-campus – We used to drive up in the hills above Bel Air. Find a spot.” He smiled. “Parking, she’d make a production of taking off – Oh, man, Alex, it was just what you wanted high school to be like. Then it got complicated. She was also – That’s the thing about her, she was also narcissistic. Seriously narcissistic, really into her looks, her brains, the whole bit. One time she told me she could have the president if she wanted.”

“Not much of a challenge there.”

“But she meant it globally, Alex. Any president. Of anything. This omnipotence she had going – eighteen years old, all that sexual confidence.” The color left his face. “Even now, thinking about her – I can’t change what happened – Try to muster some empathy, you’re a shrink, not a judge.”

“Narcissistic,” I prompted. “How did that complicate things?”

“It led her to a bad place. The wrong people, stupid decisions. She read some ad in the Cub – not one of those experiments I told you about. I guess I mentioned those to throw you off. Wanting you to chase it but not wanting it – I’m fucked up. All that therapy, all those years on both sides of the couch and it doesn’t mean a-”

“What kind of ad?”

“For photographer’s models. Some sleazeball outfit in Hollywood, I don’t even remember the name, claiming to be freelancing for Duke and Playboy and Penthouse. She never checked it out with me, probably wouldn’t have listened if I’d advised against it. She and her roommate went for it – auditioned, ended up posing. It was supposed to be bikini shots, ended up being nudie shots. Then the sleazes asked her and the roommate to do some lesbian stuff – simulation – and the roommate didn’t want to and left. But Shawna stayed. Damn her – so fucking in love with herself. They brought in another model, and she – the two of them did it. Then they must’ve realized Shawna could be motivated easily, so they brought a guy in, and she ended up – They got snaps of her sucking off some donkey dong, okay? And she brings them to me on our next – the next time we saw each other – like she’s proud of them. Brought a whole packet – bikini, nudies, soft-core, then, at the bottom, her little mouth doing the Hoover. Saving the best for last. Like I was supposed to appreciate it. Get turned on by it.”

He slammed a fist on the desk. Papers jumped.

“I lost it, man. Just blew, yelled at her, called her all kinds of names. Instead of crying, she yells back, gets aggressive. Tells me the photographer worked for all the top mags, promised her a gig with Playboy or Penthouse or Duke, this was going to be her ticket to fame and fortune. Can you believe that, Alex? Smart girl and she falls for a shit-for- brains story like that. The narcissism – I wish I could get across how much this girl loved herself, Alex. Half the time when we were together I felt I was nothing more than a vibrator.”

He stopped talking. Stared at the wall. Got a glazed look in his eyes.

“What happened, Gene?”

“It was quick. I got pissed, she got pissed back, we had a screaming fight, she jumped out of the car – We were over by Lake Hollywood. Up in the Hollywood Hills, a spot I remembered from when Marge and I were dating. She got out, started running up the road, I went after her, and she tripped and fell and hit her head on a rock and just lay there. Silent, all of a sudden the whole goddamn city got really silent, a big soap bubble of silence and I was trapped inside, like a cartoon. I got down beside her. No pulse, no respiration. I tried CPR, nothing. Then I got a look at her head and knew I was wasting my time. She got hit here. Brain tissue was leaking out.”

He touched the spot where the back of his neck met his skull. “The medulla, Alex. Basic respiration. She was gone. I got some plastic tarp out of the car – I keep it there for when Marge and I buy plants at the nursery – wrapped her up and took her somewhere.”

“Where?”

He didn’t answer. “Maybe I should talk to a lawyer.”

“Sure,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of time for talk. But think about it: Any way you can garner sympathy’s gonna help you. Agnes Yeager would like to say good-bye.”

He opened a desk drawer, and for one panicky moment I thought he’d secreted a weapon there. But he pulled out paper and pencil. Drew a square. Several curving lines.

“I’m diagramming you a map. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” I said, in someone else’s dead voice.