Koko

A large sign announcing WESTERHOLM MEDICAL CENTER in tasteful, almost unreadable green on brown stood before a large lot. Behind the lot was a nature preserve. As soon as spring came, this lot would be filled with bulldozers and excavators. This was the future kingdom of Dr. Sam Stein.

Michael got back into his car and drove home. He had lost track of what was going on in Don Giovanni, and the big voices boomed and cajoled, fighting for air and space. He turned into his driveway, and the gravel crunched beneath his tires. This was home, he was safe. Zerlina sang, “In happiness and joy let’s pass our days and nights.” Like a magic light that could pass through stone, brick, lead, wood, and skin, music streamed through the world, on its way to somewhere else. Michael drew up before his garage and switched off the engine. The tape cut off and leaped noisily up into the slot. Michael picked up the novel beside him and got out of the car. For a moment he saw his wife and Pat Caldwell looking at him from the living room window. They broke apart as he began to walk toward the front door.

1

“The thing is, I like her,” Conor said. “I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I not only like her, I think about her a lot. You know what she told me? She said she likes the way I talk.”

“No kids?” Poole asked.

“Thank God, no. This Woyzak guy never wanted ’em. Kids drove him crazy. But this Woyzak guy, everything drove him crazy. Didn’t I ever tell you about him?”

Poole shook his head, and Conor ordered another round of drinks and began describing how he had been reminded of Victor Spitalny as soon as he had met Tom Woyzak. They were in Donovan’s on the Friday night following Michael’s return from New York on Monday. On Tuesday night Michael had brought a jumble of clothes in a suitcase to Conor’s apartment. Every day he drove to his office, where he saw patients and tried to settle his affairs before returning to South Norwalk.

“What I mean is, nothing really ever disappears. We should have known it’d turn out to be Spitalny. He was there. He was there in everything.” Conor’s eyes were shining with uncharacteristic inspiration. “We even talked about him in Washington, remember?”

“I remember. But Beevers was so positive. And I guess I thought Spitalny was dead. I certainly couldn’t see him calling himself Koko and going out and murdering a bunch of people.”

Conor nodded. “Well, at least now we’re that far ahead. Beevers says he didn’t get any responses to his ads yet.”

Poole too had spoken to Beevers, who had spent ten minutes complaining about the way Tim Underhill had deserted him.

“He’s all pissed off at us, man.”

“He’s pissed off at everybody.”

“I didn’t know about Vinh, though.”

“I guess we didn’t know Vinh.”

Beevers was still furious that Poole had told Maggie Lah about Underhill, for Maggie had told Vinh.

“So what are they doing?” Conor asked. “Are Underhill and Vinh and Vinh’s kid all living in the restaurant?”

“I don’t think so. I think Vinh and his daughter live with relatives. I guess Underhill used to help Vinh’s family, back in the old days, and Vinh is repaying the favor.”

“I hope your thing works out all right, man,” Conor said.

As soon as Michael had seen Pat Caldwell standing beside Judy in his window, he had known that his marriage had reached its final stages. Judy had hardly been able to speak to him, and had soon retreated to her bedroom. Pat, grimacing with the difficulty of her position and managing by her very sympathy to suggest that she would speak privately with him later, had said that Judy felt hurt and betrayed by something that had happened between them. She no longer wanted to stay alone in the house with him. Pat was there to supply moral courage and womanly support—and to be witness to what Judy perceived as her humiliation.

“Of course you can tell me to get out, and if you do I’ll go,” Pat said. “I have only the most general idea of what this is all about, Michael. I like both of you. Judy asked me to come here, and so I did.”

Michael had spent the night on the couch in his little office downstairs, Pat in the guestroom; when Judy had told him that she would never be able to forgive him for the way he had treated her—a statement she appeared to believe—Michael had moved out to the George Washington, which had a few rooms it let out to boyfriends and grandparents. The following night he had gone to Conor’s. Now he spent hours each day talking to Max Atlas, his lawyer, who had visible difficulty keeping himself from showing that he thought his client had lost his mind. Max Atlas never smiled anyhow, his big fleshy face naturally expressed gloom and doubt, but during the hours Michael spent with him his dewlaps sagged and even his ears seemed to droop. It was not Michael’s marital difficulties that depressed him, but that a client of his should voluntarily leave a business just before it began to mint money.

“She came to the job one day,” Conor was saying. “In a Blazer. The Blazer was beautiful, man. I saw her get out, and she looked good. The woman looked real good, let’s face it. In spite of the fact you could see that she was down on account of her old man being put away. Ben Roehm hauls me out from where I’m working and says, ‘Well, Conor, I guess you ought to meet my niece Ellen.’ Right away I think I don’t have a chance with this woman. But it turns out that her father was a carpenter, her grandfather was a capenter, Ben Roehm is her uncle, and even her husband, who was bughouse ever since he came back from the war, was a sort of a half-assed carpenter. Guess what she likes?”

“I think I got it,” Michael said.

“No—guess what she likes to do?”

“The same things you do,” Poole said.

An expression of blissful amazement spread across Conor’s face. “She likes sitting around the apartment and talking. She likes coming in here to the bar and having a drink. We have great times. She claims she gets a big kick out of me. She wants to have a little house up in Vermont. She wants to have a man to hang out with. She wants kids. That asshole wouldn’t let her have kids, which was really okay seeing what a rat in the grass he turned out to be. I’d like to have kids, Mikey, I really would. You get tired of living by yourself.”

“How many times have you gone out with Ellen?”

“Fourteen and a half times. Once we just had time for a couple of beers before her parents took her out. They’re concerned about her.” He revolved his beer glass on the bar. “Ellen gets a little money from Ben Roehm, but she’s about as strapped as I am.”

“I ought to get out of your way,” Poole said. “You don’t want me sleeping in your place, Conor. You should have told me when I called you. I can go somewhere else.”

“No, her mother’s down with something, and Ellen’s taking care of her. So we wouldn’t be together anyhow, for a couple days. And besides, I wanted to tell you about her.” Conor looked away for a moment. “But I was wondering when you were planning to make that trip to Milwaukee. Her mother is getting up and around a little more these days.”

“I could do it the day after tomorrow,” Poole said, laughing. “I have to go to another funeral. That patient of mine I told you about.”

“Mikey, would you mind if I, if I, you know …”

“Of course not.”

“You’ll like her,” Conor said, and slid off the stool to go to the pay phones.

Ten minutes later he returned with a big grin on his face. “She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” He kept on grinning. “It’s a funny thing. I feel like I’m joining up with the world again—like I was floating around in space, and I finally came back to earth. It took a long time, man.”

“Yes,” Poole said.

“That whole time we were on that trip, when I look back, it was like I wasn’t really there. Everything was like swimming underwater with your eyes open. It was like I was in a dream and nothing was real. I was a human blur. And now I’m not anymore.”