The Throat

stupid, worthless gossip and innuendo they trade back and forth all day long, unless you already know what everybody is whispering into those telephones they're on day and night, you're out, boy, you are about to get flushed. People say that academics are unworldly, you know, people, especially these bullshit artists who do the kind of thing April did, they scorn us because we're not supposed to be in the real world? Well, at least we have real subjects, there's some intellectual and ethical content to our lives, it isn't just this big gassy bubble of spreading half-truths and peddling rumors and making money.'

He was breathing hard, and his face was a high, mottled pink. He drained the rest of his drink and immediately made another. I knew about Cristal. In just under ten minutes, John had disposed of about fifteen dollars worth of vodka.

'So Barnett and Company wasn't really going to open a San Francisco office?'

'Actually, I have no real idea.'

I had another thought. 'Did she want to keep this house because it was so near her father's place?'

'That was one reason.' John leaned on the counter and lowered his head. He looked as if he wanted to lie down on the counter. 'Also, April didn't want to be stuck out in Riverwood with dodos like Dick Mueller and half the other guys in her office. She wanted to be closer to art galleries, restaurants, the, I don't know, the cultural life. You can see that, all you have to do is look at our house. We weren't like those dopes in her office.'

'Sounds like she would have enjoyed San Francisco,' I said.

'We'll never know, will we?' He gave me a gloomy look and bit into his sandwich. He looked down at it as he chewed, and his forehead wrinkled. He swallowed. 'What the hell is in this thing, anyhow?' He ate a little bit more. 'Anyhow, she would never have left Alan, you're right.' He took another bite. After he swallowed, he tilted his plate over the garbage can and slid most of the sandwich into it. 'I'm going to take this drink and go up to bed. That's about all I can face right now.' He took another long swallow and topped up his glass. 'Look, Tim, please do stay here for a little while. You'd be helping me.'

'Good,' I said. 'There is something I'd sort of like to look into, if I could stay around a couple of days.'

'What, some kind of research?'

'Something like that,' I said.

He tried to smile. 'God, I'm really shot. Maybe you could call Dick Mueller? He'd still be in the office, unless he's out at lunch somewhere. I hate to ask you to do this, but the people who knew April ought to be told what happened before they read it in the papers.'

'What about the other man who called? The one who didn't know whether to call you John or Mr. Ransom?'

'Byron? Forget it. He can hear it on the news.'

He twirled his free hand in a good-bye and wavered out of the kitchen. I listened to him thudding up the stairs. His bedroom door opened and closed. When I had finished eating, I put my plate into the dishwasher and stowed all the lunch things back in the refrigerator.

In the quiet house, I could hear the cooled air hissing out of the vents. Now that I had agreed to keep John Ransom company, I was not at all certain about what I wanted to do in Millhaven. I went into the living room and sat down on the couch.

For the moment I had absolutely nothing to do. I looked at my watch and saw with more than surprise, almost with disbelief, that since I had staggered off the airplane and found an unrecognizable John Ransom waiting for me at the gate, exactly twenty-four hours had passed.

PART FIVE

ALLEN BROOKNER

1

A trio of reporters from the Ledger arrived about three in the afternoon. I told them that John was sleeping, identified myself as a family friend, and was told in return that they'd be happy to wait until John woke up. An hour later, the doorbell rang again when a Chicago deputation appeared. We had more or less the same exchange. At five, the doorbell rang once again while I was talking on the telephone in the entry. Gripping colorful bags of fried grease, notebooks, pens, and cassette recorders, the same five people stood on and around the steps. I refused to wake John up and eventually had to shake the telephone I was holding in the face of the most obstinate reporter, Geoffrey Bough of the Ledger. 'Well, can you help us out?' he asked.

Despite his name, which suggests a bulky middle-aged frame, a tweed jacket, and a tattersall vest, this Bough was a skinny person in his twenties with sagging jeans and a wrinkled chambray shirt. Forlorn black hair drooped over his thick eyeglasses as he looked down to switch on his tape recorder. 'Could you give us any information about how Mr. Ransom is reacting to the news of his wife's death? Does he have any knowledge of how Dragonette first met his wife?' I shut the door in his face and went back to Dick Mueller, April Ransom's co-worker at Barnett and Company, who said, 'My God, what was that?' He spoke with an almost comically perfect Millhaven accent.

'Reporters.'

'They already know that, ah, that, ah, that…'

'They know,' I said. 'And it's not going to take them long to find out that you were Dragonette's broker, so you'd better start preparing.'

'Preparing?'

'Well, they're going to be very interested in you.'

'Interested in me?'

'They'll want to talk to everybody who ever had anything to do with Dragonette.' Mueller groaned. 'So you might want to figure out ways to keep them out of your office, and you might not want to enter or leave by the front door for a week or so.'

'Yeah, okay, thanks,' he said. He hesitated. 'You say you're an old friend of John's?'

I repeated information I had given him before Geoffrey Bough and the others had interrupted us. Through the narrow windows on either side of the front door I saw another car pull . up and double-park in front of the house. Two men, one carrying a cassette recorder and the other a camera, slouched out and began walking toward the door, grinning at Bough and his two colleagues.

'How is John holding up?' asked Mueller.

'He had a couple of drinks and went to bed. He's going to have a lot to do over the next couple of days, so I think I'll stick around to help him out.'

Someone metronomically pounded his fist against the door four times.

'Is that John?' Mueller asked. He sounded worried, even alarmed.

'Just a gentleman of the press.'

Mueller gasped, imagining a gang bawling his name while pounding at the brokerage doors.

'I'll call you in the next few days.'

'When my secretary asks what you're calling about, tell her it's the bridge project. I'll have to start screening my calls, and that'll remind me of who you are.'

'The bridge project?' More bawling and banging came through the door.

'I'll explain later.'

I hung up, opened the door, and began yelling. By the time I finished explaining that John was asleep in bed, my picture had been taken a number of times. I closed the door without quite slamming it. Through a slit of window I watched them retreat down to the lawn, munch on their goodies, and light up cigarettes while they worked out what to do. The photographers took a few desultory pictures of the house.

A quick check from the bottom of the stairs disclosed no movement upstairs, so John had managed either to sleep through the clamor or to ignore it. I picked up The Nag Hammadi Library, switched on the television, and sat on the couch. I turned to 'The Treatise on the Resurrection,' a letter to a student named