Wally had returned to deeper interests, plucking at his nails with a tiny clipper. “Even way back then, she never struck me as something to get all that worked up about,” he said absently. “But she sure killed old Marty Harmon, just as sure as if she’d put a bullet in his head.”
I hadn’t thought of Marty in years, but it was not hard to conjure him up again. We’d come to work for Simpson and Lowe at nearly the same time, and although he was older than I, we’d both been novices at the firm. Because of that we’d socialized together, usually going out for an hour or so after work on Fridays, a custom that neither Marie nor Marty’s wife had ever seemed to mind.
Marty’s wife was named LeAnn. Before marrying Marty, she’d spent most of her life in Richmond, Virginia. They’d met while Marty was in the navy, married, then moved north, where Marty felt more comfortable. By the time he joined Simpson and Lowe, they’d had two children, a boy of eleven and a girl of nine. I don’t recall their names, but only that they were both strikingly blond. By now their hair has darkened. In all likelihood, they have married, and have children of their own. Perhaps, had I kept in touch, I might have been of some assistance to them, since, like me, they were destined to grow up without a father.
As a fellow-worker and, to some extent, a friend, Marty was self-effacing, witty, and very kind. He was not a terribly ambitious man, and he might never have become a partner. But he was highly competent, great with detail, organizational and otherwise, and socially adept enough never to embarrass himself or anyone else by his behavior at office parties or other business functions.
Our favorite place was Harbor Lights, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of town. The interior was decked out like the inside of an old whaling boat, complete with oars, coils of thick gray rope, and a few rusty harpoons. For almost two years, we went there at least two Friday evenings out of each month. We talked business and office gossip, the usual end-of-the-week banality. Marty seemed to enjoy the time we spent together, loosening his tie, and sometimes even kicking off his black, perfectly polished shoes. We talked about sports a great deal, and sometimes about our families. Marie was pregnant by then, a child we later lost to miscarriage in its second month, and Marty sometimes fell into the role of the older, more experienced man, warning me of the changes that would inevitably come with fatherhood.
“But all the changes are worth it,” he told me cheerfully, “because being a father, it’s a different kind of love.”
He was always reassuring, and even after the miscarriage he continued to talk about parenthood, clearly encouraging me to try again.
Then, without a word, our Friday meetings came to an end. At first I thought that, after two years, Marty and I had simply come to that point when there was nothing more to discuss and so had drifted in other directions.
I might have felt that way forever if LeAnn hadn’t called me three months later. It was just past midnight on a Friday, and her voice was strained.
“Steve, have you seen Marty tonight?”
“No.”
“You didn’t meet him at that restaurant you go to?”
“No, LeAnn. Why?”
She didn’t say. She never said. But something in the tone of her voice that night suggested to me that the snake which seems to lie coiled at the center of so many lives had suddenly struck out at her.
“LeAnn, has something happened?”
She didn’t answer.
“LeAnn? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, then immediately hung up.
She’d lied, of course. She wasn’t all right. She’d dropped from girlhood into womanhood as if through a scaffold floor. “Boys come to manhood through mastery,” Rebecca would write years later, “girls come to womanhood through betrayal.” So it was with LeAnn Harmon.
The following Monday, I found Marty already at the office when I arrived. He looked haggard, his shoulders slumped, as if under heavy weights, as he shambled toward me.
“LeAnn said she called you,” he said. “What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her, Marty?”
He nodded helplessly. “I should have mentioned something to you, Steve. I’m sorry you got pulled into it.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“No, of course not,” Marty said. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
He walked wearily to his desk, then pulled himself in behind it. He didn’t speak to me again that day, and only rarely after that, as if I’d become a source of embarrassment to him, something he’d rather have been rid of.
For the next month, Marty worked steadily and well, but during those intervals when he wasn’t completely engaged, he looked lost and distracted. At noon, he would wander into the small park across from the office and take his lunch alone. From the window beside my desk, I could see him on the little wooden bench beside the pond, dressed in dark pants and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, the black-rimmed glasses like a mask over his eyes.
I talked to Marty for the last time about three weeks later. It was at our old haunt, Harbor Lights. I found him sitting alone at a booth near the back. He was smoking a cigarette, his other hand wrapped around a glass of scotch. The jacket of his suit lay in a disordered lump beside him, and he’d yanked his tie down and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt.
“You know what the trouble with men like us is, Steve?” he asked. “We think we can handle anything.” He leaned forward, squinting in my direction. “But there is a force, my friend,” he said with a sudden vehemence. “There is a force that none of us can handle.”
I never asked him what that force was, and after a while, he finished his drink, took a long draw on his last cigarette, then got to his feet and walked away, giving my arm a quick, comradely squeeze as he headed for the door.
