Corman shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Lexie bowed her head slightly. “Anyway, I was sorry to hear it.”
Corman nodded and finished his drink.
Lexie immediately ordered another and waited for it to come before continuing.
“I hear you have something going,” she said. “Some sort of project.”
“Who told you that? Frances? Edgar?”
Lexie didn’t answer. “A book, isn’t it?” she asked instead.
Corman shook his head. “There’s no book,” he said.
Lexie looked surprised, but Corman couldn’t tell whether it was because he’d dropped the book idea or simply been willing to admit it instantly.
“But why?” she asked. “Julian says …”
“Julian?” Corman blurted. “I didn’t know you were still in touch with Julian.”
Lexie’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. “Sometimes.”
Corman looked at her pointedly. “Lexie, you think I care if you’re seeing Julian?”
“It’s not like that.”
“I don’t care what it’s like,” Corman said. “It’s not my business.” He looked at her very seriously, trying to find a route into her that would broaden both of them and let them live in some sort of collusion against whatever it was that had spoiled things for them. “Anyway, there won’t be a book,” he told her.
“Why not?”
“Because it didn’t add up to anything Julian would be interested in.”
“He said something about a woman.”
Corman shook his head. “They weren’t really interested in her, I don’t think. They had their own ideas. I’m not sure what. Maybe to get the father somehow. For a villain.”
“And the father wasn’t one?”
“No, I don’t think he was,” Corman said. “At least not intentionally. I mean, who’s to blame when it all goes wrong?”
Lexie’s eyes rested on him. They seemed oddly lifeless. He half-expected them to tumble from their sockets, roll across the table and drop into his lap.
“So, what it comes down to,” he said, “there’s not going to be a book.”
“I see,” Lexie said. She hesitated a moment, as if trying to get her bearings, then began, “I know Edgar talked to you.”
“Yes,” Corman said. He could feel it coming, like an executioner moving slowly down the corridor toward his cell, grim, unstoppable, prepared to carry out the court’s inflexible decree.
“The worst thing for a child is bitterness,” Lexie said, as if quoting the latest manual on the subject. “Friction. Hostility. Even ambiguity. Things like that have to be avoided.”
Corman said nothing. He felt that any words from him would fall upon her like tiny drops of water, explode on impact then turn to little dribbling streams.
“It’s always been very smooth between us, David,” she went on. “Especially these last few years.” Her eyes narrowed significantly. “I don’t want that to change.”
Corman cleared his throat weakly, offered a quick, inconsequential remark. “I don’t want anything to change.”
“Which brings us back to Edgar,” Lexie said. “Or should I say, to Lucy.” She stared at him solemnly. “You have to understand, David, that whatever I want, I want it for Lucy. Not for me at all. And I mean that.” She gave him a quick smile. “To tell you the truth, I don’t get the feeling Jeffrey’s terribly excited about having a little girl around. But I can’t think of him, of his interests, anymore than I can think of yours. It’s Lucy’s welfare. That’s what I’m interested in. Only that. Nothing else.”
He was feeling the sweat again. It was gathering beneath his arms and along the creases of his palms, dank, clammy, softening his skin, making it more pliant, as if preparing it to receive the blow.
“I have quite a few concerns,” Lexie added without a pause. Then she ticked them off. “Lucy’s school, her neighborhood.” She stopped, as if deciding whether to release another volley, then went ahead and released it. “And there’s the apartment, too, your work. Especially at night. Really, it’s more or less everything, David. The whole situation she finds herself in.”
It was the last three words that caught him, snagged his mind like a hook, jerked him from the rising waters. “Finds herself in?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean, ‘finds herself in’?”
“The way she has to live.”
“You make it sound like a swamp,” Corman said. “Or a hole. Like I’ve thrown her in a hole.”
“Not a hole, David,” Lexie said. “Just your life, the way she lives it with you.”
“My life?” Corman asked. “What about my life, Lexie?”
She looked faintly surprised by the question, but wary of it, too, as if she’d heard the hard, alarming sound of a pistol being cocked behind the seamless curtain of his face.
“Well, I mean the situation,” Lexie said. “It’s not her fault that she doesn’t have certain advantages, things that would make hei more comfortable, things that I could give her.”
Corman could feel something growing steadily more luminous in his mind, shoring up walls he thought had crumbled, restoring the shattered battlements of a city under siege, yet still unready to surrender. “There are other things,” he said. “Besides the things yot can give her. Things that matter.” As he spoke, he could see Lazar alone in his room, pressing yet another picture down into his olc suitcase. “Things that matter, Lexie.”
Lexie shifted uncomfortably. “David, I think you’ve …”
He raised his hand to stop her. “We’re all sailing, Lexie,” he began, still struggling for the words. “Sailing through this … life.”
Lexie stared at him. “Sailing?”
“And so, you have to …” He stopped, wrestled mightily to gather it all in. He could feel his mind focus slowly, like a grea camera, bringing everything into view, and after a moment he understood, very clearly and with the full force of his conviction, precisely why Lucy should stay with him.
“She doesn’t need to be protected,” he said explosively. “It would take something from her, Lexie, something that matters.”
Lexie sat back slightly, but said nothing.
“Her neighborhood, her school,” Corman said. “The way she walks the streets. Lexie, if you could see it. The way she moves toward any little craziness around her, the way she’s drawn towarc things that aren’t safe.”
Lexie watched him silently, her eyes immobile, as if fixed or something she could not quite bring into view. “I can provide a nice life for her,” she said finally. “A very nice life.”
Corman looked at her stonily. “She has the life that’s best for her.”
Lexie drew her napkin from her lap and began fiddling nervously with its lacy edges. “I’m talking about a good life, David. Opportunities.”
Corman shook his head. “No.”
Lexie’s eyes deepened slightly, but she said nothing.
Corman leaned toward her and felt the high rapture of a well-delivered blow. “Do you know why she should stay with me, Lexie? Because I trust her, and you don’t.”
Lexie glanced down, then up again, her eyes glistening suddenly.
“You never trusted yourself,” Corman added determinedly. “And now you don’t trust her.”
Lexie labored to recover then sat up stiffly. “That’s all very well, David, but there are also some practical matters, you know, such as …”
Corman knew what was coming, but also that he could face, even surmount it, because suddenly he realized that fatherhood created a life whose downward pull was always toward the deeper regions, a place where heroism took the form of washing dishes, doing clothes, holding down a job, where compromise miraculously reversed its course, and shot you to the stars.
“I’ve been offered a job at the paper,” he said, interrupting her. “A steady job. Good pay. I’m going to take it.”
