The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) Read online

  It was Luisa. She wanted to move more things out of the house. Barbara asked if she was sure. Yes, she was pretty sure. It wasn’t fair to Duane not to.

  That one made Barbara hyperventilate, but she stayed on the phone. She begged. She pleaded. She offered Luisa complete freedom to come and go if she returned home; offered her a car; offered to keep Martin at bay. Luisa’s replies became duller and duller. Finally she made her bargain: Barbara could come and visit her whenever she wanted to, but she was in love with Duane and wanted to live with him for a while if that was OK.

  She added: “I would have been leaving soon anyway.”

  The weekend had passed. Depressed, with symptoms as clinical as they’d ever been, Barbara woke up at three in the morning in the guest room. The north wind shook the northern wall. She pressed it with her fingers to still it. A full moon spent itself in the frost on the western windows. In her mind this room in the corner of the house had come unmortared and was edging out of its slot, about to fall, with the clunk of the rejected, into the bushes.

  She’d recovered from the first shock of Nissing’s discovery. On Saturday morning she’d spoken with Mohnwirbel and found him polite. He apologized formally, and later in the day, while Martin watched football, he came to the kitchen door with negatives and prints, dozens and dozens, in a shirt box. She asked him not to take any more, please.

  He wouldn’t promise. “You should be appreciated right,” he said, showing perspicacity if not sanity. But Martin still wanted to prosecute or sue.

  All weekend she’d felt as though she had cancer, as though she were ordering her life for a scheduled death. The shirt box of photos—which she couldn’t touch, let alone open or throw away—could have held the fatal X-rays. Household objects avoided contact with her, superstitiously. It would have been nice to have Dozer back to break the spell, to wander with a jangle from room to room, sniffing, yawning, spreading his sounds. But Dozer was dead.

  And yet now, on Monday, she felt better. Rain poured on the windshield and roof as she inched down Euclid Avenue and pulled into a well-situated parking space. In a busy neighborhood, a free space was an omen. She put up the hood of her rain cloak and slid across the seat and released her umbrella and stepped out, directly into a stream of meltwater. So her foot was soaked, so? She pushed quarters into the meter and ran, every second step a squish, across the street and into Balaban.

  John Nissing was checking his coat.

  “Wonderful!” He peeled back her hood and held her shoulders. “You’re here!” He kissed her mouth as if compelled by the pure joy of seeing her again. They were given a corner table with reasonable privacy.

  “I’m feeling extra specially good today,” he said when the Pouilly-Fuissé was splashing into their glasses. “A parcel which has been in the mail since 1979 and which I’d assumed was lost forever was waiting for me in New York on Friday night.”

  He smiled complacently and waited. She waited. Suddenly he leaned towards her. “Jewelry! And jewelry, what’s more, with absolutely no sentimental value.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “This is for you.” He handed her a velvet box. “And the rest is for Christie’s.”

  She opened the box. It contained two earrings: diamonds, a half carat apiece, in white-gold settings. She’d been wanting diamond earrings for Christmas.

  “You can keep them, too,” he said. “And you don’t have to worry. They aren’t antiques.”

  “I have a hundred questions about these,” she said.

  Their waiter put two bowls of asparagus soup between them.

  “Yes? What’s number one?”

  “Where do you expect me to wear these?”

  “In your ears!” He half stood, and did what she hadn’t thought men did, which was to remove earrings from women’s pierced ears. Her hands rose defensively, but fell back onto her napkin. He dropped her hoops into the box and, tongue curling with concentration, put in the diamonds. “You can tell your husband I gave them in appreciation of the Arch.”

  He sat down. He looked at her soup. If she’d had anything in her stomach she might have thrown it up. But she picked up her spoon.

  “And number two?” He cut into his soup with his own spoon and tasted it, his eyes connoisseurially unfocussed. With a hint of a nod, he came back. “Number two,” he answered, “is what do I expect in return.”

  She let her eyes affirm this.

  “A simple ‘Thank you’ will do.”

  “Thank you.”

  On the phone, he’d suggested a couple of restaurants in Clayton, but she’d asked to meet here at Balaban instead, knowing she’d feel more anonymous in the West End. In hindsight, though, she saw no reason to have avoided Clayton. People wouldn’t have thought anything of spotting her with Nissing, and what did she care if they did?

  “Number three?”

  Forget it. She shook her head. But she reconsidered. “Why me?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “But it was clear to me as soon as I saw you.”

  “That’s not really good enough. I’m afraid that won’t do.”

  The table behind her was empty, but he lowered his voice until she could hardly hear. “I see then,” he said, “that I’m required to explain my motivations while you are not, because you live in a castle and are self-explanatory, while I fly in planes and am not. I do my dance, and the lady clap a little? She is moved? She is not moved? You have a tired superiority, Barbara, and it doesn’t suit you well. If I made assumptions about you the way you’ve made them about me, I’d go so far as to guess you’ve never had an affair since you were married. This makes you a prize? At forty-three? This gives you the right to demand explanations?” He glanced over her shoulder and then looked back into her eyes. “You know you don’t speak like other people. Everyone around you is utterly reified. You know that. You speak a different language. You flaunt your sadness. You know damned well you’d like to fall in love with someone like yourself. Am I making myself at all clear?”

  “Fairly clear, yes,” she said. “But we’d better talk about something else, or I’m not going to eat any lunch.”

  Nissing had just paid the check, an hour later, when he mentioned that he had a plane to catch at 3:45. The news stung for a moment, but then she was glad. She was wiped out.

  Outside, in a drizzle, she left him without a kiss, just a smile and a close-range wave. She didn’t believe everything he’d said, but she did believe she had him on a string.

  At the first traffic light she removed her earrings. She had to go home for Luisa’s presents, the bulk of which she was bent on delivering this afternoon. The task looked easier in the light of that lunch, but it was a pity to drive all the way out to Webster Groves and back; Duane’s apartment was less than a mile away from where she’d parked.

  Singh rose well before dawn, performed an abridged version of his calisthenics, took a freezing shower, and shaved. On Wednesday he’d had his hair cut radically, close in back and on the sides. To change appearance was to exaggerate the passage of time, to elude past claims of ownership, to seem to own himself. He chose his clothes with a similar end. Barbara had seen him in natty woolens, so today he would wear black denim, cancel the conservative button-downs with a sea-blue collarless. He ate a bagel with butter and brushed his teeth.

  Day came, melting the opacity of the skylights into a blue translucence. There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. Singh threw it all away. He had an extra plate and two too many forks. He threw them away. He threw away superfluous socks and an illfitting shirt. He read through the Probst file and shredded ninety percent of it. He knew the essence now as he hadn’t two months ago; he was narrowing in. On the top sheet of the notes he was shredding he glimpsed spent phrases: tired superiority, in love with someone like herself. He took the garbage to the elevator and down to the alley and came back up with the building’s vacuum cleaner. He sucked what little dust there was from the green carpeting, what crumbs from the cooking zone, what hair balls from the
bathroom. He telephoned Barbara, and then for a second time he listened to the conversations she’d had in the last four days, complete through the previous evening. Her composure was flawless, but that said everything; a week ago she hadn’t been composed.

  AR: Where were you all day?

  BP: Oh, I took some presents down to Luisa.

  AR: I kept calling…

  BP: I did hear the phone once or twice. I was trying to sleep. I haven’t been sleeping.

  AR: I thought you might be working.

  BP: No, I work all day tomorrow.

  He erased the tape. Pigeons clustered. On the telephone he exchanged polysyllables with Jammu. Recently Jammu had had a mild attack of scruples, an allergic reaction to messing with lives, but she’d recovered now, and in a very few hours Singh would have the pleasure of pinning Martin Probst’s wife to a mattress.

  He drove a freshly rented Pontiac Reliant to his Brentwood pied-à-terre and went in to collect his portfolio. The pictures of 236 Sherwood Drive were cautious and strangely murky, like the house itself, but apparently just what the editor wanted. Singh had paid off Joshua and Vince and sent them back to Chicago. His House days were over. He ignited a clove cigarette but thought better of smoking it. He flushed it down the toilet and left the apartment.

  The Probsts’ helpful gardener was chopping ice off the front walk when Singh arrived. He returned Singh’s greeting with a piercing look and silence. Singh rang the doorbell and Barbara let him in. He observed her to see how his altered appearance affected her, and he saw that she had changed her own. She’d put up her hair with a barrette and dressed in a close-fitting T-shirt and close-fitting pants, shifting the emphasis from her body’s stalkiness to its maturity. Their mirrored strategies amused him. He forgot his line for a moment. He remembered. “Got some pictures for you.”

  “No thanks,” she said, reaching up with weightless arms and kissing him. He hadn’t expected this yet. His surprise showed. She pushed away. “I’m going to go lie down, all right?”

  She turned and climbed three steps and paused, facing away from him.

  He leaned the portfolio against the oak chest in the hallway. He considered sitting down in the living room to watch what would happen, how long it would take her to join him. Why not. Her earnest grandeur bored him. He lowered himself onto the sofa and picked up some coffee-table reading, a book of pictures of the Arch by Joel Meyerowitz. It hadn’t been here last time. He thumbed. The advantage was his. In addition to her many reasons for being “unfaithful” to Martin, she had the heart of a bourgeoise and was eager to please. Less virtuous women would have hesitated when he’d called on Monday; less intelligent women would have flirted and dallied more brilliantly; Barbara, humorless, merely said yes and named a restaurant.

  She appeared at the coffee table. “You came here to lay me, right?”

  He filtered patience into his sigh. “I had a rough flight,” he said. “Do you want to sit down with me for a while?”

  She perched on the edge of the sofa.

  “Relax, hey?” He slouched deeply. “Why not.”

  “Because it’s too damn tawdry. Why don’t you stop telling me what to do.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “I had something on the plane.”

  Barbara pressed her knees together, her hands flat between them. “You’re sweet, John. You’re very sweet,” she said. “But I don’t want to sit and talk to you like we’re dating. You’re very funny, but I don’t want to hear it now. You said you loved me. You knew me. So please.”

  She’d bought it, then.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said.

  “But it’s such a nice sofa.”

  “I don’t want to. He’ll see.”

  “Oh.” Singh glanced at the rear windows. “Of course.”

  She’d drawn the curtains in the guest room. He peeled back the bedspread and let her undress him. He looked down. Everything fine. Not that there had been much doubt. She removed her shirt and stood in her jeans and shoes, with her hands on her hips, assessing him. He felt a strain. She straddled him and pushed him onto his back, and kissed all around his mouth. The strain increased. He’d anticipated it, but still the leap had to be made. He sat up, and she followed. Here was the critical point, out of range of his charm, the point beyond which it was too dangerous to fake. He caught her wrists and focussed his eyes on the flesh lipping at the waist of her pants. It was over in a second. He loved her a little, and his chest heaved into her pinkness, ribs to ribs, stomach to stomach. His backup censor would now let almost anything past: she was soft. She was the best woman in the world. He reached and unzipped her, strained further, sliding his fingers through her slippery curls. She took off her pants and, with an exclamation that seemed to come from her whole upper body, made room for him inside. He fought her onto her back, working them up into the pillows. She made no sound. Her nails on his back spurred him into her. The work came easily to him, and though it seemed to take her an awfully long time, she finally stopped moving her hips and grew rigid. Her ribs bounced against his. She gasped and smiled with lips already mashed into asymmetry.

  The phone rang itself out, remotely, twice.

  The weather changed. It generally did.

  He was just waking up, by and by, when she confessed to being somewhat sore. He suggested an alternative procedure. She shook her head. He let the matter drop and resumed the staple position, beginning delicately but intending this time to nail her as he’d planned to. She said he was hollowing her out. That was the idea. But he didn’t want to hurt her. He let her turn with him, sideways, and as they rolled, complexly interlocked, he began to experience perceptual difficulties. He was not immune to them. He accepted them, as phenomena. The present difficulty was a TV ghost, a negative image, a woman with dark skin and dark hair and pale lips who hid in Barbara and matched her when she moved without self-consciousness, but who swerved into sight when she erred, and made the right move for her. The forms were united in the rhythm of the act and in the lathered point at which they fused with Singh, who was a fulcrum.

  Who put the cash in Kashmir

  Who put the jam in Jammu?

  University song of his. He was losing objectivity, and spent a few minutes in no particular place. His return was purely the product of Barbara’s labors. When he looked again the negative image was gone, and now he knew how complete his success had been, how impressive the results. He had her and he wouldn’t let go. He had his arms across her hot back, fingers buried in her midsection, fingers jammed in her butt, teeth on her tongue, legs splinted to hers, and the remainder a great number of inches inside her, spanning cavities and crowding ridges, and he came another time, into a newfound void, what felt like gallons.

  They stopped.

  A look of pure, lucid wickedness popped into her face, like a jack from a box. “Bye,” she said. “Glad you came.”

  “Bye-bye,” he answered, playing along.

  11

  It’s the night before Christmas. In the west, in a corner of the sky just blue enough yet to make treetops and chimneys silhouettes, Venus burns with utter whiteness. Perseus is dizzy at the zenith and pierced by jets; Orion is rising above television towers; the galaxy is performing its nightly condensation. Downtown, as the last stores close, the last shoppers drain quickly from the cold sidewalks into their cars. Bells toll from an empty church. Steam that smells of corroded pipes gushes from the backs of office buildings, and the boughs of the Salvation Army Tree of Light bow and tremble in the wind. In the living-room windows of apartment buildings—of Plaza Square, Mansion House, the Teamsters complex, Darst-Webbe, Cochran, Cochran Gardens—electric candles are lit, and strings of lights turn the four corners of window frames and shine like Hollywood squares. Blinds fall and curtains jerk. There’s a preoccupation, an apprehension, a thing to achieve. Most people are involved, but not all. Sheraton bellhops witness the departure of well-dressed out-of-towners and drink Cokes. Two veteran newsmen, Joe Feig and Don Daizy, h
ave stopped in at the Missouri Grill to share a pitcher of Miller and enjoy their kinship with the bartender, who is watching the waning moments of the Holiday Bowl on the house TV.

  Down on the Mississippi, the steamboat McDonald’s (“RAY KROC, CAPTAIN”) is shuttered and dead. Icicles hang from its permanent moorings, and snowmounds nestle in its plastic finials, golden arches, fluted pipes. Floes beyond it revolve and bob. Barge traffic is very light. How far this evening is from the heat and thunder of summer, when at dinnertime the sun is high and hot, and Cardinals take batting practice, and visitors rub their necks at the feet of the Arch, dripping mustard from their hotdogs, and the air smells like tar; how far this silence, these indigo depths, these cobbled plateaux. The Switzer’s licorice plant has given up the ghost. On its barricaded doors a sign reads:

  SWITZER’S OFFICE CENTER

  FOR LEASE

  OFFICE AND RETAIL SPACE

  The lid from a paper cup skids on a railroad crossing, hampered by its straw. Tinsel window dressings, bleached by streetlights, could be decades old. The people who are out, by the river, are those who can’t see. Even the police, Officers Taylor and Onkly, have their eyes on their watches, their minds on dinner. They get off at 9:00. The only action they’ll see in three hours will involve drunks, either derelicts or drivers. They circle a block and play their searchlight on garbage cans. The static on the radio is unbroken. Earlier, the dispatcher sang two lines from a Christmas carol and then stopped with a laugh. It’s the season of weariness, sentiment, and duty, except for children, and there are no children on the streets downtown.

  Circle south. Past the Pet Milk building and Ralston Purina, hardy gentry relax in the rehabilitated homes of LaSalle Park and Soulard and Lafayette Square. Here, safe behind rows of doubleparked cars, Andrew DeMann and his son Alex are playing with their computer while his wife Liz feeds their baby, Lindsay. Alex, growing tired, has begun to pretend that games don’t have rules. Andrew gets strict and goes down to the cellar for wine. He breathes and his heart beats. He selects a bottle.