“Okay,” Bill said after careful consideration. “Keep them. They may be useful as evidence.”
“Has he called there?”
“Yeah, a couple of times, but I’m not taking his calls till I’ve spoken to Harry Yates.”
There was a pause.
“Bill?” There was a childlike tremor in her voice.
“Yes, honey?”
“Will he be at school when I pick up Ivy?”
“No. He wasn’t there this morning.”
“What if he is?”
“If he annoys you, call a cop.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered in a choked voice.
A few minutes after Bill hung up the phone, he remembered he hadn’t told her about their Hawaiian fling. He considered calling her back, then decided against it. It would only add to her state of confusion. He’d tell her tonight in bed.
The books, partially exposed in their torn wrappings, remained on the dining-room table the entire morning. Janice walked past them at least a dozen times but conscientiously refrained from noticing them. The little game was self-defeating, however, for at ten past two, after having loitered over her hair and clothing far too long to justify the simple expedition to the school and back, she still found herself with better than thirty-five minutes and nothing to do.
Fully dressed in coat, rain boots and white fake-fur hat, she fixed herself a cup of instant coffee and stood drinking it in the kitchen, the edge of the books, sliced by the frame of the doorway, just within range of her vision.
Standing above the stack of books, cup in hand, her fingers tracing the battered embossed cover of the one on top, she had no memory of having walked up to them, nor could she stop herself from turning back the cover and revealing a hardly legible inscription at the top of the frontispiece. Handwritten in a pale mauve ink was the inscription “R. A. Tyagi, ’06,” and beneath it, in a brighter, bolder hand, “E. Hoover, ’68.” The book’s title, printed in a delicate floral design, was The Bhagavad-Gita—An English Translation. The publication date was: “1746—London.”
Janice gently grasped a sheaf of the yellowed pages and allowed them to riffle slowly through her fingers, causing a small eruption of powdery dust to drift upward from the heart of the ancient volume. The pages seemed to fall in clumps, signifying the more studied portions of the text. At one such point, she read. “As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new.…”
On another page, she read: “For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.”
Janice shut the book decisively and stepped away from the table, feeling very much a traitor for having so easily capitulated to the enemy. Bill was right. It was nonsense.
Janice picked up the pile of books and carried them to the hall closet, where, standing on a chair, she consigned them to a shadowy corner on the top shelf, next to several volumes of Bill’s more graphic pornography.
She joined the waiting mothers in front of the school, and at three o’clock sharp the bell rang and the exodus began. Less than five minutes later Ivy appeared at the double doors and smiled her way down the steps toward Janice. Hoover was nowhere to be seen. Bill had been right. No doubt, he was right about everything, Janice thought, her confidence in her husband’s judgment growing by leaps and bounds.
For the first time in nearly a week Janice found herself heading north at a leisurely pace instead of in a panic. Ivy chattered continually. Janice laughed unreservedly. It was like old times for both of them.
“I don’t know if he’s an extortionist or a nut or let’s say he’s a man who believes this to be so. We’re talking about an area that a lot of people don’t know anything about.…” Harold Yates paused a moment to organize his thoughts and place them in their proper legal perspective.
Bill sat on the couch, adjacent to Harold’s Barca-Lounger, from which, in a semisupine position, Harold conducted all his business. There was no desk in the office. A low cocktail table immediately to his right sufficed to accommodate two telephones, a cup of pencils, and several legal pads.
“But regardless of whether he’s a … nut, as you say, whatever the definition of that is,” Harold continued in a slow, pedantic manner, “regardless of whether he’s an extortionist, you’re really concerned about what you can do to protect your family from being bothered by this person. Now I have a question to ask you. Did he make any demand upon you?”
Bill considered carefully. “He didn’t come right out and make a demand, except to say that he wants to see us again and that we have to come to some kind of understanding.”
“What understanding? Does he want Ivy?”
“No. He said he doesn’t want to claim her or take her away, that he couldn’t legally, and in any case wouldn’t, since he knows what it is to lose someone you love. Don’t you see, Harry? It’s a pitch. We’re being primed for a shakedown.”
Harry mulled on this. “Is your question: What are your legal rights?”
“My question is: How do I get him off our backs?”
“Well, when you say off your backs, if he continues to intrude on your privacy, in terms of following you wherever you go, calling you at home, asking to see members of your family, he has no legal right to do that. If the amount of attention he is paying your family is bothersome or a nuisance, you can go to court and apply for an injunction restraining him from harassing or annoying you and your family. If he violates that injunction, he is in contempt of court and will be punished by the court. Punishment for contempt of court is subject to imprisonment.”
Bill’s eyes remained staring across at the lawyer.
“If we do take him to court, how do I prove that all this actually happened?”
“There are ways you can obtain proof. For example, next time he calls and wants to come to your house to talk, have a witness present.”
“Isn’t Janice a witness?”
“Certainly she is, but it would be better if you had an unrelated person present. Conceivably, you might get this Hoover to write you what he wants and proposes to do, or perhaps secretly tape his conversations.…”
That was it, Bill thought with a quick surge of elation. He’d tape him. Surely, Russ Federico would lend him the equipment and even help him set up the living room and work the machine. Russ could be the unrelated witness at the same time. Bill heard Harry droning on in the background of his thoughts and quickly shifted his concentration back to what his friend and lawyer was saying.
“The tape, while probably inadmissible, could certainly be used to convince the police that this man is bothering you and enable you to avail yourself of their legal restraints and powers.”
“I think I can arrange to tape our next meeting,” said Bill rising.
“Not so fast. Where are you going?”
“To set things up.” Bill glanced at his watch. “I haven’t got much time.”
“You intend to do this that soon?”
“I intend to do it tonight.”
“In that case, there are some questions I will want you to ask him.” Harold’s stubby hand reached for a legal pad and sharp pencil. “A few simple bedrock questions the answers to which will have some legal force and validity in a court of law, if indeed that is the course we select to pursue.”
Bill slowly sat back down on the couch and watched Harold bring the rubber end of the pencil up to his thick semiparted lips and begin mentally formulating the substance of his first question.