“Yes, I’d be more comfortable, too. Not to mention my wife.”
“I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer the phone.” I can hear the suspicion creeping back into his voice. I’ve explained everything, advertising men are good at that, but the convincing effect only lasts for sixty seconds or so.
“She’s probably got it on mute. Plus, the medication the doctor gave her makes her sleep quite heavily.”
“What time will you be home, Mr. Franklin? I can stay until seven; after that there’s only Alfredo.” The disparaging note in his voice suggests I’d be better off dealing with a no-English wetback.
Never, I think. I’ll never be home. In fact, I was never there in the first place. Ellen and I enjoyed the Bahamas so much we moved to Cable Beach, and I took a job with a little firm in Nassau. I shouted Cruise Ship Specials, Stereo Blowout Sales, and supermarket openings. All this New York stuff has just been a lucid dream, one I can back out of at any time.
“Mr. Franklin? Are you there?”
“Sure. Just thinking.” What I’m thinking is that if I leave right now, and take a taxi, I can be there in twenty minutes. “I’ve got one meeting I absolutely can’t miss, but why don’t you meet me in the apartment around six?”
“How about in the lobby, Mr. Franklin? We can go up together.”
I think of asking him how he believes I’d get rid of my murdered wife’s body at rush hour—because that is what he’s thinking. Maybe it’s not at the very front of his mind, but it’s not all the way in back, either. Does he think I’d use the service elevator? Or maybe dump her down the incinerator chute?
“The lobby is absolutely okey-fine,” I say. “Six. Quarter of, if I can possibly make it.”
I hang up and head for the elevators. I have to pass the caff to get there. Billy Ederle’s leaning in the doorway, drinking a Nozzy. It’s a remarkably lousy soda, but it’s all we vend. The company’s a client.
“Where are you off to?”
“Home. Ellen called. She’s not feeling well.”
“Don’t you want your briefcase?”
“No.” I don’t expect to be needing my briefcase for a while. In fact, I may never need it again.
“I’m working on the new Po-10s direction. I think it’s going to be a winner.”
“I’m sure,” I say, and I am. Billy Ederle will soon be movin’ on up, and good for him. “I’ve got to get a wiggle on.”
“Sure, I understand.” He’s twenty-four and understands nothing. “Give her my best.”
We take on half a dozen interns a year at Andrews-Slattery; it’s how Billy Ederle got started. Most are terrific, and at first Fred Willits seemed terrific, too. I took him under my wing, and so it became my responsibility to fire him—I guess you’d say that, although interns are never actually “hired” in the first place—when it turned out he was a klepto who had decided our supply room was his private game preserve. God knows how much stuff he lifted before Maria Ellington caught him loading reams of paper into his suitcase-sized briefcase one afternoon. Turned out he was a bit of a psycho, too. He went nuclear when I told him he was through. Pete Wendell called security while the kid was yelling at me in the lobby and had him removed forcibly.
Apparently old Freddy had a lot more to say, because he started hanging around my building and haranguing me when I came home. He kept his distance, though, and the cops claimed he was just exercising his right to free speech. But it wasn’t his mouth I was afraid of. I kept thinking he might have lifted a box cutter or an X-ACTO knife as well as printer cartridges and about fifty reams of copier paper. That was when I got Alfredo to give me a key to the service entrance, and I started going in that way. All that was in the fall of the year, September or October. Young Mr. Willits gave up and took his issues elsewhere when the weather turned cold, but Alfredo never asked for the return of the key, and I never gave it back. I guess we both forgot.
That’s why, instead of giving the taxi driver my address, I get him to let me out on the next block. I pay him, adding a generous tip—hey, it’s only money—and then walk down the service alley. I have a bad moment when the key doesn’t work, but when I jigger it a little, it turns. The service elevator has brown quilted movers’ pads hanging from the walls. Previews of the padded cell they’ll put me in, I think, but of course that’s just melodrama. I’ll probably have to take a leave of absence from the shop, and what I’ve done is a lease breaker for sure, but—
What have I done, exactly?
For that matter, what have I been doing for the last week?
“Keeping her alive,” I say as the elevator stops at the fifth floor. “Because I couldn’t bear for her to be dead.”
She isn’t dead, I tell myself, just under the weather. It sucks as a cutline, but for the last week it has served me very well, and in the advertising biz the short term is what counts.
I let myself in. The air is still and warm, but I don’t smell anything. So I tell myself, and in the advertising biz imagination is also what counts.
“Honey, I’m home,” I call. “Are you awake? Feeling any better?”
I guess I forgot to close the bedroom door before I left this morning, because Lady slinks out. She’s licking her chops. She gives me a guilty glance, then waddles into the living room with her tail tucked way down low. She doesn’t look back.
“Honey? El?”
I go into the bedroom. There’s still nothing to be seen of her but the milkweed fluff of her hair and the shape of her body under the quilt. The quilt is slightly rumpled, so I know she’s been up—if only to have some coffee—and then gone back to bed again. It was last Friday when I came home and she wasn’t breathing and since then she’s been sleeping a lot.
I go around to her side and see her hand hanging down. There’s not much left of it but bones and hanging strips of flesh. I gaze at this and think there’s two ways of seeing it. Look at it one way, and I’ll probably have to have my dog—Ellen’s dog, really, Lady always loved Ellen best—euthanized. Look at it another way and you could say Lady got worried and was trying to wake her up. Come on, Ellie, I want to go to the park. Come on, Ellie, let’s play with my toys.
I tuck the reduced hand under the sheets. That way it won’t get cold. Then I wave away some flies. I can’t remember ever seeing flies in our apartment before. They probably smelled that dead rat Carlo was talking about.
“You know Billy Ederle?” I say. “I gave him a slant on that damn Po-10s account, and I think he’s going to run with it.”
Nothing from Ellen.
“You can’t be dead,” I say. “That’s unacceptable.”
Nothing from Ellen.
“Do you want coffee?” I glance at my watch. “Something to eat? We’ve got chicken soup. Just the kind that comes in the pouches, but it’s not bad when it’s hot. What do you say, El?”
She says nothing.
“All right,” I say. “That’s all right. Remember when we went to the Bahamas, hon? When we went snorkeling and you had to quit because you were crying? And when I asked why, you said, ‘Because it’s all so beautiful.’”
Now I’m the one who’s crying.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get up and walk around a little? I’ll open the windows and let in some fresh air.”
Nothing from Ellen.
I sigh. I stroke that fluff of hair. “All right,” I say, “why don’t you just sleep for a little while longer? I’ll sit here beside you.”