Eleven years ago, the boy and girl who had met in a sundrenched secret autumn park when the world was concerned only with Greek mythology and the touch of a hand, eleven years ago the boy and girl who had learned each other’s ways in a city as glittering as the universe, eleven years ago the boy and girl who had solemnly vowed to love, honor and cherish in a huge stone church trembling with the sound of music, eleven years ago the boy and girl who had begun living together with faces clean and bright, eyes hopefully gleaming, who had come through a pregnancy and a miscarriage and all the bitter recriminations that followed, eleven years ago this boy and this girl had fervently whispered their vows anew, reaffirmed their bond, and declared to themselves and to the world that they were one, that they would not be defeated, they would survive, they would endure, they would triumph.
Eleven years ago.
Now in a hotel room in an Italian city, they saw each other after all those years, after all the clever golden people and pretty conversations, after all the cocktails delicately held and whiskey bottles drained, after all the lifted skirts and covetous hands and sly and secret insinuations, after all the deals and propositions, after all the countless necessary homicides, the lies, the petty thefts, the alibis, the threats — after all of this, after all the jazz of everyday living, the jazz that pounded and vibrated and moved away in a dazzling modulation to another distant chord, changing so imperceptibly from chord to chord, from note to note, that the change was not at all visible until now, until this moment when all the autumn leaves of a park outside a school seemed to fall in a simultaneous ear-shattering crackling rush that drowned out even the distorted jazz-throb and left them standing before a mirror in Milan, two sophisticated, intelligent, educated, experienced, successful Americans who suddenly realized they had passed Go once too often — the goddamn game was over and they were bankrupt.
“We’re dead,” Grace said, and this time he did not contradict her.
In Portobello last summer, the street band marched through playing “Midnight in Moscow,” and he bought the clock against her wishes because nothing mattered after Milan. There was a giant smudge on the bass drum where the padded stick repeatedly struck the same spot. The name of the band was lettered in a semicircle on the drum, THE LIMEHOUSE REGULARS. The band marched with a ragged beat, and the music echoed in the crowded street as he bought the clock that would later hang on the living room wall throwing minutes into eternity while he walked with rising dread over the green carpet.
The band was playing “Melancholy Baby.” The bride and groom were saying their farewells discreetly, trying to sneak out of the hall and up to their waiting car. The ham sandwich had stuck in his throat, and he washed it down with the warm beer, and then rose suddenly and walked toward the steps, past the mirrored wall, without looking back at himself.
“They leaving yet?” the teen-age boy in the tuxedo asked. His face was smeared with lipstick.
Buddwing nodded and climbed the steps.
MO 6-2367
Mount Kisco, he thought. Not Monument.
Mount Kisco 6-2367
It was too late to call now.
It was too late to do anything now.
“There’s nothing we can do now,” Dan had said, and that was when they had gone to the movie together.
He began walking.
He did not know who he was, nor did he any longer care. They had both been dead since that Sunday in Milan, and perhaps for years before that, and he didn’t give a damn, he simply didn’t give a damn. He had said that to Dan on the telephone, “I don’t give a damn.” You don’t mean that, Dan had answered. “It was over years ago,” he said. You shouldn’t say that. “It was over years ago,” he repeated.
The house had filled with strangers, and Dan had suggested that they get out of there, take in a movie, there was nothing more they could do now, the arrangements had all been made, Mount Kisco 6-2367, there was nothing more they could do. He had gone back to the silent Sutton Place apartment after he had left Dan. He knew he should sleep, it was very late. He had gone into the bedroom overlooking the Queensboro Bridge, and taken his wallet and change and keys and placed them on the dresser top. He had removed his watch — he never slept with his watch on; she had once said to him, “Take off your watch, for God’s sake! I want you to be naked!” — and then put his handkerchief on the dresser beside his other stuff and then turned and stared at the bed, and simply walked out of the apartment with no intention of ever returning to it.
He was very tired.
It was close to three o’clock in the morning, and New York City was asleep. He walked clear across Italian Harlem and into Spanish Harlem, I once broke the bank in Spanish Harlem, did I ever tell you that story? and then into Central Park. He was not afraid of muggers. The worst they could do was kill him when they discovered he was carrying only a dollar and thirty-six cents. As he entered the park, he reached into his pocket for the money and then suddenly threw it in the air over his head. “Here,” he shouted to the night, “take it! You’ve taken everything else!” The bill fluttered silently down to the path. The coins jingled behind him and then were still.
There was life hidden in the bushes of the park.
There were lips to be kissed, and breasts to be fondled, worlds to be explored. There were assassins lying in wait. He did not care. He was already dead.
He walked the entire length of the park from 110th Street, and then found a bench near the Fifty-ninth Street lake. He was bone weary. He stretched out immediately, and closed his eyes.
He thought at first he was dreaming.
The memory came so swiftly, the pictures flashed into his mind with such clarity, that he thought at first he had fallen asleep at once and begun dreaming instantly, this apartment is too still.
He unlocks the door with his key; this is unusual because he has rung the bell and she usually comes to the door to greet him. He stops in the hallway; there is no sound in the apartment save for a gentle swishing sound somewhere in its secret depths, that and the ticking of the clock on the wall, the one he bought in Portobello. He does not move. He stares at the carpet. And then he places one foot before the other and begins walking in the direction of the swishing sound. He stops outside the bathroom door and again hesitates, and then reaches out for the knob.
He turns the knob.
Something is glittering on the tile near the sink.
He sees the glittering object, but his eyes move up and away from it swiftly, and then he notices that the water tap is turned on, and he realizes without surprise that this is the swishing sound, and he sees her toothbrush lying on the rim of the sink, the open tube of toothpaste beside it, why does she never replace the cap on the toothpaste? He sees the sleeve of her red robe then, the same red cotton robe she has worn since they were married, sees the red sleeve in the open crack of the bathroom door.
He opens the door wider.
For a moment, he cannot move, he cannot think, he cannot scream.
She is wearing her white raincoat.
She has fallen behind the bathroom door, and in an instant of recognition, he realizes she is wearing the raincoat and not her robe. The red sleeve he saw is a sleeve drenched with her own blood. She is lying in a pool of her own blood. There is a trail of blood from the sink, she has opened her wrist at the sink with the glittering razor blade and held it under the water and then weakened and staggered back from the sink and dropped the razor and fallen to the floor behind the door. Her blood spreads over the tiles, her eyes are open wide and staring, her mouth is open, there is blood in her hair and on her naked breasts, he knows he will vomit. He stumbles back against the tiled wall. He shakes his head. His senses return. For a soaring gleeful instant, he thinks, I’m glad! and then suddenly whirls and smashes his bunched fist against the tiled bathroom wall, cracking the stone on his ring. Why did you do this? I love you, why did you do this?