“Charice?” he called, louder now, cupping his hands, trying to direct the sound inside so as not to wake the neighbors. “I’m really sorry, okay? I don’t blame you for being upset. But could you let me in? All I want is to go home.”
Was this an insulting thing to say? Probably. He half expected to see a yellow ribbon of light come on under her bedroom door, followed immediately by an angry woman pulling on a bathrobe. What’s that supposed to mean? All you want is to go home. Now you’re full of lamb chops and Cabernet, you got no further use for me? Is that what you’re sayin’? ’Cause, I’ma add that to my list.
Strange that in his imagination Charice should again be speaking in her teasing “black” voice, the one she used with him on the radio. During the course of the evening the syntax and vocal inflections that seemed to place her in a geographical and racial context had melted away. She’d sounded more like her brother, minus Jerome’s inflated diction. Or was he just making that up? At one point he’d almost asked, but the subject had then turned to Jerome and how he’d come so completely unglued over the attack on the ’Stang. Though loyal to her brother, she’d admitted to being concerned about his state of mind. He’d always been high strung, she said, and obsessive, as Raymer had observed. Apparently, he’d been employing a come-hither-leave-me-alone strategy with people since he was a boy. He’d always wanted friends, and later lovers, but also was repelled by intimacy and, at times, even proximity. Careful to cultivate an air of strident self-sufficiency, he was, according to Charice, extremely vulnerable. Raymer had taken all of this in, but was unsure how much to believe. Jerome had, on various occasions, given him to understand that Charice had moved to upstate New York so he’d be close by if she needed him, but tonight she’d hinted that the opposite was true — Jerome being comforted to have her close by. He’d been in therapy, she confided, for more than a decade. He took antianxiety medications that sometimes worked as intended but at other times made him even more anxious.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” Raymer said, more than willing to grant her general diagnosis, as well as the symbiotic nature of their relationship as twins, but he was still puzzled by the particulars of what he’d witnessed that afternoon. “Why would he think I’d ever do something like keying his car? And not just key it. Shred its canvas top and leather seats. Pee in it.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she assured him. “If I’d been there, it would’ve been me he suspected. And believe me. I have been there.”
Raymer must’ve looked dubious, because she’d continued. “You know your problem?” she said, pointing a glistening steak knife at him. It was a question she asked him at least once a day, which annoyed him less than the fact that every day she provided a different answer. “You think you’re the only one who’s messed up.”
“Yeah?” he’d replied, unsure why having her point out yet another human failing of his should be so pleasurable. Maybe it was because tonight her tone was not only nonjudgmental but almost, well, affectionate. For a moment he nearly expected her to put down her steak knife, reach across the table and take his hand.
“Whereas,” she told him, “everybody’s messed up.”
“Even you?”
“Okay, not everybody,” she conceded. She’d smiled then, and he must have smiled as well, because she said, “I know it’s been a rough year since…but you’re going to be okay, you know. If you just let yourself.”
It had been, now that he thought about it, the very nicest moment in a thoroughly wonderful evening. How was it even possible for things to devolve so quickly? How would he ever make it up to her?
“Charice?” he said. “I want to pay you for the lamb chops. Is that okay? And the wine? That was expensive, wasn’t it? I know your salary. I mean, I know everybody’s salary, not just yours. But I had a really nice time. I want to make sure you know that. I don’t blame you for being mad. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Or passed out. Whatever I did. But I’m really sorry, so would you please, please, let me in so I can go home?”
In the silence that followed, Raymer could feel himself slipping into one of his maudlin fugue states.
“I’m thinking about resigning, Charice,” he heard himself say. “Did you know that? I know you’re keeping a list of all the things I do wrong, so I guess I don’t have to explain why. I wish I was better at my job. I do. I wish I was better at everything. Anyway, I just want you to know…”
He stopped. What did he want her to know?
“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the station, then.”
Her apartment was on the top floor of an old two-family house, the residences configured, as near as Raymer could tell, identically. Directly below her second-story porch was another just like it. Peering over the railing into the darkness below, he tried as best he could to gauge the distance to the ground, impossible to do except when the sky lit up again, providing him with the briefest of snapshots. The problem was that the land the house sat on sloped downward from the street — sharply at the rear of the house — toward a dry creek bed. The shortest distance to the ground was at the front of the porch, but there he’d be dropping onto either a sidewalk that ran alongside the house or the neighbor’s paved driveway. A kid could probably do it, might even enjoy the thrill, while Raymer would probably break a femur. The ground would be softer off the rear of the porch, but the drop was an additional three or four feet there, and given the slope he might land awkwardly and tumble into the ravine below. Better to climb down, surely, than to leap.
The porch was supported, front and back, by two sturdy-looking columns. Would it be possible for a man his size to shinny down one of these? Maybe, if he absolutely had to. Which he did. He decided against the front column because, if he lost his grip, it would be unforgiving concrete he’d land on, though from the rear he’d most likely drop into a large hedge, where he might well become entrapped or even impaled. No doubt about it: a smart man would stay right where he was, curl up into a ball and ride out the storm on the porch. Deal with Charice’s wrath in the morning. The sky lit up again, the storm closer now. He swung one leg over the railing.
Rotten wood, even when painted over, has the soft, porous feel of a badly told lie, and as Raymer began his cautious descent, his brain registered this alarming development even before the column, when he wrapped his legs around it, began to pull away from the porch floor it supported. In that instant a number of things ran through his mind, among them the realization that the last twenty-four hours were providing him with a graduate seminar in floors and ceilings and roofs and load-bearing support, an education that might very well be the death of him. Knowing that the column he was clinging to was no longer tethered securely to anything, he immediately felt the wisdom of clambering back up top. He still had one hand on the porch floor, but to haul his carcass over its lip he would need both hands, and even then he wasn’t sure he was strong enough. Still, what other choice did he have? He couldn’t very well just let go. When he reached up with his free hand and grabbed hold of a plank, however, it had the same punky feel as the column, and a split second later the handful of rotten floorboard came away in his hand, and the moment after that he lost his grip with his other hand, which meant he was now connected to the house by his legs alone. So, he thought, this is how it ends.