He nodded.
"Have you ever heard of an English professor at the University of Chicago named Alan McKechnie?" His eyes widened; he folded his hands. "I don't really know what I'm asking. I wondered if you knew anything about him?"
"What the hell are you saying?"
"I'm curious about him. That's all."
"Well, for what it's worth," he said, and stood up. He marched over to his window, which gave a splendid view of the plaza. "I dislike gossip, you know."
What I knew was that he loved gossip, like most academics. "I knew Alan slightly. We were on a Robert Frost symposium five years ago-sound man. A bit too much the Thomist, but that's Chicago, isn't it? Still, a good mind. Had a lovely family too, I gather."
"He had children? A wife?"
Lieberman looked at me suspiciously. "Of course. That's what made it so tragic. Apart from the loss of his contributions to the field, of course."
"Of course. I forgot."
"Look? What do you know? I'm not going to slander a colleague for the sake of-the sake of-"
"There was a girl," I said.
He nodded, satisfied. "Yes. Apparently. I heard about it at the last MLA convention. One of the fellows from his department told me about it He was vamped. This girl simply pursued him. Dogged him. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, in a word-I gather he finally did become enchanted by her. She was a graduate student of his. These things happen of course, they happen all the time. A girl falls for her professor, manages to seduce him, sometimes she makes him leave his wife, most times not. Most of us have more sense." He coughed. I thought: you really are a turd. "Well. He did not. Instead he went to pieces. The girl ruined him. In the end he killed himself. The girl, I gather, did a midnight flit-as our English friends have it though what this has to do with you, I can't imagine."
She had falsified nearly everything in the McKechnie story. I wondered what else might have been a lie. When I got home, I rang de Peyser, F. A woman answered the phone.
"Mrs. de Peyser?"
It was.
"Please excuse me for calling you on what may be a case of mistaken identity, Mrs. de Peyser, but this is Richard Williams at the First National of California. We have a loan application from a Miss Mobley who lists you as a reference. I'm just running the usual routine information check. You're named as her aunt.
"As her what? What's her name?"
"Alma Mobley. The problem is that she forgot to give your address and phone number, and there are several other Mrs. de Peysers in the Bay area, and I need the correct information for our files."
"Well it's not me! I've never heard of anybody named Alma Mobley, I can assure you of that."
"You do not have a niece named Alma Mobley who is a graduate student at Berkeley?"
"Certainly not. I suggest you get back to this Miss Mobley and ask her for her aunt's address so you don't go wasting your time."
"I'll do that right now, Mrs. de Peyser."
The second semester was a rainy blur. I pushed at a new book, but it would not budge. I never knew what to make of the Alma character: was she a La Belle Dame Sans Merci, as Lieberman had said; or was she a girl on the far borders of sanity? I didn't know how to treat her, and the first draft took so many misdirections it could have been an exercise in the use of the unreliable narrator. And I felt that the book needed another element, one I couldn't yet see, before it would work.
David telephoned me in April. He sounded excited, happy, more youthful than he'd been in years. "I have amazing news," he said. "Astounding news. I don't know how to tell you."
"Robert Redford bought your life story for the movies."
"What? Oh, come off it. No, really, this is hard for me to tell you."
"Why don't you just start at the beginning?"
"Okay. Okay, that's what I'll do, wiseass. Two months ago, on February third" -this was really the lawyer at work-"I was up on Columbus Circle, seeing a client. The weather was terrible, and I had to share a cab back to Wall Street Bad news, right? But I found myself sitting next to the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, she was so good-looking my mouth went dry. I don't know where I got the guts, but by the time we got to the Park, I asked her out to dinner. I don't usually do things like that!"
"No, you don't." David was too lawyerly to ask strange girls for dates. He'd never been in a singles bar in his life.
"Well, this girl and I really hit it off. I saw her every night that week. And I've gone on seeing her ever since. In fact, we're going to get married. That's half of the news."
"Congratulations," I said. "I wish you better luck than I had."
"Now we come to the difficult part. The name of this astounding girl is Alma Mobley."
"It can't be," I said.
"Wait. Just wait. Don, I know this is a shock. But she told me all about what happened between you, and I think it's essential that you know how sorry she is for everything that happened. We've talked about this a long time. She knows she hurt your feelings, but she knew that she just wasn't the right girl for you. And you weren't right for her. Also, she was in a bad patch in California. She wasn't herself, she says. She's afraid you have absolutely the wrong idea of her."
"That's just what I do have," I said. "Everything about her is wrong. She's some kind of witch. She's destructive."
"Hold on. I am going to marry this girl, Don. She's not the person you think she is. God, how we've talked about this. Obviously you and I have to talk about it a hell of a lot ourselves. In fact I was hoping you could hop a plane to New York this weekend so we could have a good long talk and really work through it. I'd be glad to pay your fare."
"That's ridiculous. Ask her about Alan McKechnie. See what she tells you. Then I'll tell you the truth."
"No, wait, buddy, we've already been through all that I know she gave you a garbled version of the McKechnie affair. Can't you imagine how shattered she was? Please come out here, Don. All three of us have to have a long session."
"Not on your life," I said. "Alma's a kind of Circe."
"Look, I'm at the office, but I'll call you later in the week, okay? We have to get things straight. I don't want my brother having bad feelings about my wife."
Bad feelings? I felt horror.
That night David rang again. I asked him if he'd met Tasker yet. Or if he knew about Alma and the Xala Xalior Xlati.
"See, that's where you got the wrong idea. She just made all that stuff up, Don. She was a little unsteady out there on the Coast. Besides who can take all that stuff seriously anyhow? Nobody here in New York ever heard of the XXX. In California, people get all cranked up about trivia."
And Mrs. de Peyser? She had told him that I was terribly possessive; Mrs. de Peyser was a tool to get time by herself.
"Let me ask you this, David," I said. "Sometimes, maybe only once, haven't you looked at her or touched her and just felt-something funny? Like that, no matter how strongly attracted you are to her, you're squeamish about touching her?"
"You've got to be kidding."
David would not permit me to creep away from the whole issue of Alma Mobley, as I wanted to do. He would not let it go. He telephoned me from New York two or three times a week, increasingly disturbed by my refusal to see reason.
"Don, we have to talk this thing out I feel terrible about you."
"Don't."
"I mean, I just don't understand your attitude about this thing. I know you must feel terrible resentment. Jesus, if things had worked out the other way around and Alma had walked out of my life and decided to marry you, I'd be tied in knots. But unless you admit your resentment, we can never get to the point of doing something about it."