“I’m not pleasantly surprised to see you,” I said.
“Philip and Cynthia have invited me to stay the night. There’s a six A.M. call at the shoot. I’ll leave at three-thirty, maybe three forty-five. The guest room has an alarm clock.”
Cynthia came in from the deck holding some dry flowers, which she put in a vase. “Hello, Sam. A drink?”
Then it happened. “Philip, Cynthia, you have been such good friends to me. But I have to say something. You have to listen to me. This woman”—I pointed at Lily Svetgartot—“is using you. She’s using you to get at me. She’s trying to get at me because she works for that egomaniac jerk fuckhead Istvakson. He wants me to tell him very, very goddamn personal things about Elizabeth. About me and Elizabeth. She’s Istvakson’s secret sharer. How can you not see what’s going on?”
“‘Secret sharer’?” Lily said. “I don’t get the reference.”
“It’s a Conrad story in which someone shares a devastating secret aboard ship,” Philip said. “I can’t remember if the ship sinks or not.”
“Sam, Lily is our guest,” Cynthia said. “We met how we met, and we’ve had some lovely chats. She’s a very intelligent young woman. Sorry to speak to you like you’re a child, but where are your manners?”
“Manners have nothing to do with it,” I said.
“Let me speak here,” Lily Svetgartot said. She refilled her wine glass and leaned against the kitchen counter. There was a big full moon out over the beach. “Cynthia, Philip, I’m leaving Canada after this movie is done. I go to Copenhagen, where I have some work. Yes, for Peter Istvakson again. An automobile commercial. Lucrative for Istvakson, naturally. So probably we will not ever see each other again. So let me say, Sam is absolutely correct — he’s right. I work for a man he hates. For his own good reasons he hates Istvakson. I don’t much like him either. He is doing some unethical things where Sam Lattimore is concerned. I have told Istvakson this directly. Mr. Istvakson, who has control of my employment. I’m his hired assistant. I like working in the movie industry, just not for Mr. Istvakson. But I have got nothing under my sleeve. I’m just here for dinner. Okay, maybe there’s an attraction to Sam. I’m a young single woman, and who wouldn’t be? Attracted to Sam.”
And here is where I said the one thing I should not have said, because it should never have been known to anyone except Philip and Cynthia and Dr. Nissensen. No one else.
“See, that’s exactly what I mean!” I said loudly to Lily. “That’s bullshit. That’s your attempt to deny the truth. You are dumb as mud. Attraction? You talk as if I’d even care. You stand in the kitchen of my only friends and obviously don’t consider the violation, the insult. Philip and Cynthia know I’m married to the love of my life. Married. I see my wife Elizabeth most every night. Right out there on the beach. Almost every night!”
Then, apparently, I blacked out.
I woke up on the bed in the downstairs guest room. Philip was sitting in a chair he’d pulled up beside me. “You were only out a minute or two,” he said when I opened my eyes. “Here, have a sip of water. We called Dr. Trellis, told him what had happened. He’s just a couple minutes’ drive away. He told us to keep an eye on you and call back if you didn’t snap out of it shortly. He said he’d drive right over — do you want that? How’re you feeling now?”
“I think I should get back to the cottage.”
“I don’t think so. You sleep right here. Lily is already in the upstairs guest room. We sent her up there with dinner and pie. Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m not. Tell me, Philip, how much did I go off the rails before I blacked out?”
“Cynthia and I don’t judge our friend Sam typically. You aren’t experiencing typical things. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
“I must’ve really gone off the rails.”
The Testimony of House Detective Derek Budnick
PEOPLE THINK YOU want to know everything, that they have all the information you need to know. I don’t understand this. Maybe they have a need to tell you.
A few weeks after I returned from Wales, Derek Budnick knocked and said through the door, “Mr. Lattimore, it’s Derek Budnick, the house detective.”
I opened the door. “You don’t have to keep introducing yourself.”
“Yeah, but I’m supposed to identify myself each time. It’s hotel protocol.”
“Come on in.”
I had just percolated some coffee. I set a cup in front of Derek at the table, then sat down across from him.
“Are you going to stay on at the hotel?” he asked.
“I don’t have a place to go yet, but I’m definitely not going to stay here.”
“Can’t blame you, Sam, can’t blame you one bit.”
“But you aren’t here to talk about my plans.”
“No, I’ve been thinking and thinking, and thought it was maybe time to tell you what happened at the trial. Because you were away with Elizabeth’s family, and thank goodness for that, you didn’t have to look at that bastard Padgett in the courtroom. I can hardly believe I worked almost three years around a person who was so sick. I mean, he was a nasty piece of work. What’s more, he dishonored his position. The position of bellman. And there’d been complaints all along. Mr. Isherwood is not the most effective manager. Padgett sniffed that out. He had Isherwood’s number from the get-go, is how I saw it.”
“I take it the defense lawyer tried to say that Elizabeth—”
“Yes, that she — sorry to use this word — frustrated Padgett. You know, led him on or something. That it drove him to an extreme state of desperation. I’m so glad you didn’t have to see Padgett’s scumbag lawyer plying his trade, Sam. I wanted to strangle him with my two bare hands. Lowlife prick. But Padgett was the lowest lowlife prick of all. On the stand, when Padgett did his sleazebag thing, saying Elizabeth had led him on, the prosecutor came right back at him. Right there — that turned the jury. Not that they needed much turning. The sleazebag lowlife prick lawyer for Padgett, he tried to blame the victim.”
We sat drinking coffee and not talking for a while. Then I said, “I don’t know how to put this politely, Derek. Because you were good to us. To Elizabeth and me. But one of the reasons I need to get out of this hotel is not just because my wife was killed here. That’s the main thing, of course. But also, it’s because I can’t live so close to people who think they have to tell me things. Who think I want to know things. Already there’s been Mr. Isherwood, there’s been the bookkeeper Mrs. Colter, who heard the shots. And Mr. Belareuse, the old guy in thirty-two. Each of them took me aside and said what they said.”
“They meant well.”
“But you get my drift.”
“I get your drift, my friend. I’m gone.” Derek reached out and shook my hand and promptly left the apartment.
The next day, I saw the newspaper ad for the cottage.
Still Life with List of Practicalities
IN OUR BEDROOM, on the wall behind the bed, a poster: ROBERT FRANK: NOVA SCOTIA PHOTOGRAPHS. On the bedside table (on Elizabeth’s side, which was the left side), two books: Little Boy Lost and The Village, both by Marghanita Laski. A four-by-four-inch note pad, and written on the topmost page:
Bank balance: $1,344 (not including Sam’s paycheck)
Dentist 2 pm Thursday
Type ribbons — stationers on Hollis st.
Dish soap/dish sponge etc
Sam — clothing sale at Pekinbrooks — sweater?
Dissertation — work, work, work — read Notions of Victorian Dread