She walked me south and west, to Doctor Wu’s, the New York branch of a trendy LA burger joint, and a favorite of the fashion crowd. It’s usually impossible to get a table there any evening, much less a Friday, but Clare worked some magic and we were seated in ten minutes.
I ordered a ginger ale and Clare had wine, and the candlelight wrapped around us, and the chatter of the crowd covered us like a tent. The warmth and darkness and noise of the place made for a kind of privacy, and I was drifting into silence and fatigue and the scramble of my own head when Clare took my wrist. I looked up. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and nearly white against her black sweater. Her face was luminous, and her fingers were smooth and cool.
I thought she was going to ask questions- where had I been, how was the case, what was wrong with me- and I had no answers, nor even the breath to try. But Clare asked nothing. Instead, she smiled, and talked about, of all things, real estate: the twelve apartments she’d seen that day, the outrageous asking prices, the hideous furnishings, the bizarre owners, the fascist co-op boards, and the freakish real estate agents. It was a wry, flowing monologue, interrupted only by the waitress and our food, and I didn’t have to do anything except laugh, which- after a while- I did.
On the walk home, Clare leaned close and took my hand. Her perfume was light on the icy air. “I should work,” I said.
She shook her head. “It’ll keep.”
I awoke two hours before dawn, in the ashes of a dream. It was something with Holly and David and Stephanie and Jamie Coyle, but the narrative was lost. I stood by the windows and looked at the frozen city, and salvaged what pieces I could: Holly’s voice, pleading, laughing, cruel, and sad; her shadowed eyes; her bare, shining back; David’s angry mouth; his fingers tugging at the skin over his Adam’s apple; Stephanie’s hands, twisting in her lap; Coyle, bent over his sink; a pall of sadness over them all. I turned the fragments over and around in my head, but I couldn’t make them fit. I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and opened my laptop.
Clare got up at nine-thirty, and she moved slowly but methodically around the apartment- breakfast, newspaper, shower. I was working my way through Holly’s DVDs, and she put a hand in my hair as she passed.
I’d gotten through three so far, Interviews Nine, Ten, and Eleven, the final and the unedited versions I’d found in the binder. The men were there, unmasked, in all their glory, and so were their names, addresses and places of business. I’d never seen Nine before, but Ten and Eleven were, respectively, the tall bald guy and the pale, hairy guy I’d watched the night before. Chaz Monroe had been right about her later work being more extreme, and each of these men would be worth a visit.
Not that there was anything to suggest that one of them had come looking for Holly months after the fact. Still, it was possible something had stirred one of them up, perhaps in the way that Mitchell Fenn had been stirred. Cowering on the stage of the Little Gidding Theatre, Werner had sworn up and down that Fenn had been his only foray into blackmail, but doubting him came easy. I sighed. This had the feel of grasping at straws. I was reaching for another disk when the intercom sounded.
I went to the screen just as David’s image emerged. He was wrapped in a coat that looked too large, and he was stabbing at the intercom button again and again. I buzzed him in and opened my apartment door. I knew when he stepped off the elevator that he was drunk.
His steps were slow and deliberate, and though they didn’t wander, they seemed to require a great deal of concentration. He wore jeans and a pink oxford shirt under his big coat; the clothes looked slept in, and maybe more than once. His face was unshaven and the stubble on his chin was gray. His hair was tangled and cowlicked. He walked past me into the apartment, smelling of sweat and cigarettes. I looked at my watch; it was just eleven. Great.
“You have orange juice?” he said. His voice was dry and tired.
“In the fridge,” I said. He tried to help himself, and I looked on. His hands shook and his attention faltered, and it was like watching a slow-motion car wreck. After a while I went into the kitchen and poured it for him. “What are you doing?” I asked.
He was annoyed. “Drinking orange juice- what’s it look like?”
“What are you doing here, David? What are you doing wandering around drunk on a Saturday morning?”
He took a drink and slopped juice down his shirtfront. He seemed not to notice. “This isn’t drunk- this isn’t even a decent buzz.”
“I’m going to get you a taxi. You need to go home.”
David snorted. “You are the last fucking person on earth to tell me what I need, Johnny.”
Great. “You need to go home,” I said again.
He pointed at me, and lost more juice. “What I needed was for you to do one thing- one stinking thing- and look at what you turned it into.” His voice got louder.
I shook my head. “You’re not making sense.”
“No? Then let me make it clear: you destroyed my life, Johnny. I needed you to take care of one problem, and you turned it into a disaster- a total fucking disaster. Jesus Christ, you’re more of a screw-up than any of us ever thought- and that’s saying some-” He looked over my shoulder, at Clare coming out of the bathroom. She was wearing a long towel, and her hair was loose and wet.
“Bad time?” she asked.
David laughed and looked at me. “If that’s not the story of my fucking life! Here I am with my whole world on fire, and you’re lounging around with her, getting blow jobs!”
I hit him. I didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t even think once. I just whipped my forearm into the side of his head and down he went. A spray of orange juice covered the kitchen wall, and the glass broke into three neat pieces at his feet.
Clare looked at me, and looked at David, and looked at me again. Her face was blank and her eyes were cold and empty. “Jesus Christ,” she said softly. She shook her head and went into the bedroom and closed the door. Shit.
I knelt by David, and he moaned and brushed my hands off. He muttered something and got his legs beneath him and caught hold of the countertop. I tried to help him, but he jerked away.
“Get off me, you fucking psycho,” he said, leaning against the counter. One side of his face was red and there was a cut at the corner of his mouth.
“Let me get you some ice.”
He waved a hand. “Fuck you. You fucking stay away from me.” His voice was trembling; tears were welling in his eyes. Shit.
“Sit down and put some ice on that, and I’ll get you something to drink.”
He waved some more. His sleeve was soaked with juice. “You go to hell,” he said, and lurched toward the door.
“Just sit down, dammit!” I reached for his arm; he shrank back.
“Or what- you’re going to hit me again?”
I put my hands up and took a deep breath. I softened my voice and spoke slowly. “I’m sorry that I hit you, David. I’m not going to do it again. I just want you to please sit down.” His lip was swelling and his eyes were red, and he said nothing for a while, but finally shuffled to the table.
I took his coat and fixed an ice pack, and I poured him another orange juice. While he drank, I checked his head for cuts. David tolerated my ministrations without a word, but his eyes followed my every move. I was pouring him a second glass when Clare appeared. Her black coat was on her arm. She didn’t look at David as she crossed the room, and she barely looked at me. She stopped at the door.
“Are you boys going to be all right on your own?” Her smile was thin and her tone was chilly. I nodded. “Let’s hope so,” she said, and left.
I threw away the broken glass and poured myself a seltzer. I drank it, and David and I looked at each other over the kitchen counter. And said nothing. He was hunched in his chair, tugging absently on a scrap of skin at his neck, when the phone rang. We both jumped. It was Mike Metz.