I’m creepy?
But she didn’t answer, wasn’t there anymore.
I found her a couple of minutes later standing by the information booth soaking up, she said, the train station atmosphere, something she had liked to do as a kid.
I wasn’t quite done talking, I said.
So talk, she said.
But, beyond elaborating on the subject of creepiness, which suddenly seemed to me painfully self-evident and basically played out, or trying to dig a little more at the conversation we’d had at Mr. Kindt’s, which seemed to be covered by the creepiness thing anyway, I didn’t really have anything to say.
There were plenty of people going by and Tulip blabbed a little, in watered-down Mr. Kindt style, remarking, for example, on the patterns the people made striding across the regularly cleaned marble floors and going up and down the marble staircases and I said, uh huh.
Then it was time to catch the train we were apparently interested in, so we went downstairs to track 122, which was hot and crowded despite the late hour. There were a couple of conductors conferring at the top of the platform, wearing their tall blue hats and short-sleeve shirts, and the inside of the train was brightly lit, but cool and surprisingly quiet given the amount of activity. I thought then of that feeling you get on a train that is just leaving the station, going slowly, and all the heads in the car are rocking back and forth and the lights blink on and off and there is a strange calm. Thinking about this, I began to feel a little better and more hopeful.
This is very nice, I said.
Yes, it is, Tulip said.
Where’s this train going? I didn’t look.
No idea. It’s the New Haven line. I think Portchester is one of the stops. Maybe Stamford.
So we’re just going to see where it takes us?
She looked out the window at the gray platform, her face clearly reflected in the dirty glass.
Mr. Kindt wants you to murder him, she said.
Come again, I said.
There’s a script.
I looked down at my hands. They looked in need of some scrubbing. I felt my face flushing, the heat coming back. Is that why we came out tonight, so you could tell me that? Was that the whole point?
It was Aris’s idea. He wanted me to be the one to ask you.
Why?
Think about it.
I thought. Just then the conductor came over the intercom to announce the train’s imminent departure. People kept coming in, taking their coats off, putting bags on the overhead racks, unfolding newspapers, opening books.
What kind of murder are we talking about? I said.
You’ll have to ask Cornelius, he has the script now.
I’m asking you.
She didn’t answer.
He wanted you to ask because it’s part of the script.
Tulip nodded.
I would have figured he’d go for something more exotic. Something intricate or whatever.
His tastes are sometimes surprising. I mean, his favorite game is Operation.
He wants it to play like a movie, something a little racy. His lovely young friend, who stands to gain in some significant way, persuades a creepy young ne’er-do-well down on his luck to bump him off. It’s like a poor man’s version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Tulip smiled. That ends badly, she said.
It certainly does.
And I wouldn’t say you’re down on your luck.
But you would say I’m creepy.
Yes, but not that you’re a ne’er-do-well.
After she said this she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
Was that part of the scenario?
She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, I am kind of lovely, aren’t I?
She was. There was no doubt about it. There was no, in fact, getting around it, not for me.
Why not Cornelius or the knockout or the contortionists? I said. He could have gotten something cheap and thrilling out of them. Why me?
I don’t know, she said. Because it turns out you’re good. Because you got him excited with all those descriptions of murders. Because, clearly, he’s eccentric. Because he’s a rich guy from Cooperstown who likes to play, among other things, crime boss in the village.
Play crime boss?
I was kidding. Exaggerating for effect. It’s just that by now he doesn’t have to do anything. He’s like a consultant. He does some things for some people. Other people do things for him.
People like Cornelius.
Tulip nodded.
O.K., and while we’re at it, what about Cooperstown, where he made his big stake? What did he do besides supposedly weaving straw baskets before he took his famous swim? Before Cornelius helped him to “step forward,” whatever that means.
What do you think it means?
I think it means something besides a swim and a bet happened that night. Am I close?
What do I know?
Considerably more than I do, I thought. Or should have.
He likes you, Henry. He wants a turn. Forget the other stuff. Forget Cooperstown. They’ve got issues. They’ve known each other for, what, a million years? It’s their thing. Love and intricacy. Let’s leave it at that.
Tulip gave me a little shove. I gave her a little shove back. By this time we were standing out on the platform and the train was pulling away. It moved slowly into the dark tunnel that would take it across the Bronx, out of the city, and into the lamp- and moonlit suburbs, where mysteries of another order abounded and people drank cocktails out of cut glass and swam, etc., only after the sun had set behind beautiful trees. For a moment, I had the feeling that I was still on the train as it snaked its way through the dark. As it seemed to me I sat there, head bobbing while the lights went on and off, Tulip’s hand snaked down my arm, over my wrist, and her fingers curled tightly around my own. She squeezed, leaned close, bit my ear, and, reprising Cornelius’s speech from dinner the first night, said, “If they dyed by violent hands, and were thrust into their Urnes, these bones become considerable.”
I’m leading a strange fucking life here, I thought.
TWENTY-FOUR
After my surgery the ward seemed to grow enormous — so that when I left my room to stretch my legs the distances unfurling before me were dizzying — then tiny — so that the possibility of stretching my legs was rendered impossible by the robin-egg-sized dimensions that greeted me when I opened my door. This torquing of the space surrounding me, which I had no doubt whatsoever was self-imposed, fortunately ended almost as soon as it had begun, so that when, on my third try, I left my room to stretch my legs, everything had resumed its natural order. It had not, however, quite resumed its natural quality. By this I mean that while before the surgery everything my eyes had gazed upon had seemed relatively dull, dreary, lackluster, matte, etc., now as I walked around the corridors I encountered the kind of visual clarity that I had until then associated with the south of France or the Greek Islands, or the beach at Coney Island on one of those beautiful September days. Everything I looked at seemed to have been polished or resurfaced. When I looked at the microwave oven set into what had been a drab alcove in the drab visitor’s lounge, for example, I had the feeling I was standing in an open quarry with a brilliant afternoon light behind me and that what I had before me was some fresh shape made of metals and minerals pulled straight out of the ground and shot through a replicator then scoured by robots with high-speed buffers. Anyway, that’s the direction in which my thoughts tended as I took in the microwave, the marvelously vivid lime and mauve textures of the old couch by the window, the sharply delineated lines of the bits and pieces of detritus — fuzz, dirt, latex glove, a torn business card belonging to a real-estate photographer whose name and number were missing, etc. — scattered here and there across the floor.