Like a child, he held out his arms, and I straightened the sleeves and pulled the two halves of the front together. I started buttoning it up. "Get the charcoal gray suit out of the closet," he said.
I got his legs into the trousers and took black silk socks out of a drawer. Alan slammed his feet into a pair of old black wing-tips and tied them neatly and quickly, arguing for the endurance of certain kinds of mechanical memory in the otherwise memory-impaired.
"Have you ever seen a ghost? A spirit? Whatever you call it?"
"Well," I said, and smiled. This is not a subject on which I ever speak.
"When we were small boys, my little brother and I were raised by my grandparents. They were wonderful people, but my grandmother died in bed when I was ten. On the day of her funeral, the house was full of my grandparents' friends, and my aunts and uncles had all come—they had to decide what to do with us. I felt absolutely lost. I wandered upstairs. My grandparents' bedroom door was open, and in the mirror on the back of the door, I could see my grandmother lying in her bed. She was looking at me, and she was smiling."
"Were you scared?"
"Nope. I knew she was telling me that she still loved me and that I would have a good home. And later, we moved in with an aunt and an uncle. But I never believed in orthodox Christianity after that. I knew there wasn't any literal heaven or hell. Sometimes, the boundary between the living and the dead is permeable. And that's how I embarked upon my wonderful career."
He had reminded me of something Walter Dragonette had said to Paul Fontaine.
"Ever since then, I've tried to notice things. To pay attention. So I hate losing my memory. I cannot bear it. And I cherish times like this, when I seem to be pretty much like my old self."
He looked down at himself: white shirt, trousers, socks, shoes. He grunted and zipped his fly. Then he levered himself up out of the chair. "Have to do something about these whiskers. Come back to the bathroom with me, will you?"
"What are you doing, Alan?" I stood up to follow him.
"Getting ready for my daughter's funeral."
"Her funeral isn't until tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, as Scarlett said, is another day." He led me into the bathroom and picked up an electric razor from the top shelf of a marble stand. "Will you do me a favor?"
I laughed out loud. "After all we've been through together?"
He switched on the razor and popped up the little sideburn attachment. "Mow down all that stuff under my chin and on my neck. In fact, run the thing over everything that looks too long to be shaved normally, and then I'll do the rest myself."
He thrust out his chin, and I scythed away long silver wisps that drifted down like angel hair. Some of them adhered to his shirt and trousers. I made a pass over each cheek, and more silver fluff sparkled away from his face. When I was done, I stepped back.
Alan faced the mirror. "Signs of improvement," he said. He scrubbed the electric razor over his face. "Passable. Very passable. Though I could use a haircut." He found a comb on the marble stand and tugged it through the fluffy white cloud on his head. The cloud parted on the left side and fell in neat loose waves to the collar of his shirt. He nodded at himself and turned around for my inspection. "Well?"
He looked like a mixture of Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. "You'll do," I said.
He nodded. "Necktie."
We marched back into the bedroom. Alan wrenched open the closet door and inspected his ties. "Would this make me look like a chauffeur?" He pulled out a black silk tie and held it up for inspection.
I shook my head.
Alan turned up his collar, wrapped the tie around his neck, and knotted it as easily as he had tied his shoes. Then he buttoned his collar and pushed the knot into place. He took the suit jacket from its hanger and held it out. "Sometimes I have trouble with sleeves," he said.
I held up the jacket, and he slid his arms into the sleeves. I settled the jacket on his shoulders.
"There." He brushed some white fluff from his trousers. "Did you call the florist?"
I nodded. "Why did you want two wreaths?"
"You'll see." From a bedside table he picked up a bunch of keys, a comb, and a fat black fountain pen and distributed these objects into various pockets. "Do you suppose I'd be able to walk around outside without getting lost?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Maybe I'll experiment after John turns up. He's basically a good fellow, you know. If I'd got stuck at Arkham the way he did, I'd be unhappy, too."
"You were at Arkham your whole life," I said.
"But I wasn't stuck." I followed him out of the bedroom. "John got to be known as my man—we collaborated on a few papers, but he never really did anything on his own. Good teacher, but I'm not sure Arkham will keep him on after I go. Don't mention this to him, by the way. I've been trying to figure out a way to bring up the subject without alarming him."
We started down the stairs. Halfway down, he turned around to stare up at me. "I'm going to be all right for my daughter's funeral. I'm going to be all present and accounted for." He reached up and tapped my breastbone. "I know something about you."
I nearly flinched.
"Something happened to you when I was telling you about my grandmother. You thought of something—you saw something. It didn't surprise you that I saw my grandmother because"—here he began tapping his forefinger against my chest—"because—you—have—seen—someone—too."
He nodded at me and moved back down a step. "I never thought there was any point in missing things. You know what I used to tell my students? I used to say there is another world, and it's this world."
We went downstairs and waited for John, who failed to appear. Eventually, I persuaded Alan to salt away the money on the kitchen table in various pockets of his suit. I left him sitting in his living room, went back to the kitchen, and put the revolver in my pocket. Then I left the house.
Back at Ely Place, I put the revolver on the coffee table and then went upstairs to my manuscript. John had left a Post-It note in the kitchen saying that he had been too tired to go to Alan's house and had gone straight to bed. Everything was okay, he said.
PART SIX
RALPH AND MARJORIE RANSOM
1
Just after one o'clock, I parked John's Pontiac in front of the Georgian house on Victoria Terrace. A man on a lawn mower the size of a tractor was expertly swinging his machine around the oak trees on the side of the house. A teenage boy walked a trimmer down the edge of the driveway. Tall black bags stood on the shorn lawn like stooks. John was shaking his head, frowning into the sunlight and literally champing his jaws.
"It'll go faster if you get him," he said. "I'll stay here with my parents."
Ralph and Marjorie Ransom began firing objections from the backseat. In their manner was the taut, automatic politeness present since John and I had met them at the airport that morning.
John had driven to the airport, but after we had collected his parents, tanned and clad in matching black-and-silver running suits, he asked if I would mind driving back. His father had protested. John ought to drive, it was his car, wasn't it?
—I'd like Tim to do it, Dad, John said.
At this point his mother had stepped in perkily to say that John was tired, he wanted to talk, and wasn't it nice that his friend from New York was willing to drive? His mother was short and hourglass-shaped, big in the bust and hips, and her sunglasses hid the top half of her face. Her silver hair exactly matched her husband's.
—John should drive, that's all, said his father. Trimmer than I had expected, Ralph Ransom looked like a retired naval officer deeply involved with golf. His white handsome smile went well with his tan. —Where I come from, a guy drives his own car. Hell, we'll be able to talk just fine, get in there and be our pilot.