“The one who said she was Mrs. Tyler but was really her sister.”
“She’s dead.”
“What?”
“Murdered.”
“What happened?”
I told her everything, even Hush’s suspicions about the identity of the assassin. I didn’t need to ask her to keep it quiet; Mardi was a soundproof room unto herself. Her secrets were deeper and darker than anything I had ever known.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ve been hoping for something to fall into place, a detail or a mistake on Cyril’s part. But there’s been nothing. So I think I’m going to have to try and set a trap.”
“Will that be dangerous?”
“Extremely. And that’s why I can’t spend my time being worried about you.”
“But, boss...” She had never called me boss before, “what you don’t understand is that being in this office with you is the best thing in the world for me. It makes me feel safe.”
“What does?”
“It’s the way you look at me, Mr. McGill,” she said. “That’s the way I want to be seen.”
That was the last of our discussion about Mardi leaving my employ. She was going to work for me and I was going to have to protect her. I shook my head and we both grinned.
“Okay,” I said, “but will you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Go home now. Go home and leave me here to think.”
I turned off most of the lights in the suite and wandered around the rooms in stockinged feet — plotting. At eight-thirty the sun was still illuminating the city from the farther corner of the western sky. I felt like a foot soldier waiting for the command to go out and die for an idea that I barely comprehended.
I sat down in one of the vacant cubicles in the hallway leading from Mardi’s desk to mine. I put my big feet up on the Formica desktop, wondering about toes, claws, paws, and genetic history.
I sat there, speculating, until the phone rang.
It was as if I were waiting for that call, even though I had no reason to expect it.
“Hello.”
“Leonid,” said my wife of too many years.
“Yeah, Katrina. Why you callin’ the office at this time’a night?”
“I tried your cell phone but you didn’t answer.”
“Oh. Yeah. The phone’s in my office and I got my big feet out here in the hall.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Looking at my toes,” I said. “In the dark.”
“What’s wrong, Leonid?”
“I don’t know. Tell me why you’re calling.”
“Gordo.”
“Something happen?” I sat up straight, suddenly unconcerned with the mystery of evolution.
“Yes and it’s wonderful. He walked down the hall without his walker.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she said through laughter. “Elsa was right behind him, but he made it on his own. It’s been weeks since he’s been able to do that.”
“Yeah.”
“Leonid.”
“What, honey?”
“Come home.”
“Not tonight, baby. I have a serious problem to solve. More than one.”
“Does it have to do with Dimitri?”
I knew she would pick up on her baby’s predicament before long.
“Actually, no,” I said. “He’s in Paris with Tatyana.”
“Paris?”
“Our boy’s growin’ up.”
“That Tatyana Baranovich is nothing but trouble,” Katrina said.
“Just the way the McGill men like ’em, huh, baby?”
“When will he be back?”
“Few days.”
“With her?”
“No doubt.”
“I have to go,” Katrina said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Give Gordo my best.”
“This is Mr. Cyril Tyler’s private line,” prissy Phil said on an answering-machine recording. “No one is here right now to answer your call. If you care to leave a message, wait for the beep.”
No promise to call back. No thank you for calling. I was sure that Phil’s dreams were filled with the desire for unlimited power.
“This is Leonid McGill calling,” I said. “I’ve tried to get to you every way I know, Mr. Tyler, but you’ve snubbed me over and over again. So let’s try this: either you come to my office tomorrow morning or I go to the police tomorrow afternoon.”
I felt satisfied for the first time in many days.
Going down to the utility closet, I pulled out a folding cot, set it up in the aisle and stretched out. I was asleep before my eyes were fully closed.
48
Dreaming is the true genius of man, my father told me one night after one motherfucker of a nightmare. I was six years old and the previous evening I had seen the fifties science-fiction classic The Fifty-Foot Woman. She was chasing me down Broadway. The streets were deserted and my breath was ragged enough that my lungs felt like tattered paper. When my father picked me up I was still screaming. I held on to him so tight that my arms and fingers ached. But I wouldn’t let go. Old Tolstoy carried me to his favorite chair and cradled me, waiting for the sobs and shaking to subside. When I was a little calmer he told me about dreams and genius. He didn’t try to lessen the effect of the dream itself. No. He accepted the fear, and so I did, too. He hailed my shuddering experience as brilliance.
That morning, on the cot in my office hall, I was more than half the way to consciousness but my eyes were still shut and the realm of dreams was close at hand. My thoughts were images instead of logical systems. There was a commune on an upstate farm and a cowboy hitching his palomino to a rail set out just for him. A man wearing a tuxedo but with the cowboy’s face came out through the swinging doors (the commune had become a saloon). The front wall of the establishment came loose from the rest of the building and fell on the two men. The horse was crushed but the fancy gentleman was standing in the doorway, and the broncobuster happened to be situated beneath an open window. They were both standing there unharmed, with dust from the heavy impact rising around them.
“Mr. McGill.”
Cowboys and communes (a word which rhymed with saloon). And then there were peas in a pod and dumb luck, two phrases somehow having the same meaning in my dream.
“Mr. McGill,” a different voice said.
I realized for the first time clearly how difficult constructing a poem must be.
I opened my eyes. Iran Shelfly and Mardi Bitterman stood over me. Their proximity — and me in a bed in a perpetually empty office space — threatened to become my second first draft of a poem that morning.
“Hey,” I said.
Iran had on a mustard suit and a yellow T-shirt, both close-fitting, of course. The ethereal Mardi’s dress was cream and crowded with rose-colored roses. I inhaled through my nostrils, expecting the scent of those flowers to narcotize me.
“Time to get up, boss,” she said.
I sat up, fully dressed except for my shoes. I was hungover but hadn’t had a drink. I was an elite mercenary armed with nothing but poetry.
“What time is it?”
“Eight twenty-one,” the ex-con told me.
I scanned the floor, focused on my shoes. Before I could lunge Mardi bent down and actually slipped the boatlike brogans onto my still-stockinged feet. This action soothed someplace deep inside.
“Cyril Tyler is in the outer office,” she said, looking up at my satisfaction.
“What?”
“He was waiting at the door when Iran and I got here,” she continued. “We told him that you weren’t in yet. I didn’t think you were until I realized that only one lock was on.”
“Why didn’t he use the ringer?”
“He was pressing it when we walked up to him.”