--11.
I entered the house, a Smith & Wesson jammed into my shoulder, my hands cuffed behind my back. Your world looks very different when you see it with a gun muzzle choking on your deltoid, but never before and never since has it looked quite so different. For starters, the house, which, when I last saw it, had been in a state of havoc, a state of havoc wrought by the very man who was now returning me, his prisoner, to the house he himself had so recently ransacked--this house, my house, had, in the intervening days, been restored to perfect order; not only perfect order, but perfect cleanliness: every surface had been scrubbed clean and polished; the air smelled like lemon Pledge.
"Did you ever notice," I heard him say, "how quickly a wound can sometimes heal itself? How long have you been gone anyway?"
I didn't answer. He guided me into the living room, then pushed me onto the sofa. He walked across the room, turned on a floor lamp, and seated himself in the chair beside it, beneath it, resting his right ankle on his left knee, turning his right leg into a triangle.
"Nice house you got here," he said. "How much 'd ya pay for it?"
"I don't own it; I rent."
"Oh? You really ought to own. The best investment. Well, second best."
I said, "I don't understand what's happening. What's happening here? Who are you?"
He smirked and said, "You know who I am."
But I didn't know.
Then he said, "You've been followed for a very long time now, Ora. I've been following you a very long time. I know all about you."
"Why? How?"
"There are people, people who are very much interested in you, in what you do and where you go and even in what you think. I work for those people. And, in a way, you work for me--not technically, of course, but you do work for me; so I guess, by extension, you work for them too. Seems like we all work for the same people nowadays, doesn't it?" Then, changing the subject, he said, "Let's talk about Bruce Hardesty. Not," he raised his index finger, as if checking some objection he imagined I was preparing make, "Not about what he's gonna inherit, or about what you two used t' do in the sacristy when you met t' tell him all about Durney--"
My shock, my shame. . .when somebody throws something like that up in your face, you feel suddenly naked and ashamed and horribly vulnerable, exposed, uncovered. It's like a gun wound that only wings you.
There's a flat plane, papered over with reasons and lies, on which most of us manage to exist, but sometimes it tilts without warning, and you feel as though you're about to slide right off, right off of existence. When Tab Hunter mentioned my secret meetings with Bruce, I realized I had been hoping that, if I could kill Bruce, the truth about what I had done, my unintentional betrayal of Durney--my unintentional betrayal of him and worse--that this truth, these truths, would vanish. But now more people knew about those meetings, Tab Hunter and the people he claimed were interested in me. Killing Bruce would no longer erase those truths. Even killing Tab Hunter wouldn't.
"That's right," he said. "So, don't let's lie to each other. Haven't you had enough of secrets and mysteries and lies?"
My mind revived the old rationalization I had been using to keep myself sane, that Durney himself had said, 'You're my two guys, the only ones I trust completely'. How was I supposed to know I couldn't trust Bruce? How was I supposed to know that even Durney couldn't trust Bruce?
Tab Hunter, always as if reading my mind, said, "Okey, maybe Durney said 'You're my two guys, the only ones I trust completely'. But did he also say, 'You're my two guys, and I want you to trust each other completely'?"
I shook my head, like a child who has just been scolded.
"So then why were you two meeting secretly--?"
"We weren't meeting secretly--"
"In the church sacristy, where nobody would know--"
"No, it wasn't like that at all. I thought I was helping Durney--"
Then, Tab Hunter accused us--accused Bruce and me--of doing something I can't even bring myself to write. Hearing him say those words, though, hearing those words--reader, there are some words you never combine, you never say, and you never write. I won't write them. Maybe, technically, Tab Hunter was correct: Bruce and I did do those things. But it wasn't anything like what Tab Hunter made it sound with his words. Bruce and I did used to meet; we talked; one thing would lead to another; it was just something, just goofing around. And it was the only time I ever drank: Bruce used to bring a bottle of vodka to those meetings, and I didn't want him to think I was a pussy. I really wanted Bruce to like me, to admire me. He smelled like fabric softener, April fresh, like Downey. If you don't know what fabric softener smells like, I can only say that it smells like a stay-at-home mom, like new clothes perfectly folded and stored in cedar dresser drawers, like new shoes and clean underwear; it smells like a dad who makes lots of money and who invests it wisely, who enjoys a cocktail before dinner, and who reads the newspaper after; it smells like an only child who speaks when spoken to, which is not very often, and who is sent to his bedroom after dinner to finish his homework at a desk by a window overlooking a front yard perfectly green and level and kept free from every kind of weed by a lawn company that uses the latest, safest chemicals; it smells like a son who stares vacantly at his algebra problems while dreaming of big cities and fast cars and fancy restaurants and pretty women. Bruce smelled like those things, and when he came near me, my mind was glowing with vodka warmth. I don't know how it happened. I wanted him to like me. Durney had said, "You're my two guys." He thought of us as a pair, and so I did too.
Tab Hunter: "Well never mind: you are what you are. Now I want you to think back, think back far and think back hard . ." He snapped his fingers, and--
Unexpectedly, a breach formed inside my mind, like a sinkhole opening in the earth and destroying a house that once stood in that place, destroying the house by nothing more than undermining the foundation on which it had been built.
Tab Hunter said: "Houses are built on foundations, but foundations aren't built on nothing."
Through the breach in my mind, memories came rushing out into the open; each memory looked like a bird, and each bird like an origami paper crane, released from captivity, flying out of a cage, up, along with a thousand others, into the sky. One memory in particular raced ahead of the others, and then began to unfold itself, like reverse origami, only revealing its true shape and meaning when created in reverse, unfolded and uncreated, revealing a long note written on the flattened-but-still-creased paper surface. The note told the story of a memory:
I was a child listening through a closed door to my grandparents quarreling in hushed voices. My grandfather said, "Delores, they can't move; the house is rented; the lease is for an entire year."
My grandmother--she sounded as if she had been crying--said, "I don't care! You always said that that house had a bad foundation, that it should be condemned. The lease could be broken on those grounds alone. You could call the county inspector--"
"I wouldn't do that to Stan--"
"Why not! He doesn't care what he does to us!"
"Delores, you know that isn't true. The Hendricks are our friends--"
"Is that so? Then what do you call leasing the house to that, that woman, and her child?"
They were talking about Stanley Hendrick, who owned the house next door. My grandmother and Mrs. Hendrick used to gossip on the telephone about the tenants. My grandparents and the Hendricks were good friends. Then Stanley Hendrick leased the house to this woman and her bastard child, a boy, who was a little younger than I was, but I don't remember how much younger. I was jealous of him, jealous that at least he had a mother. I didn't even have that. My mother left me with my grandparents when I was born; she abandoned me, and ran off to live her life. I wonder where she is now? Nobody even knew who my father was, or if they did, they never told. At least the boy next door had a mother--that was more than I could say. Maybe, I thought, he even had a father he got to see on the weekends.
I heard my grandmother's voice through the door, "It's disgraceful, it's--"
"It's not disgraceful," my grandfather insisted: "She could have a husband and the boy could still be illegitimate. She could have a husband, still be a worse sinner a thousand times over, and you'd never know. People aren't gonna start judging us by who rents the house next door." My grandfather, always the voice of reason, of compassion. God how I hated his reason and his compassion. So unmanly. Never anything but an excuse not to do the right thing, the hard thing, the manly thing.
My grandmother, responding to his rebuke, which, even at that age, I understood to be a rebuke on the grounds of reason--he was never man enough to put her in her place, not even man enough simply to be pussy-whipped, so he resorted to reason instead--my grandmother said, "Well, then, it's. . ." She was searching for the right word, the correct word, or at least another word, and I could imagine her resentment at my grandfather for suggesting that the situation might require a word more precise than "disgraceful." Just about anything my grandmother ever disliked was disgraceful. In grade school, my report cards were disgraceful; over the summers, my laziness was disgraceful; on Sundays, the way I dressed for church was disgraceful; in high school, the friends I ran with and the music I listened to were disgraceful. When I went to work for Durney McKusker, I myself was disgraceful, and yet, by then, she had worked and worked that tired old word so hard that it had lost its power to hurt me. She had lost her power to hurt me; she and her words reminded me of used-up condoms. She was as disgusting and useless as a used condom in the bottom of a filthy motel-room bedside trash-can.
When my grandfather insisted there was no disgrace in having an unwed mother living in the house next to ours, my grandmother, who possessed tremendous force of will, but little subtlety of intellect, must have felt defeated, because she stamped her foot and said, "Fine Norman, maybe it isn't disgraceful. I don't happen to have my dictionary handy. But it certainly is bold, and it's unbecoming, and it's bound to cause a scandal." Those were her three fallback words: "bold," "unbecoming", and "scandalous." Whenever she packed those three words into a single blow, she was essentially throwing everything she had at the object of her outrage.
My grandfather, still trying to reason with her, said, "How can you say those things when our own daughter--?"
"Don't," my grandmother interjected, "You dare bring our daughter into this. Don't you dare compare her to that woman. Our daughter was taken advantage of in the most despicable way imaginable. That man should be in jail, and he would be if you were more--"
"And how do you know the same isn't true of Tasha?"
Tasha, I inferred, was the unwed mother in the house next door.
My grandmother began weeping again--her strategy of last resort in any argument with my grandfather. "I don't care, Norman. I don't give a fig for all your speechery and your words. I don't even understand how the Hendricks could do this to us, how they could rent to a woman like that. Why can't that woman just leave us alone?"
"It's not as if there are that many houses for rent here in Tiskilwa--"
"It doesn't matter," my grandmother fiercely cut in. "She's on food stamps; she's on welfare. Just last week Rose Patterson was in the checkout line behind her at Sullivan's, and she saw her using food stamps to buy tonic water and gin, and I've seen men coming and going from that house. It's disgraceful; the whole thing's disgraceful. Everybody knows it. She's not even from Tiskilwa; she could live anywhere: Elmville, Hennepin, Bureau Junction. . .she could go back to Kasbeer. There's only one reason for her to stay here. . ."
And so, they argued on into the night about the unwed mother who had moved into the tiny house next door, and I listened a while longer until finally I became bored, and I went upstairs to bed. That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about the new neighbors, and especially about the boy. I saw him a few times. I think we might even have spoken. I didn't remember his name. They moved out of the house a few weeks later, and I never saw them again.
Tab Hunter interrupted my thoughts, and said, "Why are you looking for Bruce?"
Startled out of my reverie, I said the first word that came to mind, "Revenge."
"And what does 'revenge' mean to you?"
"What the hell do you think it means?"
He rose from the chair and pistol whipped me in the face. "What does it mean to you?"
"It's justice. He killed Durney."
"Getting warmer, though I don't think you realize it. What is justice?"
"He killed Durney, and he hasn't been punished. I'm gonna punish him. He killed Durney; I'm gonna kill him."
"Is punishment justice?"
My jaw was bleeding, but with my hands cuffed behind my back I was powerless to stop it. I thought briefly about how I had broken Buddy Durant's nose, and how he couldn't stop the bleeding, and, with my own arms restrained as my face bled, I wondered if this wasn't just justice.
"Punishment," Tab Hunter said, "is punishment. It is its own thing, with its own rules, its own guts inside that aren't the same as justice. A common thug like you's got no right to speak of justice. Punishment, maybe; justice, never."
"I don't even know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about punishment. The need to punish and be punished." He stood up and left the living room. I heard him walk out the front door. A few moments later, he reentered the living room holding a cloth, which he placed over my face, over my nose and mouth.
I remember thinking, "Ether," as I struggled against him.
I heard him saying, "Did it ever occur to you that you might just wait? Sometimes what you're looking for is also looking for you; sometimes it comes to you. People like you, you don't know how to be still; you don't know how to just let things happen; you always think you have. . ."
And then, as if everything began to go in reverse, the thoughts, which had only just recently rushed up through the breach that his snap had opened inside my mind, those thoughts began to flow backward, and then all other thoughts as well, right down through the breach, until my mind was empty and completely peaceful, like an enormous, blue, cloudless sky. . .
The next morning, when I woke, my throat was burning and my wrists were sore, but I was no longer handcuffed. Tab Hunter was gone again.
I wanted to get clean. I showered. I wear swimming trunks when I shower. The only problem with wearing swimming trunks when you shower is that you have to put your hands down your trunks to wash the parts of your body covered by your swimming trunks, which feels a little bit perverted, because when I was little my kindergarten teacher told us that we should never let anybody touch any part of our body covered by our bathing suits, and then our first grade teacher told us the same thing, and our second grade teacher, and so on until about fifth grade, when they stopped telling us that, after which, for a couple grades, there was no advice at all on the question of where we should let people touch us. Then--I can't remember when, but maybe about the seventh grade--we were given very different advice from the teachers, and I remember that somehow my grandmother got wind of it, Christ knows how because I certainly never told her, and she went to the school board and raised holy hell. Nobody told us anything ever again, except for some stuff our Sunday school teacher read to us from the Bible, at least the Sunday school teacher said it was from the Bible, but to be perfectly honest I don't know where it came from.
There's a mirror on the inside of the bathroom door, and I like stepping out of the shower and seeing the reflection of myself in my swimming trunks. I hate naked bodies, but, I have to say, I look pretty good in my swimming trunks. That morning, my face looked like hell, though--cut and and bruised and swollen from when Tab Hunter had pistol whipped me. I dried myself with a clean towel, and then put on a wool, Pendleton robe. I folded the shawl collar up and I tied the robe shut tight. I always tie the bathrobe belt--my grandmother used to call it a "sash", but I'm not gonna be calling it a god-damned sash--I always tie the bathrobe belt just above my trunk-line, so that I can pull off my wet swimming trunks, and then pull on a dry pair of boxer shorts. I opened the bathroom door to let the steam out, and I walked to my closet where I hung the robe on the double coat hook that's screwed into the inside of my closet door.
I then returned to the bathroom where I washed my face again, and then tried to shave with a safety razor, but I had trouble shaving because of the cuts on my face. I rinsed my mouth with water, flossed, rinsed with Listerine, brushed my teeth, and then rinsed again with water. I soaked a cotton ball with Sea Breeze and cleaned my face again. The Sea Breeze burned inside the cuts on my face, but it burned in a way that felt kind of good.
I put on a white t-shirt, and then returned to my bedroom where I finished dressing.
That's what I did, and that's what I always do.
I took my medicines and I sat down in the chair where Tab Hunter had sat the day before, in the chair next to the floor lamp. But I didn't turn on the lamp because the room was so sunny thanks to the east-facing windows.
I ransacked my brain for some clew, but I didn't find any clews. I thought back over what I had learned since I began my search for Bruce. What I had learned, really, after all that, was not very much. . .and actually, in the balance, I had probably forgotten more than I had learned. . .what had I learned over the past several days, or several months, depending on how you reckoned time: I was at the Columbia Club when I lost time, at the Columbia Club on the Old Rome Road. . .on the Old Rome Road. . .Kevner had asked me, didn't we ever used to sing the song about "There once was a lady on the Old Rome Road"?
There once was a lady on the Old Rome Road; there once was a lady on the Old Rome Road; there once was a lady on the Old Rome Road. . .
I telephoned Riley Simmons. My call woke him up. I apologized and asked him if he ever used to sing the song about the lady on the Old Rome Road.
He said, "Christ, Ora. What's gotten into you?"
"Did you?"
"Yeah, I guess. Didn't everybody? You must've too."
"How did it go?"
"I don't know. . .something about a lady named Diamond Lil and a guy she betrayed. I don't remember, Ora. You 'xpect me to remember something that long ago?"
"How did it go," I asked, maybe a little too emphatically, maybe with an edge of. . .unreasonableness. "I have to know."
"Okey, Okey. Let's see, There once was a lady on the Old Rome Road. . . / Who read before bed the Illinois Penal Code. / Bedtime for her was always tomorrow, / And she worked 'til she was rich as Dominic Tarro. / She had diamonds in her teeth, / And they called her Diamond Lil."
"That last part can't be right. It doesn't rhyme."
"Well maybe it was somethin' else. Seriously, I'm surprised I remember even that much."
"Was there more?"
"Yeah, the rest was something like, Diamond Lil, / Not afraid to kill, / Met Dominic Tarro, / To his everlasting sorrow: / She put him in the Sangamon, / And then became a gang o' one, / And she moved on up to the Old Rome Road, / Which she ruled 'til she was nearly ninety five years old. / Now boys pay attention, / With all your comprehension: / A woman in ascension, / Means a man in descension; / A woman on the make / Is as dangerous as a snake; / A copperhead, / She'll take you to bed, / Let you see red / Then make you eat lead."
"That's it?"
"I don't know. There were different versions, but they were all about Diamond Lil, I remember that. And most were about Dominic Tarro too. Some were dirty; a few weren't. In some versions, Diamond Lil and Dominic Tarro had a kid, but Lil never told her son that Dominic Tarro was his dad, and the kid grew up and killed Tarro; the kid thought that Tarro was about to turn state's evidence against him and his mom: 'Dominic Tarro didn't give two cents / About turning state's evidence,' or something like that. Anyway, in those versions, it was Diamond Lil's sorrow that rhymed with 'Tarro'. But I don't remember how any of the other versions went."
I hung up without even thanking him, which is actually not at all like me to do. I'm usually very polite.
It was still early morning, and the heat not yet oppressive. I heard somebody outside mowing a lawn. When I was a kid, Stanley Hendrick had a riding lawn mower, and when he used to mow the lawn of his rental property, he would always mow our lawn too, as a favor to my grandparents. But he stopped mowing our lawn for a time, after all the fuss over the unmarried mother and her bastard child.
I drove back out to the Hendricks' home.
Mrs. Hendrick answered the door again, still wearing her lavender house dress. "Hello Ora," she said suspiciously. Then she became quite animated, and asked, "Did you ever find that man who was snooping around your car the other day?"
"No," I lied.
Visibly disappointed, she then said, "You don't look good, Ora. Is everything okay?"
I was rubbing my head, trying to rub away a headache, and she must have noticed the bruises on my wrists, and the cuts and bruising and swelling on my face. I said, "Everything's okay."
She stared at me.
"Is Mr. Hendrick home?"
"Yes, he's in his study. It's early, you know."
I realized that I had no idea what time it was.
I followed her into the house, through the kitchen, and back into the boarded-up three-seasons room where Mr. Hendrick had, just a couple days before, given me the address to the Pedrosa Stables in Glenview. He was wearing a green eyeshade, and holding something under a magnifying glass. Mrs. Hendrick said, "Stan, Ora's here to see you again."
Mr. Hendrick glanced up with his eyes, which looked green and sickly through the plastic visor. He said, in greeting, "Ora."
"Hi Mr. Hendrick. I'm awfully sorry to bother you again."
"It's not a bother. What can I do for you?"
"Well, Mr. Hendrick, do you remember that house you used to own, next door to my grandparents?"
"Certainly do. I still own it."
"Do you by any chance keep a record of your previous tenants?"
"I'm not sure I understand what you're asking."
"Well, do you remember when you rented the house to an unwed mother, and my grandmother got herself all out of joint over it?"
He grinned a little, and said, "How could I forget?"
"Then do you, by any chance, remember the woman's name? The woman who you rented the house to?"
His back stiffened a little, as if he had suddenly assumed a defensive posture. Then he said, though I could tell he was lying, "No, I don't remember her name." After a pause, he said, "Why do you ask?"
I realized that my ability to coax an answer from him might depend entirely on the reason I gave for my curiosity. "No reason, I guess. I just remembered that whole thing, the other day, and I thought I remembered that the mother's name was Tasha, but I was so young, and I was curious to know if I actually remembered back that far, remembered correctly that is."
He said, too quickly, "No, I think that was right, Tasha Hardesty--" and he broke off, and I could tell he had said more than he intended, and as far as I was concerned, it didn't matter if he never said another word for as long as he lived, because he had told me everything I needed to know: Tasha Hardesty, and her bastard son, Bruce, Bruce Hardesty, the boy next door, the Night Auditor, the heir to a third of Delaney Demering's fortune, and Durney McKusker's killer, Bruce Hardesty of Peoria: what strange conspiracy, I wondered, united us to each other?
I thanked Mr. Hendrick and turned to leave.
He called out after me, "Ora, I think I was mistaken, Tasha Hardesty, she lived there much later; she never had any--"
"That's okay Mr. Hendrick." Lying: "But there was a Tasha who lived next door? I guess I just got the memories mixed up."
"Sure," he said, sounding reassured. "That kind of thing happens. When we're young, we remember things and the memories get mixed up. I don't remember the name of the woman your grandmother and Mrs. Hendrick bickered over. Could've been Tasha too, I suppose, but I just don't remember and I don't keep any records that far back."
"Thanks Mr. Hendrick. I knew you'd be able to help. How's the new motor working on your jon boat?"
"Oh, just fine, thanks."
"Well, gosh, I guess I better get goin'. I got my rounds to make for the vending company."
"Come back and see us again, Ora. You know we always enjoy seeing you."
"I sure will Mr. Hendrick. So long."