Corkscrew (3 page)

Wayne read the dialogue over and over. Sometimes he read parts of it out loud, both his lines and Bryce's. He made Bryce sound insinuating, manipulative. He made himself sound innocent, vulnerable. When he heard Susan's key in the front door, he looked at the wall clock to the left of his desk. Six-fifteen. He'd been in here an hour and ten minutes. He moved the cursor to the X in the upper right corner of the screen, clicked. The boxed message appeared: 'Do you want to save changes to Document 1?' Cursor to
No:
click. All gone.

Susan worked for UniCare, a kind of umbrella organization for charities, funded mostly by New York State and partly by the tobacco companies. Not a charity itself, its job was to move the available funds around, to match resources with needs. The people with the money were for the most part soulless bureaucrats, who had no real interest in what they were doing, while the people running the charities were for the most part sentimentalists with their hearts on their sleeves, forever on the brink of tears at the thought of their 'clients.' These two groups could not possibly talk to one another under any circumstances. Susan, who could talk to both sides without losing her temper, was invaluable. She'd started with UniCare as a secretary fourteen years ago, and was now assistant director; that invaluable.

She was also invaluable to Wayne. He knew that his life was devoted to fiction, to the unreal, and he thought sometimes, if it hadn't been for Susan's solid linkage to the factual, he wouldn't have survived this long. He believed that might be the reason so many writers fell into drink or drugs; at the end of the day, they just didn't want to have to go back to that drabber world where everybody else had to live.

'Hi, honey,' he said, appreciating her lithe slenderness as she came down the hall in her office jacket and skirt, fawn-brown hair bobbing at her cheeks.

'Sweetie,' Susan said, and paused in the hallway for a quick peck of a kiss. Her lips were always so soft, so much softer than they looked, that it always took him by surprise. Every day he kissed her, more than once, and every day he was surprised.

He followed her into the kitchen. Even though she had the job outside the house and he was in here all day long, she was responsible for dinner. They'd both grown up in traditional families, where women did the cooking and men famously didn't know the first thing about cooking indoors but did all the cooking outside. There was no outside connected to a Greenwich Village apartment, so whatever alfresco culinary talents Wayne might have picked up from older male relatives around Hartford had certainly atrophied by now, and he had no interior chef talents at all. Susan too thought of cooking in a gender way, and after a few failed efforts on Wayne's part, several years ago, to put together something that could look like the evening meal, she'd assured him she didn't mind taking the responsibility, and apparently she didn't.

What this meant, in practical terms, was that during the week she would bring home a meal already prepared by somebody else, which only required heating. Fortunately, in the Village there were a number of specialty shops that could provide meals a thousand times better than supermarket frozen foods, so they didn't have to dumb down their taste buds to get through life. And frequently, on weekends, particularly if they were having friends over, Susan would actually cook, and was very good at it.

Now he followed her as she carried her white and green Balducci's shopping bag into the kitchen and put it on the counter. Looking at the wall clock, she said, 'Dinner after the news?'

'Sure,' he said.

'I'll put it in during the first commercial.'

He also looked at the clock. The network news would be on in twelve minutes. He'd come into the kitchen with her in order to tell her about the meeting with Bryce Proctorr, the strange proposition he had to think about, but could they cover all that in twelve minutes? He wanted her undivided attention, because he really needed her thoughts on this. I should forget this craziness right now, he told himself, and I know I should, but I won't be able to until Susan says so.

I'll tell her after the news, he decided, which was a relief, because in fact he hadn't figured out how he would tell her. How lead into it? What spin to put on it? I'll figure all that out during the news, he thought, and then tell her.

In fact, he told her over tonight's cod fillets in cream sauce and broccoli and scalloped potatoes and Corbett Canyon chardonnay in the dining room, another rarity in this neighborhood. Candles were on the table, and only reflected electric light spilled in from the kitchen. 'You won't believe who I ran into today,' he began.

'Mmm?'

'I went to the library,' he explained, 'to get college addresses. You know, for the resumes.'

'Mmm,' she said, without looking at him. He knew she wasn't happy about that idea. She didn't think a college campus was the right place for him, and she certainly didn't want to have to give up her job and her home to go live in some small college town in Pennsylvania or Ohio. She'd let him know her feelings on the subject, as she always did, but she'd also let him know she understood he'd only go through with it if he absolutely had to, so whatever happened, she'd go along with him. But she wouldn't get into animated conversation with him about college addresses and resumes.

He said, 'Bryce Proctorr.'

She looked up. 'The writer?'

'The famous writer. I used to know him years ago, before I met you. Before I went to Italy. Then I came back from Italy, and there was you.'

He grinned at her, still delighted that she'd entered his life. She knew what he was thinking, and grinned back.

That was such a lascivious grin, which no one would ever see but him. He felt himself stirring, but he still had his story to tell, and the thought of the story deflected him entirely.

He said, 'Anyway, he was in the library, doing some research. He saw me first and came over and said hello and we went for a drink together.'

'So he's a regular guy.'

'I suppose. But he's rich now, you know. He told me he gets a million one per book.'

'He told you.'

'Well, he had a reason.'

'Does he know about your problem?'

'I told him, yeah.'

'And he told you he gets a million one. Rubbed your nose in it.'

'It wasn't like that, Susan. Let me tell you what happened.'

He described their drink together, and how he went first, telling Proctorr his problems, and then Proctorr telling him how his second marriage was ending in a very messy protracted divorce. 'There was something about it in
People
months ago, remember?'

'Not really,' she said. 'But you used to know him, so you'd have been interested.'

'He offered me a deal,' Wayne said. His heart was pounding now, and his stomach muscles were clenched. The food from Balducci's was good, as it always was, but he couldn't possibly swallow.

'A deal? What do you mean, a deal?'

'He's been so emotionally caught up in this divorce thing, he hasn't been able to work for a year and a half. He owes a book, and he doesn't have one, and he needs the money. He wants to publish
The Domino Doublet
under his name. If,' he added quickly, 'he thinks it's good enough.'

Susan put down her fork and cocked her head, to hear him more plainly. 'He wants to take
your
book? As though it's his?'

'It's a kind of a compliment, in a funny kind of way,' Wayne told her. 'I mean, he already knows my work. He's read The
Doppler Effect,
some of the others.'

'But Wayne, why would you want to do that?'

'For five hundred fifty thousand dollars.'

She sat back. 'Oh.'

'I'm supposed to mail him the manuscript,' Wayne said. 'If he thinks it's good enough, he'll put his name on it — his title, too, I suppose — and send it in as his, and we split the money. And nobody ever knows, not even his agent or his editor.'

'Oh, Wayne…'

'You know,' he said, '
The Domino Doublet
wasn't going to be by Wayne Prentice anyway, it was another Tim Fleet.'

'But it seems so… strange,' she said.

'Famous writers have been ghostwritten before,' Wayne assured her, 'when they had writer's block, or they were drunk, or whatever. Publishing is full of the rumors, always has been.'

'Yes, I know about those,' she said, since she'd been around the publishing world for years, through him.

^'
So this is just that again,' he said. 'I can't get
The Domino Doublet
published myself, under any name. This way, instead of not being worth a nickel, it's worth half a million dollars.'

'I guess… I guess you should say yes.'

'But there's one extra kicker to it,' he said.

She waited. 'Yes? What?'

'Something he wants.' It was very hard to actually say it in words.

'Something he wants?' That little leering smile again, and she said, 'What does he want,
droit de seigneur?'

He laughed, suddenly realizing how tense he'd become, as rigid as crystal; tap me, and I'll shatter. 'No, that would be an easy one, I'd just tell him to go to hell.'

'Good,' she said, still smiling.

He didn't feel like smiling. He looked at his uneaten dinner in the candlelight, pale cod, pale potatoes, acid-green broccoli. 'He wants me to kill his wife.'

'What?'

Now he looked at her astounded, disbelieving face. 'Essentially, what it is, that way, I'd be getting her half of the money,'

'Wayne, what are you
talking
about?'

'If she's alive, she gets half his advance for the book. If I get the other half, there's nothing for Bryce, no reason for him to do it.'

'He's paying you to kill his wife.'

'Yes.' Wayne shook his head. 'And for a book.'

They were both silent, neither eating, she frowning at him, he miserably looking everywhere around the candlelit room except at her. The wall clock in the kitchen was battery-operated, and the minute hand
clicked
at every second's jerk forward, a sound they almost never heard, but which both could hear now, as loud as a metal spoon being tapped on the table between them.

'What did you tell him?' Said so softly he barely heard it, above the ticks.

'I said I had to meet her.'

That surprised her. 'Meet her? Why?'

'Well, he was describing how awful she was, greedy, nasty, a real bitch. If she was that bad…'

'It would be a little easier. Oh, Wayne.'

'I know, I know. But the point is, he agreed. He's going to figure out a way for me to meet her. In the meantime, I'm supposed to send him the manuscript. Tomorrow.' He shook his head. 'I'll send out some of those resumes at the same time, might as well get back to reality a little bit.'

'No.'

He looked at her. 'No? What do you mean, no?'

'Don't send out any resumes,' she said. 'Not yet.'

'Why not?'

She didn't say anything. He watched her, waiting, and she said, 'Wait till you've met her.'

His breath stopped. They gazed at each other, both unblinking, and he thought, she wants me to do it! He'd been so sure she would pull him back from the brink, sure of her solidity, her disdain for fantasy. They stared at each other, and he read the grim set of her jaw, and he said, 'And if it turns out he's wrong? She's a decent woman, someone we'd like?'

'Then you send the resumes,' she said, and looked away from him, and said, 'You're not eating your dinner.'

'Neither are you. Susan, why do you want me to wait?'

She nodded, still looking away, then faced him again to say, 'I've been feeling awful about this college idea.'

'I know you have. I have, too.'

'Wayne, it's the end of the marriage, I know it is, but what could I say? What was the alternative? You can't live on
me.
Of course, you
could,
but you can't. The life you had for twenty years just dried up, and it isn't your fault, I know it isn't. The markets change, the rules of the game change, everybody knows that's true, nobody ever thinks the axe is going to come down on
him.
But it comes down on someone, and this time it was you.'

'Not the end of the marriage, Susan.'

'We'd hate each other in Fine Arts Gulch, sweetie, you know we would. We'd hate ourselves, and we'd hate each other, and one day I'd pack up and come home, and you wouldn't be able to.'

'But what we're talking about doing here, I mean, you know, this is—'

'You don't have to say the words, sweetie,' she said. 'We know what we're talking about.'

'Susan, I thought you'd—'

'I want us, Wayne. I want this apartment and this life. I want my job, I want what I
do.
I don't want the world to be able to kick us apart like some sand castle.'

He looked down at his plate. He picked up his fork, but didn't do anything with it. Then he looked up again, and Susan was watching him, impassive. He said, 'What if she turns out to be a nice person?'

Her eyes glittered. 'We'll see,' she said.

The Ambien wasn't working. Bryce didn't want to open his eyes, didn't want to acknowledge that he was still awake, but finally boredom and exasperation and worry all combined in him with sufficient force to drive his eyelids up, and the red LED letters on the bedside clock read
4:19.
Oh, damn.

If Isabelle could have stayed over, surely he'd be asleep now. With her beside him,
somebody
beside him, a warm and companionable body, the insomnia would not come back. But Lucie had hired private detectives — he'd have known that even if lawyer Bob hadn't warned him about it — and there was only so much he dared do before the divorce was complete. He could date Isabelle, have dinner with Isabelle, but sleep alone, or
not
sleep, but alone, night after night.

Sometimes he got up and read, sometimes he got up and drank, sometimes he got up and watched a tape, but usually he just lay in bed and worried or raged or felt sorry for himself. Sometimes the sleeping pills worked, and then he would get up in the morning feeling fine, almost his old self. Sometimes they didn't work. Tonight it wasn't working.