Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (4 page)

Nancy leaned over and nearly shouted in my ear,
"See?"

The director next presented a Cape Breton fiddle
soloist, his style a cross between folk and bluegrass music. While he
was good, the next performer was incredible. Introduced as Alasdair
Fraser, the bearded, bearish guy addressed the audience in a thick
Scottish burr, every other word going right by me. But then Fraser
began to play, his foot keeping time, his body weaving and bobbing as
the bow made the fiddle laugh, scream, and weep. I found myself
stomping my own foot against the floor, and after he finished, the
man received from all of us the kind of ovation given when the best
in the world has done his best for you.

This time Nancy just smiled.

"Why do I ever doubt you'?" I said.

"Don't ask me."

We enjoyed another half an hour before intermission,
then a rousing second set with the step-dancers and the soloists and
a remarkable Highland dancer, noticeably past her teens, who
literally flew around the stage. After the second encore, we moved
out into the lobby, me stopping at one of the tables and picking up a
cassette tape of Alasdair Fraser.

Nancy said, "And why are we buying that?"

"Because I don't have a CD-player."

The smile that always reminds me, for no good reason,
of Loni Anderson scoring points against the males on the old WKRP in
Cincinnati.

"Don't gloat, Nance."

She tuned the smile down
but not off, leading me into the crowd moving outside.

* * *

We drove to the place Nancy rents in South Boston,
the top floor of a three-decker owned by a police family. As we
climbed the interior stairs, Drew Lynch, the son in the family,
quietly opened and closed the door on his landing, nodding to us in
between.

I said, "It's nice that they still check on your
visitors."

"They're the best landlords an assistant DA
could have."

On the third floor, Nancy opened the door into her
apartment, her cat scurrying out to meet us. Renfield had needed
surgery on his rear legs a while back, and he's managed only a gimpy,
crablike way of moving ever since. But there seems to be no pain, and
because I was the one who picked him up from the animal hospital, the
vet thought Renfield had "imprinted" on me as a kind of
surrogate parent.

Right then, though, he was chewing on my right
shoelaces, his clawless front paws trying to burrow down past the
leather to sock and flesh below. "Well named."

Over her shoulder Nancy said, "Sorry?"

"Renfield. After the guy in Dracula who eats
small mammals."

She turned, smiling down at him. "He's a
toughie, but you know he loves you, John."

"Pity he shows it through a foot fetish."

Nancy said the word "Yummies," and Renfield
immediately forgot about me, scurrying back into the kitchen and
watching intently as Nancy took down a small can, popped the top, and
mashed the contents into the remains of his cereal food from the
morning.

Laying the Alasdair Fraser tape on the shelf near her
telephone, I said, "What's he having tonight?"

"Savory Salmon."

"Why not Chunky Chicken or Tender Beef?"

"He had those last week. I don't want him
developing gastronomic ennui."

"Not exactly marinated pork and veal marsala."

She set the bowl on the floor, then came over to me,
wrapping her arms around my neck and aiming a saucy smile roughly at
my collarbone. "A certain prosecutor was thinking about Irish
sausage for dessert."

With the knuckles of my right hand, I tilted her chin
up.

"She's in luck."

* * *

Afterward, we lay in bed, cuddling front to front,
the door closed to keep Renfield out until we were ready to fall
asleep. Nancy's right side was toward the ceiling, and I stroked it
slowly from shoulder to hip with the tip of my left index finger.

In a purry voice, she said, "That should tickle,
but it doesn't."

"Only because I'm going slowly. If I speed up—"

"John, don't."

"—or use the fingernail-"

"Please."

"Okay."

"It's just so nice like this," she said.

"I'm glad we both think so."

The purry voice. "Being with you is like being
with nobody else."

I stopped the stroking. "Kind of an odd way to
phrase it, don't you think?"

A giggle muffled by the pillow. "You know what I
mean."

Starting over at the right shoulder, I said, "I
hope so."

Nancy shifted a little, causing my hand to stray onto
the base of her breast. I stopped again but this time sat up.

"John, what's the matter?"

"Hold still a minute."

"What are you doing?"

I touched and pushed and probed.

"John?"

"Nance, I feel something here."

"Something?"

"I don't . . . it's like a small lump."

"Oh, that's nothing."

"Nancy, it's the size of a cherry pit."

"Sebaceous cyst."

"A what?"

"It's just a cyst from the oil in my skin. My
mom had them all the time, and I've had a few already."

"I've never seen one on you. Or felt it before."

“
That's because the last time was years ago. They
form pretty quickly, and you can either have them cut out or just
leave them."

"Leave them?"

"Yes. They usually kind of wax and wane on their
own."

I stayed sitting up, images of Beth flooding into me.
The hospital room's mechanical bed and tiled walls, the smell of
disinfectant, the sound of hushed voices. And too many tubes
connected at too many places, her head on a pillow, the white turban
wrapped in an unbalanced way around where her hair used to—

Nancy said, "John, what's the matter?"

I let out the breath I was holding. "It just
took me back."

"What did?"

"Finding something like that lump."

"How would . . . oh." Nancy drew herself up
to her knees, her arms around my neck again, but differently than in
the kitchen. "Oh, I'm sorry. This reminds you of Beth."

"Yes."

"John, believe me. The lump is nothing. I—"

“
You've had it looked at?"

"Like I said, the doctors have always—"

“
This particular one?"

A pause. "No."

I searched for the right words. "Nancy, I know
you're trying to make me feel better, but I'm not completely rational
on this, and I really wish you'd go to the doctor."

"Soon as I can."

"Name the day, Nance."

"I'll call you."

"Now."

She broke off the embrace. "John, I told you
outside the office, I have an attempted murder—"

"Nancy, that's your job. This is your life. Not
to mention mine, if I'm lucky."

A quieter voice. "And ours, if I'm lucky too."
Another pause. "I'll call her tomorrow before court."

"Thank you."

We hugged and kissed. Rolled over and stayed still.
But I don't think either of us got much sleep.
 

=3=

The next morning, I woke up when Renfield licked my
eyelids open. Nancy wasn't next to me in her bed. I felt the sheets
where she'd been lying. Cold.

Swinging my legs to the floor, I stood with that dull
fatigue that comes from getting only half as much rest as you need. I
used the bathroom, then went into the kitchen. There was a
handwritten note propped up against the sugar bowl.

John,
I didn't have
the heart to wake you this morning
when I
knew you hadn't slept well.
Thanks for
pushing me last night.
I'll call my doctor
today.
Love,
Nancy

Today. Not "before
court," as she'd promised. Crumpling the note and pitching it
into the wastebasket, I went to see if I had some clean clothes in
her dresser.

* * *

I didn't. Have any clean clothes at Nancy's, I mean.
After riding the bus to South Station, I took the Red Line to Park
Street Under. I seemed rank enough to myself that instead of walking
to the office across Tremont, I turned west and moved through the
brisk morning air toward Back Bay. It being a Wednesday, most of the
people with real jobs were already at them. While the Common
therefore wasn't crowded, the grass wasn't empty, either.

The nice fall weather brought out the decrepit
homeless, the crazy homeless, and the enterprising homeless.
Interspersed with them were others, like a young mom and her toddler
playing Frisbee with a Heinz-57 mutt, the dog able to leap nearly two
of its own body lengths into the air from a standing start, the child
squealing in delight. Farther along the winding walkway, separate
benches held African-American teenagers necking chastely, a
middle-aged Asian-American man in a business suit working on a
note-book computer, and an elderly white couple, apparently having an
argument, each angled away from the other but speaking alternately in
grumbles and hisses.

Across Charles Street, Parks Department employees
lovingly tended the flower beds in the Public Garden, their
supervisor the bearded man with the headband who seems to have
replaced the tanned man in the hiking shorts. I nodded at the bearded
supervisor the way everybody does, meaning thanks for making the
effort. He nodded back, a little sadly, I thought, maybe thinking how
little more time was left for the blossoms this year.

Which after last night with Nancy was the wrong way
for me to be thinking. I shook it off and continued over the bridge
above the Swan Pond. The red and green pontoons for the boats were
moored in the center of the pond next to a skiff, the white swan
figureheads and bench seating already removed and sent somewhere else
till spring. I walked around the equestrian statue of George
Washington, saber drawn but broken off at the hilt, and then up the
Commonwealth Avenue mall under the century-old  Dutch elms that
were also reaching the autumn of their days.

Jesus.

I picked up my pace, breaking a little sweat under
the second-day shirt. At Fairfield, I turned right, shortly hitting
Beacon and going up the steps of the brownstone on the comer. I was
renting a one-bedroom unit from a doctor doing a two-year residency
in Chicago, and when I opened the apartment door, the morning sun
slanting through the violet stained-glass windows across the rear
wall of the living room reminded me briefly of a church service. I
felt tight enough inside that I postponed the shower and change to
pull on my running gear and go back downstairs. Crossing Beacon, I
went over the pedestrian ramp straddling Storrow Drive and started
upstream on the macadam path into a northwest wind that would have
spent yesterday blowing newspapers along the streets of Montreal.

I forced myself to watch the river. Ducks playing tag
near the docks, cormorants diving for the fish making a comeback
against the receding pollution, a lone night heron looking a little
lost in the crotch of a maple tree. College freshmen learned to sail
in the tricky,  skyscraper-skewed winds, their sunny sails
dazzling against the blue-black water. A women's scull surged
downriver in eight-oared spurts, Harvard colors on the crew shirts. A
State Police launch drew alongside a Miami Vice motorboat, checking
some kind of paperwork.

After two miles, I turned back at the Western Avenue
Bridge, using the pace to force my thoughts toward managing my
breathing, a deep breath drawn in for six strides, then blown out
with three short bursts to follow. Six-three, six-three, over and
over. It bought me fifteen minutes of focused, empty peace.

Warming down against the trunk of a poplar at the
Fairfield ramp, I noticed a golden retriever swimming along the
opposite shore of the lagoon. On the grassy perimeter, two terriers,
a cairn and a Scottie, scampered point and drag to the retriever. An
older woman waved leashes at the dogs, whistling for them. The
terriers responded but the retriever didn't, just plugging along in
the water, jaws open, drinking in the day—and I hoped not too much
of the lagoon water.

Finishing my stretching, I
walked back over the ramp, looking forward to a little professional
deception to get my mind off my own reality for a while.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," said the young
woman at the copy center, twisting a hank of frosted hair around her
index linger. "You want me to type this up like a
questionnaire?"

"Word process it," I said.

"All's we do anymore. We just say 'type' because
it's easier, you know?"

Elbows on the counter, I nodded as a disheartened
yuppie asked a male near an enormous Xerox machine to print his
résumé on "the ivory stock again, same as last time."