Night Train (9 page)

       The blood on the bedroom wall looks black now, with just the faintest undercoat of rust. At the top of the splatter, near the ceiling, the smallest drops gather like tadpoles, their tails pointing away from the site of the wound. A rectangular section of the wall has been removed by the science team, right in the middle of the base smear, where the bullet hole was. Then the downward swipe from the wedged towel.

       I think of Trader, and find that I am contemplating the scene as largely an interior-decoration problem. I want to get out the mop and make a start on it myself. When he returns, will he be able to sleep in this room? How many licks of paint will he want? Surprisingly, I think I am finding a friend in Trader Faulkner. Barely a week after I tried my level best to flake him into the lethal injection, I am finding a friend in Trader Faulkner. I talked with him at the wake at the Rockwells'. It is his key I hold in my hand. He has told me where to look for everything.

       Jennifer kept all her personal papers in a locked blue trunk in the living area, and I have a key for that too. But first I quickly cover the apartment from room to room, just to get a feel: Post-its on the mirror above the telephone, magnetic Scrabble pieces on the fridge door (saying MILK and FILTERS), a bathroom cabinet containing cosmetics and shampoos and a few patented medicines. In the bedroom closet her sweaters are stacked in plastic covers. Her underwear drawer is a galaxy—star-bright...

       It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true—unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward—shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.

       But I look around now and what I'm seeing is settled order. Tobe and myself are both slobs, and when a pair of slobs shack up together you don't get slob times two—you get slob squared. You get slob cubed. And this place, to me, feels like a masterpiece of system: Grooved, yet unemphatic, with nothing rigid in it. Homes of the self-slaughtered have a sullen and defeated aspect. The abandoned belongings seem to say: Weren't we good enough for you? Weren't we any good? But Jennifer's apartment looks as though it is expecting its mistress to return—to fly in through the door. And against all expectation I start to be happy.

       After weeks with a sour twist in my gut. The building is freestanding and even after a half hour you can feel the sun moving around it and changing the angles of all the shadows.

       Trader and Jennifer, they had two bureaus, two work stations, in the living room, not ten feet apart. On his desk there is a sheet of typing paper with stuff like this written on it: p(x) = a(sub)o + a(sub)i x + a(sub)2 x^2+ a(sub)3 x^3 +...

       On her desk there is a sheet of typing paper with stuff like this written on it: x = 30/10^-21m = 3 x 10^22m.

       And you think, Hey. He heard her. She heard him. They talked the same language. Isn't that what we're all supposed to want? The peer lover, ten feet away: Silence, endeavor, common cause. Isn't that what we're all supposed to want? For him a woman in the room. For her a man in the room, ten feet away.

       I popped the blue trunk.

       It contained nine photo albums and nine ribboned bundles of letters—all of them from Trader. This is their history, illustrated and annotated. And of course ordered. Ordered especially or ordered anyway? With a premeditated suicide there is generally some kind of half-assed attempt 'to put things in order': To attempt completion. To try for completion. But I didn't get that vibe here, and figured that the Trader 'shrine' had been up and running since year one. I hauled it all out and got myself down there on the rug. Starting at the beginning: His first letter, or note, is dated June 1988: 'Dear Ms. Rockwell: Forgive me, but I couldn't help noticing you on Court Two this afternoon. What a beautiful all-court game you have—and what a toreador backhand! I wonder if sometime I could prevail upon you to give me a game, or a lesson. I was the dark-haired, bow-legged hacker on Court One'.

       And so it proceeds ('That was quite a set of tennis!'), with little memos about lectures and lunches. Soon the album is taking up the story: There they are on the court, individually and then together. Then complication. Then complication falling away. Then sex. Then love. Then vacations: Jennifer in a ski suit, Jennifer on the beach. Man, what a bod: At twenty, she looked like a model in an ad for those cereals that taste great but also make you shit right. Bronzed Trader at her side. Then graduation. Then cohabitation. And still the handwritten letters keep coming, the words keep coming, the words a woman wants to hear. No dashed-off faxes from Trader. Faxes, which fade in six months, like contemporary love. No scrawled reminders propped against the toaster, such as I get from Tobe. And used to get from Deniss, from Jon, from Shawn, from Duwain. GET SOME TOILET PAPER FOR CHRIST SAKE. That wouldn't do for Jennifer. She got a fucking poem every other day.

       Complication? Complication fell away, and did not recur. But complication there certainly was. Its theme: Mental instability. Not hers. Not his. Other peoples. And I have to say that I was very, very surprised to see my own name featuring here...

       I prepared myself for what they're now calling a 'segue.' But a lot of this stuff I already knew. The dumped boyfriend. The freaked-out flatmate. The trouble begins at the outset, when Trader starts getting serious. There's this jock, name of Hume, who has to be eased out of the picture. Big Man on Campus can't take the strain. So what he does is present Jennifer with the spectacle of his collapse. Et cetera. Then the other problem, unconnected to this or to anything else in the outside world: A roommate of Jennifer's, a girl called Phyllida, wakes up one morning with black smoke coming out of her ears. Suddenly this nerdy little chick is either gaping at the bathroom wall or out there howling at the moon. Jennifer can't cope with being around her, and bolts, back to the Rockwell home. And who does she find there, stinking up her brother's bedroom and babbling at the pillows, but Detective Mike Hoolihan. 'Jesus Christ,' Trader quotes her as saying, 'I'm surrounded.'

       Here's a frustration with a one-way correspondence. The narrative doesn't 'unfold': What you get is just a jumping status quo. Astonishing developments simply and smugly become How Things Are. Still, Trader spends a lot of ink on Jennifer around now, coaxing her out of the notion that nobody and nothing can be trusted. Sanity, or at least logic, returns. You can finish the stories: The boyfriend, Hume, drops out for a time, and does some drugs. But he's readmitted, and comes through civilized. He and Jennifer even manage an okay lunch.

       Thickly sedated, Phyllida gets to graduate. Some collateral family member takes her in. References to her are frequent for a while. Then trail away.

       And Mike Hoolihan recovers. It is approvingly noted that even someone with a background such as hers can eventually patch things together, with the right kind of understanding and support.

       While Trader and Jennifer, of course, watch these heavy clouds pass over and cruise on up into their clear blue sky.

       Now the bureaus and the filing cabinets and the endless, endless shite of citizenship, of existence. Bills and wills, deeds, leases, taxes—oh, man, the water torture of staying alive. 'That's' a good reason to end it. Confronted with all this, who wouldn't want to rest and sleep?

       Two hours on my knees brings me only two mild surprises. First: Trader, on top of everything else, is a man of independent means. I seem to remember that his daddy was big in the construction business during the Alaska boom. Here, anyway, is Trader's modest portfolio—his bonds and shelters, his regular and generous donations to charity. Second: Jennifer never opened her bank statements. The fiercest-looking wallets of crap from the IRS lie wrenched open on her desk—but she never opened her bank statements. Here they all are, backed up from last November, and still sealed. Well, I soon rectify that. And find prudent outgoings plus a nice little sum on deposit. So why not read this good news? Then I get it. She never opened her statements because she never had to do anything about them. These were letters that needed no answer. That's what you call a sufficiency. That's putting dough in its proper place.

       What to me feels the most intimate thing I have saved till last. Her worn leather handbag, left slung over the shoulder of a kitchen chair. This shoulder is like her shoulder, erect, wide-spanned, with the gentlest inward curve... Jesus, 'my' bag, which I seem to spend half my life scrabbling around in, is like a town dump that's gone through a car compactor. I've no idea what's going on in there. Mice and mushrooms flourish among the fenders and spare tires. But Jennifer, naturally, traveled light, and fragrant. Boar's bristle hairbrush, moisturizer, lip gloss, eyedrops, blush. Pen, purse, keys. Also, her datebook. And if what I'm looking for is a sense of an ending, then here I get it big-time.

       I flick the pages. Jennifer wasn't the kind of busybody who faced a thicket of commitments every waking hour. But for the first two months of the year there's plenty happening—appointments, schedules, deadlines, reminders. And then on March second, the Friday, it all stops dead. There is nothing else for the whole year, except this, under March 23: 'AD?' Which is tomorrow. Who or what is AD? Advertisement? Anno Domini? I don't know—Alan Dershowitz?

       Before I left, as I was closing the blue trunk, I took another look at Trader's last letter. It was among the loose papers and photos yet to be gathered and organized, and it was dated February 17, this year. The postmark says Philadelphia, where Trader was attending a two-day conference on 'The Mind and Physical Laws.' It's almost embarrassing: I can hardly bring myself to quote from it. 'Already the eastern side of every moment of mine is lit by you and the thought of tomorrow...'

       I love you. I miss you. I love you. No. Jennifer Rockwell didn't have a problem with this boyfriend. He's perfect. He's everything we all want. So what I'm thinking now is she must have had a problem with the 'other' boyfriend.

       Photograph on a bookcase. It's graduation: Jennifer and three friends in gowns, all tall but bent with laughter. Laughing so hard they look fucked up on something. And the little crazy one, Phyllida, trapped in the frame, cowering in the corner of it.

       Funny thing about the apartment. It took me a while to realize what.

       No TV.

       And a funny thought, on the way out. Suddenly I'm thinking: But she's a cop's daughter. This means something. This has to matter.

Like all police I guess I'm state-of-the-art cynical, on the one hand. And, on the other, I don't judge. We never judge. We may make the roust and make the collar. We may bust you. But we won't judge you.

       Fresh from the latest slaughterhouse, that kraut brute Henrik Overmars will listen to a drunk's hard-luck story with tears in his eyes. I've seen Oltan O'Boye give his last fin to some self-pitying asshole at Paddy's—some guy whose entire acquaintance has drawn down the shade on him, years ago. Keith Booker can't pass a bum on the street—no, every time he'll slip him a buck and squeeze his hand. I'm the same way. We're the softest touch.

       Is it because we're plain brutal/sentimental? I don't think so. We don't judge you, we can't judge you because whatever you've done it isn't even close to the worst. You're great. You didn't fuck a baby and throw it over the wall. You don't chop up eighty-year-olds for laughs. You're great. Whatever you've done, we know all the things you 'might' have done, and 'haven't' done.

       In other words, our standards, for human behavior, are desperately low.

       Having said all that, I was due for a shock tonight. I felt what I so seldom feel: Scandalized. I felt 'shock' all over my body. Forget about a hot flush. I practically had the menopause in one fell swoop.

       I'm back at the apartment, cooking dinner for Tobe and myself. The phone goes and a male voice says, 'Yeah, can I speak with Jennifer Rockwell please?'

       I said, in receptionist singsong, 'Who's calling?'

       'Arnold. It's Arn.'

       'One moment!'

       I'm standing there tensed in the kitchen heat. Tell myself to work on what I was doing already: Keep your voice pitched up. Sound like a woman.

       'Actually—hello again—actually Jennifer's out of town tonight and I'm handling her messages here. I have her datebook here. Hey, were you guys meant to get together tomorrow sometime?'

       'That's what I'm hoping.'

       'Here we go. Arnold...? Starts with a D?'

       'Debs. Arn Debs.'

       'Right. Yeah, she just wants to check where and when.'

       'Would around eight be good? Here at the Mallard. In the Decoy Room?'

       'You got it.'

       That evening, over dinner, I hardly said a word. And that night, after lights out, what happens but Tobe comes across... This is no impulse thing with Tobe. It's a task of major administration. Like the King Arthur movies—winching the knight up onto horseback. But it was all very gentle, all very sweet and dear, as I need it to be now. Now I'm sober. Before, I liked it to be rough, or I thought I did. These days I hate the idea of all that. Enough with the rough, I think. Enough rough.

The night train woke me around quarter of four. I lay there for a time with my eyes open. No chance of reentry. So I got out of bed and made coffee and sat and smoked over my notes.

       I'm upset. I'm upset anyway, but I'm also pissed about something personal. Here's what: The remarks and descriptions in Trader's letters. Why? They weren't unsympathetic. And I accept that I must have been a pretty pitiful sight back then—sweating it out behind drawn blinds. What am I concerned about? My privacy? Oh, sure. As I wind down from the job I begin to see these things more clearly. And 'privacy' is what police spend their entire lives stomping on and riding roughshod over. Very, very soon you lose the whole concept of it. Privacy? Say what? No, what's bothering me, I think, is the stuff about my childhood. As if, given that, there could be no other outcome.