Part 28 (1/2)

”A guy who came into a bar waving a gun around,” Larry said, ”I'd have figured they'd put some charges on him, but I guess with Faro bleeding out on Ike's floor, n.o.body was thinking much about that. Undertaker looked like a better bet than the paramedics. Anyway, there's no mug shot or prints. The only thing I find from the case is Faro's gun and the s.h.i.+rt they stripped off him in surgery”still inventoried in evidence, actually. I thought if I send the pistol over to Mo d.i.c.kerman, it's possible he can pick up a print on it. Maybe with that, we find Faro under another name.”

d.i.c.kerman was the Chief Fingerprint Examiner and as good as anyone in the country. Muriel liked that idea.

”And if you want to pop for it out of the P.A.'s budget,” Larry said, ”we can do DNA on the blood on the s.h.i.+rt, too. See if he's in CODIS.” CODIS stood for Combined DNA Index System, but that was a $5,000 long-shot. Larry, however, wanted to pull out all the stops, and she didn't fight him.

”Happy?” she asked, as she had last week. Once again Larry hesitated.

”I'm still missing something,” he said.

”Maybe you miss me, Larry.” She found that line hilarious, but she didn't linger on the phone to see if he, too, was laughing.

Chapter 29.

July 2001 Together THEY WERE TOGETHER whenever they were not at work. For Gillian, who had defied the inclination to cling even in junior high, the experience was otherworldly. Arthur stayed in the office until she was done at the store, then picked her up for dinner at eight or nine. Usually she'd shopped at the gourmet counter at Morton's and was waiting with a heavy shopping bag when Arthur's round sedan cruised to the curb. At his apartment, they made love and ate and made love again. Most nights she slept there and returned to her place at Duffy's for a few hours once Arthur left for work.

Consuming physical pa.s.sion had never really been part of any of her prior relations.h.i.+ps. Now Arthur and the stimulation of s.e.x remained at the periphery of her mind throughout the day. Often some stray a.s.sociation she could not even name sent a pleasing throb through her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and pelvis. Arthur and she seemed stuck in the sweet valley of sensation. The strong stalk that grew from Arthur was like some secret self. Real life commenced here. This was the moist cellar of being, the dark mysterious foundation rooms. If she”or Arthur”had previously made the descent they might have an idea how to rise up from time to time, but now they seemed melted together at the core of pleasure.

”I'm an addict,” she said one night, and was immediately struck dumb by her carefree remark. There were a thousand thoughts she was unwilling to explore.

Their languor was reinforced by Gillian's reluctance to carry their affair beyond Arthur's bedroom. It seemed impossible to her that their relations.h.i.+p could survive once they began to mix with others, once they inserted themselves in the context of history and expectations and endured judgment and gossip. Like some enchantment, what existed between them would perish in the light of day.

Arthur, on the other hand, would have been just as happy to take out front-page advertis.e.m.e.nts announcing his dedication to her, and he was frequently frustrated by her unwillingness to venture out together, even to visit the homes of his high-school and college friends who he insisted would be discreet and accepting. Instead, the only consistent company they kept was with Arthur's sister, Susan. Every Tuesday, they drove to the Franz Center for Susan's injection and the subsequent trip to the apartment. On the way back, Arthur narrated the events of his day, pretending Susan was keeping track. At the lights, she would glance to the backseat, almost as if she were checking that Gillian was still there.

In the apartment, the agenda was always identical to their first evening together. Gillian remained largely an outsider as Arthur and Susan cooked, then Susan retreated with her plate to the television set. She spoke to Gillian infrequently. But when she did, the salvaged Susan, the coherent personality which collected inside her, the asteroid in a belt of s.p.a.ce dust and gravel, was in charge. She never confronted Gillian with her madness.

One night Arthur had to reset a circuit breaker in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Seeking another cigarette, Susan approached Gillian on her kitchen stool. She now trusted Gillian to trigger the lighter for her, and she took in the first breath as if she hoped to reduce the entire cigarette to ash with a single drag.

”I don't understand you,” Susan said. s.h.i.+elded by the bluish veil she'd released between them, Susan darted her pretty green eyes toward Gillian.

”You don't?”

”I keep changing my mind. Are you a Compliant or a Normal?”

Gillian was taken aback, not by what Susan was suggesting, but because on her own, Susan had adopted the same coinage Gillian had applied at Alderson to the travelers on the trains that clattered past the prison boundary. They were Normals to Gillian not due to any inherent superiority, but because they were free of the stigma of confinement. That, undoubtedly, was how Susan regarded the so-called sane.

”I'm trying to be a Normal,” Gillian said. ”Sometimes it feels as if I am. Especially when I'm with Arthur. But I'm still not sure.”

There was no more to the conversation, but a few nights later, Arthur called out to Gillian in excitement. She found him in the apartment's second bedroom, where the only light was the cool glow from his office laptop, which he lugged home every evening.

”Susan sent you an e-mail!”

Gillian approached the screen with caution. As she read, she sank slowly to Arthur's knee.

Arthur give this to Gillian. DON'T READ IT. It's not for you.

Hi, Gillian.

Please do not get too excited about this. I have been working on this e-mail for three days now and Valerie has given me some help. Usually, I cannot put down more than a sentence or two. There are only so many moments in the day when I'm able to hold on to words long enough to write them, especially when they are about me. Either I can't remember the term for the feeling, or the feeling disappears when I recall the word. Most of the time, my mind is fragments. Normals don't seem to understand that, but for me the usual state in my head is images jumping up and disappearing like the flames over a burning log.

But I am having good days and I had some things I could never tell you face-to-face. Conversation is so hard for me. I cannot handle everything at once. Just the look in someone's eyes can be distracting. Let alone smiling or joking. Questions. A new saying is enough to send me off for several minutes, wherever it leads. It is better for me like this.

What did I mean to say?

I like you. I think you know that. You don't look down on me. You have been to some bad places”I can feel that. But the more I see you, the more I realize we are not the same, even though I wish we were. I'd really like to think I can make it back the way you have. I want you to know how hard I try. I think to Normals it appears as if I just want to succ.u.mb. But it takes a lot of strength to hold my own. I am afraid whenever I see a radio, or hear one. I go down the street all the time saying Don't listen, Don't listen. And the sight of people on the bus with headphones may be my undoing. I hear only the voices I don't want to whenever I see those pads over somebody's ears. Even as I am typing these words, I can literally feel the electricity coming out of the keyboard, and there is no way to turn off the certainty that someone like the Great Oz is out there at the heart of the Net, waiting to take me over. All my strength goes into resisting. I'm like those people in movies I remember from childhood, where there is a s.h.i.+pwreck and huge waves, and the survivors are paddling desperately in the water holding on to a life ring or a piece of floating junk, so they don't go down.

I can see you are trying every day, too. Keep trying. Keep trying. It would be harder for me if I ever saw someone like you give up. You make Arthur happy. It is easier for me when he is happy. I don't have to feel I've ruined his life. Please do your best to keep him happy. Not just for me. For him. He deserves to be happy. It would be horrible if you weren't with him. It is better with three.

Your friend, Susan Gillian was devastated. It was like receiving a letter from someone held for ransom, someone you knew would never be freed. When she allowed Arthur to read the screen, he, predictably, wept. The messages he got were seldom more than ten or twenty words, produced in the isolated moments of coherence that fell upon Susan briefly every day, like a magic spell. But he was not envious so much as moved by his sister's concern for him”and also, to Gillian's eye, suddenly frightened.

”What is she worried about?” Arthur asked. Gillian refused to answer. But she felt a pall encroaching. Even someone as perpetually hopeful as Arthur had to consider a peril that was obvious to a madwoman.

That night, when they made love there was an absence”still tender but more anch.o.r.ed here on earth. Afterwards, as Gillian reached to the bedside table for a cigarette, Arthur asked the question neither of them had ever ventured aloud.

”What do you think will happen with us?”

At the inception, she'd made her predictions, and much as she would have it otherwise, her view had not changed.

”I think in time, you'll move on, Arthur. Perhaps build on what you've learned about yourself with me and find someone your own age. Marry. Have babies. Have your life.” She was startled to find how fully she'd envisioned the outcome. Arthur, naturally, was taken aback and pulled himself up on an elbow to glower.

”Don't pretend you don't understand, Arthur. This would have been far better for you at another stage.”

”What stage is that?”

”If you were twenty-five or fifty-five the difference in our ages might matter less. But you should have children, Arthur. Don't you want children? Most people do.”

”Don't you?”

”It's too late, Arthur.” That was the ultimate calamity of the penitentiary: it had taken the last of her childbearing years. But that thought was down there in the valley with the broken bodies of a million regrets.

”Why is it too late?” he demanded. ”Are we talking about biology? The world is full of children who need someone to love them.” In her presence these days, Arthur was often impetuous, even inspired. Was there any difference greater among human beings than between the abject fatalist who had been run down by living, and those determined to shape their lives to the contours of a large idea? And she was his idea. Oh, she willed herself to reject that, to cross her wrists before her face and forbid his exhilaration in her company, as her father forbade blaspheming. But it was far too wonderful, far too much of what she had a.s.sumed she would never have again. He did not see her yet. And when she came chillingly into focus, he would be gone. But she was determined to savor the moment. She took him into a lingering embrace, before she resumed the slow march to the truth.

”Don't you see, Arthur, you're already trying to find a way to have with me everything you want in your life. This is an adventure for you, this entire period. But when it ends, you won't be able to abandon what you've always imagined for yourself.”

”Are you saying you'd never want to be a parent?”

It was inconceivable. Her own survival still required her full attention.

”It would be an enormous change, Arthur.”

”But that's the point of life, isn't it? Changing? To be happier, more perfect? Look how much you've changed. You believe you've changed for the better, don't you?”

She had never thought of it that way.

”I really don't know,” she said. ”I like to believe I have. I like to believe I wouldn't make the same mess of my life. But I'm not certain.”