Part 2 (1/2)

I CALLED BRYN MAWR. IN THOSE DAYS YOU COULD DIAL THE SCHOOL'S main number, get a school operator, ask for the student by name, and you would be connected to the student's room.

”I'm sorry,” the operator said after putting me on hold for half a minute, ”Miss Powell is no longer attending Bryn Mawr. She's withdrawn from the school.”

”But she was just there a few weeks ago.”

”That's all the information I have. Her number has been disconnected.”

I wondered if I should call information in Delaware. If the Powells lived in Delaware, they probably lived in Wilmington. Maybe Dover. Those were the only cities in Delaware I knew. But Powell was a common name and if Mr. Powell was as wealthy as Mr. Andrews said, he would have an unlisted number.

I thought of calling CPA Properties. h.e.l.lo, can I speak to the owner? To the owner's daughter?

In the end, once again, I did nothing.

THE WATER HAD BEEN SHUT OFF AT LAST. THE DOOR HAD BEEN flung open. She had come out of the powder room without looking at me and gone along the line of bookshelves, heading back into the heart of the party.

”Kendrick?”

I ran to head her off. Sprinted. She put her hand out for the door handle and I got there first.

”Get out of my way,” she said. Her green eyes were not as glazed as before. They did not seem to be normal, but it was hard to tell what was going on behind them because they were looking right through me.

I tried to get her to focus on me, dipping my head to get on eye level with her. ”You okay?” I asked.

”What do you think?”

What did I think? The theme of the evening. The thing to which I keep coming back, even now.

”I think you probably had a little too much to drink.”

”f.u.c.k you,” said Kendrick Powell, defying me to say anything more.

Her skin was somehow pale beneath her tan. Her hair was slightly wet, but all the signs of sickness had been removed, along with all traces of eyeliner and lipstick. She still looked beautiful, but dangerous, like a jungle cat that could strike out at any time. I wanted to put my hand on her bare arm, tell her everything was going to be all right. But it seemed like such an inappropriate thing to do, to touch her after she had been touched so much.

I got out of her way.

She walked straight out of the library, past Mrs. Martin, who was waiting on the other side of the door with not one but two friends, both older women wearing pale greens and pinks and giant diamonds on their left hands. Was Kendrick's head held high or was she hanging it in shame? Why do I think now that she was doing both? She took three, maybe four, steps and then her foot slipped, her ankle rolled, and I realized she was barefoot.

Mrs. Martin and her friends went from staring at Kendrick to looking at me in horror. What had I done to the poor girl? Kept her in a closed room with her shoes off? Sent her stumbling out in a stripped-down, almost disheveled, state, trying to be brave, trying not to reveal her abject level of humiliation? Oh, young man, how could you?

I thought to run back into the library to get the shoes. They were little more than sandals, really. Small heels, thin straps, probably didn't weigh a pound between then. How do I know what they weighed? I never picked them up. I didn't pick them up before Mrs. Martin gaped disbelievingly at me, and I didn't pick them up afterward. I followed Kendrick instead, followed her through the sea of people in yellow sport coats and blue blazers and Lilly Pulitzer dresses with patterns of sh.e.l.ls that looked like flowers and flowers that looked like sh.e.l.ls, followed her all the way to the front door. Where was McFetridge? Where were the Gregory boys? Didn't Kendrick know anybody at the party? Why was I the only one standing under the portico with her, waiting for her car?

She hadn't even called for it. She just appeared, stood there barefoot, her arms at her sides, and one of the smiling young black men in white jackets went and got it for her.

”You sure you're okay to drive?” I said.

”f.u.c.k off,” she said.

f.u.c.k off, f.u.c.k you, the last four words she said to me; and she told Mr. Andrews how nice I had been to her?

The Alfa arrived. Its engine throbbed and what might have sounded like music somewhere else was almost unseemly in front of the Gregorys' front door. The young man leaped out, held the door, and Kendrick, placing her right hand on the trunk for support, hobbled around the back of the car and got in the driver's seat without so much as looking at him. The valet shut the door gently but firmly; Kendrick put the car in gear and was off, the pebbles in the driveway spattering in every direction.

She drove away and I stood there.

”Can I get you a car, sir?” the smiling man asked. Not ”your” car, but ”a” car. He seemed astute enough to know I didn't have one of my own.

I gave him the five bucks that was loose in my pocket and went back inside, where a crowd was gathered around the grand piano. One of the Senator's buddies, a radio talk-show host up on Cape Cod, was playing and singing ”Goodnight, Irene.” But he changed the lyrics, spiced them up, directed them to one of the older ladies, who started to dance, to move her hips, until she realized how risque his version was, and then she called out, ”Ohhhh,” in a throaty voice that made everybody laugh as she raised her hand to her face in feigned embarra.s.sment.

Then the Senator himself began to sing, ”We were sailing along ...” The pianist found the right notes on the keyboard, took up the accompaniment. ”... on Moonlight Bay. We could hear the voices ringing, They seem to say, 'You have stolen her heart, Now don't go 'way!' ” The Senator reached out to grab the hand of his sister, the one who was married to the movie actor, and twirled her toward him. The crowd shook their highball gla.s.ses appreciatively as she spun in close and twirled back away again, her dress blowing outward, showing off a pair of legs that were quite commendable for a woman her age.

The verse was finished, repeated, and everyone around the piano joined in. A few brown-spotted hands were clapping and bracelets were jingling as the voices sang, ”You have stolen her heart ...,” and this time when the Senator's sister spun back to him, it was he who changed the lyrics, his voice booming out in a pa.s.sable baritone that made all the others drift off, ”We were strolling along....” His right arm slipped around her waist and his left hand took hers and held it chest high as he sang, ”On Moonlight Bay.” He looked over his shoulder, grinning at us, grinning wholeheartedly, a grin that said, Look! Look what I can do! Can you believe it? And then he adjusted his position, moved in slightly behind and to the side of her, and the two of them began gently waltzing away from the piano, ”We can hear the voices singing, 'You have broken my heart, please go a-way!' ”

The guests roared. Fingers tapped on the heels of palms as the brother-and-sister dance team continued across the floor. It was all great fun, so much so that I almost would have forgotten the incident in the library if it were not for the small ball of cloth in my pocket.

CAPE COD, March 2008.

I WENT INTO FOGO'S FOR DINNER. BAD NAME. I'M NOT EVEN SURE how good the food is, but for years I went there three or four times a week. I could eat at the bar, a lovely slice of veneered log in which the natural contours provided cutouts that allowed a man to sit comfortably in whichever of the twelve long-legged, spindle-back chairs happened to be available. I liked that veneered log. I liked the television behind the bar. I liked the post-middle-aged people who worked there and knew just enough about me to ask how things were going without inquiring too deeply.

I suppose certain aspects of my life were obvious. I wasn't married and I didn't live with anyone, or I wouldn't have been in there eating dinner as often as I did. I usually wore a suit, particularly if I stopped off on my way home from work, so I had to be a professional. I never dined with clients-or, for that matter, anyone else-so I was unlikely to be involved in business. I didn't have an accent, or at least not a Boston or Cape Cod accent, so I was not originally from the area. I liked to watch whatever sporting event was on TV and I made appropriate noises in support or condemnation of the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots, so I had to have been around for a while. And I liked to have a Manhattan, or a couple of beers, or a gla.s.s or two of wine, or even an occasional martini, so I was a man of party potential without being an alcoholic.

Of course, the Cape is a small place between October and May, and sooner or later a person in my position was bound to come into contact with one of the employees outside the restaurant. Jury duty, a domestic dispute, an unlawful detainer action, a kid in trouble, even a moving violation, was going to get one of them into the courthouse at some time or other; and I tended to be in one of the county courthouse buildings eight to ten hours a day. So at some point somebody was going to run into me.

The first time I recognized anyone from the restaurant was when a waitress named Meg appeared on one of my jury panels. Judge Wilkerson dutifully introduced me as the deputy district attorney representing the people of the Commonwealth and asked the courtroom full of citizens if any of them knew me or the defense counsel or the defendant in the case. Several people raised their hands, but none of them identified me and none of them was Meg. I had merely turned to the audience, let them see me, not searched their faces. It was only when Meg was called to the jury box that I realized she was there. I looked right at her, she looked right back at me, not a sign of recognition was pa.s.sed.

The case, as I recall, was a break-in, the defendant a Brazilian. It was not a big deal to anyone but the victim and the accused. When it was my turn to question the prospective jurors, I addressed Meg. ”Ms. O'Brien, do I look familiar to you?”

”I'm not sure. Should you?”

”You mentioned you work at Pogo's restaurant in Osterville. I happen to eat there sometimes. I wonder if you recall ever waiting on me?”

Meg was a hard-faced woman with dun-colored hair, who wore her restaurant uniform with the hem of her skirt an inch or two higher than the other waitresses did. If I had to guess, I would have said she was about fifty, divorced, had raised or was raising two kids on her own, lived in a rented house, and depended on her unreported tips to survive. She was also none too bright, as evidenced by her answer to my question. ”Not really. You usually eat at the bar, don't you?”

The defense counsel exercised one of his challenges to take her off the jury, and later, when I ran into her at the restaurant, she asked me why I had brought up the fact that she knew who I was. ”I wasn't gonna say nothin',” she said.

I told her I appreciated it, but it could have jeopardized the prosecution if anyone found out she really knew me.

She shrugged. ”I figured the guy was guilty as sin anyway, or you wouldn'ta been chargin' him. And if he wasn't”-she shrugged again-”then I would have given you a raft of s.h.i.+t next time I seen you. So I figured the pressure was really on you.”

Somehow, in her mind, that all made sense. I tried to follow it through, but got only so far. In any event, she was off the jury, the Brazilian got convicted, and from that point on whenever I sat down at the bar I was addressed by John the bartender as Counselor.

In March, the main dining room was closed. There were about twenty patrons scattered in booths and at tables throughout the pub, which had logs burning in the brick fireplace and was where I always ate anyhow. I was alone at the bar, sipping a Manhattan and reading through the printed list of daily specials that was tucked into the menu, when a man came in and sat down next to me. There were three seats to my left, eight to my right. There wasn't any need for him to do that.

”How's it goin'?” he asked John.

”Goin' good,” John said, as if it was none of his business, and slid him a menu, a black paper place mat, a set of silverware wrapped in a white napkin.