Absent Friends

She made a trip to the bathroom mirror, checking to see how red her eyes were, giving her hair a comb. While she did this she resolutely did not look at Harry's shaving things on the sink, his bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. Her pale brown hair, straight and sleek and lustrous in good times, lank and sullen now, could have used a little more work, but she stuck the comb back in the cabinet when she felt the lump start building in her throat again. You can't do interviews with a lump in your throat.

Normally, of course, Laura would never chase all over town for interviews like these. There was no time. This was work you did over the phone, in the days, so recent but in another life, when the phone was just another tool you never even thought about, you just picked it up and someone was there. You did interviews over the phone so you could write the story yourself and grab the byline, not the “reported by” that came when you phoned a story in.

Normally, you sat at your desk, scribbling as fast as you could, and you asked people, What did you think when you heard? (The river, my God, how can it be that the river just keeps running under the burning blue sky?) When was the last time you spoke to Harry Randall? (Yesterday, early morning, no time for coffee, dashing out the door, hasty kiss.) What was the substance of that conversation? (Stone [already at elevator, jabbing button]: “Aren't you working today?” Randall [rumpled, preoccupied, but offering that ever-amused smile]: “I have something to check out first. I'll be in later.”) What was your relationship with Harry Randall? (Stone: The ocean with its shores? The ship with its anchor? Randall: Where do you get these things?) Do you have anything to add? (Long, long silence.)

But normally, when Laura asked what someone thought about a death, a disaster, that was what she wanted to know: what they thought. Today what she was going to be asking was, Did you do this? Did you kill Harry?

Not literally, of course. Reporter-Laura would be asking the questions, and she was too cool, too professional, to make a dumb mistake like that. She would be cunning and clever. She would wait and watch and listen, study them, how they sat and spoke and looked at her, when they talked about Harry. Her years in school, her years in Des Moines and St. Paul, and these years on the New York Tribune: Reporter-Laura had paid attention, she'd been working hard, she had learned a lot. And now she knew: it was all for this.

For this one story.

Laura walked out of Harry's apartment without looking back. She meant to continue purposefully down the hall—she was a reporter, on her way to cover a story—but she was engulfed, staggered, by a wave of panic when she heard Harry's door click shut behind her. She plunged her hand into her pocket, terrified she'd forgotten the key, and when she felt it, she dug it out to make sure that's what it was, not a whistle or a penknife or some other hard object masquerading as the way back into Harry's place. She stared at it, cold silver on her palm. Then, clutching it, she ran down the hall, chased by her echoing footsteps, and punched the elevator button, willing the elevator to come fast, fast, fast.

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 6

Secrets No One Knew

October 31, 2001

Marian had had a heavy morning of meetings: the Downtown Council, among others. There, the topics of the Fund, of Harry Randall's poisonous story, of Jimmy, of Marian's association with what had gone before, pulled at everyone's words, at their thoughts, like tree roots clutching at travelers attempting to pass through a cheerless forest.

She spoke twice, to averted eyes and yes-fine-let's-get-on-with-it nods, and after that she kept silent, one hand conscientiously taking notes on a yellow pad, the other in her lap twisting a scrap of paper into a tight hard knot. She swept from that meeting as soon as it broke, though she herself had always been the first to say the business of a meeting is truly conducted before it begins and after it ends. One or two of the others started to say something as she passed by them, but she did not stop.

The other two meetings had gone better. The downtown arts organizations involved were, in the wake of the attacks, in desperate need of money, and the MANY Foundation had money. Marian's questionable morality, her sordid past—well, that was the way Harry Randall's third story had made things appear, there was no use pretending otherwise—these things, it seemed, were important to people in absolutely inverse proportion to how much they felt she could do for them.

Marian was disappointed by this reaction, but not surprised. She'd been in the nonprofit world, cajoling money out of Peter to give away to Paul, for too long to find herself caught off guard by anyone's agenda, anyone's motives.