Double

June Paxton wasn’t hard to find. She was sitting by herself off to one side, and she was the only person there who was wearing mourning black. Chubby was a good word to describe her; another was homely, and a third was sad. At some other time, she might have resembled a graying Betty Boop. Now, hunched over something in a pineapple shell with two straws sticking out of it, she looked exactly like what she was: somebody who had just lost a close friend.

I stopped at her table and said, “Ms. Paxton?” and she looked up at me out of blue eyes that had a glazed sheen, like pottery fresh from baking in a kiln. Whatever the pineapple-shell concoction was, she’d had more than one of them. I told her who I was, and she nodded bleakly and said, “Sit down,” and then proceeded to study me while I got myself into the chair across from her.

Pretty soon she said, “You don’t know who I am, I guess. I mean, we’ve never met. I’d remember you if we had.”

“Would you?”

“Oh, sure. Big men are my weakness. Always have been.”

“Well, the desk clerk told me who you are.”

“Him,” she said. “He’s a faggot. Not that I’ve got anything against faggots, you understand, unless they’re obnoxious like that one. One of Elaine’s and my best friends is bisexual.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Karyn Sugarman. You know Karyn?”

“No, I don’t.”

A waiter came by and I told him I’d have a Miller Lite. June Paxton ordered another of the pineapple things; then she rummaged around in a fat black purse and got out some cigarettes and lit one awkwardly. Out over the ocean, the sunset colors had begun to shift and blend together, and the cloud wisps were darker at the edges and backlit as if by flames.

“I quit smoking four years ago,” she said. “Not a single goddamn coffin nail until this afternoon. As soon as I heard... I wanted a cigarette. Isn’t that funny? One of your best friends dies and all of a sudden you start craving nicotine.”

I didn’t say anything. What can you say?

She said, “I’m getting drunk. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Stop calling me ma’am. Do I look like a ma’am? My name is June.” She blew smoke toward the beach, and her lower lip quivered, and I thought for a moment she might burst into tears. But she held her control and said, “Damn,” in an empty little voice. Then she said, “You saw it happen. That’s what they said on the TV newscast I heard.”

“I saw it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“They said it was an apparent accident. ‘Apparent.’ What’s that mean? Was it an accident or wasn’t it? That’s why I want to talk to you.”

“Do you think it might have been something else?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it happen. Was it an accident?”

“It might have been. But the way she came over the railing... well, she could have jumped. She could even have been pushed.”

“Damn,” June Paxton said in that same empty little voice. She scrubbed out her cigarette in a clamshell ashtray and immediately lit another. “She killed herself. That’s what happened, she threw herself out of that tower.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She wasn’t herself lately. Just wasn’t the same.”

“How do you mean?”

“Moody. Unhappy. And she hadn’t been sleeping — you can tell when a person’s not sleeping. Kept to herself, wouldn’t socialize much. She was always private, you know, never said much about her personal life, but lately... if anyone asked her a personal question she’d just close up.”

“How long had this been going on?”

“Weeks. A long time.”

“Any idea what was bothering her?”

“A man, I suppose. Isn’t it always a man?”

“Not always. Sometimes it’s other things — like a job.”

“No, not with Elaine. She liked her job.”

“She got along with Lloyd Beddoes, then?”

“More or less. He’s a hunk, but... who knows? I’ve never seen him with a woman. Maybe he’s a faggot too.”

“Did she get along with Victor Ibarcena?”

“Definitely a faggot, that one. And a twerp. ‘Yes, sir, no, sir.’ A twerpy faggot. Whole place is probably full of ‘em.”

“So there was no trouble between Elaine and either Beddoes or Ibarcena?”

“Doesn’t matter, does it? She killed herself.”

“And you think it might have been over a man.”

“Sure. Always a damned man.”

“Any particular man?”

June Paxton frowned, and you could see her thinking it over. The waiter came back with my Miller Lite and another of the pineapple things for her. I tried to pay him, but she wouldn’t have any of it; she shoved a twenty-dollar bill at the waiter and shooed him away. Then she took a slug of her drink, shuddered, and went after her cigarette again.

“Rich, maybe,” she said. “God knows why.”

“Rich who?”

“Don’t know his last name. But I don’t like him.”

“Boyfriend of Elaine’s?”

“What else? She wouldn’t talk about him.”

“Young guy, wavy hair, odd blue eyes?”

“That’s him. You know him?”

“I met him yesterday,” I said. “Why wouldn’t Elaine talk about him?”

She shrugged. “Ashamed because he was so much younger than her, I suppose. Twenty years’ difference in their ages.”

“How long had she been seeing him?”

Another shrug. “I only saw them together once.”

“Where was that?”