Lights Out

Eddie was pleased, and more pleased when she smiled and said: “Now I owe you one.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. And I’m free for dinner tonight.”

“Me too.”

She laughed. He felt her breath on his face, cool in the atmosphere of the steam bath. “Pick you up at six,” she said. “Dress casual.”

And then she was out the door, trailing steam. For a moment Eddie was breathless, and not just because of the heat.

It wasn’t until later, in the shower, that he realized what had been odd about Karen’s eyes: he’d seen the circular outlines of transparent discs floating on her cool blue irises. How could she be blind as a bat when she was wearing contact lenses?

18

Dress casual: what did it mean?

Eddie wandered around Macy’s, checking out the clothes and lots of other things, even trying on a blue blazer in front of a three-way mirror. He noticed stubble on his head. He hadn’t shaved it for a while, no longer had his Remington, of course; that was one of the gifts he’d left for Prof. The stubble had a tarnished sheen. Eddie stepped closer to the mirror, and saw that his hair was growing in gray.

“Fabulous,” said the clerk. “It fits you like a glove.”

Eddie left Macy’s without buying the blazer or anything else, and returned to Jack’s suite at the Palazzo. Jack would know how to dress casual. In the bedroom, he opened drawers full of stuff, better than anything he’d seen at Macy’s. There were all kinds of colors and textures. Eddie had worn denim so long he’d forgotten what matched what. He began putting on and taking off clothes, reminded of a scene in a book about Marie Antoinette.

Some time later he was standing in front of the mirror again, wearing a black cotton turtleneck, a blue wool sweater, gray corduroy pants rolled up an inch or two and held in place by a tightly cinched woven-leather belt, gleaming loafers with tassels on them.

He studied his reflection. A clever trick, like the photographic blending of ruffian’s head on Ivy Leaguer’s body. Fabulous. Fit like a glove, but someone else’s. He stuck his hands in the pockets, trying for casual, and withdrew a half-full pack of Camels. He came close to lighting one, came close to throwing the pack away, ended by putting it back in his pocket.

At six o’clock the phone buzzed. “I’m downstairs,” said Karen de Vere.

Karen did look fabulous: her hair was swept up, revealing the substructure of her face, at once strong and fine. She wore jeans, leather boots, a leather jacket; and her tortoise-shell glasses. She offered her hand. He shook it: warm, dry, not without power.

“You look so much like your brother,” she said, “except for the hair. But I guess everyone tells you that.”

“We don’t hang out with the same people,” Eddie replied.

Karen almost laughed; but how could she have gotten the joke? Eddie saw the laugh coming in her eyes; then she stifled it.

“Did you get in touch with him?” Eddie asked.

“Everything’s fine.”

Karen had a car outside, a low Japanese two-seater. “Not too hungry, I hope,” she said. “It takes about an hour.”

“Fine.”

They drove out of Manhattan, onto a bridge, headed north. She stuck a cassette into the tape player. “Like jazz?” she said. “I’m sick of rock.”

A bass played a bouncy line that made Eddie think of hippos, then came a trumpet, soaring above. “Me too.” He’d heard nothing but rock blasting out of the cell blocks for fifteen years.

Karen drove fast, cutting from lane to lane. She watched the road ahead. From time to time, he watched her. The clouds darkened and darkened, and then it was night.

“Funny thing,” she said, as they crossed the Connecticut line. “I’ve known Jack a number of years. Business, but we’ve had lunch a few times, went to a hockey game once, if I recall.”

“You like hockey?”

“Just the fighting,” said Karen. “The point is, in all the time I’ve know him, he never mentioned you.”

“I’m the black sheep.”

“How so?”

“You know how families are,” Eddie said, although his own didn’t deserve the name.

“I know how mine is-completely screwed up,” Karen said. She glanced at him; oncoming headlights glared on the lenses of her glasses. “What makes you the black sheep?”

Eddie shrugged.

“Jack did make an animal analogy last night about you, now that I think of it, although it was to a bird, not a sheep.”

Eddie waited.

“The albatross, specifically. Odd, given our earlier conversation about ‘The Mariner.’ ”

An icy wave flowed across Eddie’s shoulders and down his spine. He hadn’t felt anything like it since the moment in the shower room when he’d come to and realized what Louie and the Ozark brothers had done. Icy: because Jack considered him an albatross; because Jack would tell someone; because of what it said about his own obsession-yes-with the poem.