Small Town

He wanted to do something. But he couldn’t even go tell anybody. He had access, he could call anybody in the NYPD or the city government and he’d be put right through. To say what? That he thought the Carpenter might try something on September 11? Gee, thanks for sharing that, Fran. That’s very helpful. Sharon, if this clown calls again, I’m not here.

Maybe he should go search Central Park for a willow tree. Cut himself a forked stick like the dowsers used to witch for water. Peel the bark off, stand in Times Square with the thing, spin around a few times and walk in the direction the stick pointed. Let it lead him straight to the Carpenter.

If he thought there was a chance in a million it would work, he’d fucking try it.

Friday morning he woke up with a headache and a sour taste in his mouth. He showered and shaved and brushed his teeth and took a couple of aspirin, and while he waited for them to kick in he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t skip his weekly trip to London Towers.

At eight o’clock he was there, getting a big smile from her smartass doorman. He got on the elevator, and by the time he got off it he had an erection. He felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

And she saw it the minute she opened the door, motioned him inside, felt it through his clothing, told him she wanted to see it.

“The hair’s starting to grow back, Franny. We’re going to have to wax you.”

The cuffs, the rawhide thongs, the leather hood. Her hands, her mouth. The cock ring. The toys. The smell of hot wax.

God help him, he loved it.

“Franny, somebody told me something a few days ago and it seems to me I ought to pass it along. I’m not sure if it’s a police matter, but I figured you would know who should be told about it.”

He was dressed, all but his shoes. She was dressed, too, and had shifted gears smoothly, no longer the sexual taskmaster, suddenly a woman friend seeking advice. It was harder for him to make the adjustment, but he sat down to hear what she had to say.

And learned about a man who’d disappeared, an older man, a widower, who’d failed to turn up at his office and was not lying dead in his apartment. Nothing remarkable there, he thought, but she went on to tell how the man, one Peter Shevlin, kept a boat at Seventy-ninth Street, and the boat came and went, apparently of its own accord.

The Flying Dutchman, he thought.

“I’m sorry,” she was saying. “Now that I hear myself telling you this I’m struck by how ridiculous it sounds. He’s probably turned up by now, he was probably never gone in the first place, just trying to avoid the old battle-ax who’s trying to lead him to the altar.”

“Probably,” he said, but drew out his notebook just the same. “Better give me the names again,” he said. “It’ll give me something to do.”

thirty-three

In the early morning hours, when the sky was just beginning to lighten, the Carpenter’s wife paid him a visit.

He noticed her perfume first. It was a scent he hadn’t smelled in years, in decades. She’d worn the same perfume as long as he’d known her. Woodhue, that was the name of it, by Fabergé. He bought her some every year on their anniversary, and at Christmas, and on her birthday. And then one day he’d noticed that she was wearing something else, and wondered why, and she explained that there’d been a change in her body chemistry, evidently, because her old perfume no longer smelled very nice on her or to her.

And so she’d changed scents, to something a little spicier, a little heavier, and that became the perfume he bought for her three times a year, and you would think he could remember its name now, but he couldn’t. He remembered Fabergé Woodhue, however, and recognized it the instant he smelled it.

And then he just felt her presence, there in the little cabin of the Nancy Dee. Next he heard her voice, speaking his name. Billy? She alone had called him Billy. His parents, contemptuous of nicknames, never called him anything but William. Friends in school had called him Bill. At work he was William, or Mr. Harbinger, and Carole called him William, too, in front of other people.

When they were alone she called him Billy.

Billy? Can’t you see me?

And then of course he could. She was young, she looked as she had looked in the early years of their marriage. Not the girl that he met and fell in love with, but the young woman with whom he had set about making a life. She was wearing the blue dress he’d always liked. He’d wondered whatever happened to that dress.

“Carole,” he said, “I thought you were dead.”

I am, Billy.

“But you’re here.”

I can’t stay long.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. Had he ever told her that when she was alive? He must have, he’d thought it often enough. Yes, surely he’d told her.

You used to tell me that all the time, Billy. I never believed you.