Yes. She knows how you always know. How you always know your own, from the very first word, at least until they grow up and become someone elses.
I said, Hi, Trish, why you calling so early, hon? Your moms still in the sack. And at first there was no answer. I thought wed been cut off, and then I heard these whispering whimpering sounds. Not words but half-words. Like she was trying to talk but hardly anything could come out because she wasnt able to muster any strength or get her breath. And that was when I started being afraid.
Well, then, hes pretty slow, isnt he? Because Janetwho was Jax at Sarah Lawrence, Jax in the Dramatics Club, Jax the truly excellent French-kisser, Jax who smoked Gitanes and affected enjoyment of tequila shootersJanet has been scared for quite some time now, was scared even before Harvey mentioned the dent in the side of Frank Friedmans Volvo. And thinking of that makes her think of the phone conversation she had with her friend Hannah not even a week ago, the one that eventually progressed to Alzheimers ghost stories. Hannah in the city, Janet curled up on the window seat in the living room and looking out at their one-acre share of Westport, at all the beautiful growing things that make her sneeze and water at the eyes, and before the conversation turned to Alzheimers they had discussed first Lucy Friedman and then Frank, and which one of them had said it? Which one of them had said, If he doesnt do something about his drinking and driving, hes eventually going to kill somebody?
And then Trish said what sounded like lees or least, but in the dream I knew she was eliding? is that the word? Eliding the first syllable, and that what she was really saying was police. I asked her what about the police, what was she trying to say about the police, and I sat down. Right there. He points to the chair in what they call the telephone nook. There was some more silence, then a few more of those half-words, those whispered half-words. She was making me so mad doing that, I thought, Drama queen, same as it ever was, but then she said, number, just as clear as a bell. And I knewthe way I knew she was trying to say policethat she was trying to tell me the police had called her because they didnt have our number.
Janet nods numbly. They decided to unlist their number two years ago because reporters kept calling Harvey about the Enron mess. Usually at dinnertime. Not because hed had anything to do with Enron per se but because those big energy companies were sort of a specialty of his. Hed even served on a Presidential commission a few years earlier, when Clinton had been the big kahuna and the world had been (in her humble opinion, at least) a slightly better, slightly safer place. And while there were a lot of things about Harvey she no longer liked, one thing she knew perfectly well was that he had more integrity in his little finger than all those Enron sleazebags put together. She might sometimes be bored by integrity, but she knows what it is.
But dont the police have a way of getting unlisted numbers? Well, maybe not if theyre in a hurry to find something out or tell somebody something. Plus, dreams dont have to be logical, do they? Dreams are poems from the subconscious.
And now, because she can no longer bear to stand still, she goes to the kitchen door and looks out into the bright June day, looks out at Sewing Lane, which is their little version of what she supposes is the American dream. How quiet this morning lies, with a trillion drops of dew still sparkling on the grass! And still her heart hammers in her chest and the sweat rolls down her face and she wants to tell him he must stop, he must not tell this dream, this terrible dream. She must remind him that Jenna lives right down the roadJen, that is, Jen who works at the Video Stop in the village and spends all too many weekend nights drinking at the Gourd with the likes of Frank Friedman, who is old enough to be her father. Which is undoubtedly part of the attraction.
All these whispered little half-words, Harvey is saying, and she would not speak up. Then I heard killed, and I knew that one of the girls was dead. I just knew it. Not Trisha, because it was Trisha on the phone, but either Jenna or Stephanie. And I was so scared. I actually sat there wondering which one I wanted it to be, like Sophies fucking Choice. I started to shout at her. Tell me which one! Tell me which one! For Gods sake, Trish, tell me which one! Only then the real world started to bleed through always assuming there is such a thing .
Harvey utters a little laugh, and in the bright morning light Janet sees there is a red stain in the middle of the dent on the side of Frank Friedmans Volvo, and in the middle of the stain is a dark smutch that might be dirt or even hair. She can see Frank pulling up crooked to the curb at two in the morning, too drunk even to try the driveway, let alone the garagestrait is the gate, and all that. She can see him stumbling to the house with his head down, breathing hard through his nose. Viva ze bool.
By then I knew I was in bed, but I could hear this low voice that didnt sound like mine at all, it sounded like some strangers voice, and it couldnt put corners on any of the words it was saying. Ell-ee itch-un, ell-ee itch-un, thats what it sounded like. Ell-ee itch-un, Ish!
Tell me which one. Tell me which one, Trish.
Harvey falls silent, thinking. Considering. The dust motes dance around his face. The sun makes his T-shirt almost too dazzling to look at; it is a T-shirt from a laundry-detergent ad.
I lay there waiting for you to run in and see what was wrong, he finally says. I lay there all over goosebumps, and trembling, telling myself it was just a dream, the way you do, of course, but also thinking how real it was. How marvelous, in a horrible way.
He stops again, thinking how to say what comes next, unaware that his wife is no longer listening to him. Jax-that-was is now employing all her mind, all her considerable powers of thought, to make herself believe that what she is seeing is not blood but just the Volvos undercoating where the paint has been scraped away. Undercoating is a word her subconscious has been more than eager to cast up.
Its amazing, isnt it, how deep imagination goes? he says finally. A dream like that is how a poetone of the really great onesmust see his poem. Every detail so clear and so bright.
He falls silent and the kitchen belongs to the sun and the dancing motes; outside, the world is on hold. Janet looks at the Volvo across the street; it seems to pulse in her eyes, thick as a brick. When the phone rings, she would scream if she could draw breath, cover her ears if she could lift her hands. She hears Harvey get up and cross to the nook as it rings again, and then a third time.
It is a wrong number, she thinks. It has to be, because if you tell your dreams they dont come true.
Harvey says, Hello?
Rest Stop
He supposed that at some point between Jacksonville and Sarasota he did a literary version of the old Clark-Kent-in-the-phone-booth routine, but he wasnt sure just where or how. Which suggested it wasnt very dramatic. So did it even matter?
Sometimes he told himself the answer to that was no, the whole Rick Hardin/John Dykstra thing was nothing but an artificial construct, pure press agentry, no different from Archibald Bloggert (or whatever his real name might have been) performing as Cary Grant, or Evan Hunter (whose actual birth name had been Salvatore something-or-other) writing as Ed McBain. And those guys had been his inspiration along with Donald E. Westlake, who wrote hard-boiled caper novels as Richard Stark, and K. C. Constantine, who was actually well, no one really knew, did they? As was the case with the mysterious Mr. B. Traven, who had written Treasure of the Sierra Madre. No one really knew, and that was a large part of the fun.
Name, name, whats in a name?
Who, for instance, was he on his biweekly ride back to Sarasota? He was Hardin when he left the Pot o Gold in Jax, for sure, no doubt. And Dykstra when he let himself into his canal-side house on Macintosh Road, certainly. But who was he on Route 75, as he flowed from one town to the other beneath the bright turnpike lights? Hardin? Dykstra? No one at all? Was there maybe a magic moment when the literary werewolf who earned the big bucks turned back into the inoffensive English professor whose specialty was twentieth-century American poets and novelists? And did it matter as long as he was right with God, the IRS, and the occasional football players who took one of his two survey courses?