It was way after Trader called and I was still sitting up, brain-dead from reading stuff like that—about how unfortunate suicide is, for all concerned. Then I saw the following, marked with a double query by Jennifer’s hand. And I felt ignition, like somebody struck a match. I felt it in my armpits.
As part of the pattern, virtually all known studies reveal that the suicidal person will give warnings and clues as to his, or her, suicidal intentions.
Part of the pattern. Warnings. Clues. Jennifer left clues. She was the daughter of a police.
That did matter.
The other end of it came to me this morning as I was clattering through the kitchen cupboards, looking for a pack of Sweet ‘N’ Low. I found myself dully staring at the bottles of jug liquor that Tobe seeps his way through. And in response I felt my liver shimmer, seeming to excrete something. And I thought: Wait. A body has an inside as well as an outside. Even Jennifer’s body. Especially Jennifers body. Which has consumed so much of our time. This is the body—this is the body that Miriam bore, that Colonel Tom protected, that Trader Faulkner caressed, that Hi Tulking-horn tended, that Paulie No cut. Christ, don’t / know this about bodies? Don’t I know about alcohol—don’t I know about Sweet ‘N’ Low?
You do something to the body, and the body does something back.
At noon I called the office of the Dean of Admissions at CSU. I gave the name and the year of graduation. I said,
“I’ll spell it: T-r-o-u-n-c-e. First name Phyllida. What address do you have?”
“One moment, sir.”
“Look, I’m not ‘sir, okay?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. One moment. We have an address in Seattle. And in Vancouver.”
“That’s it?”
“The Seattle address is more recent. You want that?”
“No. Phyllida’s back in town,” I said. “Her guardian’s surname. Spell it, please.”
This information I flipped over to Silvera.
Next I called state cutter Paulie No. I asked him to meet me for a drink this evening, at six. Where? What the hell. In the Decoy Room at the Mallard.
Next I called Colonel Tom. I said I’d be ready to talk. Tonight.
From now on, at least, I won’t be asking any more questions. Except those that expect a certain answer. I won’t be asking any more questions.
Phyllida Trounce was back in town. Or back in the burbs: Moon Park. She herself had no real weight in all this. And, as I drove across the river and out over Hillside, I could feel a great failure of tolerance in me. I thought: If she wasn’t so nuts we could do this on the fucking phone. A failure of tolerance, or just a terrible impatience, now, to get the thing down? The insane live in another country. Canada. But then they come home. And sane people hate crazy people. Jennifer hated crazy people, too. Because Jennifer was sane.
On the phone, Phyllida had tried to give me directions, and she’d gotten lost. But I did not get lost. Moon Park was where I was born. We lived in the crummier end of it—Crackertown. This. Wooden cartons with add-on A-frames or cinderblock shacks with cardboard windows. Now spruced up with pieces of contemporary detritus: The soaked plastic of yard furniture, climbing frames, kiddie pools, and squads of half-dismantled cars with covens of babies crawling around in their guts. I slowed as I passed the old place. We have all moved on, but my fear is still living there, in the crawlspace underneath…
It was over in the Crescent that Phyllida and her stepma now resided. The houses here are larger, older, spookier. One memory. As kids we had to dare each other to do the Crescent on Halloween. I would lead. With a rubber ghoul mask over my face I’d use the knocker, and then, minutes later, a gnarled hand would curl around the door and drop a ten-cent treat bag onto the mat.
There’d been rain, and the house was on a slow drip.
“You and Jennifer, you roomed together at CSU?”
… In a house. With two other girls. A third and fourth girl.