“Then you got sick, didn’t you, Phyllida. But you hung on till graduation.”
… I hung on.
“Then you guys lost touch.”
… We wrote for a time. I’m not one for going out.
“But Jennifer came here to see you, didn’t she, Phyllida. In the week before she died.”
I’m putting in these dots—but you’d want more than three of them to get the measure of Phyllida’s pauses. Like an international phone call ten or fifteen years back, minus the echo, with that lag that made you start repeating the question just as the answer was
finally coming through… By now I’m giving myself the cop shrug and thinking: I know exactly why Jennifer killed herself. She set foot in this fucking joint: That’s why.
“Yes,” said Phyllida. “On the Thursday before she died.”
The room was muffled with dust, but cold. Phyllida was sitting in her chair like a lifesize photograph. Like the photograph in Jennifer’s apartment. Just the same, only more beat-looking. Straight, thin, weak brown hair, over a gaze that traveled not an inch into the world. Also present was a guy: About thirty, fair, with a balding mustache. He never said a word or even looked in my direction, but attended to the buzz of the earphones he wore. His face gave no indication of the kind of thing he was listening to. It could have been heavy metal. It could have been Teach Yourself French. There was a third person in the house. The stepmother. I never saw this woman, but I heard her. Blundering around in the back room, and groaning, with infinite fatigue, as each new obstacle materialized in her path.
“Jennifer stay long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Phyllida, you’re a manic depressive, right?”
I think my eyes came off brutal when I said it. But she nodded and smiled.
“But you have that under control now, don’t you, Phyllida.”
She nodded and smiled.
Yeah: One pill too many and she slips into a coma. One pill too few and she goes out and buys an airplane. Jesus, the poor bitch, even her teeth are nuts. Her gums are nuts.
“You keep a pill chart, don’t you, Phyllida. And a roster. You probably have one of those little yellow boxes with the time compartments and the dosages.”
She nodded.
“Do something for me. Go count your pills and tell me how many are missing. The stabilizers. The tegretol or whatever.”
While she was gone I listened to the steady buzz of the guy’s earphones. The insect drone—the music of psychosis. I listened also to the woman in the other room. She stumbled and groaned, with that unforgettable weariness—that indelible weariness. And I said out loud, “She got it too? Jesus Christ, I’m surrounded.” I stood up and moved to the window. Drip, drop, said the rain. It was now that I made myself a promise—a promise that only the few would understand. The stepmother stumbled and groaned, stumbled and groaned.
Phyllida came floating down the passage like a nurse. I moved to the door. She herself had no real weight in this. She was just the connect.
“How many?” I called. “Five? Six?”
“I think six.”
And I was gone.
-+=*=+-
Hurry hurry. Because you see: This is where we came in. It’s five p.m. on April second. In an hour I meet with Paulie No. I will ask him two questions. He will give me two answers. Then it’s a wrap. It’s down. And again I wonder: Is it the case? Is it reality, or is it just me? Is it just Mike Hoolihan?
Trader says it’s like calling shots in a ballgame. It even fucks with your eyes. You call a good ball out because you wish it out. You wish it out so bad that you see it out. You have an agenda—to win, to prevail. And it fucks with your eyes.
When I was working murders it sometimes felt like TV: But the wrong way around. As if some dope had watched a murder mystery (based on a true story?) and was bringing it back for you the wrong way around. As if TV was the master criminal, beaming out gameplans to the somnambulists of the street. You’re thinking: This is ketchup. Ketchup from a squeezer that’s getting crusty around the spout.