Double Delight Page 25

  Tamar laughed. “You sound like Darling the Parrot, ‘Dr. Greene’! The Radiant Light is the core of all Being. It is Being. And we are but passing apparitions—‘hungry ghosts.’”

  “So, T. W. Binder did not die, exactly, but—?”

  “Well, I guess you’d say his body died, but his inner Being passed on to another state. He—”

  “Not another state as in ‘New York’ or ‘Arizona’ or ‘West Virginia,’ but another state of ‘Being’?”

  Terence’s irony was lost on Tamar, who replied, thoughtfully, as if this were an abstruse epistemological problem to which she had given some time, “T.W.’s body was buried in the State of New Jersey, yeah! but his Radiant Being was helped on to another plane.”

  “But not a plane as in ‘TWA’ or ‘USAir’—?”

  Now Tamar did catch Terence’s irony, and cut her eyes at him. She said, flatly, “No.”

  “And who ‘helped’ T.W. onto this new, radiant plane?”

  Tamar shook her head. The scimitar-earrings jangled. “How the fuck would I know, mister?”

  “A fellow inmate at Rahway? Somebody doing a favor for somebody else?”

  Tamar shrugged. As if in caution, she took a small step backward.

  “You knew Eldrick Gill, too, didn’t you? Was he another lover of Ava-Rose’s?”

  Tamar said impatiently, “Look, mister: I told you, the woman’s private life is her own. She came along one day, her and some fat bald guy asking would I rent her a little space in my shop for The Craft of Beauty, so I said yes. Her things are pretty nice, she makes them all herself, it’s fine with me. But our relationship is mainly business. I’m sure as hell getting fed up with you guys coming in here all the time looking for her!”

  Terence winced. “What guys?”

  “She attracts you like a goddam maggot.”

  “Magnet, you mean.”

  “Magnet, you mean.” Tamar laughed derisively. “Whatever you say, you’re the professor, you’re the big deal. From Queenston, eh!”

  Terence winced again. The impulse to close his hands around the woman’s throat, to erase that look of smug hostility from her face, rose in him like an urge to cough or sneeze; but he managed to speak in his usual affable voice, as if dealing with one or another obstreperous associate at the Foundation. “Tamar, you must have known Eldrick Gill? He was here one day last September. One day, at least. For the last time. Remember? You and Ava-Rose left the store, and he approached Ava-Rose—and you walked away, fast.” Terence could see from the expression in the woman’s bulldog face that she had known Gill, but that she would not admit it. “Was he a lover of Ava-Rose’s, too?”

  Tamar glanced over her shoulder uneasily. How empty the store must have seemed to her! The sign reading OPEN caught her eye, hanging on the door; at this time of day, it should have read CLOSED, which would mean that, to the outside, it read OPEN. But the significance of this reversal, if it contained any, was not immediately clear to her. She said, “I can’t talk much longer, I’m busy, mister. You want to know about Ava-Rose Renfrew’s private life, ask her.”

  She would have turned contemptuously away, but Terence seized her wrist. “Please, I’d just like to know: Was Eldrick Gill a lover of Ava-Rose’s, too?”

  Tamar pulled at her wrist, too startled to be frightened. “I said, ask her.”

  “Did you know—did she tell you—that Eldrick Gill is dead, too?”

  Tamar blinked. The tiny red bead in her nostril looked like a tiny bead of blood. “Nah, Dickie’s in New Mexico, they said. “He’s—”

  “Who said?”

  “—relocated, doing business down there. Who said he’s dead?”

  Terence spoke with careful irony. “His inner Being passed on to another plane, but his body disappeared. Back in September. A few days after T.W. passed on, too.”

  “Nah—I never heard that.”

  Tamar shook her head stubbornly, tugging at her wrist. Terence gripped her tight. “This ‘Dickie’—who was he to you, and to Ava-Rose?”

  “Nobody.”

  “What kind of business was he in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You really don’t know that he’s dead?”

  Tamar shivered. Terence was standing very close to her, as in a clumsy dance; he could smell a scent as of musky perfume and perspiration lifting from her.

  Tamar was a strong, wiry little woman, but she could not pull free from Terence’s grip so long as he wished to hold her. She whispered, more angry than frightened, “Mister, let go! You got no right to touch me.”

  Terence hesitated. He did not want her to break free from him, to pull an alarm, or scream for help; but he did not want to hurt her—truly, he did not.

  I must never kill again. Never.

  Relenting, Terence could not resist a final question. “Tell me, at least—who was Ezra Wineapple?”

  Now Tamar wrenched free of Terence, stumbling back against a counter. Defiantly she said, “Some old fool mad to marry Ava-Rose, who wound up in the river instead.”

  The precise date of T. W. Binder’s death, Terence Greene learned, by way of several telephone calls to Rahway State Prison, was September 9 of the previous year; Eldrick Gill had died his secret death, and his body sunk in the Delaware River, on September 14.

  T. W. Binder’s murderer or murderers, presumably prison inmates, remained unidentified—he’d been found dead in a storage room of a kitchen, stabbed to the heart. Terence would have liked to ask if a man named Eldrick Gill had visited anyone at Rahway shortly before the murder, but did not dare.

  What had Cap’n-Uncle Riff said—“A sucker is born every minute, and what are you going to do about it?”

  “Ava-Rose ain’t here, Dr. Greene, but, sure, stop by, y’know you’re welcome any ol’ time!”—Holly Mae Loomis’s telephone voice boomed in Terence’s ear.

  So, after Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium, Terence drove to 33 Holyoak. Knowing of course that really he was not welcome.

  He’d become, without his knowing it, a sort of tolerated old uncle, a kindly presence—“Dr. Greene.”

  The Renfrews’ visitors had stayed so long, it seemed to Terence, that they had moved permanently into the house. At the same time, near as he could figure out from Ava-Rose’s vague explanation, one of the twins had gone to live permanently with relatives in another part of the state. “Dara or Dana?” Terence had asked, concerned, a bit hurt, for he’d grown sentimentally fond of the girls and had assumed they were fond of him; and Ava-Rose mystified him by saying, with a pouty little frown, “Oh, they’re so grown up now, they hate ‘the twin thing’—as they call it. The girl you’ll see, next time you come visit, is ‘Donna.’”

  “But—which girl is it? And won’t I be seeing the other again?” Terence asked.

  Ava-Rose said wistfully, “I’m sure you will, someday, Terence. Not that you’d recognize her, anyway—children grow up so quickly, in America!”

  When Terence arrived, just before sunset, at 33 Holyoak, the girl, presumably Donna, was just leaving, climbing with a flash of bare legs into a gleaming black Sting Ray idling at the curb. Behind the wheel of the raffish sports car was a swarthy-skinned man in his thirties, with a thin black moustache and eyes hidden by mirror sunglasses; Terence despised him on sight, the more because he hadn’t troubled to get out of his car to greet pretty Donna and open the passenger’s door for her. How could the Renfrews allow a child that age to go out with a man so much older! (Though, in a tight-fitting summer-knit aqua shift that showed a good deal of her thighs, and her mouth so strikingly red, Donna did not much resemble a child.) Seeing Terence, the girl waved, and called out, laughing, what sounded like, “H’lo Dr. Applegreen!” Terence waved back, a bit frantically, “Donna?—just a—”

  The Sting Ray moved off with a squealing protest of tires, gathering speed even as Terence stared after it. The air stank of exhaust.

  Terence, standing in the street, stood for a moment, helpless.

 
‘Donna’!—and now there is neither ‘Dara,’ nor ‘Dana,’ for me.

  Terence saw that Ava-Rose’s yellow Corvette was parked in the Renfrews’ driveway. Which meant that, since she was out, she was out in someone else’s car.

  Jealousy is the heart’s first death.

  There were two unfamiliar cars in the driveway, with West Virginia license plates, the more battered with a HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS! sticker on its rust-speckled rear bumper. Over in the tall grass, abandoned, was the old, unpainted van formerly used by Cap’n-Uncle Riff for his secondhand goods business. (Cap’n-Uncle was now the proud owner of a new model Ford van, which Ava-Rose had financed for him, ostensibly with her savings and credit, but in fact through Terence’s generosity. Though somewhat pressed for money lately, Terence had thought it shameful that a man of Cap’n-Uncle’s age and distinction should be forced to drive so rundown a vehicle.)

  It was a soft, melancholy evening. Seeing the Renfrews’ house, and the wild garden in the front, Terence felt, as always, that peculiar tug of emotion. As if, somehow, many years ago, he too had lived here, among the Renfrews.

  Though Terence had spent a good deal of money on the house since the previous September (the crumbling chimney had been shored up, the most damaged of the slates on the roof repaired, wooden trim repainted), it was hard to see much difference. The house was unmistakably ramshackle, and old. Straggly vines grew everywhere, even across windowpanes; the picket fence was about to collapse; the sagging veranda was more cluttered than ever with junk which, months ago, in the first flush of his romance with Ava-Rose, Terence himself had offered to clear away. (Ava-Rose had thanked him politely, but declined the offer.) And the garden was lushly overgrown—a colorful confusion of roses amid scrubby hollyhocks, briar-bushes, giant thistles, and every variety of weed. A gray wooden flamingo lay flat on the ground as if it had been shot down.

  Of course, now the twins were gone, no one made the silly, charming ornaments any longer. An unsold stack lay rotting on the veranda.

  As Terence approached the house, Buster, dozing in the driveway, looked up blinking. His tail thumped several times in a desultory manner as he sniffed, recognized Terence, and yawned.

  Holly Mae Loomis, hoeing in the garden in her raggedy straw hat and coveralls, cried out, “Yoo-hoo, Dr. Greene! Over here! My lord, you did get here fast.” She seemed both amused and uncharacteristically edgy. “Like I told you, though—Ava-Rose ain’t here, and I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  Terence saw to his discomfort that Holly Mae was not alone: a younger woman, who resembled her, in features, skin tone, and even in her dyed coppery hair, was standing with crossed arms, sipping from a can of Rolling Rock beer. Introduced to Terence as “Lily Pancoke from Sheenville, West Virginia,” the woman shot out her hand to shake Terence’s, and grinned happily, showing an expanse of gum. “Real nice to meet you, Doctor.” From the way the woman looked at Terence, he understood that she had been told tales of him.

  Ava-Rose’s besotted lover, a married man.

  Ava-Rose’s suitor who had killed, at least once, for her.

  Or maybe she knew nothing of him—she was smiling at him in such a friendly, frank way, as if he were a neighbor who’d just ambled over to say hello.

  Holly Mae was hoeing vigorously, her ruddy face gleaming with perspiration. Amid the festooning weeds and tall grasses there were cultivated beds of roses; their beauty leapt at the eye, like pain. Terence stared, and his vision misted over. He wanted only Ava-Rose, and Ava-Rose was not here—or was she? (Inside the house, through the opened windows, came the sound of a dog’s high-pitched barking: But which dog was this?) It seemed to him that Holly Mae was somewhat stiff with him lately; on the phone, and in person. The lawsuit against the Trenton Transit Company was still pending after many delays, but lately, according to the team of lawyers, hopes for a multimillion-dollar settlement were “less certain.” (For one thing, the treasury of the City of Trenton was nearly bankrupt.) It seemed to Terence unfair that Holly Mae should blame him.

  Lily Pancoke asked pertly would Terence like a beer?—but Terence said no thank you, he would have to be leaving. Still, he did not leave. Lily Pancoke asked where he was from, he sure didn’t sound like he was from Trenton, but Terence, distracted, did not hear. He was wondering if, under a pretext of using the bathroom—after all, he had paid to have that very bathroom improved—he might prowl about the house, maybe even slip upstairs and check out Ava-Rose’s bedroom, to determine if Ava-Rose really was gone. (But what if, in her bedroom, he discovered her with another man—what then?)

  “I’m not armed,” he said, smiling, with a gesture as of turning his pockets inside-out, “—I’m not to be considered dangerous.”

  Lily Pancoke laughed heartily, not that Terence’s joke was amusing, if indeed it was a joke. She was a busty woman of about forty-five with scrubbed-looking cheeks and close-set warm eyes. Her fingernails were long and curved and painted purplish-red. “Nah,” she said, “—not you. A jury’d never convict.”

  Holly Mae did not join in her friend’s, or relative’s, good-natured banter with Terence Greene. She’d jammed her straw hat down farther on her head, and her breath was audible as she hoed, stooped to pull out weeds, or, cursing, picked insects off her roses. She cleared her throat and said again, “Huh!—like I said, Ava-Rose ain’t here, and didn’t say when she’d be back.” She paused. Terence made no reply. “Could be,” she added cautiously, “she won’t be back till tomorrow.”

  Terence gave no sign of the emotion he felt at hearing this statement but continued to gaze at the roses, smiling, admiring, as if his visit were after all neighborly. He said, “Holly Mae, your roses are more beautiful than ever.” A cheerful comment, but it came out sounding like a sob.

  He reached out to touch a creamy-pink multifoliate rose, of the kind, so like a watercolor in its shading, he’d admired the previous summer. Possibly the blooms on the roses generally were less profuse than he remembered, and the bushes scrawnier, and—what was this?—an iridescent-glittering insect scuttled through his fingers; but these roses were beautiful, each subtly differing from the others, and giving off a faint, sweet scent. Terence stared, blinking moisture out of his eyes. What was the name of the hybrid tea-rose?—he knew, but could not remember.

  Holly Mae said gruffly, “Pretty, yes, but, lord, are they work! Me with my bad back, and maybe whiplash-injury, an old woman toiling away for beauty, eh? And look here”—stooping with surprising dexterity to snatch up the insect, and squash it expertly between her fingers—“these damn ol’ Jap’nese beetles!”

  Lily Pancoke, eager to join in, said, with a smile at Terence, “We’re so local, down in Sheenville, we don’t even have any Jap’nese beetles.”

  There was a sudden hysterical yapping, and out through the screened front door came a tiny henna-colored dog, a Pomeranian, with bedraggled red ribbons on his collar—literally through the screen, tearing a small rent into a hole. The door flew open, and a lanky bare-chested youth rushed after the dog, lunging to seize it, but missing, as the frantic little creature scrambled from the veranda and hit the ground already running on its stubby legs. The boy too leapt off the veranda, pursuing the dog around the garden, stumbling and swearing. He cried, with an angry laugh, “Fuck!” as the dog rushed through his legs, and would have fled to the street, except Buster, aroused and barking excitedly, was blocking its path. Another time the little creature reversed its direction, panting and yipping, and both the boy and Buster ran after it. Lily Pancoke shrieked with laughter—“Go, Randy Lee! Get ’im! Near-about your size, ain’t he!”

  Holly Mae had dropped her hoe in alarm, and was tugging the brim of her straw hat down as if to hide her head. “Jesus! Don’t let that little bugger escape!”

  At last the Pomeranian caught itself, flailing, in a climber rose bush, and the boy snatched it up in his arms in triumph—“Gotcha!” As soon as the dog realized it was pinned in the boy’s ropy-muscled arms, it ceased st
ruggling; the boy chortled, “Ain’t you the one, Pip, eh!—fastest little fucker I ever seen!” The dog began to lick at the boy’s face and the boy tried to lean his head away.

  Lily Pancoke was choking with laughter, but Holly Mae, pressing a hand against her bosom, seemed to see nothing funny. She said, “Randy Lee, take Pip back inside, and lock him up somewhere. He gets away, you know Chick’s gonna tear up the house.”

  “Nah, Auntie, he’s okay now. He ain’t going anywhere, are you, baby?” The boy held the dog against his pale, narrow chest with such tenderness, he might have been a young father holding his own infant.

  Holly Mae introduced Terence to “Randy Lee Turcoe also of Sheenville, West Virginia”—a “kissing-cousin” of Ava-Rose’s and Chick’s up in Trenton for the summer. Terence and Randy Lee mumbled greetings, each shyly, and made no effort to shake hands; the boy self-conscious in the presence of a stranger in a suit and tie, and Terence self-conscious, in fact uneasy, in the presence of a youth of his own gender so beautiful, and so seemingly careless in his beauty, his instinct was to look away.

  Randy Lee Turcoe might have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-six years old. Barefoot, he was an inch or so taller than Terence; his body was both slender and muscled, and oddly pale; there were curly dark hairs on his forearms, but his chest was nearly hairless, and his nipples were rosy-pink. Though he talked and laughed and carried himself without the slightest pretension, or awareness of his distinctive looks, his face reminded Terence of certain Renaissance paintings Terence had neither seen nor thought of in years—above all, the exotic, epicene St. John the Baptist of Leonardo da Vinci.

  Don’t look, maybe it’s wiser. Just don’t.

  Yet it was difficult not to stare at Randy Lee, who, scarcely minding the Pomeranian’s frantic licking of his face, seemed the most good-hearted of people. Like Leonardo’s saint, Randy Lee had a perfect oval face, alabaster-smooth skin, luminous smoky eyes, and fine, thickly crimped hair to his shoulders; unlike the saint, he had tobacco-stained teeth with a pronounced gap between the two front teeth, and, on his right earlobe, one of those cruel-looking clamp earrings, gleaming gold. His low-slung raggedy jeans were snug across his small, muscled stomach and the fly front was missing a button. As he talked, and the women, especially Lily Pancoke, teased him, he wriggled his bare, bony-knuckled toes in the dirt.