Babylon and Other Stories Part 16

"I'm hanging up, Mr. Hodges," I tell him. "I'm a television reporter, and I need my beauty sleep."

"Just hold on a minute," he says, but I don't.

I sleep late, wake up, read three papers, watch CNN. My free time's mostly in the morning, and until recently I'd spend it with Jeff. He liked to cook, preferably old-school breakfasts with eggs and sausage and hash browns. After eating we'd go right back to bed. Half an hour later I'd get restless and want to leave the house, but he'd hold me down, his big hands on my shoulders, telling me not to be in such a rush all the time. It was a friendly argument, but an argument nonetheless. With him gone, I find there's all this s.p.a.ce in my life, phantom and new, like when you put on your clothes after successfully dieting off five pounds. Except with the pounds you know you're more than likely to fill up the s.p.a.ce again.

The phone rings every hour on the hour, and the caller ID says it's Luther Hodges. He leaves these messages that sound offputtingly breathy and excited-less distressed than p.o.r.nographic. He wants to meet me for a drink and protest his innocence.

"This case will be tried in the court of public opinion," he says when I finally pick up the phone. "You have a responsibility to garner all the facts."

"Like what facts?"

"I'm being set up," he says.

"By whom?"

"I can't tell you over the phone."

I roll my eyes and agree to meet for a drink that afternoon, letting him pick the place; you can tell a lot about a person from the kind of bar they deem a suitable rendezvous point. He chooses a chain restaurant on 195, a neon-lit catastrophe with a sports-bar theme. When I get there I find him hunkered down in a booth with two hands around a pint of beer. In front of him is an order of fries served in a plastic football helmet.

I sit down opposite him and pull out my notepad. "So, Mr. Hodges. Who do you think set the fire?"

He leans forward over the table, then looks to his left and his right. It's three in the afternoon and the only person around is our waitress, a bored nineteen-year-old in a Patriots jersey. I wonder who he thinks could be listening. Luther Hodges, I decide, watches a lot of thrillers on late-night TV.

"My ex-wife," he says, "has some very shady acquaintances."

"I see. And what's your ex-wife's name?"

"Shannon Hodges. She lives in Pawtucket. All her friends are no-good characters."

I write on the pad, so that he can see, Shannon Hodges. No-good characters. I underline the no-good. People like to feel that their words are being taken seriously. When I was in school, before I had much practice interviewing people, I used to worry about how to get them talking to me. Now that I've been working for a while, I know the real problem is how to shut them up.

"And what would she stand to gain by burning down your store?" I ask. "Is she a beneficiary on the insurance policy?"

"Ha!" Luther Hodges says, his little black eyes sparkling with malice. "The fire's incidental. She doesn't care about the store one way or the other. She never did. All she wants is to set me up. To see me suffering gives her great happiness, and it always has."

I hear this kind of thing from married couples all the time, and it's another reason I don't like to put all my eggs into a basket labeled Life with Jeff.

"She's very, very clever." Luther taps on my notepad with his index finger, for emphasis. "You'll have a hard time catching her. She's great at covering her tracks. This case could make your career."

"There's no need for you to worry about my career, Mr. Hodges."

"Call me Luther," he says, "and I'm not worried. I seen you on the news. Lipstick on. Hair blowing. You look like a million bucks even when it's twenty below. I know you're going places."

"I'll be in touch," I tell him, and leave enough money to cover my drink.

I check in at the station-nothing pressing there, just another story about plummeting temperatures and rising oil costs-to pick up Mario and then drive out to Pawtucket. The sun's shining and the roads are dry. Shannon Hodges lives in a rundown duplex behind a chain video store. When she comes to the door, though, she doesn't look shady at all. She's wearing office clothes and looks tired but respectable. I can smell something cooking, and the news is on in the background, which always rea.s.sures me. She recognizes me right away.

"You're on TV," she says. "Boy, you're young."

"Can we come in?"

"Shorter than I thought, too."

"Can we please come in?"

"Is this about Luther?"

"It's about the fire at his store."

"I saw it on TV," she says, and opens the door.

Mario goes into the living room and starts setting up. I ask her if she'll sit on the couch and answer a few questions. The place is dumpy but clean: flowered couch, wicker tables, doilies on everything.

She sits at the corner of the couch and smoothes her skirt. "I only have a few minutes," she says. "I'm expecting company for dinner."

"Someone special?" I say.

She narrows her eyes. "Luther and me are divorced."

"Where were you last night?"

"At work. I'm a manager at a clothes store at the mall. We stay open till ten, it takes till ten-thirty for everybody to cash out, I'm home by eleven. You can check the time cards if you doubt it. Did Luther tell you I set the fire in his stupid store? That son of a b.i.t.c.h."

I look at her.

"Please don't put me swearing on TV," she adds.

"Does your ex-husband have a lot of enemies? Who would benefit from this?"

"He doesn't have any enemies I know about," she says. "But on the other hand, he doesn't have a lot of friends, either."

"How's his business doing, do you think?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Do you know anybody who sleeps on a water bed?"

"Not personally."

"My point exactly. For years I told him, Luther, you gotta go high end, and get into ergonomics, those fancy mattresses from Sweden you see advertised in the back of magazines. Did he listen to me? Never."

After we're done, she walks me and Mario to the door. "I'll definitely be on tonight, right?" she says. "I wanna tell my mom to watch."

As we leave, a man gets out of a car across the street and starts for Shannon Hodges's door. He's younger than Luther, and taller, so I can figure why Luther would try to pin the fire on his ex-wife. There are simple explanations for most things.

Heading back to the station, I consider calling Jeff to see how he's doing, just to hear his voice. But when I get there, Luther Hodges is waiting for me.

"Mr. Hodges."

"I told you to call me Luther."

"What do you want, Mr. Hodges?"

"I got something to show you."

I check my messages. I thought there might be one from Jeff, but there isn't. Instead there's one from a contact of mine, confirming that Luther Hodges does indeed carry ma.s.sive amounts of fire insurance. I'm not following any other major story at the moment, and don't have to tape anything for tonight, so I agree to go with him. I'm curious about what he might want to show me. We take my car-I feel trapped if someone else is driving-and he directs me back to the scene of the crime. The water used to fight the fire has frozen into ma.s.sive, st.u.r.dy, ghost-white icicles. Folds of ice droop thickly over the building, and beneath them you can just make out the bones of the charred wreck itself, the contours dark and shadowed. The whole thing is kind of gorgeous, as fragile and decorative and pale as an enormous wedding cake. It could all break apart at any second, is what I'm thinking, looking at it. There's police tape everywhere, but we ignore it. Luther leads me around back, to a cracked window that isn't fully iced over. We peek inside, and I can see the husks of the water beds laid out in the dark like crypts. The icicles creak in the wind, an anxious, spooky sound.

"See that?" Luther says, but I have no idea what he's pointing at. "That's the Queen Elizabeth," he says, "the cruise ship of water beds. The ultimate deluxe model. I bought two for display purposes. They cost thousands of dollars. If I sold just one I'd be back on track. It was an investment, don't you see? So why would I burn it down?"

Suddenly he's sobbing, this fat little man. Not tearing up, but serious sobs that steal his breath. I take his arm and lead him back to the car. Sitting in the pa.s.senger seat, slumped and soft-fleshed, his doughy cheeks aflame with cold, he makes me feel a little teary myself. I pat him awkwardly on the shoulder. Without saying anything, I pull out of the parking lot and drive to the nearest bar I can find. Luther follows me inside, as obedient as a child. We drink one shot and then another. It's a neighborhood place, and the locals eye us in an unfriendly manner. We do our best to ignore them. I can't tell whether I'm being recognized and I don't care. Several drinks later I announce to Luther that I'm driving him home. He starts to cry again, and I sigh.

"You do believe I'm innocent, don't you? It's important to me."

"Of course I do," I tell him, although I don't. I think he's sobbing out of regret for his own dumb behavior, not over being wrongfully accused. I think it's only a matter of time before he gets arrested. Which makes me wonder what the h.e.l.l I'm doing here, exactly, in this bar, with this man, investigating this half-interesting story. What if this is going to be my life from now on? What if, because I haven't chosen marriage and kids with Jeff, this is what I get? It doesn't seem fair.

Just because a person has an insurance policy that covers fire, it doesn't mean she wants her entire life to go up in smoke.

I drive Luther to an apartment building that hasn't seen better days and probably never will. When I pull up in front, he asks if I want to come in. With three or four drinks in me, I decide it might not be a bad idea to wait a while before driving home. But once we get inside he offers me another drink, and I say yes. He pours me a Scotch, neat, in a small gla.s.s.

His apartment looks like a motel room, with a bed and a TV in the living room and not much else. There are some dog-eared Reader's Digest books stacked in the corner, which look like church-bas.e.m.e.nt giveaways. In the kitchenette is a small counter with two stools in front of it, and I sit down on one and sip. The Scotch is gone almost before I know it. Luther keeps puttering around the apartment, picking socks up off the floor, putting dishes in the sink, pulling lint off the sleeve of his sweater. And talking the whole time about how the fire's ruined him, how his wife left him once the water bed business started to go downhill, how he kept telling her that water beds would come back in style but how she didn't believe him, how she had no faith and wouldn't take the leap, how she wanted security, for everything to be pinned down.

"Let me ask you a question," he says while pouring me more Scotch. "Do you think we're living in a cla.s.sical or a romantic age? I think it's cla.s.sical. I think there's no big emotions left, no pa.s.sion. Everyone's concerned with self-preservation. It's about money, it's about safety. You know what I mean?"

I look at the Reader's Digest books. "Where do you get this stuff?"

"I read things," he says.

"Is that a water bed you've got there?"

He shoots me a look.

"I've never actually been on one," I say.

He holds out his arm in a gesture of welcome, the bottle of Scotch still in his hand. I lie down on my back, expecting it to swish and sway. Instead it feels basically solid, like any other mattress. Unfortunately I'm encountering other problems: the spins, for example. The water bed and I seem to lift up off the ground together, hurtling through s.p.a.ce on a mission to some faraway planet. My palms feel very cold. I keep losing my grip on my gla.s.s. Luther Hodges is lying next to me, talking about back muscles and the even distribution of weight. The bed spins and flies, part water, part solid. I'm leaving earth and I'm all alone-no Jeff, no Mario, no camera-and it almost makes me cry, the agony and confusion of it, and I grab Luther by his grimy collar and pull him down closer to me, so that on this mission at least I'll have a warm body along for the ride.

I wake up regretful.

A few hours later I wake again and find I'm still in the apartment. In my dream I'd showered, dressed, and left Luther behind-but apparently never got around to doing it for real. A middle-aged man is lying next to me, smelling of middle-aged sweat. I think I've just violated a bunch of journalistic ethics. I remember what one of my journalism professors used to say: "When you find you're starting to break all the rules I've taught you, you'll know you're finally working in news."

I get dressed slowly, my stomach several steps behind me. Luther's snoring is soft and buzzing and regular, like a small appliance. He doesn't budge as I leave the place, stepping out into the cold morning. The temperature's the same as it has been, but today the cold doesn't feel bitter. It just feels numb, inevitable. I'm not even surprised when Jeff and Aurora pull up to the curb. Why wouldn't they be here? It's their case.

I walk toward them, all of our three breaths pluming in the air. I can see that Aurora knows right away what has happened, and that Jeff doesn't, because his brain won't admit to it, won't let him see it, even though there are simple explanations for most things. I know that this, as much as my future in news, explains why I couldn't ever marry him. He isn't un.o.bservant; he just can't imagine that someone he loves could be so different from himself.

"He must be asleep," I tell them. "I couldn't get him to come to the door."

"Probably pa.s.sed out," Jeff says.

"Probably," I agree.

He looks at me closely, and for a second I think he registers my hangover, my bleary eyes, my skin that Luther Hodges has touched with his doughy little hands. "You're up early," he says.

"News never sleeps," I say.

I head home and shower and check messages. There's only one and it's from Jeff, from last night. He's calling to tell me that the homeless man in Cranston has been identified by workers at a downtown shelter. So far as they know, the guy didn't have any family. He gets to the end of the message and then stops talking for a couple of seconds, as if he expects me, impossibly, to say something back. It's the moment of hope that gets me, that pause on the line before he hangs up.

The Sw.a.n.ger Blood.

The kid was screaming, and Gayle's sister seemed helpless to stop him. He stood on the steps of the swimming pool in the backyard, its serene turquoise water shimmering in the afternoon sun, oblivious to his complaints. Gayle, watching, was tempted to cover her ears. It had been two years since she'd seen the kid, and in that time something had gone seriously wrong. To begin with, his head had grown way out of proportion to his body, although she couldn't quite tell if this was part of the problem or only some sorry accompaniment to it. More disturbingly, from the second she'd arrived at the house he'd been screaming his head off, almost literally: his wide, chubby face swollen and red, his enormous head flung back, wobbling above the tiny stem of his neck as if threatening to detach. All this because he wanted to eat macaroni and cheese and Gayle's sister, Erica, didn't have any in the house.

"Be soft, Max," Erica kept saying. "Be soft."

The kid did not want to be soft. Softness was last on his list of priorities.

"It's not fair!" he screamed, his face getting, impossibly, even redder. Twin streams of mucus ran out of his nose and down his chin. His little hands kept twisting the hem of his striped T-shirt in an anguished, strangely adult, Lady Macbethlike gesture.

Erica knelt beside him, her face level with his, wheedling. "Why don't we go inside and have some bagel pizzas?"

"I hate bagel pizzas," was the kid's response. "You said I could have mac and cheese, and I want mac and cheese! It's. Not. Fair!"

"I could run out to the store and get some, if you want," Gayle said. At this her sister turned and stared as if she'd suggested capital punishment, or jail time, or selling the kid into slavery. It was not, apparently, the appropriate solution.

"What are you thinking?" Erica said. She always asked rhetorical questions when she was mad. "He needs to learn you can't always get what you want. Isn't that right, Max? Isn't that what you need to learn?"

"No, it's not. It's not what I need to learn at all!" He curled his hands into fists and beat them against Erica's chest. Gayle flinched. He was. .h.i.tting hard.

"Okay, that's enough," Erica said. "You're taking a time-out." She scooped him up by the waist and carried him inside, his legs thrashing behind her like he was swimming. Gayle wondered what she'd do when he got too big for her to pick him up. The head alone would soon be too big, at the rate it was growing.

While her sister and the kid were waging the mac-and-cheese war inside-she could hear, through the sliding gla.s.s doors, the muted arias of his continuing screams-Gayle sat down in a lounger by the pool. A mountain laurel hung over a corner of the shallow end, its blue flowers bent down, as if drawn to the blue water. It was a brilliantly sunny day in early April, eighty-five degrees, the perfect season to be back in Texas. She always tried to line up sales conferences in sunny places this time of year: Florida, Arizona, southern California. There were conferences going on in every state, every weekend, at every hotel, and Gayle sometimes thought it wasn't sales that kept the economy going, wasn't in fact any particular industry or service, but the conferences themselves. She'd chosen this one so she could see her sister and family, a decision she knew she'd regret almost immediately but had made anyway, because her parents would have wanted her to.

The gla.s.s doors slid open, then closed, smooth on their runners. Erica's husband came outside, carrying two gla.s.ses, and handed her one.

"Henry Higginbottom," Gayle said, and took it. "Hank." In the eight years he and Erica had been married, Gayle had never gotten tired of saying his name. They hugged. Henry was wearing khaki shorts and a b.u.t.ton-down shirt and he sat down in the lounger next to her. His legs were pasty white. He had a job teaching biology at the university. All the Higginbottoms were nerds: teachers, lab technicians, civil servants. They all wore gla.s.ses, too, and in the wedding photos-taken on a day as bright as today-their eyes were often hidden behind the lenses, which caught and reflected the Texas sun.

"So, how's the conference?" he said.

"Oh, you know." Gayle sipped her drink, which was gin, and enjoyably strong. "Power Point slides, vendors, c.o.c.ktails. The usual. It's nice to take the afternoon off."

"Always be closing," Hank said. "That's the extent of what I know."

"That's pretty much the gist of it."

"So have you been? Closing?"

"Sure."