All the anger went out of me at once; in its place, also at once, came feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy. I do not deal well with crying women. Crying women, especially if I happen to be the one who made them cry in the first place, give me the craven urge to slink off somewhere and hide. Instead, I kept standing there. She kept standing there too, bawling her head off.
Nothing happened to change the tableau for maybe half a minute. Then we sort of groped toward each other at the same time, and clung together mumbling apologies, and a couple of minutes after that we were in bed making love. And a couple of minutes after that, she sighed and said, as if nothing at all had happened and she had just walked in the door, “God, what are we going to do about Ray?”
Sometimes I think I lead a strange life. And then there were times when I knew damned well I did.
Chapter Ten
We left the flat together at nine on Friday morning. I usually leave earlier—eight-thirty or so, in order to get to the office and have it open for business at nine; but today, for two good reasons, I waited for Kerry, who didn’t have to be at Bates and Carpenter until 9:30. One reason was that I wasn’t going to the office first thing. (So I had called Eberhardt, waking him up, and asked him to go in early for a change and open up.) The second reason was that I liked to sit around with Kerry in the morning, lingering over coffee and indulging in the mild fantasy that we were old married folks. The mild fantasy was all mine, unfortunately, and likely to remain just that. She wasn’t having any more of marriage after her experience with Ray Dunston—not that I could blame her much. She also kept refusing to move in with me. She didn’t want to give up her apartment on Diamond Heights, she said, even though it cost her a thousand dollars a month; and she liked the feeling of independence living alone gave her. This in spite of the facts that we already shared some expenses, we each kept part of our wardrobe at the other’s, and we slept together—either at her place or mine—an average of four times a week.
There was no discussing the subject with her; she got defensive and angry whenever I tried, which usually led to a fight. I hoped the same thing wasn’t going to happen with the subject of her alcohol consumption. It was a matter we hadn’t discussed any further last night. What we had discussed, at great length and to no conclusion whatsoever, was the Reverend Dunston and his relationship with the Right Reverend Clyde T. Daybreak. I think we both had the same fantasy on that score: that he would just disappear again, as magically as he had appeared yesterday morning, and we would never have to deal with him again.
I got my old clunker started and drove up over Laguna and down to the high-rise where Alex—excuse me, Alejandro—Ozimas had his penthouse. Parking isn’t so bad around there after nine A.M.; most of the neighborhood drones (of which I was one) had left for work by then. I found a place for the car around the corner, and walked back and rang Ozimas’s bell.
There was an answer this time, after about ten seconds. A young, unaccented male voice, of the type that can only be described as fruity, yelled through the speaker in angry tones, “Yes? What is it?” If I had had my ear down there I might have suffered damage to the eardrum. I pushed the talk button and gave my name and occupation and said I wanted to discuss an important business matter with Mr. Ozimas, one relating to Kenneth Purcell. The voice snapped, “I’ll see if he’s receiving,” and clicked off.
I waited. And I thought: So it’s late in the fourth quarter of a crucial game for the ’Forty-Niners, they’re trailing by six points, they’ve got the ball and eighty yards to go for a touchdown. Joe Montana calls time out and goes over to the sidelines to talk to coach Bill Walsh. Walsh says, “What I think we should do, Joe, I think we should throw deep to Dwight Clark down the left sidelines.” And Montana says, “Good idea, Coach, but I’d better check with Dwight first. I’ll see if he’s receiving.”
I laughed aloud at my own wit and made a mental note to share it with Kerry and Eberhardt. It made me feel like kicking my heels a little, like Snoopy on top of his doghouse when he gets off a good one. Maybe this was going to be one of my better days.
At least three minutes went by. I was getting ready to ring the bell again when the electronic locking system made its wounded-fly sound. I pushed inside and got into the elevator and rode it up to the twenty-first floor, where it deposited me in a kind of foyer with a couple of chairs in it, in case anybody needed to sit down while waiting. I didn’t need to sit down or wait: the door opened five seconds after I used the ornate knocker in the middle of it.