Clay Phipps climbed the three porch steps, paused a moment to smooth his linen shirt, and rang the bell.
After a moment Nina Silver opened the door, not very wide. She was backlit by the yellowish glow of the living room, her jet black hair was square across the bottom and perfectly framed her oval face. She smiled at Clay Phipps, but her posture was the posture of a sentry.
"Clay," she said. It was neither unfriendly nor welcoming.
"Nina," he said. He waited a polite interval to be invited in and was only slightly surprised when the invitation didn't come. "I was wondering how you are. These rumors ... It must be very trying."
"I'm all right, Clay," the former widow said. "Thank you for your concern."
There was a silence, and Clay Phipps's falseness filled it up the way a bad smell fills an elevator. Then the evening's first locusts began to rattle. Blocks away, some idiot revved a motorcycle. The family friend cleared his throat. "Nina," he fumbled, "the rumors, the newspaper ... Is it true? Is he back?"
There is a horror of lying about important things that is more ancient than morality, a kind of religious terror of tempting fate, offending the universe by denying some crucial facet of it. Nina Silver wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and there was no way she could lie about her husband being alive. "He's back."
"My God."
"He's been through hell, Clay. He's very ill, he's very weak. He's not ready to see people."
"I understand," Phipps mumbled, feeling that he understood nothing, neither life nor death, friendship nor love, loyalty nor envy.
"Please keep this quiet, Clay. Please? We'll call you when he's a little stronger. I promise."
"All right," said Phipps, "all right."
He backed down the porch steps, he didn't know how his feet found the stairs, the sidewalk. On the way home he didn't notice dogs or cats, trees or lizards. He didn't see the misted moon or the swarms of moths around the streetlights. He was looking for something else, scanning his heart for some bright patch of gladness at learning Augie Silver was alive. The gladness should gleam, he thought, the way a pool of cool water gleams in the desert; he could steer his steps to it and be refreshed, be saved. But first he had to find it, and though he looked at nothing else as he strolled down Olivia Street, he couldn't find the glad gleam either.
*
When he got home he was rattled and thirsty. He grabbed an extravagant Pauillac, an '82 Duhart-Milon, and noticed that his fingers were unsteady as he sliced the lead foil. The wine poured purple and thick, it glubbed as it squeezed through the neck of the bottle. No light came through the bowl of the glass, and the first smells were black smells, licorice and tar.
Phipps took the wine to the living room and sat down on the sofa. The pale, denuded rectangles where Augie's paintings had hung put a crazy pattern on the wall. Phipps told himself he'd have the place painted soon.
Augie Silver was alive.
Phipps drank. The wine was closed up still, it tasted less than it smelled and had a steely edge. He sucked air through it. Some of the alcohol was siphoned off and different flavors seemed to move like different-colored pebbles to different places in his mouth. Amazing stuff, Pauillac.
Augie Silver was back, and Clay Phipps was one of the very few people who knew it for sure.
He poured more wine. The wall of tannins opened just a bit, glints of fruit came through like sun through the chinks of a blind. Dusty currant with an undertaste of plum, held together by a teasing astringency that did rude things to the tongue.
Augie was alive, a lot of things were changed, a lot of plans suddenly in chaos, and as Clay Phipps drank he saw less and less the wisdom or necessity of keeping it to himself.
Claire Steiger, at least, should have the information.
He lumbered to his desk, looked up the phone number of the Ars Longa Gallery in New York, and left a message with the answering service. Then he refilled his glass. The wine was getting soft and comfy as a well-used baseball mitt.
Why shouldn't Robert Natchez be told? Why not Ray Yates? They were friends, after all, they had a right to know.
Phipps made two more calls. But Natchez was at a reading and Yates was hiding from his loan shark, and he just talked to their machines. He poured out the last of the wine. He didn't think he'd broken his word to Nina Silver. Had he even given his word? He couldn't quite remember. That part of the evening seemed a different day. His conscience was not clear exactly, but shut down, benumbed. If he'd failed to find the cool, clear water of loyalty, he'd at least availed himself of a damn nice puddle of wine. His balance just a little tentative, he slipped out of his linen clothes and went to bed alone.