“The daughter didn’t say, but I always had the feeling that Mary wanted to get the hell out of here.”
Though it hadn’t been discussed, we were walking back to Leda’s, going north along the dark edge of Central Park. I thought about what it would be like to go into that park and lie there for three days, looking up through the trees thinking you were going to die. “How’s your ankle?”
“The ankle is a brilliant metaphor for that time in my life. My ankle was unbearably painful, and I thought it would neverfunction the same, and then, maybe a year later, I realized I hadn’t thought about it for the entire day. My ankle and I recovered, and that was sad, too.”
“What about the horse? Did the horse die?”
“Whistler? Oh, Whistler must be dead by now. I read the proposal in 1980. Horses last, but not that long. Funny that you think about her, though. Do you want to hear something crazy?”
“Tonight? Something crazy?”
“When I got the book proposal back in 1980, it came with a picture of the horse.”
“You told me that.”
“When?”
“In the car.”
Eddie shook his head. “Oh, the past, the past. Anyway, when your mother told the people at Houghton I was quitting, she packed up my office and mailed the boxes to Polly and Skip.”
“That’s aggressive,” I said, but the other thing that should be said is Oh, my poor mother.
“The picture of the horse was in the box. And when I finally set myself up at S&S, the picture of the horse was pinned to a cork board in my office. I would have told you I did it to remind myself to be vigilant about trying to close the deal, but the truth was I found the horse comforting. After a while I got it a little frame, and in that frame it sits on my desk to this day.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Not about anything. When you come to my office, I’ll show you. The authors always go straight to Whistler. They all want to know if it’s my horse.”
When you come to my office.That was the part I got stuck on.
When we arrived at Leda and Steve’s building, we tookanother moment to stand beneath the dark red awning, Eddie with his hands on my shoulders.
“I still have a million and six questions,” I said. I wondered if the doorman would let me sleep on one of the couches in the lobby as I was too tired to take the elevator upstairs.
Eddie yawned. “I’ll answer anything.”
“Promise? Promise you won’t disappear again?” I wanted never to let go of him.
“I didn’t disappear. That makes it sound like I abandoned you. I was exiled.”
“You’re missing the point. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Okay then. Till death do us part,” he said. “How about that?”
“Sounds good.” Now I was yawning, too. “And you have to promise me you won’t die.”
“Oh, Duck,” he said. “I’ll die, and so will you. I promise to go first and check it all out, make sure things look good up ahead.”
I saw an empty cab going downtown and my arm shot up. “Hey!” There were so few people on the street, so few cars, and the cab saw me and skidded to the curb up ahead and we trotted off to meet him. “Call me tomorrow,” I said, and kissed his cheek. Then he was in the taxi, squeezing my hand through the open window and letting it go. I kept standing there. All the lights were green, and in a minute he was gone.
Henry said he hadn’t waited up for me, but he was up, sittingin the dark living room playing a video game with someone in Reykjavík. I sat down on the couch beside him and fell backwards.
“How did it go?” he asked, continuing to play. I guessed itwasn’t the kind of thing you could stop once you were in the middle of it.
“You were right.”
Henry’s head gave an imperceptible nod. “Okay, but did you have a good time?”
