Gavin was silent, looking at nothing or maybe at his distant spired city where men played saxophones on Broadway.
"You can hear it in some of the versions," Jack said. "Not all of them. You ever heard the Nina Simone cover?"
"I'm not sure." Gavin sounded distracted.
"Some versions are pretty bright and harmless, lots of brass. Ella Fitzgerald's recording was like that. But I hear Nina Simone's version and I think the girl was right. The drummer makes a sound like static and then the first note's a growl, the bass line's ominous and it kind of drags, and the melody's on piano but the piano's muted. It sounds fragile. You can hardly even hear the melody at the beginning. Half the song, it's just the piano drowning in the bass line, trying to break through. The singing doesn't start till halfway through, and then when it gets to that part about rising up singing, it's like—" Like a thunderstorm, like disintegration, like a soul rising up, but Jack felt stupid saying these things aloud. "I don't know, you can just hear it in that version."
"Jack," Gavin said, "do you know what's happening tonight?"
"I don't know." Jack wasn't sure what Gavin meant but earlier in the evening he'd been inside and he'd heard a car door slam. Through the living room window he'd watched Grace walk down the driveway to the waiting car. She'd been wearing a dress that reminded him of his little sister's china dolls, and this detail was so strange that he couldn't stop thinking about it, but stranger still was the identity of the driver waiting for her by the car. "What time is it?"
"Two o'clock," Gavin said. " Maybe a little later. I keep thinking, if I'd just known, if I'd known she was pregnant. But then I think, maybe I did know, maybe I just didn't do anything about it . . ."
Jack had taken a Vicodin but it wasn't enough, his skin was crawling, so he swallowed another. Why hadn't he called Gavin, all those years ago, when Anna arrived at Holloway College with a baby? He took another pill and sat still for a while before he spoke again, waiting for the substances in his bloodstream to light up. "I think she should have told you," he said. Gavin was looking at him now, a ghost in the dark. A light blinked on in the house and cast complicated blue-yellow shadows over the grass. "But you didn't hear that from me."
"What happened to that girl who was staying here?"
"Grace," Jack said. "I don't know what's happening to Grace. She left earlier in a funny dress." He remembered his saxophone and lifted it from the grass.
"Who did she leave with?"
"Anna," Jack said. "She left with Anna."
"Do you know where Anna is?"
"No."
"I want to talk to her," Gavin said, but Jack thought he was talking mostly to himself.
"Why would you want to talk to Anna? When has Anna ever done anything good?" Jack wasn't sure if he'd spoken aloud. He was floating. The saxophone was warm and clammy in his hands and it caught the light from the house, an ethereal shine down the curve of the bell. He liked looking at lights when he was in this state. All the edges were shimmering. "I'm going to play again," he said.
"Wait," Gavin said.
"What for?"
"Jack, listen, it's none of my business, but it seems like maybe you're taking a lot of pills."
"The thing with this arrangement of 'Summertime,' " Jack said, "is you can just keep it going. There's the first section that everyone knows, and then—"
"What are you on, Jack? Is it Vicodin? Oxycontin?"
"I'm going to play again," Jack said. Playing, he had realized, was something that would preclude talking. He wanted to fall back into music and rest for a while. He started playing "Summertime" at half-speed, almost a dirge, slow light all around him, and when he looked up some time later Gavin was gone. He drifted alone in his lawn chair on the grass.
Twenty-Four
When Gavin reached his apartment he took two Vicodin and flushed the rest down the toilet. He sat for a long
time in front of the television. Remembering nothing of the programs he was watching, bone-tired, anesthetized by the flickering blue light. When he allowed his thoughts to wander he imagined an alternative version of events: he arrives in Florida on assignment from the New York Star, spends a few days interviewing people about the exotic-wildlife problem, following William Chandler around swamps, writing up his notes in a Ramada Inn in the evenings. Until finally he meets Eilo for dinner in a seafood restaurant, and this is where the fantasy begins: they have a pleasant dinner and he drives back to the hotel afterward, and the difference between this scene and what actually happened is that when Gloria Jones's house goes into foreclosure the bank calls a different broker, not Eilo, so Eilo never goes to Gloria Jones's house and never has a photograph to give him.
. . .
G a v i n d i d n ' t realize he'd fallen asleep until he heard the doorbell. He started awake and the television was showing a nature special, seagulls wheeling through the air above a rocky shore. He stood up, his heart beating too quickly, and the doorbell rang again. It was four in the morning.
At the bottom of the stairs was his front door, and on the other side of this a dusty foyer where his mail was delivered. The door between the foyer and the street was steel with a dusty spyhole that he'd never looked through. The glass was so greasy that he saw only a vague shadow, a man standing outside with his arms folded over his chest. He couldn't tell who it was. Gavin got down on one knee and called through the letter slot. "Who are you?"
"Liam," the man said. "It's Liam."
Gavin only knew one Liam. There was no reason to let him in except his own desperate curiosity, and the shock of Liam Deval being there at all; here after all these weeks was his story, waiting on the other side of another door. Gavin unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
Liam Deval was shivering in the streetlight. "Can I come in?"
Gavin stood back, and Deval slipped past him into the foyer and up the stairs. In the light of the apartment Deval looked malarial, glittery-eyed and shivering with streaks of sweat down his face. His hair wet against his forehead, sweat coming through his shirt.
"I came to apologize," Deval said. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am." He was looking at Gavin's arm in the sling. Gavin nodded but said nothing. He wasn't sure what a person was supposed to say in these circumstances, what the etiquette was for forgiving or failing to forgive the man who'd sent a bullet into your arm. His bandages itched.
"I never would have done it if I'd known who you were," Deval said. "Why did you let me in?"
"That's a good question. Curiosity, I guess."
"Is it okay if I just stay here for a few minutes?"
"Are you armed?"
"I threw it away," Deval said. "Can I use your bathroom?"
"It's there on the left." Deval stood before the bathroom sink and began methodically scrubbing his hands with soap and hot water. Steam rose and clouded the mirror. Gavin left him there and went into the living room. He turned off the TV and straightened the pile of newspapers, moved his cameras from the coffee table to the lower shelf of the television stand. "Can I offer you anything?" he asked, when Deval emerged from the bathroom. Deval's eyes looked unnaturally bright.
"Do you have any alcohol?"
"Alcohol, no, I've just got juice and orange soda. Or I could make some coffee if you'd like."
"You have any lemons?"
"Lemons?"
Deval nodded.
"Actually, I think I might."
" Would you mind boiling some water," Deval said with curious intensity, "and then squeezing some lemon juice into it? I know it's a strange request."
In the kitchenette Gavin filled the kettle, put it on the stove and began searching one-handed in the fridge. A slightly desiccated lemon was hiding behind a ketchup bottle. "I used to go to Barbès to hear you play," he said, to break the silence. He sensed Deval watching his every move.
Deval's eyes seemed to focus. "Barbès," he said. "Barbès. Really?"
"Before I knew you were involved in . . . in any of this," Gavin sa
id, trying to keep the frustration at the fact that he still didn't know ex actly what this was out of his voice, all he had to go on was his own wild conjecture, his guesses, his suspicions and his paltry trail of clues. "Whatever you're involved in. I used to go every Monday night. Feels like a different lifetime."
"Barbès," Deval said. "I was just thinking of that place a little earlier."
Gavin heard a noise he couldn't immediately identify, and he realized that Deval's teeth were chattering. Gavin turned off the air conditioner, opened the other window in the living room as far as it would go. Soft sounds of traffic drifted up from the street. The heat at this time of night wasn't terrible.
"I used to stand at the back," Gavin said. He walked past Deval into the bedroom and pulled a blanket from the unmade bed. Deval was staring at him through the doorway, as if Gavin's words were all that kept him from floating off. "I was there listening to you every week for a while, you and Arthur Morelli. I loved your sound."
"I loved it too," Deval said.
"Why did you stop playing together?"
"We had a falling-out." Deval reached for the blanket and pulled it close around him. "It's hard to play with someone for a long time. It's like a marriage. Sometimes it lasts forever, sometimes you get sick of each other, sometimes the other party gets tired of playing the rhythm part."
The kettle was whistling. Gavin found a clean mug and filled it, but the lemon was hard and almost dry. He squeezed as hard he could with his good hand. He could only get a few drops out of it, but Deval didn't complain when he raised the hot water to his lips.
" Thank you," Deval said. The drink seemed to calm him. He sipped, gazing around at the unremarkable room, and his shivering subsided.
"Did something happen to you?"
"I took care of something," Deval said. "I solved a problem." His hands were shaking again. Gavin sat on the other end of the sofa, unsure where to look, trying not to stare.
"Listen," Gavin said. Deval's expression was inscrutable. "The whole time I've been back in Florida, I've been trying to find out what happened to a girl named Anna Montgomery. Do you know her?"
Deval didn't speak for a moment. "Do I know her," he said. He made a sound very much like a laugh. "Yeah, I know Anna."
"When did you meet her?"
Deval glanced at Gavin's bandaged arm. "I guess the least I could do is tell you a story," he said. "I met her at a music school in South Carolina. She'd stolen some money and she was on the run with her baby, which was as crazy as it sounds, and she knew my roommate. She just appeared out of nowhere in the dorm one night. She'd had to leave Utah quickly. She didn't really have a plan."
"Why didn't she go to her sister?"
"Because Daniel told her not to. He told the guy she'd stolen money from that she'd never go anywhere but back to Florida, then he called her and begged her to go anywhere else." Deval lifted the mug with some difficulty. His hands were unsteady. "She was thinking of people she knew outside Florida, people who were kind, and she wasn't really close to anyone outside your jazz quartet. She thought of Jack."
"Jack's kind."
"He is. Inept, but kind. It wasn't such a bad choice."
"So she arrives in South Carolina with a baby. Then what?"
"I drove her to Virginia," Deval said. "I know it's crazy, but I was already half in love with her that first night and I liked her kid, and I thought, you know, why not? She couldn't stay in the dorm. There was something about her. I wanted out of the music school anyway, I was young and stupid and thought I was too good to be there. I wanted an adventure, and if you're in a position to help someone, shouldn't you? She had a tattoo of a bass clef on her shoulder and I took it as a sign. I had ideas about what I wanted my life to be. Living with a woman and a child, I liked that, there was something settled about the arrangement. We were together for three years."
"And what brings you to Sebastian?"
"Someone came to my mother's house and took a picture of the kid." Deval leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and slowly lowered his face into his hands.
"Your mother? Gloria Jones, that woman she was staying with a few months back?"
"Gloria. Yes."
"A picture. That's what started this whole thing?" He felt ill. The picture of Chloe was stuck to his fridge with a magnet.
"You can't imagine how terrified Anna was. She calls me sobbing in New York, tells me Paul's found her. It all just happened so quickly after that. I came down to Florida, plans were made . . ." He sat up, his eyes unfocused. "How far would you go for someone you love?"
"Is that a serious question?"
"Yes."
"I don't know," Gavin said. "Far." Who did he love? Eilo. Maybe Karen, he realized, even now. It seemed paltry, loving only two people in the entire teeming world, but he knew some people had far less.
"Exactly. You never know how far you'll go till you're faced with it."
"How far . . . ?" But he didn't want to know.
"I owed her," Deval said. "I lived off her money for years. She
funded the first album I recorded with Morelli." He turned suddenly to Gavin. "I don't want to do the wrong thing anymore."
"I don't want to do the wrong thing anymore either," Gavin said, but he didn't think Deval heard him.
"Are you supposed to just go back to your life, after something like this?" Deval didn't seem to expect an answer. He'd looked away again. He was gazing into the air at the center of the room. "That sound," he said. "It was like he was choking."
"What?"
Deval shook his head and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry," he said. "I came here to apologize. I didn't know who you were when you came lurching into the room at the Draker. I didn't realize how sick you were, I thought you were coming at me, I just panicked and there was a gun in my hand." He was standing. He swiped his hand over his eyes and pulled the blanket from his shoulders, folded it into a neat square without looking at Gavin. "Thanks for letting me in," he said.
"There's one last thing. I have a small favor to ask of you."
"What kind of favor?"
"I just want to talk to Anna," Gavin said. "I just want to know that she's okay. Could you possibly tell me where to find her?"
Deval hesitated a moment, looking at the square of blanket in his hands. "Fine," he said. "I suppose I owe you that. You just want to talk to her?"
"That's all."
There was a pen on the coffee table from when Gavin had been doing the crossword puzzle. Deval wrote an address on the corner of a newspaper page. "She gets in late," he said. "Ten, eleven p.m."
" Thank you." Gavin shook Deval's hand and locked the door behind him, listened to Deval's footsteps receding on the stairs. He turned on all the lights. Sleep was out of the question. He felt watched. There was no sound except the distant hum of traffic through the open window. He closed the window, turned on the air conditioner for background noise and then the television set for company, lay down on the sofa with the blanket over him and tried to think of nothing but the screen.
Twenty-Five
Aday earlier, the day of the transaction, Sasha started swimming again. She'd rarely taken advantage of the recreation center pool before— it was ten dollars for a pass, and she never felt like swimming at convenient moments— but on the way home from the diner that morning she saw sun glinting off the vaulted recreation center roof ahead and she was struck by an unexpected wistfulness. She hadn't swum seriously since high school, and only occasionally afterward.
When she arrived home the thought of swimming hadn't yet left her. She knew she should be sleeping but the transaction was so close now and her thoughts were racing. She went through all her drawers and found her swimsuit under the t-shirts, threw it into a shopping bag with a towel and went back out. At the recreation center she paid the fee— the attendant glanced at her waitressing uniform but said nothing— and changed quickly in the damp of the locker room. It was seven thirty in the morning, the pool deserted but for two men sw
imming laps. Sasha dove in and the water closed over her. She swam two laps, which was all she could manage after so long without exercise, drove home with wet hair in the sunlight and fell into a blessedly dreamless sleep.
W h e n s h e woke in the late afternoon she lay still on the bed for a while, feeling curiously light. A faint scent of chlorine rose from her skin in the shower. Tonight was the transaction, tomorrow Anna and Chloe could come back and the house wouldn't seem like a tomb above her, tomorrow the debt would be paid. She drove to the diner and clocked in early, and a few hours passed in a haze of plates and bright lighting. Bianca touched her shoulder near midnight.
"Someone here to see you," she said. "A kid."
Sasha looked past her and saw the girl waiting by the hostess stand. The girl was looking down at her shoes, tugging at a too-tight sleeve of her frilly dress. Beyond the girl she saw Anna, just for a moment, watching her from the other side of the glass door to the parking lot. Anna turned away into the darkness.