Wit's End Read online

  Death was death, she went on, and reminded you of nothing so much as death, though her father’s had happened over time, with time to think about it, while Oliver had been gone in a minute, killed a mile from his house by a drunk driver, so that Rima had even heard the sirens and not known whom they were for.

  Scorch leaned closer into the mirror, turning her head from side to side to see the braids she’d made out of soap and hair. “Wasn’t the drunk driver Oliver?” she asked.

  Rima felt as if, out of the blue, she’d been punched in the gut. This was not the way she liked to tell the story.

  And just that quickly she was ready to go back to Wit’s End and her solitary room on the floor she had been promised would be all hers, and was now sharing with Martin. She offered to get a cab, but everyone else was willing to call it a night too, especially Scorch, who had to be back at Addison’s in a few hours to walk the dogs.

  Cody had had only two beers, and those at the beginning of the evening. He had stopped drinking so that someone would be sober enough to drive home. Scorch told Rima this in a careful, expressionless voice, as if she had no point to make by it.

  The road home was dark, no moon, no bonfires on the beach, just the green light from the little lighthouse floating over the black ocean, and a bright window in Rima’s bedroom at Wit’s End, where she must have forgotten to turn the light off.

  It wasn’t until Rima was getting out of the car that she thought to ask how it was that Scorch knew how Oliver had died.

  “I read it on Addison’s blog,” Scorch said.

  (2)

  Rima could see Addison’s wireless on her laptop in her bedroom, but no one had given her the key, and until someone did, she was stuck with her own server and the intolerable dial-up. She wouldn’t have connected if she hadn’t really needed to see Addison’s blog and needed to see it now. She brushed her teeth, and when she came back the site had only just finished loading.

  www.maxwellane.com/Earlydays

  Halloween photos posted. To be honest, we forgot to take them on Halloween, so we had a quick reprise. Berkeley’s the one dressed as a spider. Little Stanford is Spider-Man. That’s our lovely houseguest Rima in the background, fallen asleep on the couch and dreaming, no doubt, of masked wiener dogs. As one so often does.

  http://ScorchedEarth.livejournal

  I like Rima, and I feel for her and all—I wouldn’t want to lose my parents, even though they annoy me sometimes, but everyone I love annoys me sometimes, yes THIS MEANS YOU, but I’m sorry, I just don’t get what makes her a high status female. She’s got money I guess, but she didn’t really do anything for it except stay alive longer than anyone else. Before that, she was a junior high history teacher, and maybe she was really good at it, I could see that, but would it be high status even if she was?

  And I think she’s in deep denial about her brother who got drunk one night and drove his car off the road and into a wall. How much worse would it be if he’d killed someone else instead of himself? I mean, I am sorry for her, really really sorry, but I think it’s important to remember that it could have been worse. A kid in my high school got drunk and he hit a car with three other people in it and all of them died.

  Tonight she got seriously wasted, and maybe this was just something she needed to do or maybe drinking problems run in the family. I really hope not, because I do like her and I hope it doesn’t sound like I don’t.

  (Link to www.maxwellane.com/Earlydays where there is a picture of Rima sleeping on the couch.)

  http://www.maximumlane.com/maxbim/fireandicecity.txt “You don’t have to be alone,” Bim told Maxwell, so softly he wasn’t sure Maxwell heard him. But when he moved his hands, slowly as if he expected to be stopped at any moment, down Maxwell’s arms to his waist, undoing his belt, unzipping his pants, slipping first one hand and then the other inside, he found Maxwell’s cock expecting him. “You never have to be alone again. Neither of us does. All you have to say is yes.

  “Or if that’s too much, just don’t say no.”

  (3)

  Rima dreamt that Maxwell Lane was kissing her. He was nothing close to seventy-two years old. She felt his breath on her cheek, his tongue moving nearer to her mouth. It was all so real she opened her eyes to find that she was, in fact, not sleeping alone.

  Pressed against her right thigh was a furry lump she assumed was a dog, since a second dog was draped over her neck, thoroughly licking her face. Which made the dream an extremely embarrassing one, especially when she recalled that this same man had been reaching for her father’s cock in some online sex fantasy just the night before. Was that what inspired the dream? Something to seriously not think about.

  The room was warm, and the dog on Rima’s neck was damp with her own sweat. Rima moved her (him?) aside and saw that it was Berkeley; Berkeley’s fur, she had figured out, was slightly darker and curlier than Stanford’s. She put her other hand under the covers and felt around until she found Stanford’s little bony rump.

  It was a puzzle, the dogs’ being here. She hadn’t thought they liked her all that much. Plus, it meant, it must mean, that she had left her bedroom door open, which she never did, and would she have, last night of all nights, with Martin just down the hall?

  Besides, it was a high bed. The dogs could never have gotten into it without help. Maybe one could have stood with its front paws on the bed frame while the other scaled its back in some unlikely dachshund Cirque de Soleil, but even then there would be only one dog in her bed, not two. So either she had reached down and helped them up while she slept or someone else had tiptoed in and planted them in her bed. The latter didn’t seem likely, until you remembered that she was living with people who thought nothing of posting your picture on the Internet without your knowledge or permission and were therefore capable of anything. (To be fair, it was mainly a picture of dogs; Rima had been barely visible in the background. Out of focus and covered with a chenille throw. Still.)

  If Rima had been hoisting dachshunds into her bed last night, what else might she have done all drunk and unaware? She had a taste in her mouth like stewed Band-Aids. Her head was heavy and far too large, and the sun in the room seemed at best unnecessary, at worst malicious. She had to pee, and she had the niggling sense that something bad had happened, which she thought at first was explained by the blogs, her Sleeping Beauty picture, and her father’s appearance in flagrante delicto with Maxwell Lane, but then she remembered she’d had a breakdown over Oliver. Scorch had said something mean about him. When Rima remembered what she’d said, it wasn’t mean so much as true, though really, what could be meaner than that?

  Oliver had had a wild side, which Rima admired and encouraged. Loved. If Oliver had been along last night, he would have picked up the clown early in the evening and partied with the band after. Oliver always maintained that it was a sad night when you couldn’t even manage to party with the band. Rima remembered something his high school counselor had told her. It would be better for Oliver in the long run, she’d said, if we weren’t all so charmed by him.

  Oliver would be alive today if he’d had a proper mother instead of Rima to raise him.

  Something was happening downstairs, something only a dog could hear, and suddenly both dogs were awake and alert, places to go, people to see. Rima lifted them down, and they raced for the sure-enough wide-open door, the hall, the stairs, yapping hysterically. She got up to use the bathroom and noted that she was in the clothes she’d worn the night before. Only her shoes were missing. She hoped she hadn’t left them at the bar.

  She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, changed her clothes, and readied herself to face the breakfast table, but this proved to be a false start and she went back to bed instead. Maybe she could sleep some more, dream about Maxwell Lane again, but she didn’t and she didn’t.

  The next time she got up, the morning was over. She looked under the bed for her shoes, which weren’t there, but she found a piece of paper, which she pulled out and read.
>
  November 3, 2006

  130 East Cliff Drive

  Santa Cruz, CA 95060

  Dear Ms. Constance Wellington,

  A few days ago, while poking about in my attic, I came across your old letters. This is long, long overdue, but I wanted you to know that you were right to believe in Bim Lanisell’s innocence all those years ago. He was eventually completely cleared. In this case, you were the better detective and I am

  humbly yours,

  Maxwell Lane

  What a busy evening Maxwell had had! Rima might have almost suspected the hidden presence of a twelve-step program in his life. Step nine: Unfinished business. But the handwriting was her own. What else had she done last night, all drunk and unaware? She had written a letter.

  In fact, she remembered writing it now, how it had all been done in a burst of drunken merriment. It was deeply unsettling to remember that she’d been drunk and merry, however briefly. Surely that wasn’t a good combination. Surely that wasn’t a good look for her.

  By the time she made it to the kitchen, Scorch had come and gone, the dogs had been to the beach and back. Addison and Tilda had eaten breakfast and also lunch. Martin’s door was shut when Rima passed, so she thought he was still sleeping, but it turned out he’d already left. Tilda, who’d hoped for dinner with him the night before and breakfast with him this morning, who’d shopped with that in mind—lamb chops with crushed mint, mashed potatoes with garlic and cheddar, eggs with chorizo—was hiding her disappointment by telling Addison about an article she’d read at the dentist’s. According to this article, dying has its own smell. Not death, not the finished product, but the process of dying. The article said that someone named Burton could be taken through a hospital ward and could pick out those patients who would die, considerably before their doctors made the call.

  “Did I say that Burton was a dog?” Tilda asked. “A bluetick hound.” This was the sort of information Tilda could be predicted to like—mystical, but faintly scientific, and with animals. There is a larger world than you allow, Mr. Lane.

  Rima liked it less. Was there a household anywhere, she wondered, in which death and murder were discussed more often at meals than in this one? The Spook Juice dollhouse minus its corpse had been moved accusingly to the kitchen counter. Rima had to reach over it to put in her toast, which she did, then waited, while Addison and Tilda bickered amiably about whether a mystery writer would be more suited to solving a murder (Tilda’s position) or committing one (Addison’s), until the toast popped up behind the dollhouse roof like the morning sun.

  She joined Addison and Tilda at the table. “This is why conservatives so love a good mystery book,” Tilda was saying in an aggressive non sequitur. She was in the mood for a fight and didn’t care with whom. “It’s the bald-faced fantasy that the world is run by competent adults.” She looked closely then at Rima, leapt up in a competent-adult way. “I have just the tea for you,” she said. “A cleansing tea. A great morning-after tea.”

  It was a hit-and-run. Nothing insulted Addison as reliably as being called conservative. She had given countless speeches to countless gatherings of mystery writers and readers arguing this very point. Why, then, did people persist in making it? But she was too pleased to have Martin gone to rise to the bait. The shock to her was not that he had left so early, but that he had stayed the night in the first place. He’d never done that before, and she’d no idea he ever would. If asked, she would have described Martin as a tireless critic. Or a tiresome one. Martin’s life was clotted with utterly predictable disappointments that took him completely by surprise.

  Rima was staring into her teacup. Something Tilda had said reminded Rima of something else, and she was trying to chase it down, but the tea distracted her. She was not looking into the tidy sort of cup a tea bag produced. Bits of twig and bird nest were floating on an oily surface. This was serious tea, and Rima respected that, while feeling no desire to drink it. She raised her head again.

  Addison was looking very businesslike this morning in a black sweatshirt from Powell’s Books Portland and with her gray hair brushed straight back. “Did you young people have a nice time last night?” she asked.

  “You can read all about it on Scorch’s blog,” Rima said. She meant this to be a bit rude. If Addison looked at Scorch’s blog she’d know that Rima had seen the link to her own. But the minute the words were out, Rima worried that she’d sounded just as rude as she’d intended. She didn’t want Addison to think she was ungrateful. She wasn’t ready to be sent back to Ohio. “The band was good and loud. Control Your Dog,” she added, hoping to soften things. Which was probably more bewildering than mitigating, but it didn’t matter because Addison had stopped at the main point anyway.

  “Scorch has a blog?” She turned to Tilda, who shrugged to show her innocent ignorance. “Everyone turns out to be a writer,” Addison said. “Why? Why must everyone write?”

  “Control Your Dog was the name of the band,” Rima said, as if someone had asked.

  “Why can’t they just read? There are so many very good books, already written. Written and published. I could recommend any number. Is she posting about me?”

  “Me. She must have logged on the minute she got home.”

  “I won’t hire someone if I know they’re writing,” Addison said. “I once had a handyman who sold pictures of my bedroom to the tabloids. What little privacy I have, I value.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” said Rima.

  “I’ll have to speak to Scorch.” Addison spread a spoonful of lime marmalade over a piece of wheat toast. The bed hadn’t even been made when the pictures were taken, and she still remembered the accompanying headline. “Where Maxwell Lane Gets It On.” It must have happened during that week or so when disco was king. She didn’t remember this; she deduced it from the finger-snapping faux hipness of the headline.

  “Would anyone know anything about Margo Dumas’s sex life if she hadn’t had that assistant who forwarded those e-mails?” Addison asked.

  Margo Dumas wrote novels involving ancient Rome and time travel. Rima had read one once. Beyond the fact that Dumas liked to detail the oddly mixed sensations of buttoned-up modern career women ravished by ancient emperors and gladiators, Rima knew nothing of her sex life. Probably the question had been rhetorical.

  The three women sat in silence. Addison was thinking about Scorch’s blog. Diaries used to be private things—that was the whole point. They came with those little keys so that no one would read them. When and why had they turned into performance art?

  Tilda was thinking this was probably not the moment to tell Addison she was writing a memoir. Time enough for this confession after it was published. It was mostly about being on the street anyway. Addison would hardly be in the book at all. Though it would be nice if she blurbed it.

  Rima took a sip of her tea, but it was still too hot and burned her tongue. The sun came into the room through the screen of fig leaves. The color of that rippling light gave Rima the sense of being trapped in amber, the three of them breathing more and more slowly as the air around them thickened. A hundred years from now they would be found in just these postures.

  And then this end-of-the-world scenario was suddenly too comforting, so she re-created all three of them from their DNA—hangover, scalded tongue, hand with half-washed angry-pig stamp, and all—and forced them to live again.

  (4)

  In fact, Rima was pretty comfortable with sloth and torpor. It was Oliver who would have minded, Oliver who would have said it was time to get a message out. Which is why, when Kenny Sullivan arrived, Rima had the letter from Maxwell stamped, addressed, and ready to be taken. Rima never could deny Oliver anything if he really wanted it.

  Of course the minute the letter was irretrievably gone, Rima wished it back. It occurred to her belatedly that Oliver’s judgments were not a sound foundation for her own actions. He was, after all, in a spectacular lapse of judgment, dead.

  But the letter did not really
trouble her. What were the odds that Constance Wellington was still at the same address? What were the odds that she was even alive? The letter would be coming back on its own soon enough; Rima just had to make sure she was the one it came back to. If only all lapses could be so inconsequential.

  Take the lapse of her missing shoes. They had been found in Martin’s room. They had been found in Martin’s room by Martin’s mother. Tilda had returned them to Rima’s closet without a word, but Rima’s conscience was so entirely clear that she asked where they’d been, and then things were beyond awkward.

  Rima was quite certain that she hadn’t slept with Martin, but when she imagined saying this to Tilda it came out so unpersuasive that she didn’t even try. And because she hadn’t said it right away, her denial became increasingly unconvincing until even Rima herself would not have believed it. She felt that a certain something—coldness? suspicion? disapproval?—a certain bad something had entered her relationship with Tilda. The snake tattoo, which had seemed merely earthy and elemental, now had fangs.

  Once the shoes had been found, she remembered taking them off. Undoing the laces had proved difficult, and going to bed with her shoes on unthinkable, so she’d asked Martin for help, only he couldn’t untie them either. He’d cut the laces with a little blue Swiss Army knife he carried on his key chain. Would Rima remember that the knife was blue, but not remember that they’d had sex? She thought not.