Mickelsson's Ghosts, John Gardner [well read books .TXT] 📗

you, Peter.” She glanced at Blickstein. “Shel, leave him alone.”

“No no! Good heavens, no!” Mickelsson said. “Believe me, I don’t blame you!” He looked around. “What a wonderful party!” Then, leaning toward her, making his face tragic, “I really must talk to you alone for a minute. Is it possible? Don’t tell me no. Dearest lady, I pray you!”

Levinson drifted nearer, hands in coatpockets, eyebrows forming a solid wedge.

Jessie threw a look around, checking her troops. The dean and Tillson watched intently. Tillson had put down his glass, on his face a tortured, pitiful expression. His left hand consoled his right. Now Mickelsson saw Blickstein’s young friend on the couch, Professor Warren’s wife, beside old Mrs. Meyerson. Both of them stared at him. The young woman’s face was electric. There were dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise she seemed well, even radiant. It crossed his mind that she might be an ally. She would have heard by now about Lawler’s arrest. Mrs. Meyerson was licking frosting off a napkin, looking up furtively, hoping she wasn’t being watched.

“I take it this is the get-up you put on for your episodes?” Jessie said in his ear. “Do you really feel you need it?”

“Please let me talk to you,” he said. “I stand before you a humble suppliant.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. She pushed her hair back angrily. “Mickelsson, you ass.”

“Please, Jessie, little bird, gentle thrush—”

“Either you’re crazy and I should call the police, or you’re the most shameless, devious—”

“Please,” he said, and, surprising himself, burst into tears.

“This way,” Jessie said suddenly, and seized his hand firmly, as a boy would.

“Jess—” the dean said warningly. His hand closed more tightly on Mickelsson’s elbow. Jessie gave him a look, and after an instant the dean’s hand opened and he bent his head, like a barber finished with a job. Tillson came up and spoke into Jessie’s ear. She shook her head, gazing as if from a great distance at Mickelsson, reaching back, holding Mickelsson’s hand. She said to Tillson, “No.” She slammed her smile at him and after an instant he backed off like a servingman.

The dead man handed Mickelsson his drink. Then Mickelsson continued down the hallway with Jessie, walking in a foggy dream, swaying a little, courtly. Behind them, Edie Bryant held her arm out, preventing anyone from following. In the bedroom, he closed the door behind them and released Jessie’s hand to click the lock. Jessie met his eyes, her face like polished steel, then decided to look away. The room, after the livingroom, was unnervingly quiet. Jessie’s stillness alarmed him.

The bed was piled high with coats, remains of a zoo’s worth of animals—sheep, mink, otter, seal. … (Bryant would not like that.) She stood beside the bed, furtively brushing at the sides of her eyes with two fingers, looking around for a place to sit. At last she sat on top of the coats and covered her mouth and nose with her hands, breathing deeply. A shudder ran through her shoulders; her eyes settled on Mickelsson. Then she was still again.

“Jesus, if you could see yourself,” she said.

“I feel fine!”

“You feel fine.” She glanced at the locked door. Now she lowered her hands from her mouth and looked hard at the floor. Her shoulders drew inward.

He remembered the martini in his hand. “You want a sip?”

She looked up at him, then reached up and took the glass. He used the occasion to pull off his scarf and coat. After she’d sipped, she swallowed hard, as if the gin had burned her throat. She looked at his hands, then handed the glass back.

He smiled, then asked, “Did I tell you I saw the picture of you in the paper?”

She jerked her head away, then quickly wiped her cheek and shook her head. “What do you want?” she asked.

He said, “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove—”

“Stop it!” she cried.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, quieting herself. “Thank you for your … affection. I have a party to attend to.” Now her two hands were pressed to her knees. Her eyes were clamped shut.

He crouched down in front of her, tears blinding him, and put his right hand on her two hands. “Jessie,” he said, “it’s true that the get-up is a fraud. But the craziness is real. You have to help me. If I had my way, I’d come to you as the perfect lover, flawless golden lion. …”

“Go home,” she said. “Peter—” She drew in breath, then said softly, shaking her head a little, “Go fuck yourself.”

“I can’t,” he said.

Her hands closed tightly around his. “It was you, wasn’t it,” she said, “the one who looked in at us, in Geoffrey’s office.”

“It was an accident. Anyway, I’ve done something much worse.”

“I’m sure,” she said.

“I murdered someone, Jessie,” he said.

She stared at him.

He said, “Would you like another drink?”

Seconds passed. Then she reached for his glass.

Slowly, deliberately, Mickelsson began to lift the coats off the bed and lay them on the carpet, neat as a launderer.

She said, “What do you mean? What are you telling me?” She did not think to hand him the glass back, placing it instead on the bedside table.

He sat down beside her. “If you don’t hold me in your arms, Jessie …”

She hesitated, then put her arms around him. As if on second thought, she closed them around him tightly. He closed his arms just as tightly around her. Without his quite knowing how it happened, they were lying side by side, the coats she’d been sitting on pushed off onto the floor. He held her still more tightly, pressing his lips to her throat. She was saying, “What are you telling me? Are you crazy? Who did you murder?”

“Whom,” he corrected.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said. Her embrace loosened, then tightened so that he could hardly breathe. He kissed her throat, then the notch of her collarbone, then nuzzled toward her breasts.

“Peter, what are you doing?” she whispered. “Peter!