Referred Pain: Stories Read online

  Eric stared at the golden blur of Tad, haloed in morning light. Anatomize. “Not bad,” he allowed. Fair was fair. The kid was developing.

  “Yes,” Tad agreed eagerly, with relief. “You’re dealing with the black market in organ transplants, you’ve got body parts being flown back and forth …”

  Eric’s mind raced. Yes, Tad was right. And as for the character who was doing the analyzing, or anatomizing—

  “And in a way,” Tad broke in excitedly, “what Laura’s going over is a dead issue, it’s the past. Her husband could be dead too for all she knows. I mean, I don’t know what you have in mind, what you plan to have happen to him, but for her, well—”

  “Okay. ‘Anatomize’ it is. But Tad.” Yes?

  “Be more careful in the future.”

  And he was. At least Eric couldn’t be absolutely sure he hadn’t uttered the next two dubious words. They were good words in any case, so he said nothing and let them stand.

  He followed Lucinda’s advice and went to a couple of book parties, with her choosing his ties and inspecting him like a mother with an adolescent bound for his first dance. He wondered, as she plucked a speck off his lapel, if he could really have come on to her. Not that he hadn’t thought of it on and off, mostly in between brief and half-hearted erotic forays, post-Ada. Unlike the women he had pursued or was pursued by, Lucinda was so luscious, sympathetic, so near at hand. The sheer convenience. Still, a move like that wasn’t his style, nor the sort of thing a man would forget. Why would she lie? He’d studied deception all his life, written time and again about the exploitation of the innocent by the canny, the shortsighted by the far-seeing, the shrewd chess players, and Lucinda wasn’t one of the chess players. They were more like Tad, biding their time, proceeding cautiously but inexorably.

  She made sure he had enough twenties in his wallet for taxis and an impromptu dinner (Tad had become his personal ATM banker; no worries on that score—he was scrupulously honest) and sent him off. Once there, he had to watch out for high floating trays of canapés and swift jostlings by the young and presumably talented. Presumably, for he would never know, never read their books, yet he wasn’t so blind that he couldn’t see their newness, the women’s short skirts and clunky shoes, the men’s longish hair and collarless shirts.

  The trouble, he thought, was not being blind enough for the warning emblems of stick or dog. Trying to pass, so to speak. People greeted him, but, unable to read the name tags, he was reduced to squinting blankly. Even when they declared themselves he didn’t quite trust them: in the dim haze of faces, anyone could claim to be a long-lost editor or reviewer. With sickening clarity, he saw himself as prey to every farcical or sinister deception that cunning minds might devise.

  He drifted home through the dark April streets in slow motion. Sparse traffic, luckily, for he couldn’t make out anything solid more than thirty feet off, only the pulsing glare of headlights, huge and explosive as fireworks. He walked the mile and a half downtown to prove he could do it, then resolved once more to stay home. Maybe, he thought wildly, he could have Tad tape all his other books. Then whatever dark time was left to him, he could spend listening to the record of his passage. It was all that remained. In the old days, the press of images everywhere had fooled him into thinking he had a life. Now the mist he inhabited was yielding up the truth. It was so fitting, so novelistic, he almost laughed.

  In the morning, one of Tad’s days off, on impulse he called Bill Benson. Grace answered with all the perkiness of ambition. “How are you, Mr. Malverson?”

  “Grace, you can call me Eric, and I’m fine. Would you put Bill on, please?”

  “I can’t, Eric. He’s not in.”

  “He always used to be in when I called. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks. I need him. Where is he this time?”

  “Actually, he had to attend a funeral.”

  “Whose?”

  “His mother-in-law.” Grace paused, a nanosecond of respect for the dead. “She had a stroke on Monday.”

  “Oh. Well, give him my condolences. Grace. Have you had any fan letters for The Way to Dusty Death?”

  “Not that I recall. I would have forwarded them. But some might still—”

  “I got a few letters at home, mostly back in February.”

  “That’s nice. I’ll tell Bill.”

  “Doesn’t it seem odd to you, half a dozen letters the first month the book is reprinted, without any reviews?”

  “But why not? You have a very loyal readership out there, Eric, and The Way to Dusty Death is probably your best known book. I don’t see anything odd. Why not just enjoy it?”

  “I didn’t get any fan letters when you were going through the mail.”

  She gave a wry chuckle he wouldn’t have thought her capable of. “Well, I wish I could have done better. I certainly wasn’t sequestering any. Maybe Tad is your good luck charm.”

  “Okay, don’t get the wrong idea, Grace. I’m not losing it. Just a little bit on edge. Maybe a tiny bit paranoid.”

  “No problem. Aren’t we all. Have a nice day.”

  “That new character I introduced yesterday,” Eric began as he opened the door to Tad. “The cardiologist. I heard the tape last night. His name isn’t Bergen. It’s Burton.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tad said. “Did I say Bergen?”

  “You did. Several times.”

  “I’m really sorry. I’ll fix it.”

  “It’s hard to mistake Burton for Bergen. I think it is. How’d that happen?”

  “I don’t know, Eric. I guess either I misheard or I jotted it down fast and then couldn’t read my writing. Anyway, I’ll change it right away.”

  “Maybe you just like the name Bergen better than Burton. Or maybe you thought Bergen was a better name for that character.”

  Tad was staring. Maybe even glaring. Eric blinked and squinted to read his face but couldn’t. “No,” Tad said. “Nothing like that. Just a simple mistake.”

  “Maybe you think it makes no difference what a character is called. It might seem unimportant. But believe me, to a writer it makes a very big difference.”

  “I believe you and I’m sorry. I’m in the middle of two papers and haven’t been getting enough sleep. I must’ve been careless.”

  This time the imperturbable Tad was perturbed, but whether out of guilt or innocence, Eric couldn’t see. Either way, he was gratified. And five minutes later, ashamed of himself. Was cheap sarcasm the only weapon he had left? He muttered a half-hearted apology, and Tad said it was no problem.

  But he couldn’t get over his vexation. He’d said the name half a dozen times. Could it be a simple mistake? He felt shaken like a rag doll and stayed up half the night, fretfully pulling apart the roast chicken Lucinda left. Dissecting it, he thought, as he stood nibbling in the kitchen. Anatomizing it. Definitely not analyzing it. How could he be sure the manuscript would be his words? For all he knew, Tad might be constructing an entirely different story. A happy trusting story, the kind of story a fortunate boy who grew up with horses and books might write, all the ambiguity and deceptions sanded away, from the common lies of self-interest to more elaborate machinations or self-delusions. His own intricate web shrunk to a simplistic tale of good and evil.

  He would need someone else to read him the final version. Grace might do. But could he stand her slick humility for that long? What if she and Tad were joined in some unholy alliance? Maybe Grace was the girlfriend, postmarking the letters from far-off locations. But the girlfriend was Angela. Or so Tad said. No, Lucinda said. He had to trust Lucinda. And yet, there was that Hoboken postmark. Her boyfriend Gerard could have done that. Gerard drove all over the country, dammit. He could be mailing letters from anywhere.

  He couldn’t let himself doubt Lucinda. It was all Tad’s doing. He’d have to get rid of him. Banish him as soon as the book was done. Never mind if he was a good luck charm, devil or angel (Lucinda had reported scornfully that angels were in vogue—she’d heard idiots testifyin
g on talk shows). Or a fantasy he’d conjured up? Could you banish your own fantasies once they got the upper hand? Wasn’t that precisely what madness was? No, Tad couldn’t be a fantasy. Lucinda was no fantasy, and she’d seen him come and go for months, even fed him croissants. He could eat two or three at a sitting. Fantasies wouldn’t eat so heartily. What if, real as he was, he refused to go? What if the book had become his personal mission?

  What have you got for me today, Eric thought when they next went through the mail. A note from the Nobel committee? How about the White House? Medal for the arts? Nothing. It was almost disappointing. He enjoyed the odd bits of good news, real or not. He was the perfect mark, a co-conspirator. Pitiful.

  Nothing unusual happened all week, in fact the work went so smoothly that Eric almost forgot his pre-dawn frenzies. Until one evening he heard the sentence about the barking dog. The novel’s principled attorney, Brenner, no longer quite as gullible as at the start, had hunted down a witness in Prague. Eric had spent some time there years ago at a conference and found to his dismay that dogs were welcomed in his local café. A yapping terrier at a nearby table almost drove him wild, though no one else seemed to mind; they stroked him and gave him scraps. It was the kind of droll detail that stuck and was bound to turn up in a novel. The dialogue between Brenner and his prospective witness, the doomed victim of a botched illegal kidney transplant, took place in that very café. The mood was tense, even threatening, and made more so by the frantic yelps of a dog at the next table. Brenner was adamant—in the name of truth, naturally—and the cowed witness skulked away, knowing he’d have to testify; there was no hiding out from the law or the managed-care establishment. Brenner watched him leave with satisfaction (that would be shattered soon enough), and the scene ended with a sentence about the dog. “Sometime in the last few moments the dog had stopped yelping, but Brenner was too exultant to notice.”

  Eric clicked off the tape. He’d never uttered those words. A moment later, as they echoed in his ear, he wasn’t so sure. They sounded right. Necessary. They were words he might well have said, should have said. If he hadn’t said them this time, he would surely have added them later.

  He decided to take a new tack. “That closing sentence about the dog was pretty good, Tad. Pretty sharp. I should thank you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Let me find it.” He leafed through pages, then glanced up with the familiar elegant tilt of the head. “That’s exactly what you said, Eric. It’s right here.”

  Eric wanted to hear more. A more forceful denial. Protest, impatience, even anger at his badgering. But Tad held his peace. Tad had learned to handle him. There were no words to confront that bland innocence. Let it go. Let Tad go ahead and write the fucking book, for Chrissake.

  Later, alone, he tried to be reasonable. The work was going better than he had dared to hope. There was no firm proof of fabrication. A word here and there? Even Borges’s assistants, even James’s, might have made a mistake or indulged themselves now and then to relieve the tedium. The book was inseparable from Tad’s voice; he couldn’t send him away now. Once they’d finished, not long off, they would have a day of reckoning. He would be understanding and fatherly, he knew young people could get carried away by well-meaning enthusiasm, and Tad would own up—he was a good boy, basically—and Eric would forgive him. He just needed to know. He needed to be told the truth because he couldn’t see it for himself.

  “Eric,” Tad began as they sat down the next morning. “The term is almost over, only three more weeks, and at that point I’ll have to leave. I’m going to Oklahoma for the summer to help my uncle on his ranch. I hope that’s not too inconvenient.” He waited but Eric said nothing. “It feels like we’re coming to the end anyway, aren’t we? I mean, I can see you’re tying things up …”

  Eric didn’t speak for a long time. “What about next fall?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sorry. I’ve been offered two freshman comp classes to teach, and with that and the dissertation, well, it’s about all I can handle.” He paused, waiting. “But it’s been terrific working with you. I’ve learned so much, and I’m really looking forward to reading the book when it comes out.” He gave an awkward laugh. “I mean really reading it.” Again he waited. “If you like, I’ll ask around. I might be able to find someone else for you.”

  “I’ve gotten used to you, Tad,” Eric said at last. “With your help the work’s gone very smoothly.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad I could be useful. But I’m sure someone else could do as well.”

  “By the way, there haven’t been any fan letters lately.”

  “I noticed. I guess after the first few weeks … Is that how it’s usually been in the past?” Tad asked.

  “It varies. Still, one or two more before you leave would be nice.”

  But of course none arrived. Tad wasn’t stupid, after all.

  He came day after uneventful day until the term was over and the book was done, a neatly stacked pile of pages with the requisite disks placed dead center above it like a paperweight. A firm handshake for Eric, a hug for Lucinda. Eric wouldn’t have been surprised at this point if Tad had dissolved and vanished before his eyes or flown out the hall window or sunk through the floor. But he merely hoisted the pack onto his back, tucked his T-shirt in his shorts, opened the door and shut it firmly behind him.

  Something had been visited upon him, Eric thought. Whether it was very good or very bad almost didn’t matter. What mattered was that he hadn’t the vision to recognize what it was. He could only stand beside Lucinda, both of them gazing at the closed door as if something more might happen.

  “Did he ever ask you to mail any letters for him?”

  “No. Why would he?” said Lucinda. “He was out all the time. He did ask me to pick up a silk scarf like mine, though, at that shop in my neighborhood. For Angela.”

  “And did you?”

  “I tried. But they were sold out.” She sighed. “I’ll miss that boy. He had such a sweet way about him.”

  It was just what Ada had said about him, soon after they were married, when he asked what made her fall in love with him. He suspected it might be the glamour of the early success and the money, and he wondered if she’d be frank enough to say so. What she said instead was startling, for he’d never imagined himself the least bit sweet. She must have come to see the truth.

  Deadly Nightshade

  NO QUESTION THAT SHE was brave. But it had to be something more than bravery. Nothing so stark as hunger—there were easier ways to satisfy hunger. Curiosity, surely. How could she help but be tantalized by something both beautiful and forbidden? Beyond curiosity: youthful defiance, that acute lust to court danger. It might even have been despair, not giving a damn anymore what happened—let it kill me or cure me of this misery. Love misery, it must have been. Why else would she choose the love apple, smooth and luscious-looking, red as the hearts blood? It’s safe to say “she” rather than “he,” although like everything else about the matter, that too is unknown. But a woman is more likely to seek adventure or death by something as humble as a fruit.

  No one in living memory had eaten it, and there must be a good reason, the elders warned. Never mind the old sailors who returned from voyages over the horizon with stories of natives who ate the fruit and thrived. Everyone knew sailors made up tall tales. They brought home seeds too, and though the vines those seeds bore were good to look at, danger often lurked behind beckoning surfaces. The fruit would kill.

  She went alone to the edge of the village where the woods began, grabbed one off the vine before she could stop herself, bit in swiftly, expecting bitterness and startled by sweetness, then ate all the way through the soft wet pulp, the juice dripping down her palm. And waited for the griping pains, the vertigo, the dimming in the eyes, the convulsions and hallucinations.

  The first hour of anticipation was the worst. What would it be like when night came and pain clenched her in the dark? Would she fall into a swoon, never
to wake, or die screaming in remorse? She thought of what she would leave behind, family, friends, most of all the one who tormented her by his restless leaving and returning. The pain and dizziness didn’t come, but that hardly eased the terror. It might be a slow poison, more excruciating than the quick kind. She waited alone in the woods so no one would witness her suffering. As night fell she drifted toward sleep, first fighting it then yielding, her last slippery thought being, This might be my last thought.

  Light surprised her awake, light and hunger. She leaped to her feet in triumph and relief, then shrank back. Too soon to rejoice. It might be an extremely slow poison.

  She gave it almost a whole day to do its work. As the uneventful hours passed she grew more confident and more reckless. She ate a second one, and waited, until at last eagerness sent her racing back to the village. By the time she reached the square her cheeks were flushed with excitement, nearly as red as the fruits that filled her basket. Breathlessly, she told what she had done. Look! she cried. Here! Eat! But people being what they are, they didn’t rush to take what she offered. Some didn’t believe her, suspected her of a malevolent urge to poison the lot of them. She’d always been eccentric, they muttered, always needed to go her own way. They didn’t even trust when she ate one in full view. She didn’t really want another just then. She was worn out. The strain of teasing death had wearied her, and all she wanted was to eat something familiar, something like bread, and lie down. But she couldn’t show any reluctance or weariness; they would think the fruit had sapped her strength. She knew it wasn’t the fruit. It was the historic moment, and historic moments are exhausting. But she ate it anyway, just to show the stodgy cowards. And it was good, the best so far.

  Finally a loyal friend ate one in solidarity, then another stepped forward, and another, a small plucky group. For the next few days the talk was of nothing else; the village was tense, waiting for the dire results that never came. And so before long, as might be expected, a good number of people began sampling the fruits, some cautiously, a mere morsel or a few drops of the juice added to a stew, others exuberantly eating them raw and whole. They were a great success. How could they not be? We all know, thanks to the forgotten woman, what a fresh tomato tastes like. Even now, it’s the rare person who doesn’t like tomatoes. There were a few holdouts, naturally, the sort who would never eat what their grandparents had warned them not to eat: woe to those who turn their back on the old wisdom. Sooner or later you’ll be sick, they warned the tomato eaters. The poison will do its work in its own good time. In fact for years to come, whenever the tomato eaters fell ill with some ordinary transient illness or exhibited any peculiar behavior, those die-hards would shake their heads with satisfaction and blame it on eating tomatoes.