I couldn’t say it was because Ted held to the notion that Ellen and Lucy and I would one day live together again. “Ted’s confused.”
“He was always confused. Just what did happen last night?”
“Like I said, nothing. How was Lucy this morning?”
“She’s fine. Yesterday she asked if it would be OK if she became an astronaut. Then she said she had a crush on a boy at school and should she be thinking of sleeping with him?”
“Christ, she’s eleven years old.”
“I thanked her for sharing this with me, and told her it was really way too early for all that.”
Ellen spread butter on the bread, then mustard and mayonnaise; she built layers of ham, cheese, tomato, and lettuce, one on top of the other, and pressed down gently on the two slices before cutting them in half with one firm, confident stroke.
“If you’re going because of the money, don’t. I’ll find the money, OK?”
“Billy the optimist.”
“Billy the hope-deserted,” I said. “I only feel good at work. Think how bad things must be.”
“You always felt good at work,” she said, holding on to her calm. “I’m not going because of the money. I’ve got a job, remember?”
“And you couldn’t get one here?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to. I want the one I’ve been offered up there.”
She turned in her wheelchair, touched hair out of her eyes. “I can’t discuss this now. I’ve got an appointment in half an hour.”
“With Megan?”
Ellen, resolutely unflaky in all other matters, went to see a psychic, or rather consulted one, for these days psychics had gone straight. No longer were they middle-aged hippies living in ramshackle bungalows near the exits to freeways. Megan had another of those degrees in business administration and read the runes by phone or fax. She talked about closure, completion, journeys, and all the rest of that New Age paraphernalia, while of course continuing in vague terms to see success, a new job, the possibility of a life lived according to love.
“No, with someone else.”
As she moved her hand to close the fridge door, I saw that she was wearing a bracelet, a silver thing inlaid with linked silver-and-turquoise dolphins. I remembered a warm spring afternoon in the bedroom right above our heads when, home from work early, she’d walked toward me naked except for gold earrings and a gold chain around her ankle. She’d always loved jewelry. It made her feel wanton, she said once. I think I’d made some stupid joke about Chinese food.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“You were looking at me weird.”
If I hadn’t been unfaithful a couple of times when I was working down in South Bureau, Ellen and I might never have split, and if we hadn’t she might never have fallen through that skylight on Olympic. All this was spilled milk, I knew, and no use sobbing, but I’d cheated; I’d married a quality person, messed around, and lost her.
“That’s new?” I said.
“What?” she said, touching her wrist.
“There, the bracelet.”
“Oh, this. Yeah, it’s new. You’d better go now. I’ve got to get ready.”
It was only then that I put it together. “You’re seeing someone.”
She nodded, sighing, before her eyes met mine full on. “Yes, I’m seeing someone.”
“You’re having an affair?”
“Affairs only happen to married people. We’re not married anymore, remember?”
The computer where my reading chair had been, the freedom bird on the ceiling: this wasn’t a casual thing. “Is it serious?”
“You have no right to ask.”
“Of course I do.”
“Yes, maybe. It’s serious.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Someone I like.”
Jealousy made the furious sprint from my liver to my brain. “No kidding? I’m not questioning your taste. I know you’ve got Lucy to think of and will be smart in this area.”
“I’ve learned, you mean?”
Touché, I thought, a hit, and the blade was unbuttoned; I was bleeding. “I guess you have. Who is he?”
“I’m not going to let you interrogate me.”
“He’s on his way over now? In the middle of the day. He’s not even a working guy?”
“Oh, sure, that’s right, I’ve picked a member of the idle rich. Frankly, Billy, it’s none of your damned business. A guy’s made the time to come and take me for lunch. It could be Mickey Mouse, and you’d have to like it.”
“I’d have no problem with Mickey.”
“Here’s yours.” She handed me a plate with the sandwich tightly wrapped in tinfoil.
“This is it? I have to go now?”
She was looking toward the living room. “I think you’d better watch this.”
On TV King Kong had been gunned down by the U.S. Air Force and Channel 5 had the news. Ellen hit the sound.
First of all there was the headline item, a restatement of the trial verdict and a review of Corcoran’s career. There was footage of the guy, grinning and sheepish, at the Oscar ceremony, as if saying to the world: “What, all this for little old me?” There were shots of various beautiful and famous women holding his arm as if it were everything, and there was a reminder of how he’d looked on the night of his arrest, with his dark suit rumpled and his eyes shut down.
The reporter herself popped up next, with her tweed jacket and black leather vest. It was Ward Jenssen. Her hair seemed even shorter than I remembered from just a couple of hours before, but then it was very possible she’d had it styled during the interim. “And now yet more clouds loom on the horizon for this once prestigious Police Department.” There was film of the crowd in front of Mae Richards’s house, a picture of Ricky Lee, one of me with my hand in front of my face, and then Ward Jenssen was back, retelling the more romantic aspects of Ricky Lee’s career, laying it on thick that he’d given thousands of dollars toward the building of a sports center in an abandoned movie theater down in South Central. They showed a clip from a movie in which he’d had a small part, and that was news to me. Then there was the sound of my bleating, “No comment, no comment,” and “Will you turn this thing off?” After that, Ward Jenssen wore a wolfish grin and said I was being handed this week’s award as the most obstructive and rude member of a famously obstructive and rude department — of which more in a moment, she said. Then it was back to Charlie Corcoran, squinting, with a match between his teeth in a gangster role he’d played.
“I guess they figure they had to let him go because he’s been famous for more than fifteen minutes,” Ellen said. “You sounded like an asshole.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” She was looking, not at me, but still at the screen, as she said, “She’s even more attractive these days.”
Now it was my turn to play dumb.
“Who?”
“Ward Jenssen.”
“Oh, her. I thought you