John Hart - The King Of Lies

“What’s your secretary’s name?” she asked. I told her and she turned to the nurse, who looked uncomfortable. “Where’s your phone?” The nurse told her to use the one in the triage nurse’s office. Down the hall. Second door. Mills looked back to me. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said, and I almost smiled before I realized she wasn’t making a funny.

She flapped her way through the curtains and disappeared. I heard her heels on the tile and then I was alone with the nurse. She fluffed my pillow.

“Is this the emergency room?” I asked.

“Yes, but Saturday morning is slow. Shootin’ and stabbin’ is done until tonight.” She smiled and suddenly became a real person.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Oh, nothing but some bruises and such. Your headache might last longer than it would have otherwise.” Another smile and I knew I wasn’t the first Saturday-morning hangover she’d seen. “You’ll be discharged shortly.”

I laid my fingers on the warm dough of her forearm. “Has my wife been to see me? Five five. Short black hair. Pretty.” She looked blank. “Hard eyes,” I added, only half-joking. “Attitude.”

“I’m sorry. No.”

I looked away from the pity in her face. “Are you married?” I asked.

“Twenty-two years,” she said.

“Would you leave your husband alone in the emergency room?” She didn’t answer, and I thought, No, of course not; differences end at the hospital door.

“That would depend,” she finally said. She smoothed my blankets, her hands moving sure and quick, and I thought she didn’t want to finish the sentence.

“On?” I asked.

She looked at me and her hands grew suddenly still. “On whether or not he deserved it.”

And there it is, I thought, the difference between her and me. Because I would be there regardless. No matter what. Suddenly, this nurse was not an unexpected friend, and with that bleak realization the warmth in the tiny curtained place evaporated. And even though she remained and tried to make further conversation, I found myself alone with my headache and the disjointed images of the previous night.

I had heard a sound. Wheels on wood flooring. Ezra’s big leather chair being rolled to the top of the stairs. I knew I was right about that. I’d felt the weight, damn it.

I hadn’t been that drunk.

When Mills appeared, she looked pissed. “I spoke to your secretary,” she said. “There’s no chair at the bottom of the stairs. There was no chair when she found you this morning. Furthermore, nothing is out of place. No windows are broken. No sign of a forced entry.”

“But Ezra’s chair…”

“Is at his desk upstairs,” Mills said. “Where it has always been.”

I thought back to the day before. I’d sent my secretary home early.

“Maybe I forgot to lock the door,” I ventured. “Look, I’m not making this up. I know what happened.” Both Mills and the nurse stared at me, wordlessly. “Goddamn it, somebody threw a chair down those stairs!”

“Listen, Pickens. You’re not high on my list of favorites right now. I wasted an hour yesterday trying to track you down, and I’m not going to waste more time because you decided to tie one on. Do I make myself clear?”

I didn’t know what infuriated me more, that Mills refused to accept what I’d told her or that my wife lacked the decency to come to the hospital. My head was about to split, my body felt like the loser at a Tyson fight, and I thought I might puke hospital green.

“Fine. Whatever.”

Mills looked at me as if she’d expected more fight and was disappointed. The nurse said she had some papers for me to sign, then disappeared to fetch them. Mills stared at me and I stared at the ceiling, determined to keep my mouth shut. This day could go two ways. It could get better or it could get worse. After what felt like a long time pretending to be interested in white acoustic tile, Mills finally spoke.

“We still need to discuss the night Ezra disappeared.” Her tone was softer, as if it had occurred to her that this information might be relevant and that I controlled it. I said nothing, and her temper finally exploded. “Damn it, Work, he was your father!”

I looked at her then. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” I said, and immediately regretted the words. There had been venom in my voice, and I saw the surprise in the detective’s eyes. “Listen. I need a shower. I need to talk to my wife. Can we do it this afternoon?” She started to speak and I cut her off. “Your office. Three o’clock. I’ll be there.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” she said.

“I’ll be there. Three o’clock.”

The ripe-peach smell lingered after Mills left. Would I make the meeting? Maybe. The night in question had been a bad one and I’d not talked about it. Ever. Some secrets you keep, and I’d shared this one with my sister alone. It was Ezra’s last gift, a lie wrapped in guilt and mortified to pure shame. I’d lost sleep to that lie, and maybe my soul, too. What did Jean call it? Ezra’s truth. Well, Ezra’s truth was my truth; it had to be, and if Jean thought differently, she was kidding herself.

I lifted the sheet. Somebody had put me in a tie-up dress. Perfect.

The nurse let me dangle for almost an hour. When she finally appeared with my paperwork, I still had no clothes, and she left me for another twenty minutes while she collected them for me. The day was getting worse and the feel of dirty clothes against my skin only made it more so.

I limped out of the emergency room and into a day made dull by low scudding clouds. Sweat came instantly in the prickly damp heat. I felt for my keys, couldn’t find them, and remembered I had no car, either. So I walked home, and if anyone saw me, they didn’t offer a ride. At home, I closed the door as if against a pursuing wind. “I’m home,” I called.

The house was empty, as I knew it would be. Barbara’s car was gone. The message light blinked its red eye at me, and on the kitchen island I saw a note-a beige rectangle of expensive stationery, with Barbara’s tight writing beneath a pen laid across it in a perfect diagonal. I walked over without real interest.

“Dear Work,” it began, which surprised me. I expected something different. “I’ve gone shopping in Charlotte. Figured you could use the space. I’m sorry that last night was so hard for you. Maybe I could have been more supportive. And I agree… we do need to talk. How about dinner tonight? Just the two of us. Barbara.”

I left the note where it lay and went for a shower. The bed was made, which reminded me that I had no clean suit for Monday. I looked at the clock; the cleaners closed in twenty minutes. I tossed the filthy remnant of my suit into the closet and took a shower.

When I got out, I dressed and went to the office. Inside, I pocketed my keys and looked around. Mills was right about some things. Everything looked normal. But somebody had almost killed me, and I wanted to know why. If there was an answer here, I expected to find it upstairs.

Ezra’s office ran the length of the building. The walls were raw brick and looked warm above the twenty-thousand-dollar Persian rug. There were exposed beams, leather furniture, and Tiffany lamps. Ezra had had no taste of his own and had to pay for it. I tried to remember the decorator’s name and failed. She’d liked oil paintings and low-cut tops. I saw her breasts once when she bent over to spread some fabric samples. Ezra had caught me looking and winked. It had made my skin crawl, but in sharing the pleasure of those full pale breasts, he’d treated me like an equal for the first and last time. How fucked-up was that?

Ezra’s paintings spoke of money-the old kind. Looking at them, you heard the bugle and smelled the dogs. The people in these paintings had gamekeepers, gun bearers, and beaters. They hunted in fine clothes and returned to a silver table service and servants. They hunted hart and stag instead of deer, pheasant rather than quail. Their homes had names.