Pete Hamill - Forever

“And leave the child behind me?”

He touched Cormac’s arm.

“Don’t worry about the child,” he said. “The gods will watch over him.”

He smiled, raised an open palm, then walked away toward the waterfront. To the flowing waters. To the abode of Oshun.

When Cormac entered the loft, there was a recorded message from Healey:

“Brother O’Connor, it’s me. I’m in the city of Lost Angels. My idiot producer was so excited over our spitballing, he ordered a private jet. He says it’s perfect for REDFORD, and this kid named DiCAPRIO, and some young blond chick with a belly button. He’s gonna pay me a SHITPOT of money to turn it into a movie. Believe this? I’m in some hotel, the Tarantula Arms with room service, and I got some insane real estate lady in the lobby, looks like Carol Channing; shit, maybe she IS Carol Channing. She’s taking me to see some apartment she says is PERFECT. Probably in a nursing home. Sorry I missed you, amigo. I’ll call when I know where the FUCK I am!”

He was always Healey, and Cormac was relieved, knowing he was safe. He sat down and wrote him a letter. He would ask Delfina to mail it on Wednesday.

He went to the bedroom and took a long nap, full of poisonous dreams. And then he dressed for his appointment with William Hancock Warren. One final uptown ride on the Lexington Avenue subway. One final trip back home. The sword was inside a long black Chambers Street backpack, the kind made for camping.

In the lobby of Warren’s building, the sour doorman looks at Cormac, takes his name, calls the Warren apartment. Then he grunts his dubious approval. Cormac feels his heart and blood racing. When he reaches the penthouse, Patrick is standing in the open door. Cormac thinks: Shit, he isn’t supposed to be here.

“Evening, Mister O’Connor,” he says.

“Hello, Patrick.”

“Would you like to leave your—the pack, sir?”

“No, I have something in it for Mister Warren.”

“Very well. A drink?”

“Just water.”

Warren is standing near the fireplace when Cormac enters the downstairs living room. A large chunky log burns in the hearth. Cormac thinks: When I’m finished here, I’ll leave by the Western door, as in Ireland long ago. The door reserved for the dead. With me, I’ll take the fire out of the hearth. Warren reaches out a sweaty hand and Cormac shakes it. He wears a long-sleeved Brooks Brothers dress shirt, pale blue, the cuffs folded up, stains in the armpits. He glances at the backpack.

“You going camping?” he says.

“No, I’ve brought you something that would look strange on the subway.”

He opens the zippers and takes out the sword, which is wrapped in a blue towel. Cormac removes the towel in a ceremonial way and shows Warren the sword. His eyes widen and he leans forward.

“My God,” he says. “It’s beautiful.”

“ ’Tis.”

Cormac offers him the handle and Warren grips it, turns the sword to examine the blade and tip, and then squints at the etched spirals. Holding the sword, he stares at Cormac for a beat.

“Your fellow did a fine job.”

Cormac thinks: The fine job was done by the man who made it.

“He says it was almost certainly made in Ireland in the eighteenth century. By a blacksmith, not an armorer. It could be worth almost anything, depending upon the desire of the buyer. The spirals are Celtic. They’re symbols of immortality.”

With a kind of reverence, Warren lays the sword on the polished top of a captain’s table and sits down in an armchair. Cormac sits facing him. The sword points north.

“Thank you, Cormac, for seeing what I didn’t see,” he says. “I bought it, oh, ten years ago, in a junk shop in Rhinebeck. Hanging in a mess of cobwebs. The owner had no—what is the word? No provenance . No history of the sword. He thought it was made around the time of the Revolution but didn’t really know. I had been collecting other swords, in England, in France, thinking someday I might have time to become an expert, and the size of this one—well, it just seemed to fit with the others.”

Warren sees a piece of decoration or a hobby for old age. Cormac sees the sweat on his father’s brow as he worked at the forge.

“It was good of you to do this, Cormac.” A small smile. “Of course, you could have just asked me for it. You didn’t need to steal it while my wife was asleep.”

So she told him everything, Cormac thinks. And here he is, still mad for her. Or so it seems.

Patrick comes in with a tumbler of water on a tray, ice in a cup on the side. Cormac glances at the fake Sargent portrait of Elizabeth Warren and hears her say the word “intimacy,” the name of a place as far from her as Jupiter.

“Would you like the food now, sir, or—”

“Now, Patrick. That would be fine.”

Patrick bows and goes out. If I kill Warren first, Patrick might hear, might call the police, or race to the street… Now it’s Warren’s turn to glance at the portrait of his wife, as if he has noticed where Cormac’s eyes had drifted. He takes a deep breath, then exhales. Cormac feels shame seeping from him.

“The sword is one thing, Cormac,” Warren says. “But I want to discuss something personal with you. Personal, and painful.”

“And I with you.”

For a second, Warren looks as if they are thinking of the same subject. Then he smiles in an uncertain way. His hands find each other, the fingers opening and closing. The sword is within Cormac’s reach.

“In that case, I’ll go first,” he says. “It’s about my wife.”

“Yes?”

He exhales. “First, a confession. Many weeks ago, I put a private detective on your trail.” He shrugs as if this were a ludicrous decision. Then smiles. “I simply wanted to know who you were. Elizabeth was very impressed with you, with your interests, your way of speaking, your good looks. From the moment she met you at the Met, and more so after our dinner party… So I wanted to know more. Were you married? Or gay? Were you some kind of con man, the sort of predator that always hangs around museum openings with a slick line of bullshit? I wanted to know. I don’t ever want Elizabeth to be hurt. Emotionally or physically.”

He does love her, Cormac thinks. That he does.

“The private detective did discover something very interesting: You don’t exist. You don’t have a driver’s license. You don’t use credit cards. You don’t pay taxes, at least not under the name of Cormac O’Connor. You don’t vote, or subscribe to magazines. You live in a building downtown. He followed you there one night, but your name is not on the bell, or on a lease. And you do have a girlfriend. A beautiful young Latin woman who lives in East Harlem. Otherwise, nothing, nada, zilch.”

“Sorry to have been such an inconvenience.”

“But here you are, sitting in my living room.”

Cormac stares at him. “And why were you really on my trail?” Warren inhales deeply, then exhales slowly, and says, as if uttering a confession, “Because I want you to become my wife’s lover.”

Cormac smothers a smile. It’s absurd. A moment from a daytime soap opera. On cue, Patrick enters with a tray: a small pizza sliced in quarters, plates and silverware and napkins, salt and pepper. Cormac moves the sword to his side of the captain’s table. Patrick places the tray on the table. Bows slightly.

“That will be all, Patrick,” Warren says. “You’re going out, am I right? Well, we can clean up. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, sir. Good night, Mister O’Connor.”

He leaves, the door clicking shut behind him. Warren’s hands knead each other. He stares at Cormac, then looks at the pizza.