John Irving - Until I Find You

Paris, perhaps—that would explain the earliness of her call. It was the middle of the day in Paris; maybe Alice had miscalculated the time difference. But hadn’t she come home from Paris, too?

Yes, Jack remembered—she had. She told him she’d met up with Uncle Pauly and Little Vinnie Myers, among other tattoo artists. It hadn’t been a convention, not exactly; it had been about planning a Mondial du Tatouage in Paris. The whole thing had probably been Tin-Tin’s idea; he was the best tattoo artist in Paris, in Alice’s view. Stéphane Chaudesaigues from Avignon would surely have been there, and Filip Leu from Lausanne—maybe even Roonui from Mooréa, French Polynesia.

They’d all stayed at some hotel in the red-light district. “Just down the street from the Moulin Rouge,” Alice had told Jack. Le Tribal Act, a body-piercing group, had provided one memorable evening’s entertainment: they’d hoisted some fairly remarkable household items with their nipples and penises, and other pierced parts.

But this was weeks (maybe months) ago! Jack’s mother was calling from Toronto, where it was as early in the morning as it was in New York. Jack really must have been out of it.

“Oh, Jackie, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry!” his mother cried into the phone.

“Mom, are you in Toronto?”

“Of course I’m in Toronto, dear,” she said, with sudden indignation. “Oh, Jackie—it’s so awful !”

Maybe she’d passed out, drunk or stoned at Daughter Alice. She’d just woken up—after a night of sleeping in the needles, Jack imagined. Or one of her colleagues in the tattoo world had died, one of the old-timers; maybe a maritime man was eternally sleeping in the needles. Her old pal Sailor Jerry, possibly—her friend from Halifax and fellow apprentice to Charlie Snow.

“It makes me sick to have to tell you, dear,” Alice said.

It crossed Jack’s mind that Leslie Oastler had left her—for another woman! “Mom—just tell me what it is, for Christ’s sake.”

“It’s Emma— Emma’s gone, Jack. She’s gone. ”

“Gone where, Mom?”

But he knew the second he said it—the telephone suddenly cold against his ear. Jack saw that dazzling-blue glint of the Pacific, the way you see it for the first time—turning off Sunset Boulevard, barreling down Chautauqua. Below you, depending on the time of day, the dead-slow or lightning-fast lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway, sometimes a sea of cars, always a tongue of concrete—the last barrier between you and the fabulous West Coast ocean.

“Gone how ?” Jack asked his mother.

He didn’t realize he was sitting up in bed and shivering—not until Mimi Lederer held him from behind, the way she held her cello. She wrapped her long arms around him; her long legs, wide apart, gripped his hips.

“Leslie’s already left for the airport,” Alice went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I should have gone with her, but you know Leslie—she wasn’t even crying!”

“Mom—what happened to Emma?”

“Oh, no—not Emma !” Mimi Lederer cried. She was draped over Jack like a shroud; he felt her lips brush the back of his neck.

“Jack—you’re not alone!” his mother said.

“Of course I’m not alone! What happened to Emma, Mom?”

“It looks like you should have been with her, Jack.”

“Mom—”

“Emma was dancing, ” Alice began. “She met a boy dancing. Leslie told me the name of the place. Oh, it’s awful ! Something like Coconut Squeezer.”

“ Teaszer, not Squeezer, Mom—Coconut Teaszer.”

“Emma took the boy home with her,” Alice said.

Jack knew that if Emma had brought some kid from Coconut Teaszer back to their dump on Entrada Drive, she hadn’t died dancing. “What did Emma die of, Mom?”

“Oh, it’s awful !” Alice said again. “They said it was a heart attack, but she was a young woman.”

“Who said? Who’s they ?” Jack asked.

“The police—they called here. But how could she have had a heart attack, Jack?”

In Emma’s case, he could imagine it—even at thirty-nine—considering the food, the wine, the weightlifting, and the occasional kid from Coconut Teaszer. But Emma didn’t do drugs. There’d been more kids from Coconut Teaszer lately. (Both Emma and Jack had thought the kids were safer than the bodybuilders.)

“There will probably be an autopsy,” Jack told his mother.

“An autopsy— if it was just a heart attack?” Alice asked.

“You’re not supposed to have a heart attack at thirty-nine, Mom.”

“The boy was … underage, ” Alice whispered. “The police won’t release his name.”

“Who cares about his name?” Jack said. There’d been more and more kids who looked underage to him. Poor Emma had died fucking a minor from Coconut Teaszer!

As for the kid himself, Jack could only imagine that it must have been a traumatizing experience. He knew that Emma liked the top position, and that she would have told the boy not to move. (Maybe he’d moved.) If the boy had been a virgin—and Emma would have picked him only if he looked small— what would it have been like to have a two-hundred-and-five-pound woman die on you, your first time?

“The boy called the police,” his mother went on; she was still whispering. “Oh, Jack, was Emma in the habit of— ”

“Sometimes,” was all he said.

“You must meet Leslie in Los Angeles, Jack. She shouldn’t have to go through this alone. I know Leslie. She’ll break down, eventually. ”

Jack couldn’t imagine it, but he was uncomfortable with the idea of Mrs. Oastler alone in the Entrada Drive house. What kind of stuff would Emma have left lying around? The notion of Leslie discovering Emma’s collection of porn films wasn’t as disturbing as the thought of her reading Emma’s writing— whatever Emma hadn’t finished, or what she didn’t want published. Jack had not seen a word of Emma’s work-in-progress—her third novel, which was reportedly growing too long.

“I’ll leave New York as soon as I can, Mom. If Leslie calls, tell her I’ll be in L.A. before dark.”

He knew that Erica Steinberg was a good soul; Jack assumed she would release him from his interviews at the press junket.

Everyone who knew Jack knew that Emma had been part of his family. As it turned out, Miramax arranged everything for him—including the car to the airport. Erica got him his ticket; she even offered to fly with him. It wasn’t necessary for her to come with him, Jack told her, but he appreciated the offer.

There was another call to Jack’s room at The Mark that morning. Mimi Lederer had been right—room service was confused by his breakfast order. Although he’d stopped shivering, Mimi had gone on holding him as if he were her cello, until the phone rang that second time.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the yogurt,” Mimi heard Jack say into the phone. “ Any kind of yogurt will do.”

“Are you okay, Jack?” Mimi asked.

“Emma’s dead,” he snapped at her. “I guess I can worry about the fucking yogurt another day.”

“Are you acting?” she asked him. “I mean even now. Are you still acting?”

Jack didn’t know what she meant, but she was covering herself with the bedsheet as if he were a total stranger to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with you, Jack?”

They were both sitting up in bed, and Jack could see himself in the mirror above the dresser. There was nothing wrong with him, but that was the problem. Jack didn’t look as if his best friend had died; on the contrary, he looked as if nothing had happened to him. His face was a clean slate—“more noir than noir, ” The New York Times might have said.