John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

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I kept clear of your neighborhood for seven full days: you’d told me it was risky, which was very likely true. By the eighth night, however, my mental distractions were losing their juju, and by morning my self-control lay in tatters. I woke up with a hangover I’d done nothing to deserve, queasy and drained of emotion, and knew that something had to happen soon.

I didn’t have long to wait. Less than an hour later, as I lay bunched on the floor like an old pair of boxers, a padded legal envelope arrived by UPS. I tore the package open and found Fielding’s silver-bound opus inside, carefully dog-eared at page 41:

THE MAGICAL VIRTUE OF CHASTITY. — Belief in the magical potency of chastity and asceticism is widespread, from ancient times down to the modern.

Influential chiefs of the Congo keep in their service a virgin to care for their arrows, shields, rugs and other instruments of war. They are hung up in her room, generally speaking, or in a convenient tree. It is believed that the girl’s purity imbues these objects with some extraordinary virtue, which their user, in turn, “catches.” If the custodian loses her virginity, the articles are destroyed as tainted and dangerous to those who would use them.

As late as the first century A.D., it was believed that the Vestals of Rome had the power by a certain prayer to immobilize runaway slaves where they stood, if they were still within the city walls. A similar power was attributed to one of the “gangas” of Doango, in Mozambique.

For the second time in our acquaintance, Mrs. Haven, you’d sent me a code I was helpless to crack. “Influential chiefs” of the Congo? The “ gangas ” of Mozambique? Had you sent me the book as a joke, or was it precisely the opposite: a veiled cry for help? And in what sense, exactly, could a rug be considered an instrument of war?

I never needed to break this particular code, as it turned out, because you rang my buzzer that same afternoon. You were out of breath when you entered, like a Hollywood adultress, and you couldn’t seem to look me in the eye. I took the Eskimo coat from your shoulders and kicked a stack of photocopies off the couch. You had on a hideous pair of Adidas cross-trainers, the kind a Boca Raton retiree would wear, and rumpled blue cotton pajamas. The pajamas were emblazoned with a design that I couldn’t decipher: it might have been a pattern of storm clouds, or whirlpools, or even tiny, slate-gray galaxies. You glanced down at yourself, frowning a little, as though someone had dressed you without your consent. You had just taken a step: perhaps the biggest of our secret life together. You must have been as terrified as I was.

“What’s this?” you said, picking up one of my notebooks.

“Nothing,” I mumbled. “Just notes and such.”

“Notes and such for what?”

“For that project I mentioned at my cousin’s party.”

“What sort of project? I can’t quite remember.” You hefted the notebook like a piece of evidence. “Are you working on a novel, Mr. Tompkins?”

“Jesus no,” I said, giving a tight little laugh. “One of those per family’s enough.”

“You’ve got a novelist in your family?” You narrowed your eyes. “No more cloak-and-dagger, Walter. Spill the beans.”

I’d trapped myself, Mrs. Haven, and I knew it. I felt the familiar pool of shame condensing at the base of my spine, the shame I’d felt for years whenever the subject of Orson came up; and there were definite reasons, given who your husband was, to keep his name from you. But there was no way out for me but straight ahead.

“It’s my father, believe it or not. But his books aren’t the kind—”

“I wonder if I’ve heard of him. Is his name Tompkins, too?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Mrs. Haven.”

“Fine with me,” you said blithely, making an elaborate dusting-off gesture with your hands. You were used to men not wanting to talk about their fathers, apparently. I racked my brain for some new topic, anything at all, but I needn’t have bothered. You had an announcement to make.

“I talked to the Husband this morning. I told him about our arrangement.”

I counted down from ten before I spoke.

“Our arrangement?”

You nodded. “I decided it was time.”

Images of the Husband overran my frontal lobe: photographs culled from magazines, mostly, of him shaking the hands of movie stars and hedge-fund managers and minor heads of state. Any temptation I might have felt to come clean — to tell you why I’d concealed my identity, or what I knew about the man whose name you bore — withered when I considered his position in the world. The walls of the apartment seemed to be vibrating faintly, as though a subway train were passing underneath us. You waited patiently for me to answer.

“What was his reaction, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He laughed.”

The tremors grew stronger. “Why would he do that?”

“He laughs when he’s angry. He’s conflict-averse.”

“I think you need to tell me what he said, Mrs. Haven.”

“He said he’d deal with you in time. Those were his words exactly. ‘I’ll deal with Mr. Tompkins, dear — he calls me “dear”—in time.’”

I said nothing to that. The vibrations had stopped.

“It’s not worth worrying about, Walter. Really. He’s said this kind of thing before.”

“And what’s happened before? When he’s said that, I mean. Did he actually—”

“He doesn’t know you, Walter. He couldn’t hurt you if he wanted to.”

“What else did he say? I’d like the exact phrasing, if possible.”

This seemed to amuse you: you sat up and worked your face into a frown. “‘I appreciate your candor, oh woman, destroyer of worlds,’” you declaimed in a mock baritone. “‘Thanks for telling me about this pal of yours.’”

By now my throat and tongue were dry as chalk. “There’s not much to tell, when you get right down to it. Is there?”

Your eyes went flat instantly. “Not much to tell?”

“I only mean—”

“I thought you were in love with me, Walter. That was my understanding.”

“Mrs. Haven, if you’ll just—”

“You did say that at some point, didn’t you?”

I tried and failed to find the voice to speak. You returned my glassy stare without a flinch.

“I’ll bet I can guess the reason for your hesitation, Walter. Would you like me to guess?”

“Hold on. Hold on just a second—”

“You think it was premature to tell the Husband, because I haven’t let you fuck me yet. And that’s by no means unreasonable. That makes excellent sense.” You nodded to yourself. “We’re basically strangers, after all.”

You sat upright now, your back unnaturally straight, like a typist or a judge behind the bench. Your lips were compressed into a tight and bloodless crimp: Fielding’s “cupid’s bow” was gone without a trace. I saw you suddenly as you might have looked at age six or seven, struggling to control your temper, sitting by yourself in some neglected corner. But when I tried to imagine the rest of that faraway room, or the house you’d grown up in, or the people who’d lived in it with you, the picture went dark. You were right, I realized. The two of us were strangers to each other.

“Mrs. Haven,” I said quietly, “you haven’t even told me your first name.”

You gave a slight start, as though I’d just spoken Latin, or barked like a terrier, or whispered to you that your breasts were showing. One of them was, in fact, which didn’t help matters. You took a long time to answer, staring off into space — or into spacetime, possibly — and when you spoke again your voice was soft and slow.