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  But it wasn’t just that. Patterson cared about these people. He almost hated to admit it, but he did. He was exasperated and tired, but he couldn’t stand to see these poor people suffer. It was the last thing this woman needed to fall down and get trampled to death outside a television studio in San Francisco.

  The producer had begun making suggestions: tape the show in LA like you used to, or use one of those independent video bunkers in Marin or Berkeley, where the musicians lipsynched and people spent all night making close-ups of model space ships.

  He made sure the woman was okay, made sure she was conscious and smiling—weakly, but it was a smile. It was a brave smile—emotion had swept her. She thought she was happy.

  Patterson felt the familiar inner refrain: got to do something different.

  Can’t go on like this.

  He shook hands, wrestled his arm back out of one frenzied grasp after another, smiled all the while. He couldn’t believe himself. Here he was, smiling, waving, and he knew the risk.

  He snaked his way to the limo, tangled with the CBS security like a running back shoving his own blockers ahead of him. People everywhere. This was tight security? This was a slow, steady riot.

  Jesus, it was starting to hurt, that rictus he kept for all comers. He had made it to the automobile, but the car door was blocked by photographers, squinting up at him, cameras whining.

  “Get that door open!” someone was bellowing. “Open the door!”

  This was controlled hysteria, the forces of order barely more coherent than the citizens themselves. The station had beefed up its complement of uniforms, but the result was that the usual mob was simply increased in size, in weight.

  The door was open at last, and Patterson was pushed inside, someone’s hand pressed down on the top of his head, to protect it from the top of the doorframe, a gesture both solicitous and commanding: you go here now.

  Patterson was on the seat, arm on an armrest, and now the door wasn’t closing, slammed against an ankle or a briefcase. The engine started, but there were cries of “Hold it! Hold it!” People were in the way, tangled around the car, in the door handle, the bumpers, the street a mass of people shouting and taking pictures.

  Patterson had wanted to be a doctor. What did he mean wanted to be. He was a doctor. An M.D. His drawings of the bones of the hand had been sold and framed. He had published articles on the spleen when he was only a resident at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, probing gunshot wounds for the pumper, the trauma-severed artery that was spurting life.

  He knew quite enough about bullets, soft-nosed, high-velocity, every sort of projectile. He had been continually amazed and horrified at the power of guns, the abrupt, unnatural navel of the entry wound giving way to the blossom-burst of the bullet’s exit. He had contemplated a career of research or clinical, hands-on medicine before drifting into psychiatry because, if the truth were told, he was afraid of having patients who might die.

  Disease terrified him—not that he was entirely squeamish. He admired the graceful, thread-thin vine of the lymphatic system, the lovely, burgundy lobes of the liver, the busy brain-gray plumbing of the guts. As an intern he saw people dying, and he felt abashed in the face of pain, in the face of the grief-stunned family, and had hoped for living patients, people who were likely to survive.

  “Please move so we can shut the door please,” a voice was calling. It was Poole.

  Patterson could have chosen urology, with its reservoirs and ducts, or podiatry with its faith in bone to heal, like living wood, chalk fusing with chalk. But he believed in hope, an invisible, airy presence in the body. He wanted to be a physician. He wanted to be a living doctor, with living patients. He wanted to be a therapist.

  The door would not shut. Someone was trying to thrust something in through the half-closed space, a bunch of color, reds, yellows—flowers. Patterson reached for the bouquet, and called out that it was all right, but security guards had the woman—if it was a woman—and the flowers were snatched away, scattered.

  People responded to the logic of the times. It made sense. It was what happened when you became famous: people wanted you dead.

  Everything comes to an end: the door was slammed. The limo parted people, guards, cops, photographers, figures helping each other out of the way, a Laocoön of traffic police, uniformed figures yelling into transmitters, stocky women holding back tourist’s aiming what could have been pistols but which were, from the lack of effect, mere cameras, the latest in miniaturization, magnetic tape or Kodachrome capturing what would turn out to be an enigmatic shot, one that would require a voice-over in a living room down the years: “There’s Dr. Patterson, you can sort of see him. Look at all the security; someone was going to shoot him.”

  “We’re out of here,” said the driver cheerfully, another stranger, a large, dark man. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was a driver Patterson knew, someone provided by the city or the station or the network. But even he could be the assassin, driving off with his victim.

  They weren’t out of there. They were going nowhere. Patterson closed his eyes. He wanted to practice medicine. That was all. He wanted to help someone, just one person, in the way he had been trained. He was a healer. In his intellect, his heart, his scheme of the future, he was still just that—a physician.

  They were moving at last. This was where the sniper would have a clear shot.

  He couldn’t go on like this, eyeing the rooftops as they glided past. He wondered which billboard, which gable, which parked car, hid the rifleman. Or the pedestrians at the curb—the windows, although high-impact, were not bulletproof, not at this angle, so close.

  You won’t even hear it, thought Patterson. The burst that blows all this away will be the single most important thing that ever happens to you.

  And you’ll never know it.

  They whisked through an intersection. Another clear shot, if someone wanted to take it. Any of those blurred figures could be cradling a gun.

  The only man who had understood Patterson was Paul Angevin, and Paul was dead, lost four or five years ago. They had found his fishing boat floating empty in the Pacific. Paul had been a TV producer mildly famous for his shows on the heart, the brain.

  Patterson got Loretta Lee on the limo phone. “I take it you’re not dead yet,” said Loretta Lee.

  “What I want to know is, why would a prospective killer call up and tell a radio station what they were going to do?” said Patterson.

  “An extrovert,” said Loretta Lee.

  Patterson wanted to argue the point, but he couldn’t. There were people who liked to operate in secret, and people who didn’t. They were living in an age of people who couldn’t stop talking. “Maybe he’ll blow me up on the show.”

  “We’ll schedule it if you want.”

  “Who is this little jerk? Poole.”

  “The network loves him. He’s an expert.”

  “Let me guess. He teaches the FBI how to keep people from copying videotapes.”

  “He’s been complaining. He says you want to get killed.”

  There was nothing like changing subjects. “Do you think Angie is trying to seduce me?” asked Patterson.

  “I thought you didn’t take much seducing,” said Loretta Lee.

  If I were a killer, smiled Patterson to himself, enjoying the sound of Loretta Lee’s voice, I would be there, behind that approaching chimney, up on that roof. I would be chambering a shell and taking a deep breath.

  Ready to squeeze.

  7

  Margaret’s mother called. “We’re both absolutely sick,” she said. “When this kind of thing happens it just makes you wonder.”

  Margaret considered this. Then she had to ask. She kept her voice calm, even indifferent. “What does it make you wonder?” asked Margaret.

  Andrea did not answer, except, perhaps, in an oblique way. “How is Curtis taking it?”

  “You can imagine,” said Margaret. But this didn’t sound quite right. So she added, “He’l
l be okay.”

  Andrea let a pause enter the conversation, a way of indicating that Curtis must not be entirely okay. “I would so much like to talk to him,” she said.

  “He’s resting,” said Margaret. It was true enough.

  “I was so hoping I could say something to him, offer our condolences—”

  “Not right now,” said Margaret.

  There was another, careful little pause. “Do give him our love,” said Andrea. “And if you need to talk to me, about anything …”

  Her mother’s use of our was something new. As she communicated polite concern, with an underlying, natural fascination with bad news, she was also letting Margaret know something about the future.

  Mrs. Wye brought a plate of peanut butter cookies. The white-haired woman was stronger, now, perhaps because there was misfortune to be shared—a misfortune not her own.

  “You shouldn’t have come up all this way,” said Margaret.

  “I just wanted to do anything I could do,” said Mrs. Wye.

  Margaret thanked her, and tasted one of the still-warm cookies. It was delicious, and Margaret said so.

  “I was hoping I could see the poor man,” said Mrs. Wye.

  “He needs some time to himself,” said Margaret.

  “Of course he does. He must be devastated.”

  “It’s hard,” said Margaret.

  “And you look tired, too, dear Margaret.”

  “Not really.”

  Mrs. Wye stood there, one hand gripping an aluminum walking stick, the white rubber tip of the stick punched into the carpet. The carpet puckered there, slightly, as though Mrs. Wye was a much stronger, heavier person who had arrived to stand rooted on the spot. “I think I know what’s happening.”

  There were eleven cookies left, petite pats of dough that had been indented by the tines of a fork before baking. They rested on a bone-white Spode plate. Behind the cookies, on the pattern of the plate, Margaret could make out a hunting scene. A woman on a horse was barely making it over a rail fence.

  Maybe I am tired, thought Margaret. Too tired for conversation, anyway.

  “How is he, in fact?” asked Mrs. Wye. She emphasized in fact.

  “You don’t need to worry,” said Margaret.

  Mrs. Wye gave the slightest smile—she knew. “I know how he must feel. Art is the way we expand out of ourselves, and into the future.” Mrs. Wye shivered with the intensity of her feeling. “I hope he won’t suffer a relapse, Margaret.”

  Margaret felt a kinship with Mrs. Wye. It was a sudden rush of gratitude, affection. “You know how fond he is of you.”

  Mrs. Wye’s voice was strong. She lifted the aluminum stick. “If you need my help …”

  Margaret thanked her.

  “People expect everything of us,” said Mrs. Wye.

  “Maybe they should,” said Margaret, knowing that Mrs. Wye did not mean simply people. “Maybe we’re stronger than they are.”

  Mrs. Wye was gone before Margaret remembered the photo album. Margaret wanted to share these images with Mrs. Wye, but instead she sat alone holding the big, hand-bound book, leafing through the pages herself. Here was Curtis smiling, hands on his hips, Stinson Beach stretching behind him. Here was Margaret on the same beach, her turn now, smiling back at Curtis. It was painful to see how happy they were.

  And here was a picture taken at Santa Cruz. Curtis had swept her along in a sudden desire to drive down Highway 1, and Margaret had left the radio playing in her apartment, her drafting table lamp on, forgetting everything but Curtis. He had been like that in those days, impetuous, joyful.

  Here was a photo taken by a stranger, a man happy to oblige. Two people stood smiling, windblown, just a little sunburned. Curtis had his arm around her. That night they had made love, the lights of the boardwalk spinning, the twirling necklace of the ferris wheel far beyond the motel window. She could see the light in her mind’s eye, the way Curtis had looked, the subtle, shifting colors.

  It was the first night they had spent together, and Margaret had awakened in the early hours. She did not know where she was for a moment, but she knew who was beside her, and what was happening to her life. She had been too excited to sleep again, awake until dawn.

  And here was another picture, the two of them at a table in one of those South of Market clubs, his hand stretched across the table to take hers. It didn’t seem possible to her that they used to go out like this nearly every night.

  The first impression she always had, entering the room, was that it was entirely empty. The emptiness was complete, unbroken, as was the silence.

  Curtis said nothing, lying there in the bad light.

  “This isn’t like being alive,” she said. “It’s like pretending you’re dead.”

  He did not respond. A single strip of daylight fell across the bed, and across one of his legs.

  Through a part in the curtain was the blue sky. The sky was not yet obscured by the afternoon clouds that always arrived over San Francisco Bay in June.

  It was difficult to say what she had to say. “Nobody is watching you,” she said. “Nobody is trying to listen in on your conversation.” She couldn’t help it—her voice trembled.

  He wasn’t listening.

  Earlier she had folded a washcloth across his eyes. She had read of people doing this in former days, when it was thought darkness and a damp cloth might be a cure for headaches. The washcloth had been cold. Now it was warm.

  After awhile you could see fairly well in light like this. The eye adjusted. The single slant of light was nearly too bright to look at. She continued, “People aren’t tapping your phone. It isn’t real—the way you think.” She didn’t want to say the words. Talking about it made it sound worse. Phrasing it made her think: could he really be this disturbed?

  There was a mirror across the room. She could see the reflection of a woman in a dark skirt, with long, dark hair, staring into the looking glass with an expression of calm. No one could have guessed what she was feeling.

  “It’s not even a matter of opinion,” she said. “Whether Caravaggio was a better painter than Rembrandt is a matter of opinion. This is a matter of what’s real.”

  It was like talking to herself. All right, she reasoned. Maybe that’s all I’m doing. She could think of no better place to be.

  She continued to speak, in a voice so low he probably could not have heard it anyway. “I was hoping that when I married you I could make you stronger.” Her mother had told her she was a fool. Curtis Newns would be nothing but trouble.

  “I am not crying,” she said. “Not enough to bother you, anyway. Bruno is going to be here in half an hour. I don’t want to see Bruno alone.”

  There was a movement on the bed, the angle of elbow, the slant of knee changing slightly. She read the meaning: I don’t blame you.

  But he did not speak.

  The nude drawings, the ones of me, she thought. “He’ll want to buy something—whatever you have. And then he’ll want to see what else you’re doing—what big thing you’re working on.”

  His eyes were open. He was gazing at the ceiling.

  “You want me to show him the drawings,” she said. “But he can’t have them. He can’t even take a photo of them. I’ll just let him look.”

  He continued his silence, but she did not feel so alone anymore. He was aware of every word. “You want him to think you’re painting.”

  She knew him. She savored his silence, and continued, “Curtis, I would do anything for you. But you care what people think.”

  Curtis shifted one of his feet, slightly.

  “And what people are going to think,” she said, “is that you’re as bad as ever—too sick to see your old friend Bruno.”

  She paused. She knew what Curtis would say: He’s not a friend. She continued, “What will I tell him?”

  She could sense the tension in him. She sat on the bed beside him, and ran a hand along his arm. “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to you.”


  Sometimes he reminded her of a leopard, a mustang, a captured creature who could communicate alertness, acceptance, tension with every angle of his posture, the way he breathed. Just now he was saying: there is nothing you can do for me.

  She said, “I’m losing you.”

  8

  The security guard in the lobby called to report that Mr. Kraft was here.

  Margaret said that Mr. Kraft should come up, sounding just as natural as though Mr. Kraft was a regular visitor, or maybe someone arriving to measure the place for new curtains.

  Maybe I should greet him at the door, she thought. Or maybe let him ring the doorbell, once.

  He did not ring the doorbell. He knocked, and he arrived more quickly than Margaret had expected, so that she was far across the room, arranging a dry bouquet on the piano. This made her a little breathless when she reached the threshold.

  Margaret opened the door, and he did not move or make a sound for a second or two. He looked at her, and she was aware of how much he could surmise at a glance. He seemed to know her at once.

  He was bigger than his photographs, and better looking. The famous critic’s hand captured hers. She was aware of the moment, having rehearsed it mentally so many times. She held forth her hand, and he took it, and she told him how pleased she was to meet him at last.

  “Margaret Darcy,” said Bruno Kraft, and the way he said her name made it sound lovely. “I have looked forward to this moment for a long time. Someone should have given me fair warning—you are absolutely beautiful.”

  Margaret gave a little laugh. “You’re famous for your charm,” she said.

  “I am famous for my taste,” he said. “And for my honesty.”

  But he had called her by her maiden name, the name she used on her books. Perhaps this was a way of separating her from Curtis, an imaginary, momentary divorce.

  “Honesty is important. And sincerity.” She was chattering, talking without bothering to think. She had warned herself against this. But it was such a relief to actually have him here, to have the anticipation over with, and she was giddy—the feeling surprised her. She was excited by something she had not expected.