USA Noir Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series Read online

  * * *

  The first question came from a bearded man in his forties, the type who wrote nasty book reviews that guaranteed him tenure.

  “Do you think if you’d stayed in Brooklyn,” the bearded man asked, “you’d have been a better writer?”

  Carmody smiled at the implied insult, the patronizing tone.

  “Probably,” he answered. “But you never know these things with any certainty. I might never have become a writer at all. There’s nothing in the Brooklyn air or the Brooklyn water that makes writers, or we’d have a couple of million writers here . . .”

  A woman in her twenties stood up. “Do you write on a word processor, in longhand, or on a typewriter?”

  This was the way it was everywhere, and Carmody relaxed into the familiar. Soon he’d be asked how to get an agent or how he got his ideas and how do I protect my own ideas when I send a manuscript around? Could you read the manuscript of my novel and tell me what’s wrong? The questions came and he answered as politely as possible. He drew people like that, and he knew why: He was a success, and there were thousands of would-be writers who thought there were secret arrangements, private keys, special codes that would open the doors to the alpine slopes of the best-seller lists. He tried to tell them that, like life, it was all a lottery. Most didn’t believe him.

  Then the manager stepped to the microphone and smiled and said that Mr. Carmody would now be signing books. “Because of the large turnout,” the manager said, “Mr. Carmody will not be able to personalize each book. Otherwise many of you would have a long wait.” Carmody thanked everybody for coming on such a frigid night and there was warm, loud applause. He sat down at the table and sipped from a bottle of Poland Spring water.

  He signed the first three books on the frontispiece, and then a woman named Peggy Williams smiled and said, “Could you make an exception? We didn’t go to school together, but we went to the same school twenty years apart. Could you mention that?”

  He did, and the line slowed. Someone wanted him to mention the Dodgers. Another, Coney Island. One man wanted a stickball reference, although he was too young to ever have played that summer game. “It’s for my father,” he explained. There was affection in these people, for this place, this neighborhood, which was now their neighborhood. But Carmody began to feel something else in the room, something he could not see.

  “You must think you’re hot shit,” said a woman in her fifties. She had daubed rouge on her pale cheeks. “I’ve been in this line almost an hour.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and tried to be light. “It’s almost as bad as the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “You could just sign the books,” she said. “Leave off the fancy stuff.”

  “That’s what some people want,” he said. “The fancy stuff.”

  “And you gotta give it to them? Come on.”

  He signed his name on the title page and handed it to her, still smiling.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding the book before him like a summons. “I waited a long time. Put in, ‘For Gerry’—with a G—‘who waited on line for more than an hour.’”

  She laughed then too, and he did what she asked. The next three just wanted signatures, and two just wanted “Merry Christmas” and then a collector arrived and Carmody signed six first editions. He was weary now, his mind filling with images of Molly Mulrane and Seanie’s face and injuries he had caused so long ago. All out there somewhere. And still the line trailed away from the table, into a crowd that, without his glasses, had become a multicolored smear, like a bookcase.

  * * *

  The woman came around from the side aisle, easing toward the front of the line in a distracted way. Carmody saw her whisper to someone on the line, a young man who made room for her with the deference reserved for the old. She was hatless, her white hair cut in girlish bangs across her furrowed brow. She was wearing a short down coat, black skirt, black stockings, mannish shoes. The coat was open, showing a dark rose sweater. Her eyes were pale.

  Holy God.

  She was six feet away from him, behind two young men and a collector. A worn leather bag hung from her shoulder. A bag so old that Carmody remembered buying it in a shop in the Village, next door to the Eighth Street Bookshop. He remembered it when it was new, and so was he.

  He glanced past the others and saw that she was not looking at him. She stared at bookshelves, or the ceiling, or the floor. Her face had an indoor whiteness. The color of ghosts. He signed a book, then another. And the girl he once loved began to come to him, the sweet pretty girl who asked nothing of him except that he love her back. And he felt then a great rush of sorrow. For her. For himself. For their lost child. He felt as if tears would soon leak from every pore in his body. He heard a whisper of someone howling. The books in front of him were now as meaningless as bricks.

  Then she was there. And Carmody rose slowly and leaned forward to embrace her across the table.

  “Oh, Molly,” he whispered. “Oh, Molly, I’m so, so sorry.”

  She smiled then, and the brackets that framed her mouth seemed to vanish, and for a moment Carmody imagined taking her away with him, repairing her in the sun of California, making it up, writing a new ending. Rewriting his own life. He started to come around the table.

  “Molly,” he said. “Molly, my love.”

  Then her hand reached into the leather bag and he knew what it now must hold. Passed down from her father. A souvenir of long ago.

  Yes, he thought. Release me, Molly. Yes. Bring me your nickel-plated gift. Do it.

  Her hand came out of the bag, holding what he expected.

  RUN KISS DADDY

  BY JOYCE CAROL OATS

  Kittatinny Mountains

  (Originally published in New Jersey Noir)

  Tell Daddy hello! Run kiss Daddy.”

  He’d been gone from the lake less than an hour but in this new family each parting and each return signaled a sort of antic improvised celebration—he didn’t want to think it was the obverse of what must have happened before he’d arrived in their lives—the Daddy departing, and the Daddy not returning.

  “Sweetie, h’lo! C’mere.”

  He dropped to one knee as the boy ran at him to be hugged. A rough wet kiss on Kevin’s forehead.

  The little girl hesitated. Only when the mother pushed more firmly at her small shoulders did she spring forward and run—wild-blue-eyed suddenly, with a high-pitched squeal like a mouse being squeezed—into his arms. He laughed—he was startled by the heat of the little body—flattered and deeply moved, kissing the excited child on the delicate soft skin at her temple where—he’d only just noticed recently—a pale blue vein pulsed.

  “What do you say to Daddy when Daddy comes back?”

  The mother clapped her hands to make a game of it. This new family was so new to her too, weekends at Paraquarry Lake were best borne as a game, as play.

  “Say Hi Daddy!—Kiss-kiss Daddy!”

  Obediently the children cried what sounded like Hi Daddy! Kiss-kiss Daddy!

  Little fish-mouths pursed for kisses against Daddy’s cheek.

  Reno had only driven into the village of Paraquarry Falls to bring back semi-emergency supplies: toilet paper, flashlight batteries, mosquito repellant, mouse traps, a gallon container of milk, a shiny new garden shovel to replace the badly rusted shovel that had come with the camp. Also, small sweet-fruit yogurts for the children though both he and the mother weren’t happy about them developing a taste for sugary foods—but there wasn’t much of a selection at the convenience store.

  In this new-Daddy phase in which unexpected treats are the very coinage of love.

  * * *

  “Who wants to help Daddy dig?”

  Both children cried Me!—thrilled at the very prospect of working with Daddy on the exciting new terrace overlooking the lake.

  And so they helped Daddy excavate the old, crumbled-brick terrace a previous owner had left amid
a tangle of weeds, pebbles, and broken glass, or tried to help Daddy—for a while. Clearly such work was too arduous for a seven-year-old, still more for a four-year-old, with play shovels and rakes; and the mild June air too humid for much exertion. And there were mosquitoes and gnats. Despite the repellant. For these were the Kittatinny Mountains east of the Delaware Water Gap in early June—that season of teeming buzzing fecundity—just to inhale the air is to inhale the smells of burgeoning life.

  “Oh! Dad-dy!” Devra recoiled from something she’d unearthed in the soil, lost her balance, and fell back onto her bottom with a little cry. Reno saw it was just a beetle—iridescent, wriggling—and told her not to be afraid: “They just live in the ground, sweetie. They have special beetle work to do in the ground.”

  Kevin said, “Like worms! They have ‘work’ in the ground.”

  This simple science—earth science—the little boy had gotten from Reno. Very gratifying to hear your words repeated with child-pride.

  From the mother Reno knew that their now-departed father had often behaved “unpredictably” with the children and so Reno made it a point to be soft-spoken in their presence, good-natured and unexcitable, predictable.

  What pleasure in being predictable!

  Still, Devra was frightened. She’d dropped her play shovel in the dirt. Reno saw that the little girl had enough of helping Daddy with the terrace for the time being. “Sweetie, go see what Mommy’s doing. You don’t need to dig anymore right now.”

  Kevin remained with Daddy. Kevin snorted in derision, his baby sister was so scaredy.

  * * *

  Reno was a father, again. Fatherhood, returned to him. A gift he hadn’t quite deserved the first time—maybe—but this time, he would strive to deserve it.

  This time, he was forty-seven years old. He—who’d had a very hard time perceiving himself other than young, a kid.

  And this new marriage!—this beautiful new family small and vulnerable as a mouse cupped trembling in the hand—he was determined to protect with his life. Not ever not ever let this family slip from his grasp as he’d let slip from his grasp his previous family—two young children rapidly retreating now in Reno’s very memory like a scene glimpsed in the rearview mirror of a speeding vehicle.

  “Come to Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”

  The name itself seemed to him beautiful, seductive—like the Delaware River at the Water Gap where the river was wide, glittering and winking like shaken foil. As a boy he’d hiked the Appalachian Trail in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania and northwestern New Jersey—across the river on the high pedestrian walkway, north to Dunfield Creek and Sunfish Pond and so to Paraquarry Lake which was the most singular of the Kittitanny Ridge lakes, edged with rocks like a crude lacework and densely wooded with ash, elm, birch, and maples that flamed red in autumn.

  So he courted them with tales of his boyhood hikes, canoeing on the river and on Paraquarry Lake, camping along the Kittatinny Ridge where once, thousands of years ago, a glacier lay like a massive claw over the land.

  He told them of the Lenni Lenape Indians who’d inhabited this part of the country for thousands of years!—far longer than their own kind.

  As a boy he’d never found arrowheads at Paraquarry Lake or elsewhere, yet he recalled that others had, and so spoke excitedly to the boy Kevin as if to enlist him in a search; he did not quite suggest they might discover Indian bones that sometimes came to the surface at Paraquarry Lake, amid shattered red shale and ordinary rock and dirt.

  In this way and in others he courted the new wife Marlena, who was a decade younger than he; and the new son, Kevin; and the new daughter who’d won his heart the first glimpse he’d had of her—tiny Devra with white-blond hair fine as the silk of milkweed.

  Another man’s lost family. Or maybe cast off—as Marlena had said in her bright brave voice determined not to appear hurt, humiliated.

  His own family—Reno had hardly cast off. Whatever his ex-wife would claim. If anything, Reno had been the one to be cast off by her.

  Yet careful to tell Marlena, early in their relationship: “It was my fault, I think. I was too young. When we got married—just out of college—we were both too young. It’s said that if you ‘cohabit’ before getting married it doesn’t actually make any difference in the long run—whether you stay married, or get divorced—but our problem was that we hadn’t a clue what ‘cohabitation’ meant—means. We were always two separate people and then my career took off . . .”

  Took off wasn’t Reno’s usual habit of speech. Nor was it Reno’s habit to talk so much, and so eagerly. But when he’d met a woman he believed he might come to seriously care for—at last—he’d felt obliged to explain himself to her: there had to be some failure in his personality, some flaw, otherwise why was he alone, unmarried; why had he become a father whose children had grown up largely without him, and without seeming to need him?

  At the time of the divorce, Reno had granted his wife too many concessions. In his guilty wish to be generous to her though the breakup had been as much his wife’s decision as his own. He’d signed away much of their jointly owned property, and agreed to severely curtailed visitation rights with the children. He hadn’t yet grasped this simple fact of human relations—the more readily you give, the more readily it will be taken from you as what you owe.

  His wife had appealed to him to be allowed to move to Oregon, where she had relatives, with the children; Reno hadn’t wanted to contest her.

  Within a few years, she’d relocated again—with a new husband, to Sacramento.

  In these circuitous moves, somehow Reno was cast off. One too many corners had been turned, the father had been left behind except for child-support payments.

  Trying not to feel like a fool. Trying to remain a gentleman long after he’d come to wonder why.

  * * *

  “Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”

  * * *

  The new wife was sure, yes, she would love Paraquarry Lake. Laughing at Reno’s boyish enthusiasm, squeezing his arm.

  Kevin and Devra were thrilled. Their new father—new Daddy—so much nicer than the old, other Daddy—eagerly spreading out photographs on a tabletop like playing cards.

  “Of course,” the new Daddy said, a sudden crease between his eyes, “this cabin in the photos isn’t the one we’ll be staying in. This is the one—” Reno paused, stricken. It felt as if a thorn had lodged in his throat.

  This is the one I have lost was not an appropriate statement to make to the new children and to the new wife listening so raptly to him, the new wife’s fingers lightly resting on his arm.

  These photographs had been selected. Reno’s former wife and former children—of course, former wasn’t the appropriate word!—were not shown to the new family.

  Eleven years invested in the former marriage! It made him sick—just faintly, mildly sick—to think of so much energy and emotion, lost.

  Though there’d been strain between Reno and his ex-wife—exacerbated when they were in close quarters together—he’d still insisted upon bringing his family to Paraquarry Lake on weekends through much of the year and staying there—of course—for at least six weeks each summer. When Reno couldn’t get off from work he drove up weekends. For the “camp” at Paraquarry Lake—as he called it—was essential to his happiness.

  Not that it was a particularly fancy place: it wasn’t. Several acres of deciduous and pine woods, and hundred-foot frontage on the lake—that was what made the place special.

  Eventually, in the breakup, the Paraquarry Lake camp had been sold. Reno’s wife had come to hate the place and had no wish to buy him out—nor would she sell her half to him. In the woman’s bitterness, the camp had been lost to strangers.

  Now, it was nine years later. Reno hadn’t seen the place in years. He’d driven along the Delaware River and inland to the lake and past the camp several times but became too emotional staring at it from the road, such
bitter nostalgia wasn’t good for him, and wasn’t, he wanted to think, typical of him. So much better to think—to tell people in his new life, It was an amicable split-up and an amicable divorce overall. We’re civilized people—the kids come first!

  Was this what people said, in such circumstances? You did expect to hear, The kids come first!

  Now, there was a new camp. A new “cabin”—an A-frame, in fact—the sort of thing for which Reno had always felt contempt; but the dwelling was attractive, “modern,” and in reasonably good condition with a redwood deck and sliding glass doors overlooking both the lake and a ravine of tangled wild rose to the rear. The nearest neighbor was uncomfortably close—only a few yards away—but screened by evergreens and a makeshift redwood fence a previous owner had erected.

  Makeshift too was the way in which the A-frame had been cantilevered over a drop in the rocky earth, with wooden posts supporting it; if you entered at the rear you stepped directly into the house, but if you entered from the front, that is, facing the lake, you had to climb a steep flight of not-very-sturdy wood steps, gripping a not-very-sturdy railing. The property had been owned by a half-dozen parties since its original owner in the 1950s. Reno wondered at the frequent turnover of owners—this wasn’t typical of the Water Gap area where people returned summer after summer for a lifetime.

  The children loved the Paraquarry camp—they hugged their new Daddy happily, to thank him—and the new wife who’d murmured that she wasn’t an “outdoor type” conceded that it was really very nice—“and what a beautiful view.”

  Reno wasn’t about to tell Marlena that the view from his previous place had been more expansive, and more beautiful.

  Marlena kissed him, so very happy. For he had saved her, as she had saved him. From what—neither could have said.

  * * *

  Paraquarry Lake was not a large lake: seven miles in circumference. The shoreline was so distinctly uneven and most of it thickly wooded and inaccessible except by boat. On maps the lake was L-shaped but you couldn’t guess this from shore—nor even from a boat—you would have to fly in a small plane overhead, as Reno had done many years ago.