“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get a big, overpriced dinner.”
—
We went to one of those lobster joints where you sit outside and eat as much fish, bread, and corn as you can fit into your face. In her own impassive way, Dena ate like someone who’d been starving. I’d only seen a Dorito’s bag in her father’s kitchen.
I tried to gorge as much as she. But something reduced my appetite. I realized that, even if I were done with the chase for the movie, someone else might not be.
And if Johnny Cooper had gotten as far as Europe, how hard was Bar Harbor, Maine?
I looked around the picnic area. I saw a family of three, two chubby adults with one fat, screaming kid. I saw a teenage couple, practically licking each other’s faces. An elderly woman was sitting alone, sucking on a lobster leg.
“What are you looking at?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered.
“You think he’d—”
“Well, why not?”
Dena had no reply. I saw a maintenance worker shaking out a garbage can. More kids. I looked past the restaurant grounds to the water it abutted. There were all kinds of boats docked there, from sailboats to yachts. Who knew who was on them?
“Well, if you’re not going to eat this,” Dena said, ever practical, “you ought to wrap it up.”
My round robin of suspicion ended at our table. I saw Dena placing the rest of my dinner in a doggie bag. She was doing it carefully; she so clearly cared about me. I couldn’t help it, I felt more disappointment about her father’s tape than gratitude. And that didn’t make me proud.
—
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You can’t go back to New York tonight.”
I hadn’t intended to. I was exhausted; I’d even hoped to stay a few days. But suddenly I felt that being alone again would help me think.
Besides, there was just the one mattress.
“All right,” I said, weakly. “The floor will be fine.”
“Now you’re being infantile.”
It was a statement of fact from Dena. Precise, businesslike, she pulled down the cover and sheet of her father’s mattress and plumped the single pillow. Then she doused the light.
In the dark, I could see her start to undress, pulling her child’s T-shirt up. Then we both turned away. As ever, it seemed weirdly instinctive for us to avoid anything else. I quickly stripped to my shorts and crawled into bed.
A wave of fatigue hit me as soon as I lay down. I barely felt Dena rock the mattress as she joined me.
“Good night,” she said.
I smelled Dena’s newly washed nightgown. I thought instead of Marthe’s leotard, of Katie’s freckles. Then I thought of trivia.
“Anne Bancroft replaced Patricia Neal in John Ford’s Seven Women,” I said.
Dena didn’t hear me. She was faced away, talking, too, but in a dream.
“Lost,” she was saying. “Help me. I’m lost.”
Wasn’t it wrong to be displeased by a woman so displeased by herself? I reached over and wrapped an arm around her. Immediately, Dena held on. In a moment, she was quiet, and so was I. The only sound was a seal in the water outside.
At that moment, the world seemed uninhabited, except for a trivial man and a woman without a subject—or, more precisely, with a subject that had brought her only unhappiness.
The next morning, I called my machine in New York. I was shocked to hear Katie’s voice.
“Roy,” she said, breathlessly. “Get in touch with Leonard Friend in Philadelphia. Ask him about Chapter Fourteen. And tell him that I love him.”
Suddenly, on the tape, in the background, I heard a door open. I heard Johnny’s voice. Then, without another word, she hung up.
I SHOULD HAVE LET IT GO.
I mean, I no longer had a financial backer, except for an unwitting Johnny. I had family responsibilities and a newsletter to put out. But the trail that seemed to end had opened up again. And, at long last, it might lead me to The Day the Clown Cried.
Besides, I owed it to Dena.
“I took all that lobster meat out and put it in a sandwich,” she said, handing me a paper bag the next morning. “There’s one piece of cornbread left. The fries I had to chuck.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had a sense that we sort of loved each other, but in an incredibly muddled way. Why, given my life, should that have been a surprise?
“Thanks.” It seemed an inadequate expression. I followed it up with a big hug, which Dena returned and took time to relinquish.
Finally releasing me, she said, “Be careful.”
“Where will I be able to reach you?”
