On the stroll up Olivia Street, Clay Phipps counted seventeen cats and eleven dogs. The cats were nearly all in motion-skulking over hot curbstones and slinking through the latticework under porches, stalking palmetto bugs or just being sneaky for the hell of it. The dogs tended to be princely still-laid out on the pavement with their chins on their crossed paws, panting softly, contentedly drooling, fixing passersby with the flatteringly interested glances that canines turn on humans. The day had been cloudless, with an odd desiccating wind from the east. The cactuses were gloating, they seemed to stand up straighter and taller as the palms drooped and the poincianas let their feathery leaves hang down lank as Asian hair. Finger-sized lizards clung to tree trunks and climbed the pocked sides of coral rocks; they were brown, gray, invisible until sex or vanity got the best of them and they puffed up their scarlet throat sacs, making themselves impressive and absurd.
Clay Phipps was not ordinarily a rapt observer of dogs and cats, plants and lizards. But this evening he was trying, with mixed success, to distract himself from the errand he was on. It was, on the face of it, a simple mission, potentially a joyous one, yet Phipps could bring himself to feel no joy. Everything had gotten too screwed up in his feelings toward Augie Silver, his feelings toward himself. Everything made him feel ashamed. He had tried to seduce the woman he took for Augie's widow but who may have been his wife. He was selling, at the first opportunity and with hardly a moment's hesitation, the paintings Augie had given him as tokens of their friendship.
Why was he so willing, secretly eager even, to part with those canvases? There was, of course, the nasty vulgar business of the money. It was fatiguing, a high-wire strain to live wealthily year after year while having, in fact, so little cash, so little real security. His newsletter could go out of fashion, the perks and freebies could dry up, and that would be the end of the amber-edged Bordeaux, the turreted hotel rooms. What would he do with himself? Minus the trappings, Clay Phipps would look to all the world like the small-timer, the perennial freeloader, the facile lightweight he suspected himself to be.
That was why he was secretly relieved to have Augie Silver's paintings off his walls: The pictures, like almost everything else to do with Augie, had come to seem a reproach to him, a reminder of how he'd gypped himself for want of nerve, shortchanged his life in the name of doing what was easy. They'd been earnest young artists together, Clay and Augie had. Augie had stuck to his work and eventually won through to mastery, while Clay had given up on the slow salvation of writing plays and used his skill to carve himself a blithe and cushy niche. They'd been bachelors together back when being a bachelor was rambunctious, ribald fun.
Augie had emerged from the debauch with the mysterious readiness for love, for marriage; Clay had not emerged at all, just grown stale within the ever staler game. He had been left behind; no, he had left himself behind, and that was worse.
He walked up Olivia Street and was assaulted by an ugly thought: Certain things would be easier if Augie Silver stayed dead and gone. There'd be a great deal less explaining to do. There'd be no more mute reproaches. Phipps's life had in some sense shriveled to accommodate the fact of his friend's death; he was, if not happy, at ease now in the smaller space, the tighter orbit. Maybe Robert Natchez in some crazy way was right: The world closed up around a dead person, there was no room for his return.
Clay Phipps climbed the three porch steps, paused a moment to smooth his linen shirt, and rang the bell.
After a moment Nina Silver opened the door, not very wide. She was backlit by the yellowish glow of the living room, her jet black hair was square across the bottom and perfectly framed her oval face. She smiled at Clay Phipps, but her posture was the posture of a sentry.
"Clay," she said. It was neither unfriendly nor welcoming.
"Nina," he said. He waited a polite interval to be invited in and was only slightly surprised when the invitation didn't come. "I was wondering how you are. These rumors… It must be very trying."
"I'm all right, Clay," the former widow said. "Thank you for your concern."
There was a silence, and Clay Phipps's falseness filled it up the way a bad smell fills an elevator. Then the evening's first locusts began to rattle. Blocks away, some idiot revved a motorcycle. The family friend cleared his throat. "Nina," he fumbled, "the rumors, the newspaper… Is it true? Is he back?"
There is a horror of lying about important things that is more ancient than morality, a kind of religious terror of tempting fate, offending the universe by denying some crucial facet of it. Nina Silver wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and there was no way she could lie about her husband being alive. "He's back."
"My God."
"He's been through hell, Clay. He's very ill, he's very weak. He's not ready to see people."
"I understand," Phipps mumbled, feeling that he understood nothing, neither life nor death, friendship nor love, loyalty nor envy.
"Please keep this quiet, Clay. Please? We'll call you when he's a little stronger. I promise."
"All right," said Phipps, "all right."
He backed down the porch steps, he didn't know how his feet found the stairs, the sidewalk. On the way home he didn't notice dogs or cats, trees or lizards. He didn't see the misted moon or the swarms of moths around the streetlights. He was looking for something else, scanning his heart for some bright patch of gladness at learning Augie Silver was alive. The gladness should gleam, he thought, the way a pool of cool water gleams in the desert; he could steer his steps to it and be refreshed, be saved. But first he had to find it, and though he looked at nothing else as he strolled down Olivia Street, he couldn't find the glad gleam either.
*
When he got home he was rattled and thirsty. He grabbed an extravagant Pauillac, an '82 Duhart-Milon, and noticed that his fingers were unsteady as he sliced the lead foil. The wine poured purple and thick, it glubbed as it squeezed through the neck of the bottle. No light came through the bowl of the glass, and the first smells were black smells, licorice and tar.
Phipps took the wine to the living room and sat down on the sofa. The pale, denuded rectangles where Augie's paintings had hung put a crazy pattern on the wall. Phipps told himself he'd have the place painted soon.
Augie Silver was alive.
Phipps drank. The wine was closed up still, it tasted less than it smelled and had a steely edge. He sucked air through it. Some of the alcohol was siphoned off and different flavors seemed to move like different-colored pebbles to different places in his mouth. Amazing stuff, Pauillac.
Augie Silver was back, and Clay Phipps was one of the very few people who knew it for sure.
He poured more wine. The wall of tannins opened just a bit, glints of fruit came through like sun through the chinks of a blind. Dusty currant with an undertaste of plum, held together by a teasing astringency that did rude things to the tongue.
Augie was alive, a lot of things were changed, a lot of plans suddenly in chaos, and as Clay Phipps drank he saw less and less the wisdom or necessity of keeping it to himself.
Claire Steiger, at least, should have the information.
He lumbered to his desk, looked up the phone number of the Ars Longa Gallery in New York, and left a message with the answering service. Then he refilled his glass. The wine was getting soft and comfy as a well-used baseball mitt.
Why shouldn't Robert Natchez be told? Why not Ray Yates? They were friends, after all, they had a right to know.
Phipps made two more calls. But Natchez was at a reading and Yates was hiding from his loan shark, and he just talked to their machines. He poured out the last of the wine. He didn't think he'd broken his word to Nina Silver. Had he even given his word? He couldn't quite remember. That part of the evening seemed a different day. His conscience was not clear exactly, but shut down, benumbed. If he'd failed to find the cool, clear water of loyalty, he'd at least availed himself of a damn nice puddle of wine. His balance just a little tentative, he slipped out of his linen clothes and went to bed alone.