A Killing Smile Page 2

  Lawrence pushed past the doctor and two cops and into the cubicle. No one tried to stop him. A nurse was cleaning up the sink; she had blood-stained patches on her uniform. Tubes hung down from the bed. Hospital machinery had been silenced and pulled to the side.

  Lawrence folded back the white sheet soaked with Sarah’s blood. He didn’t recognize the woman underneath as remotely resembling his wife. The flesh on the face had been partially stripped away; peeled, twisted, and sliced; nose and mouth and eyes had collapsed into a wreckage that might have been anyone. He glanced down at the wedding ring on her left hand. It was Sarah’s ring; the only way he knew the body had some connection to him. Lawrence sobbed; he bit the corner of his lower lip and slowly shook his head. “Seriously injured,” he repeated to himself. She had been dead the moment he had received the call from the hospital. His hands began shaking. He couldn’t stop crying and he began slamming a fist into the wall. The numbness seemed to swallow him; and he wanted the pain.

  The nurse quickly covered the body, turned and reached for Lawrence’s hand. One of the cops moved in and pulled Lawrence back. The cop explained the circumstances of the accident, in soft, measured tones. There was a tenderness and caring in that young man’s voice. He didn’t hurry the details; he didn’t make it sound like a standard accident report. He hovered near Lawrence and stared into Lawrence’s eyes. The pupils were dilated and there was little response. Lawrence clenched his fists and smashed them down on the trolley. He collapsed onto the floor, pulling the sheet down with him.

  A few moments later, Lawrence remembered the doctor had given him an injection. He thought the doctor’s Adam’s apple had frozen still the moment the needle slid into the vein on his right arm. As he slipped into unconsciousness he thought of Sarah inside the supermarket, looking at the expiry date on the muffin package. He ran towards her, but she kept several steps ahead; he yelled for her to stop, to look around, to wait for him. He saw her climb into the red midget MG with the top down and pull out of the parking lot. He heard the crash. Lawrence saw a face beneath a sheet that he didn’t recognize. When he awoke it was morning and a nurse was standing over him taking his pulse. Behind her was Kelly Swan and three of his law partners. His room bloomed with baskets of flowers; floral arrangements stacked back to back.

  The ordinariness of Sarah’s last day, a day filled with minor errands, paperwork, routine matters, were inappropriate to her death. A series of insignificant events ending in shattered glass and broken, smashed metal. His eyes closed, arms folded across his forehead, Lawrence shifted through the miscellaneous details of Sarah’s final journey. Sarah had gone home early from the university to do some shopping. She had felt the wind in her face as she drove her little red MG. The tape deck had been locked onto a Beatles’ golden oldie album—‘Hey Jude’ blasted out of the duo speakers. In the back seat she had two bags of groceries. A dozen bran muffins, skim milk, diet coke, and two large sausage pizzas. Sarah’s special health-kick diets never omitted the pizza. She had pulled out of the supermarket parking lot and had caught the right sequence of traffic lights. Sixty feet beyond one green light the road sloped off to the left and down. Two cars were stopped. The lead car was turning into a 7/11 Store. The driver, an overweight computer science graduate student, who occupied the first car, told the police he was making a left-hand turn across traffic. He had seen a sign advertising a 46-ounce giant Slurpy for 79 cents and on an impulse decided that sign was talking directly to him. He had a sudden urge for junk food.

  The car Sarah rear-ended was a 1988 Olds. One of the cops said that she must have, for a split second, lost her concentration; she’d been distracted, by a memory, a thought, an idea. Some image had flooded into her mind twenty seconds after the graduate student decided on the giant Slurpy. She hadn’t left a skid mark. The driver of the Olds climbed out unhurt and vomited in the street as he looked at Sarah’s head smashed through the windscreen. ‘Hey Jude’ still blared from the wreckage.

  They had been married twenty-two years last October. By the time of the funeral, the impact of Lawrence’s nightmare had grown dim for most people. Sarah had become another Christmas holiday traffic accident victim. After New Year’s, Lawrence had become that unfortunate man who had lost his wife; the man who had grieved through all the major holidays. Kelly had found him sitting alone inside his office at two in the morning weeping. Papers were scattered in messy stacks on his desk; open boxes stuffed with more papers had been pushed next to the desk. One box contained stories and articles from Southeast Asia.

  When he observed people, Lawrence discovered their concentration had moved into reaches far beyond loss and sorrow; as life moved on, only Lawrence seemed to stand still at the moment of Sarah’s death. In a short time, idle gossip replaced sympathy. People made strange remarks; and not knowing Lawrence was in earshot, compounded his loss in a thousand painful ways.

  “At least they didn’t have children,” someone whispered behind him. “She didn’t feel a thing,” a voice said from a cloak room. “Her face was reconstructed from wax. I know for a fact. It wasn’t really her. That’s why the casket was closed.”

  A girl in the typing pool said to another as he was in the firm library, “She had a cool million dollars of life insurance. People have killed their wives for a lot less.”

  In the dining room of his club, where he had sat with his back turned, “Did you see that young woman at the funeral? She was all over Lawrence. As if people couldn’t see through her little act. Christ, she could have waited until Sarah was in the ground.”

  His law firm insisted that he take six weeks’ leave. A leave was the last thing he wanted or needed. His office was the surviving continuity in his life—the place where he could stake out and enforce his claim for control and deny access. He had no idea how he survived those first days and nights alone in the house. He had been exposed to the telephone calls, the flowers, the telegrams, and faxes. There had been no refuge, no shelter for him to hide.

  At ten one evening Kelly came into his office and shut the door hard. “Why are you so curt with me? Have I done something wrong? I know this thing has been horrible for you. But does it have to affect our relationship? ”

  “Sarah had a relationship with a friend of mine before we were married. His name was Robert Tuttle. You were about five years old at the time.”

  “Don’t play that game, Larry.”

  “And guess who I heard from? Bob Tuttle. He’s in Bangkok.”

  “What’s he doing in China? ”

  “Thailand.”

  “China, Thailand, Hong Kong. The point is, Larry, what the hell is going on inside your head. Did you just use me the other night? Didn’t it mean anything to you? Are you ashamed? Is it me? Did I say something wrong? Tell me what’s going on, for godsake.”

  “I’m going to Bangkok.”

  “How long? ” Tears had welled in Kelly’s eyes, breaking through a ridge of black eyeliner.

  “I don’t know. I can’t put a cap on it. Not now.”

  “It’s a place to run to if you can’t handle women. The sex capital of the world. Just the place you need, I guess.”

  Lawrence stared at her for a moment, shrugged, and returned his attention to a stack of papers. His eyes were black-rimmed and puffy; his face a sallow yellow. Shaving, he had missed a small patch below his right ear. Slowly his appearance was evolving to match the collapse that had happened inside.

  “And here you’re the guy who couldn’t fudge an extra two hours on a client’s bill,” she said. “I believed in you, Larry. I thought you had integrity. I looked up to you. I know you lost your wife. I’m sorry. Everyone in the firm is sorry. But you can’t drag on like this forever.”

  He had an answer of sorts; but it was not one he was able at that instant to provide her. One telegram had come from Bangkok. “I was distressed to learn of Sarah’s death. It’ s been many years since we have spoken. When the time is right for you, please come for at least one week. Stay as my gu
est. There are some matters we ought to settle.”

  Robert Tuttle was a name that had surfaced no more than two or three times in the quarter of a century he had lived with Sarah. What possible things could they talk about? Had Tuttle gone mad? Sarah was dead, and he invited him to Bangkok to put matters to rest. Christ, what matters? He knew nothing of his life; and hadn’t given him a second thought.

  Tuttle’s telegram was stuffed away and forgotten with hundreds of other people he had once known and had come out of the woodwork at the time of Sarah’s death. But Tuttle’s reappearance came with the discovery of personal effects in Sarah’s office. Tuttle catapulted into his life by Sarah’s own hand. The second week after her death, Lawrence found Sarah’s diaries going through papers in her filing cabinet inside her office in the English department at the University. There had been twenty-two. One for each year of their marriage. He read two diaries, sometimes three, sleeping little, eating even less until he lost track of the days of the week and the date of the month.

  She had not forgotten Robert. He appeared in every one; from year one to the date of her death, Tuttle’s presence had evolved into something large, immediate, and significant. Tuttle had been conscripted into her fantasy world; a secret conspiracy with the past that she had taken to her grave. Lawrence’s grief congealed into anger, and the anger cooled into bitterness. She had deceived him all these years. They had never kept secrets from each other. Lawrence felt utterly betrayed; a fool, and the following night he slept with Kelly Swan in the bed he and Sarah had occupied. After that night, Lawrence began ignoring Kelly, and putting some distance between her and himself.

  He stayed home studying Sarah’s diary as if new meanings would gush from the bedrock of each text. He stopped answering his phone or the door. For ten days, he didn’t shave or shower; he wore jeans and a T-shirt. He had opened a data base on his computer named “Tuttle.” He had counted the number of times his name had been entered; and the number of times Sarah had mentioned Lawrence’s name. Then he listed all adjectives she had used to describe Tuttle; and all the ones she attached to him. He ran the figures three or four different ways. He made charts and graphs. In the end, Lawrence had spent more time poring over the diaries than Sarah ever had.

  On the day of her death, Tuttle’s name had cropped up. He reread a cryptic line in Sarah’s perfect handwriting: “Tuttle had this smile the day of our wedding. A killing smile. He had stood in the back of the church as my father brought me out for the walk down to the altar. Tuttle mouthed the words, ‘Goodbye, Sarah. Be happy inside your safety net. I hope it holds and you never tumble; that you never take the hard fall.’

  “Less than half an hour later, when Lawrence and I turned to walk out of the church as man and wife, Tuttle and his smile had vanished in the warm October sun. What did Tuttle always say in the dark room after we had made love? There are four thresholds of life; deserts to cross, and they were fear, doubt, loneliness, and the last one he always said with a grin was the largest and the most difficult to cross. He called this spirituality. Everything in the ’60s was spiritual this, spiritual that. It is possible he was a creature of his time. That he no longer remembers himself what he once said. That you throw yourself deep in the web of narrow distractions and pretend the treadmill you’re riding is crossing the vast deserts of life and that you’ll never disappear. And what does Lawrence say after we make love? We are keepers of the perfect life. We have earned our place; we are in control for an indefinitely long period. He stares at his appointment book and sees order. Tuttle, can you hear me? Our lives are in perfect harmony—as if we were in a contest and were judged to have won the competition. My rough guess from your stuff that I’ve read in the last year is that you’re wandering, lost and stranded, inside one of those unscheduled deserts. Sometimes I long to meet you and ask you what I can ask no one else: When does the net become an anchor? When does the appointment diary become sea floor where you can no longer breathe? Answer me that, Tuttle. Leave a message for me in the cupboard.”

  Lawrence looked up from her last diary with a grim expression each time he finished that passage. Was she saying that he had become an anchor? Or their marriage was this heavy weight in her life, bolting her down? That she was suffocating in their relationship? Perhaps Sarah had been thinking of Tuttle at the crucial moment her MG had collided. When she departed this life, she had been thinking of questions she wanted to ask Robert Tuttle. An old boyfriend she hadn’t seen or talked to in twenty-two years. Or had she? It was possible. Lawrence wasn’t in the habit of checking up on his wife. Sometimes she had attended a conference on her own. Tuttle might have been waiting for her. He was angry. Why hadn’t she said something? Why had she written about Tuttle in her diary after all these years?

  Back inside his house, Lawrence frantically searched through the stacks of messages. He found Tuttle’s telegram. Lawrence read the words again and for the first time understood that Tuttle had extended an invitation of sorts. “When the time is right for you, please come for at least one week. Stay as my guest.”

  Why had Tuttle invited him? They were strangers after so many years; their lives had gone in opposite directions. What could they possibly have to say to one another after such a length of time? He had remembered one characteristic of Tuttle from their college days: his love of the dramatic, the theatrical—a turning of a situation into a staged event for a specific purpose. He had slipped over the Canadian border at night and camped out near the church in Seattle; he had waited for Sarah to appear on her father’s arm inside the church; he had come in dirty jeans and unshaved face to make his final farewell. This was a standard Tuttle gesture, thought Lawrence.

  Lawrence could only guess what drama awaited him in Bangkok. It could have been as simple as Tuttle’s wanting free legal advice. It would not have surprised Lawrence to discover that Tuttle had hit the sharp blades of the law. He liked the idea that Tuttle might need him, and for once Lawrence would have the upper hand in dealing with him.

  Lawrence had gone on to graduate first in his law school class and become an editor of the Law Review. He had achieved success while Tuttle had dropped out of UCLA in their third year. The draft board sent Tuttle a notice to report. Tuttle burnt it in a small ceremony in the student union cafe to a round of applause. That same night, Tuttle asked Sarah to go with him to Canada—he had decided to leave on a Greyhound bus heading to Vancouver on Monday morning. Sarah had agreed to meet him at the station. She never arrived. Tuttle left Los Angeles alone, and a week later Sarah had become engaged to Lawrence Baring.

  Robert and Lawrence had roomed together for six months. Lawrence had fallen in love with Sarah the first time Tuttle introduced her as his old lady. She had long braided brown hair, wore no makeup, faded blue jeans, and a thin white blouse without a bra. Sarah’s father was a federal court judge in Seattle, and Tuttle was her rebel act of defiance. She stood in the doorway of their apartment with an arm wrapped around Tuttle’s waist.

  “Larry wants to be a lawyer,” said Tuttle, giving Sarah a little poke in the ribs.

  “To help the poor? ” Sarah had asked. This was 1968, the day before the Fourth of July.

  “Civil rights law,” Lawrence had answered with firm conviction.

  * * *

  The phone line to Bangkok was surprisingly clear as if the connection was next door in Arizona; as if Tuttle had never really been very far away. “Robert, I thought about taking a trip to your part of the world,” Lawrence said. There had been a long pause.

  “I hoped you might phone.”

  “Just one question, Robert. Did you and Sarah write during the last few years? Or maybe run into each other at a conference or something? ”

  Tuttle laughed. “The last time I saw Sarah was in Seattle on the day of your wedding. She was walking next to her federal judge father to marry you.”

  * * *

  Lawrence booked a suite at the Bangkok Regent Hotel. A palace of fountains, gardens, white marble floor, ser
vants, and staff who glided gracefully through the lobby. The courtyard cafe filled with lunching generals, politicians, and businessmen. High-society Chinese ladies in Paris fashion drifted through the exclusive shops. He had taken a suite of rooms and everyone called him Khun Lawrence, bowing from the waist, slender fingers and hands together to form a wai. Kelly phoned him three times from Los Angeles. She wanted reassurance; and, in his own way, so did Lawrence.

  The newspapers were filled with stories about four minor wives fighting to control the estate of a deceased land developer who had been shot dead. Under the photograph of the women seated outside the courtroom was another photo—a death mask of the deceased slumped over the wheel of his car. Lawrence thought he was going to be sick; but forced himself to look at the picture. The face was falsified by death; all the features had been frozen, exaggerated, and twisted by the departure. It was like a lifeless husk and Lawrence found himself crying alone in his hotel room. Male, female, young, or old, the face of death had never evolved beyond the picture in the newspaper or Sarah’s face in the hospital. Later he tore off the death photograph and flushed it down the toilet. He wanted to destroy the entire paper but found himself going back to it. He studied the photos of the young women seated side by side. Each one looked ten years younger than Kelly. They were half his age; and the deceased had been more than thirty years older than his wives. They each had one child by the deceased. Another wife claimed the four minor wives had no claim. He couldn’t imagine four wives. Each day he bought both English newspapers and read the details. The access to power in relationships was rearranged in strange patterns, weaving multiple families, disconnected children into an emotional overlay he tried, but could not, understand.