Chapter 34

Effen isn’t entirely unaware of what’s going on. He knows the changing times of the day. He knows Tom is there. So is Brut. Whenever he starts to wake up, he’s given another helping of whatever Tom put into him the first time. The giddiness becomes nausea. Sometimes he’s hungry; sometimes he’s sick to his stomach. He thinks he retches. He’s certain he wets the bed.

He doesn’t care. He’s tired of life and the surprises of life and the never-ending duties of life. It’s good not to deal with them any more. His life is over.

He’ll never see Farrell again. Pity. Did he really make love to her? Did she really say she wanted to have his child? Did he really try to give her one? Farrell Schmidt? God, no. Farrell Schmidt would never suffer the indignity of begetting. It must have been one of those dreams we take for reality, yet know they aren’t real even as we dream them.

He shall miss Farrell. She’s unlike any woman he’s known, from mother to cousin to Gustie and business associates. She lacks arrogance. Vanity. Self-absorption. The tragedy of her life lay not in losing her home or her work or her last caring relative, but in her blindness. She couldn’t see her own worth. She couldn’t see the love of life and laughter that flowed through those great brown eyes and transformed that thin, childlike face into a DaVinci Madonna at a time when she more than anyone could have prospered most from the sight. She couldn’t see that beauty has nothing to do with big hair or structure or voluptuousness. It’s honesty, the capacity for friendship, the will to love, the ability to rejoice in the goodness of the world even in the midst of horror.

And beauty is the ability to carry on, no matter how badly that horror beats you down.

Will she miss him?

When she learns what has happened, will she be ashamed of him?

Will she be ashamed of herself for having loved him?

Is he ashamed of himself? For what? For Gustie? The girls? Everything?

He tries to push himself up, succeeds in falling against the wall. Contact with the plaster suggests that whoever pulled the jeans off him when he anointed the bed didn’t bother to put anything in their place, including shorts. Lovely. Now he’s got to waste time and strength dressing himself.



It’s evening. Tom is eating a sandwich over Fair Mantle’s weekly newspaper. He doesn’t hear anything from Effen’s room. Motion in the corner of his eye sends him jumping from the chair.

Effen steadies himself against the door frame. His syes are sunken and his color is off, but he’s fully dressed – jeans, blazer, hikers.

Tom is alarmed. He’s never known anyone who could or even wanted to fight that stuff. “How do you feel?”

The words come out with forced precision. “How do you think?”

Tom pushes the teapot toward him. “Maybe you should eat something.”

“Why? What did you load me up with?”

Tom looks at the paper. “You don’t need to know.”

Couldn’t be Valium, that’s for sure. Farrell had a Valium drip when she had her tooth out. Said it was the best dental experience of her life. Gave her a real rush. Put her in a terrific mood for three days.

Effen is decidedly not in a good mood. The only rush he feels is a wave of nausea. His head is heavy. The stuff is trying to drag him back to sleep.

Tom tells him to sit down before he falls down.

“Can’t. I’ve got to go downstairs. I’ve got to do the books.”

Tom snorts. “Forget it. You’ll never make it down the stairs. Besides, we don’t want lights down there.”

“This is a business. It should be lighted. It should appear that someone is here, else it could be looted. There are chemicals, you know.”

Tom admits The Owner has a point, but he doesn’t like the thought of him on the stairs. “Stay here, I’ll get the ledger.”

“There are a few books. Accounts receivable. Accounts payable. Cash disbursements. They’re in the lower left drawer of my desk.”

“So many books?”

“That’s why it’s called doing the books. Can’t keep everything in one journal. Need to keep track of clients, supplies, disbursements. Everything.”

“Right.” Tom never understood accounting.

Effen opens the books Tom brings him. His eyes acquire the fuzz of incomprehension seen on frustrated translators. He needs invoices. Tom refuses to go in search of the things. “Your damned business will have to wait.”

No, not the damned business. Everything.

Effen leans on the table, rests his head on his arms. He hasn’t read Tennyson’s The Lotus Eaters since college, but he remembers the blank verse as if he just turned the page: How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream with half-clos’d eyes, never to seem falling asleep in a half dream. Death is the end of life. Ah, why must life all labor be? There is no joy but calm. Give us long rest, or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.”