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Authors: Archer Mayor
Tags: USA
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often under his sofa pillows for his missing change, that the last time he’d watched TV he’d been tuned to the Playboy channel, and that his culinary talents, although obviously not flashy, far outshined my own—meaning he made more of a meal than a pig-in-a-blanket and a can of fruit cocktail.
I’d been keeping my hopes high for what his office might yield, however, and after a quick look through Jardine’s laundry—in which I found a woman’s blouse—I settled in his desk chair to see if at last I could peel back a small corner of the blanket that shrouded this man’s history.
First impressions were not encouraging; the top drawer was empty, a discovery I thought symbolic of the entire house.
The underlying question was, why? Was it that Jardine’s moderate wealth had come so suddenly that he’d leapt from having nothing to a house full of furnishings without passing through those years in which the rest of us accumulate tons of junk? That didn’t explain the parents Beaumont had mentioned. Jardine must have bent over backwards to eradicate all signs of their presence here, making an erstwhile family home into what looked like a weekend condo.
I hesitated before checking the other desk drawers, still lost in thought. There were other possibilities—a man without identification traced to a house without individuality. There was an almost ominous blandness to it all, the way aspects of real life are sometimes portrayed artificially on stage. I put that thought into a mental cubbyhole and began going through the rest of the drawers.
There I found the first signs of life—bank statements, insurance papers, credit-card receipts, utility and oil bills, tax returns. I would immerse myself in all those later, fabricating a life from them as an archaeologist does from debris found in the dust. But at first glance, it all seemed utterly normal. Jardine had an income that averaged out to some forty-five thousand dollars a year. There were no gigantic debts, no large, unexplained deposits.
There was a desk calendar, one of those two-ringed plastic easels you can flip through, day by day. Again, it was mostly blank, barring the occasional cryptic note, like “R 2” or “G 730.” Flipping through, I found concentrations of R’s, G’s, T’s, S’s, and more, with some extending throughout the year and others ending at the tail end of a clump. For the most part, whether bunched or spread out, they usually fell on Fridays or Saturdays. With Beaumont’s appraisal of Jardine as a ladies’ man, I was content to think for the moment that the initials stood for women’s first names, some of whom were regulars, while others had apparently been brief and passionate affairs.
I leafed through the calendar a little more carefully a second time, focusing on a single discrepancy. Without exception, R had a single low digit next to it, usually a 2 or a 3, while all the others rated anywhere from 6 to 11, with the occasional 630, 730, and 830 thrown in for good measure. If these numbers stood for rendezvous times, then R had a fetish for either mid-afternoons or the dead of night.
The phone rang suddenly, causing me to drop the calendar in surprise. It stopped after the first ring, there was a click and a soft whirring sound, and then a gentle, modulated male voice filled the room: “Hi, this is Charlie’s machine. Talk to it like you’d talk to me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
There was a beep, a pause, then an irritated woman’s voice muttered, “shit,” and the line went dead.
I stared at the answering machine under the phone. A single beady red light was blinking on its front. I leaned forward and read the various labels imprinted in the black plastic. I couldn’t remember if that light had been on when I’d sat down or not. I found a button marked “messages” and pushed it. Again the machine whirred, and I could hear the tape rewinding. There was another beep, and a woman’s voice
I’d been keeping my hopes high for what his office might yield, however, and after a quick look through Jardine’s laundry—in which I found a woman’s blouse—I settled in his desk chair to see if at last I could peel back a small corner of the blanket that shrouded this man’s history.
First impressions were not encouraging; the top drawer was empty, a discovery I thought symbolic of the entire house.
The underlying question was, why? Was it that Jardine’s moderate wealth had come so suddenly that he’d leapt from having nothing to a house full of furnishings without passing through those years in which the rest of us accumulate tons of junk? That didn’t explain the parents Beaumont had mentioned. Jardine must have bent over backwards to eradicate all signs of their presence here, making an erstwhile family home into what looked like a weekend condo.
I hesitated before checking the other desk drawers, still lost in thought. There were other possibilities—a man without identification traced to a house without individuality. There was an almost ominous blandness to it all, the way aspects of real life are sometimes portrayed artificially on stage. I put that thought into a mental cubbyhole and began going through the rest of the drawers.
There I found the first signs of life—bank statements, insurance papers, credit-card receipts, utility and oil bills, tax returns. I would immerse myself in all those later, fabricating a life from them as an archaeologist does from debris found in the dust. But at first glance, it all seemed utterly normal. Jardine had an income that averaged out to some forty-five thousand dollars a year. There were no gigantic debts, no large, unexplained deposits.
There was a desk calendar, one of those two-ringed plastic easels you can flip through, day by day. Again, it was mostly blank, barring the occasional cryptic note, like “R 2” or “G 730.” Flipping through, I found concentrations of R’s, G’s, T’s, S’s, and more, with some extending throughout the year and others ending at the tail end of a clump. For the most part, whether bunched or spread out, they usually fell on Fridays or Saturdays. With Beaumont’s appraisal of Jardine as a ladies’ man, I was content to think for the moment that the initials stood for women’s first names, some of whom were regulars, while others had apparently been brief and passionate affairs.
I leafed through the calendar a little more carefully a second time, focusing on a single discrepancy. Without exception, R had a single low digit next to it, usually a 2 or a 3, while all the others rated anywhere from 6 to 11, with the occasional 630, 730, and 830 thrown in for good measure. If these numbers stood for rendezvous times, then R had a fetish for either mid-afternoons or the dead of night.
The phone rang suddenly, causing me to drop the calendar in surprise. It stopped after the first ring, there was a click and a soft whirring sound, and then a gentle, modulated male voice filled the room: “Hi, this is Charlie’s machine. Talk to it like you’d talk to me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
There was a beep, a pause, then an irritated woman’s voice muttered, “shit,” and the line went dead.
I stared at the answering machine under the phone. A single beady red light was blinking on its front. I leaned forward and read the various labels imprinted in the black plastic. I couldn’t remember if that light had been on when I’d sat down or not. I found a button marked “messages” and pushed it. Again the machine whirred, and I could hear the tape rewinding. There was another beep, and a woman’s voice
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