The King is Dead

2

One hot night nine years previously, Walter Selby had found himself alone in the parking lot outside of a baseball stadium, a vast concrete pool set in acres of asphalt down by the river. The game was done and the crowds were leaving but he’d become separated from his companion, a pyknic reporter from the Press-Scimitar, in a ruckus that had begun when an elderly woman suddenly struck her cane down on the head of a passing teenager. Now he was wandering between and among the parked cars, trying to find his man. Thirty minutes had passed since the last out had been made, and still the crowds were milling. Every so often the headlights on an exiting car would swing by, causing shadows to wheel across the way; he wasn’t sure which gate he and the reporter had used to enter the stadium, earlier in the evening, still less where they’d parked the reporter’s car. And the lights, and the groups of ghosts, marked only by their voices, which passed him in the summer darkness.

There, about thirty yards away, stood a rounded figure, much like the rounded figure he had lost. The man was standing in silhouette against the downward raking light of a stanchion; Walter started that way, but as he approached the figure turned, smiling at a passing woman with a mouth full of gold, and it was another man, no one he knew. He stopped again and sighed. A car went by, boys and girls hanging out the open windows and cheering loudly.

The woman, a woman-shadow, was coming his way. She came closer and closer, until she was within touching distance; then she stopped and looked up at him, though her face was still hidden in the shadows. Well, said the woman, shaking her head. I can’t find mine. You can’t find yours, either, can you?

He said nothing, because he could think of nothing to say. An old sedan approached them, its lights illuminating her for just a moment; she had dark hair and pale skin, and fine, taut features, and she was about to smile, but the car passed and her amusement was given into the darkness again, leaving him with the impression that he’d barely missed seeing something uncommon, a notion nudged a little further on by a trace of her perfume, loosened by the passing car from the kingdom beneath her clothes. He hesitated; she was still smiling in the night. At length he said, No. I was right behind him, but we got separated coming out.

The moon was half round; occasionally its shine would be slowly occluded and then revealed by a night cloud, and the slow shuttering of the moonlight added to the woman’s superlunar appeal. I had some friends here, she said solemnly. They could be anywhere. I don’t even know how I lost them. She spoke quickly and cleanly, with a kind of confidence that she might have learned from the movies. For that matter, she continued, I don’t really know where I am. I came along because I didn’t want to sit home. She made a wry face with such force that he could feel it in the darkness.

You’re in Memphis, Tennessee, said Walter. Where the lost can hardly be distinguished from the found.

She started at the sharpness of the sentiment and then settled. I think you’re right, she said. I think you’re right. I’ll tell you what, then: You look for my friends, and I’ll look for yours. With that she took him by the arm and began to walk him in the same direction from which she’d come. Now, don’t tell me your name, she said. But tell me what your friends look like.

My friend … He had almost forgotten his friend altogether, and now he could hardly picture the man. There’s just one, a little round fellow. I don’t know. He looks like everybody else, only a bit more so. And yours? If I’m going to look for yours, I’m going to have to know.

Oh, she said. I lied about that. I don’t really have any friends here.

Came all by yourself, did you? Halfway through the sentence it occurred to him that she might be telling the truth, however improbable it may have been, and he pitched the tone of the last words down, so she could take them for sympathy or take them for mockery, either way if she wanted.

Yes, she said sadly, protruding her lower lip in a facetious sulk. No friends. Oh, well. Who needs friends? All of these people.—She stopped in her tracks and gestured around the parking lot and then widened her eyes at him. And only you are gallant enough to help me. No, she said again. Which, after all, means you’re going to have to take me home.

I have no way to get home myself, he reminded her.

Well then, we’d better find who we’re looking for or we’ll have to walk, she said.

They began to wander this way and that, they stopped to let a honking car pass, and he stole another look at her in the ruby glow of its taillights. Then they were walking again. There was something quick and supple about her stride, as she effortlessly adjusted her pace to match his. In time they came to the edge of the lot; there was a field of tall grass, and in the distance they could see the lights of cars gliding slowly along the access road. Hm, she said. This may take all night.—All right, she said, grabbing his arm a little tighter, turning him back toward the stadium. New rules: My name is Nicole Lattimore.

I’m Walter Selby, said Walter Selby. She smiled again, just as they emerged from the shadows, and this time he could see her face whole and happy, her pale blue skin and perfect countenance, and the grin set within it, so broad that her lower teeth showed like an animal’s—a figure of joy and absolute appetite, world-conquering, generous and overflowing, and so powerful upon her face that she squinted as if she too was blinded by it. Overhead there was an airplane climbing the sky, moving upward, outward from the surface of their beautiful blue-black globe. By his side there was this flawless creature, smiling and announcing her name, and he knew what he wanted.

—Stoney, she said loudly. Stoney! In the near distance a tall dark figure was loading something into the back of a sedan; the man turned at the sound of her voice, ducking his head as if it would help him see farther across the night. Nicole? Then they were at the car and all the doors were opening at once, and they were surrounded by five men, the youthful products of reason, peace, and prosperity. Oh my, said Nicole. I don’t know how I got lost, but I’ve been looking for you for almost half an hour now. This is Walter: he’s been helping me find you.

Hello Walter, said one of the men, speaking for all of them.

He’s lost also. Maybe we should give him a ride. She turned to him. Where are you going? He gave one last glance around the parking lot, now mostly empty. I suppose I should probably wait here a little while longer, he said.

No, no, she said. We can give you a ride, we can take you home. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Walter, this is George. He’s driving, and you have nothing to worry about.

They piled into the car, a big black Ford: Walter, Nicole, and two other men in the backseat, three more up front. Well, Nicole said to no one in particular, I was really worried. I was really worried, even with Walter here, and even though he was so nice. I thought I was never going to see you again, ever. With that she fell silent, but Walter listened very hard for her thoughts. He was thirty-three then, and she was only twenty-one.

To his other side there was a slight pale boy named Peter, who began to speak. You know, George, he said to the man at the wheel. You are the only man in Memphis who knows exactly where he’s going.—The car bounced over a rut in the road, and Nicole fell against Walter, her slight weight briefly lingering at his shoulder before she righted herself again. Peter continued. Your name’s Walter, is it?

Walter nodded.

Tell us about yourself, Walter.

Peter … said Nicole.

No, no, Peter went on. I’m curious. I mean, what do you do? Aside from rescuing lost women in parking lots.

That’s not enough? said Walter. My God, man. The training alone: months in the wastelands of the Arctic, years studying female physiognomy, perfecting the Reassuring Smile, the Unflappable Calm. This suit, for example: Do you think I simply fell into it this morning? Oh, no, my friend. It’s the result of decades—decades, I say—of research into color science … the psychology of texture … the evolution of animal skins. Ah, you know, John Thomas Scopes was one of ours.

The car was quiet, Peter’s wit had been broken by the time Walter had finished his second sentence, and only Nicole was smiling. Hers was the discovery: let the boys be less smug for it.

I work for the Governor, said Walter. I’m a speechwriter, an aide.

Again there was silence, and then Peter spoke again. The Governor, is that right? Tell me this, because I’ve been wondering. Has he met the newly crowned Queen yet?

The Queen? said Walter.

Elizabeth the Second. I wonder if she’ll ever come to visit us, said Peter wistfully. Well, never mind, we have our own Queen. We have our Queen right here. He reached across Walter’s legs and touched Nicole’s knee, a gesture, it seemed, as much to her silence as to the girl herself. Then he went back to staring out the window and making fun of George’s driving. The others began to go over the baseball game, making jokes, telling tales. When they got onto plays they had seen, fantastic and legendary moments, Walter spoke up.—I saw a triple play once, he said. This was in the minor leagues, though. In San Diego, while I was stationed there.

Stationed? The other man in the backseat lifted his head and leaned forward so he could crane around and look at Walter. Stationed, as in the Army? They were too young to have fought in the War, or even to remember it very well.

Marines, he said. He could feel a change of consciousness in the girl beside him, a soft click as she came a little bit more alive.

A thin-faced, red-lipped boy in the front seat turned. There were tears of excitement in his eyes. Selby, he said. Isn’t that right? Corporal Walter Selby. I knew I recognized you.

What’s that? said George, peering up at Walter through the rearview mirror.

Isn’t that right? said the thin boy again.

Yes, said Walter.

You came to my school to give a talk, about five, six years ago.—Walter frowned, not from forgetfulness but merely to disavow any vanity, but the thin boy misunderstood. Oh, you probably don’t remember, he said, as if remembering were a weakness.

Eddy remembers everything, said a weary man sitting beside Walter, who until then had said nothing at all.

You were awarded the Navy Cross, said Eddy. Yeah. For distinguished something, valor and bravery or something. Boy, you stood up there …

What’s the Navy Cross? said George.

A bit of ribbon, said Walter, and a bit of bronze.

Did you fight Germans?

You don’t use a navy to fight Europeans, said Peter.

Of course you do, said George. There’s a whole ocean between us. They had U-boats. They had a navy.

I fought Japanese, said Walter softly.

The car was quiet. They were passing over a bridge, the water below was pitch black and as smooth as glass, and Nicole reached over and briefly touched Walter’s arm.

Then they were at his door, and she was stepping out of the car, leaving him room to exit. Good night, you all, he said.

Five good-nights came back. He stood on the sidewalk, slightly turned away from Nicole, as if he couldn’t quite bear her brightness full on.

Thank you for taking care of me, she said.

You’re welcome, he said. It was a pleasure. Good night. He nodded gently and started up his walk, looking back at the girl when he was halfway to his door. She was standing beside the car, she smiled at him again with her effortless jubilation; then she waved good-bye. And she climbed back in, and the car drove off, leaving him there in the quiet of his neighborhood, in the center of his tiny little lawn, which stretched for miles and miles to his lighted front door.

3

Back in the days when days were new, Nicole had met a man named John Brice. That was in Charleston, it was early in the fall, and all of her friends had thought he was strange. Yes, they said, he was handsome, lean and graceful, but he was strange. To begin with, he’d just appeared on the street one April day—Nicole had seen him standing outside the Loews in the middle of the afternoon, waiting all by himself for a matinee to begin—and then again, there he was on Broad Street a few days later. After that it was time to time; he was always alone, often with his hands thrust into his pockets. Sometimes it seemed as if he was dancing a little bit, dancing to himself as he went on his way. She’d seen him, a tall slim fellow with refined, almost feminine features and his hair combed back.

At the time she was just out of her parents’ house; an only child, imaginative and open. She’d spent two years in junior college, and then she came home again, took an apartment with a girlfriend named Emily, and started working in a women’s clothing store called Clarkson’s: some dresses, some underthings. Just a job, although she took pleasure in the details of the place, the feel of her fingers stretching over satin or the resistance of a band of elastic. Mr. Clarkson was usually at home, tending to his sick wife, so most of the time the store was hers; she even had keys to open it in the morning and close it at night, with only an hour or two toward the end of the day when he would stop by to empty the till and deposit it into the bank across the street. Otherwise, there she was, alone amid the cloth, the silks and nylons, and the ladies who came in.

This man, he must have been new in Charleston but he strode down the sidewalk as if he’d put a down payment on the whole town. That was something you noticed right away. Still, she didn’t think much of him; he was not-quite-regular and all alone, and it didn’t take much to make a young man wrong for a girl, in that city, in those days. At first she couldn’t quite tell what it was, exactly, and then it came to her: there was a slight eccentricity in the way he dressed, nothing that most people would have heeded, but she had an eye for the way a man put himself together. He would pass her on the street, wearing a pair of black dress shoes, perfectly acceptable, except that the laces were mouse-grey, and he had doubled them through the eyelets before he tied them. Was that on purpose, or couldn’t he shop for something as simple as shoelaces? One evening when she was walking home from work she saw him standing outside a florist’s in a seersucker suit, quite a nice one, actually, with narrow stripes of a deep rich blue; but it was a little bit late in the year to be wearing summer clothes, late enough that you would’ve thought he would be cold; and his belt was a few inches too long, so that the extending tongue turned and fell a few inches down over his hip. It was just the kind of thing she would notice, and she crossed the street instead of passing by him; but he turned and watched her all the way down to the end of the block, and she could feel his attention dragging on her at every step.

Then he came into Clarkson’s. It was a Tuesday, late in the morning, and he opened the door, peered in for a second, and then slipped across the threshold. He didn’t say a word, he just moved among the dresses and the blouses, along a line of girdles, back and around and back again, while she followed him from behind the counter and thought, What is this man doing? He took a little half step sideways—very gracefully—and she stood perfectly still. Then he did a little dance, maybe, a few subtle steps almost too soft to be seen at all, a slight gesture with his hip, his head cocked. He glanced up at her, studying her face, and she would have reddened before his eyes—but just then the telephone rang, she looked down at it, and he suddenly turned and left the store before she’d even had time to pick it up.

Then there was her father’s fiftieth birthday party, marked by a family gathering in their house outside of town—she remembered the weekend well and long afterward. So goes the tone of a time: not just forward over everything to come, but seeping outward too, in every direction, like wine on the figures of a carpet. She helped her mother in the kitchen, there was an aunt who got drunk at the party that evening, and wept noisily all night at something no one else had noticed and the woman herself couldn’t explain. That night Nicole slept in her old bedroom and listened to her parents in the room next door, arguing in soft voices and then, worse, giving in to that silence which had frightened her so when she was a child, and still made her uneasy. Poor father: a few years after she was born he’d contracted a fever, which was polio and paralyzed his left leg from the hip down. Poor mother: a local beauty alone with an infant, her husband quarantined and perhaps never to come home. By the time he recovered they were strangers again, the large family they’d dreamed of was not to be, he retreated into hobbled quiet, and she wore a seaside cheerfulness everywhere but on her mouth’s expression. Now Nicole listened as her mother sat heavily on the edge of the bed, and her father cracked his knuckles as if he would break his fingers right off.

The next day she was back at work, and that very afternoon John Brice appeared again. The same man, he walked around the store a little bit and then left. But she knew he was going to come back again, she knew she was going to know him, and she waited for him; a few days went by, and then right when she’d decided to stop thinking about it, he opened the door and came in. He had a look, didn’t he? Not just his expression, which was ready, but his clothes. This time he was wearing a grey double-breasted suit and a wide blue-and-grey tie, a foppish outfit, kind of high-toned, she thought, although he wore it very casually. He ambled up to the counter where she stood. Hello, was what he said.

She should have just said hello in return. Instead she fell back on her shopgirl manners. How may I help you? she asked.

He paused. I was just looking, he said, and motioned to the inventory with one long pale hand.

Anything in particular? she said

No…. He shook his head a little.

Maybe if you tell me who you’re shopping for, I can recommend something. The sun outside the windows shone down on an empty street, and she looked up and read the name of the store imprinted backward on the inside of the day-dark yellow glass.

What’s your name? he asked. She didn’t expect that, and she hesitated. It was something she didn’t want to give away, because she knew she’d never be able to get it back. Come on, now, he said, and made her feel foolish.

Nicole, she said at last. Lattimore. It was as if all the dresses and underthings were filled with silent women, watching women: were they smiling or shaking their heads? It didn’t matter anymore. It was done, really, with that. She gave him her name, and that was all he needed.

4

On the third weekend after they’d met he invited her for a drive down to Sea Island and she accepted. He had a huge blue car, a Packard Coupe that he’d bought almost new a few weeks after he’d arrived in town; he came to get her at the hour they’d set, just past dawn, and parked outside her apartment building, but he didn’t ring her buzzer. She only realized he was there when she grew impatient waiting and put her head out the window to see if he was coming; then she went hurrying down to him, though she didn’t chastise him for not coming to her door. It seemed like one of his things, she could let him keep it if he wanted.

It was a long way, and chilly, and he drove fast, flying along the edge of the ocean, beside inlet and alongside islet, blue outside his window and green outside hers. On Sea Island they bought a basket lunch from a general store, then parked by the ocean and scared the seagulls off the sand with the car horn. Later, they kissed until her lips were sore and her tongue tasted just like his. They arrived back in Charleston that evening; it was too late for dinner, really, but he was hungry, so they stopped for a hamburger. She asked him what he intended to do with his life. She thought it would be a good way to begin to get to know him.

He didn’t hesitate and he didn’t look away. I’m going to be a bandleader, he said, and for a moment she couldn’t imagine what in the world he was talking about. Play the saxophone, jazz, he went on, and he held his hands up, one above the other, gripping an imaginary instrument and wiggling his fingers. Jazz, jazz, jazz. New York, Chicago, maybe Los Angeles. I’m going to be famous.

At first she thought he was joking; it had never occurred to her that a man could have such an ambition, that wealth and fame could be studied, rather than simply stumbled upon by those with improbable access to the unreal. Oh, you are? she said teasingly, and she saw him wince. I’m sure you have the talent, she added hastily, and you certainly look the part. But isn’t it difficult to break in?

Sure it is, he said. He paused. I’ve got a little luck, he admitted. My father, over in Atlanta—he has some money. He stopped again, as if he was suddenly embarrassed by the rarity of his fortune. My father is what you might call … a wealthy man. He doesn’t much approve of what I’m trying to do, but he’s willing to support me for a little while.

Then why did you come to Charleston?

My grandfather had a house here, he said. When he died, he left it to my parents, but they never use it. So I came up here to get away, to practice—you know. To get myself ready.

Ready, she thought. Odd syllables. Was she ready, herself? The more she thought about the word, the stranger it became.—And here was the waitress with the check, it was time for him to take her home.