All the Old Knives Read online

  Really? Did commercial radio reach its creative peak in 1982? I switch it off.

  To my left is a high school, and on the right a sign points me into the trees and down Ocean Avenue, which rolls downhill toward the coast, splitting the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea in half. The speed limit drops to twenty-five, and I ease along between two tricked-out SUVs. Carmel long ago rid itself of traffic lights, so every few blocks a four-way stop hides among the trees and cottages. I feel like I’ve been slipped a mild tranquilizer. It’s the freshest air I’ve breathed in my life.

  Eventually, after brief views of small homes through the trees, the shopping district appears, cut down the center by a median strip full of cultivated trees and lined on either side with cottage-themed local stores. Chains are prohibited, and the town center looks like a cinematic version of a quaint English village. Not a real English village, mind, but the kind in which Miss Marple might find herself stumbling around, discovering corpses among the antiques. I drive through the center, all the way down to the sea, passing retirement-aged shoppers dressed like golfers as they walk their little dogs, then take the sandy parking loop to get a glimpse of the clean, white beach and rough waves in the quickly fading light. There are tourists driving behind me, so I only get a moment of serenity before heading back up into the center.

  I park near the corner of Lincoln and wait behind the wheel as evening descends. A smattering of locals and tourists, each one his own particular shade of white, wander the sidewalks. I’m in the middle of an idealized vision of a seaside village, rather than the real thing. An image of an image, which is a perfect place to live if you want to be something other than what you once were.

  But it’s nice, and I wonder if I should have reserved a room for the night instead of a seat on the red-eye back to San Francisco. I can see myself waking in this village and joining the golfers for their dawn constitutionals along the shore. The morning breeze, the sea—the kinds of things that can clean you out after a decade in the Vienna embassy. A salt wash for the soul.

  After tonight, though, it’ll take more than a pretty beach to scrub my soul clean, and I suspect that by the time I settle into my return flight all I’ll want to do is run from Carmel-by-the-Sea as fast as my little legs can carry me.

  After raising the roof with another button press and locking it into place, I take a phone out of my shoulder bag. It’s a Siemens push-button I abandoned years ago for the lure of touch-screen technology. It’s neither shiny nor minimalist, but it has an excellent microphone I sometimes use to record conversations inconspicuously. I power it up, check the battery, and set up the recording software. I’m the kind of person who likes a record of his life. If not for posterity, then in order to cover my ass.

  Back in Vienna I used cash to refill the Siemen’s prepaid SIM, and now I dial a number I used a week ago; before that I hadn’t used it in more than three years, when I made the call for Bill Compton, who was once Celia’s boss. After three rings a gruff-sounding man answers. I’ve never seen him, so I don’t have a face to imagine. I say, “Is this Treble?”

  He thinks a moment. His own code name changes depending on the speaker, so in his head (or, for all I know, on an old envelope beside his phone) he goes through a list of names. Treble means that he’s speaking to … “Hello, Piccolo. How are you?”

  “We’re still on?”

  “A small roadster,” he says. “Very feminine. In Carmel-by-the-Sea.”

  “Exactly.”

  He hesitates. “You said there were a couple mopeds and an older Chevy, right?”

  “But they won’t need any work.”

  “Yes, yes.” His manner doesn’t instill confidence, and I wonder how old he is. “Yes, it’s all fine. I’m there.”

  “In Carmel?”

  “Of course.”

  I hadn’t expected him to arrive so soon.

  “When do you need it, again?” he asks.

  “Not immediately, but in the next few days.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “There’s a chance,” I say quickly, worrying about his memory, “that it won’t be necessary.”

  “Yes, you told me this before.”

  “In that case, I cover travel and half your regular fee.”

  “I know. It’s fair.”

  “Good. I’ll call you again soon.”

  “Be seeing you,” he says, and when he hangs up I think, I sure as hell hope not.

  4

  I arrive at Rendez-vous a half hour early, taking the existence of a bar as a hopeful omen, though I see no bottles. I’m intercepted by a young, hardly there woman in black with a ponytail atop her skull and an iPad in her hand. Even though the restaurant behind her is completely empty, she says, “Reservations?”

  “Yes, but I’m early. Just getting a drink.”

  “Name?”

  “Harrison—I mean, Favreau.”

  “Seven o’clock,” she says approvingly to the iPad. “I can seat you now, if you like.”

  During the flights I sustained myself with an image of my terminal point: a stool and a long bar to support my exhausted frame. It’s what I want Celia to see when she arrives—a man in a man’s place. “I’ll wait at the bar,” I say as I slip past the waitress and, with relief, station myself at the end of the pounded-iron counter. A pert young bartender, also in black, who has sculpted his three-day beard so carefully that it looks like a layer of paint, smiles thinly. I order the gin martini I’ve been anticipating for the last twenty-four hours.

  “Sorry. We only have wine.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  He shrugs, reaching for a laminated pamphlet that lists the bottles at his disposal. It’s wine country, after all. I start to read through the vineyards, but the compound names quickly blur—I don’t know a thing about wine. I shut the menu. “Something very cold and strong.”

  “White or rosé?”

  “Man, I don’t care. Just make sure it’s dry.”

  I watch him take a bottle from the fridge and waste a lot of time fooling with the opener before getting it open and pouring. He’s not elegant about it, the wine glug-glugging and splattering a bit on the counter. Aware of the spectacle, he gives me an embarrassed smile. “First day on the job, sorry.” Which makes me like him, just a little bit.

  He slides over what proves to be a tannin-heavy Chardonnay from deep inside Carmel Valley—Joullian Estate—in a glass foggy with chill. Beside it he places a dish of macadamia nuts, then winks, still embarrassed, before heading off again. In his place a wall-length mirror gives me a full view of the restaurant.

  What did I expect? Certainly not this.

  It makes me think of a depressed evening a month or so ago, after returning from my final night with Linda, a new recruit from California. She was attractive and fun, smart and witty, yet at the end of the night, as I dressed and watched her smiling at me from under the sheets, I knew that this was the end of it. So, like the man I wish I wasn’t, I pretended otherwise, kissed her nose and returned to my empty apartment and began to drink heavily. I turned on the television and, flipping through the channels, stumbled upon a dramatization of a Christopher Reid poem, The Song of Lunch.

  Sitting here waiting, I can’t help seeing myself in that story of a man still stung by love, meeting his old flame for lunch at their old haunt,”Zanotti’s.” That poor sod imagines that time changes nothing—neither in himself nor in their restaurant. Instead, he gets the modern whitewash, a reimagined Zanotti’s, not so unlike Rendez-vous, where I’m faced with

  Origami ceiling aglow

  like a Cubist thunderstorm,

  ominous over white

  reflective surfaces,

  apple-green chairs

  (minimalist for your discomfort),

  and dustless, machine-washed

  wine glasses.

  Polished and peeled

  monochrome wait staff

  attend to every desire,

  except those not

&n
bsp; on the single-page menu.

  A married couple, neither half younger than sixty, has settled at a clinically white table to read menus off another laminated card. He looks grouchy yet resigned; she has a permanent smile affixed to her face. I bet he’s a cheater on the golf course, and I’ll lay odds she brews an incredible iced tea.

  The Siemens weighs heavily in my pocket, but I try to ignore it and focus instead on what I expect from this night.

  What do I know about Celia Favreau, née Harrison? First of all, despite Vick’s doubts, I do know that she’s no longer mine. Five years without a word. Five years building a life in this leafy utopian outpost. Carmel, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was a temporary residence for writers and artists, who set up camp and roomed in primitive cabins along the white beach. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 an influx of homeless bohemians pushed the locals into finally taking city building seriously. The town’s history is associated with famous writers—Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Robinson Jeffers—but I doubt those old artists would be able to afford a meal in the town it’s become.

  She came here to make a life with Drew Favreau, a GM manager who’d spent half his working life in Vienna before retiring at fifty-eight. They dated a mere four months, then he popped the question. The relationship confused her friends—an older man with no particularly apparent charms, while Celia’s charms were apparent to everyone, particularly to the long line of young men she’d used and abandoned during her first three years in Vienna, leading up to our year together. A few years ago, Sarah Western told me that when she pressed for explanations Celia became vague and unconvincing. She wanted to stop running around, she claimed. She wanted to sit still. “A woman like her doesn’t settle down,” Sarah told me. “For Celia, stasis equals death.”

  So what was the answer? Because of our history, and because of the way I felt, I wasn’t in a position to ask directly, but her friends pressed her, and their opinion finally settled on that catchall of midlife crisis. She was nearing forty, after all, her childbearing years coming to a close, and after a life in the secret world no one could blame her for wanting to rest. So, Carmel.

  I haven’t come unprepared—I’ve spent many hours on my due diligence. There is Drew, now sixty-three and a hundred and eighty pounds. There is Evan, four years old and already attending the overpriced Stevenson School around the corner from their house on Vista Street. According to school reports, it looks like Evan’s shaping up to become a bully. Then there is little Ginny, one and a half, with long chestnut hair just like her mother.

  There’s reading to be done in a place like this, so: digital subscriptions to The New Yorker, The New York Times, the L.A. Times, and The Economist, plus a real-paper subscription to National Geographic (Drew’s choice, I’m guessing). For a six-month period just after the move Celia maintained a Facebook page, showing off photos of the beach and quaint restaurants and upscale parties in order to feed Viennese jealousy, and it worked well—her fate was discussed throughout the embassy. Then, as if she’d done enough to make her new life convincing, she abruptly shut down the page. Old friends noticed long lags in her e-mail replies, most prefaced with “Sorry, I’ve just been so busy.” Over drinks, Sarah said, “We’re defending the free world, right? But she’s too busy to answer a lousy how-are-you e-mail?”

  She was busy, though. She became staff photographer for the local rag, the Carmel Pine Cone, and volunteered at the Sunset Center, where traveling musicians, most long past their prime, came to play midcentury hits for the retirees. By the time she became pregnant the second time she had taken a part-time job at the Stevenson School, because one thing about Celia is that she knows how to lay the groundwork for her future, or her child’s. She also makes time, two hours a week, to meet with Dr. Leon Sachs, her therapist, whose notes I have been unable to access.

  Are all these projects enough to keep her from answering old friends? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think she decided that she was done with that existence. In Vienna she was Celia 1, and this new Celia, Celia 2, is busy jettisoning the baggage of that previous self. She’s even using a therapist to make sure European phobias don’t encroach on her American life. Again, she’s planning ahead. She can see her quietly successful future with complete clarity, and she’s cutting away anything that might threaten it.

  She is, and has always been, a breathtaking woman.

  5

  From: Celia Favreau

  Date: October 1, 2012

  To: Henry Pelham

  Subject: RE: Hey

  My Dear H,

  What a surprise! I thought you’d have moved on to DC by now, or to Switz—you were always crazy for those mountains. Yes, let’s do meet. I’ve been living in a bubble of my own construction for far too long; it’s time to let in some fresh air.

  How’s Matty? Did she fit you into a wedding ring yet? The rumors about Drew are half-true, like most rumors. He went to the emergency room with what turned out to be a heart murmur. He’s on some drugs—aren’t we all?—but is as fit as a 50-year-old. One that’s in decent health, I mean.

  The children are lovely. All children are, I suppose, but mine particularly so. Evan has begun dancing at the local academy and is at the top of his class. Ginny drew a nearly perfect face the other day—not even two yet! Obviously, both are geniuses of the highest order.

  Tell Klaus to invest the security deposit into his family. That should make him happy.

  Jake who?

  The restaurant: Rendez-vous (yes, hyphenated—no snide comments, please), at Dolores and 6th. Let’s say seven, and when we get closer we can adjust.

  Looking forward to it!

  Best,

  C

  6

  The kids. The husband. Klaus. Matty, for Christ’s sake. The things we talk about to avoid the only subjects that truly matter. The ways in which we distract ourselves each and every day to ignore the fact that, eventually, we will keel over and die. As if this doesn’t matter, when it’s the only thing that truly matters.

  What I should have said in my invitation was “Celia, I can’t stop seeing you when the lights go out. I see each of your parts—I atomize them—and then re-create them. They are exhibits for my own prosecution: wrists, neck, ankles. More: earlobe, chin, nipples, the cleft above your ass. For the last five years I’ve been defiling you periodically … did you know? Have you been assaulted by cold shivers around ten P.M. Vienna time? That would be around one in the afternoon in California, when you’re resting at home, preparing dinner for your clan, volunteering at the local theater, or taking snapshots of small business owners. Maybe you were reading The New Yorker on your iPad, longing for the intellectual life of the other coast, when you felt my icy intrusion. How did it make you feel? Did it make you queasy, or was there a tickle of arousal at the base of your spine, where I once slid my hands beneath your blouse? Did that feeling stay with you through the family dinner, tugging at you as you served steamed kale and grilled chicken to your spawn, finally taking over once everyone was asleep, even that elderly man who shares the bed with you? Did you reach down to finally take hold of the feeling with your slender fingers? Could I have, just occasionally, been atomized by you? Midnight your time is nine in the morning for me. I never felt a thing, but perhaps I wasn’t paying close enough attention.”

  My glass is empty, and I feel an urge to sneak off to the toilet. I haven’t relieved myself since twenty thousand feet over Carson City, Nevada, and the mix of wine and impure thoughts brings me back to that part of my anatomy. I slide carefully off the chair and turn to find a smiling, plump woman standing beside me. Dark eyes, an angle to her head, rounded cheeks, and white gold clip-on earrings.

  “I hope you’re not loaded already,” she says to me.

  “Celia. Wow.”

  She laughs aloud, shaking her head. “I know I’ve gained, Henry, but not that much.”

  I’m confused suddenly. She’s mistaki
ng my thoughts—she’s always mistaken me. “You’re dreamy,” I tell her and lean forward for the embrace and the kisses on the cheeks. But it’s been five years, after all, and she’s lost the habit. The hug is interrupted by a kiss I’m aiming at her soft left cheek, which lands instead on the corner of her lips. We separate awkwardly. “Excuse me,” I mutter.

  “You,” she says with authority, holding me at arm’s length and leaping past the faux pas. “You’re exactly as you were. What’s your secret?”

  She lies beautifully. I’ve lost weight, but in the way of sickness, and the gray that once leaked stealthily into my hair staged a winning frontal assault two years ago. “Martinis,” I say, “but apparently they’re verboten here.”

  She puts on a frown for my benefit. “I should’ve chosen someplace else.”

  “Let’s just find our table, okay?”

  I watch her as we dutifully head to the ponytail. Motherhood has changed her from the long, lithe woman who crushed hearts in Austria, but love doesn’t lose interest so easily. The neck. The wrists. The ankles. Those eyes and lips—fuller now, more enticing.

  “Are you leering?” she asks, brow arched.

  “Just lost in your beauty, dear.”

  The ponytail brings us to a table by the window via a circuitous route, and I stumble against a garishly green chair, still half-distracted by erotic memories. I’m overwhelmed by the confusion of my own incompetence. Have I really aged that much? Have I become a doddering old idiot?

  Yes, probably. I mean, no. It’s Celia. Here, again. Close enough to kidnap.

  When I met with Bill Compton a month ago, I was on my game. I drew him to a pub of my own choosing and cut through his evasions and circumspection with a razor. By the end, he was the one distracted to the point of incompetence. His last sip of beer was delivered with a quivering hand. By the time I left, he was in a state of high panic, and not only because I brought up the Flughafen. He became a wreck because I was the polar opposite of a wreck. I was machine-made. I was in complete control of my faculties, crunching through each of his excuses with hard realities.