Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(36)
“Whew,” DeMarco said. “I think I’m getting dizzy.”
“All of Tom’s novels, as I’m sure you know, have borrowed characters and situations from other novels. Tom intended his novel to be like Nabokov’s in its use of wordplay and lots of literary allusions, and to be a comment on contemporary American society. The plot would be different, of course, just as all of Tom’s plots were wholly his own creation, but in theme, you might say, his D was going to echo Lolita in that both would be about desire and the moral implications of how we respond to our desires.”
“This is very helpful information,” DeMarco told him. “Though I can’t help but wonder how you came to be so well informed.”
“I told you, Tom was my advisor. I went to his office nearly every day. I picked his brain every chance I could. He’s a very, very generous man with his time and advice. And I like to think that he saw some potential in me as a writer and that’s why he was so supportive.”
“So if I want to find this Annabel character… You say she was only twelve years old?”
“In Nabokov’s novel. But not in Poe’s poem. And not in Tom’s novel either. But she would be somebody still young enough to have a kind of wounded innocence to her.”
“A wounded innocence.”
“Someone who has been hurt but is still…vulnerable, I guess. Trusting. Not yet jaded. Not yet cynical.”
“Someone like you,” DeMarco said.
Nathan Briessen flinched. “Funny you should say that. Tom said that once.”
Strange irony, DeMarco thought. Huston was writing a novel about an older man who falls in love with a girl, and here was a young man who was in love with the older man.
“Desire,” DeMarco said. “That’s what the title stood for? D for desire?”
“The book was to be divided into four parts: Desire, Deception, Despair, and Discernment.”
“Discernment? It was going to have a happy ending?”
“That I don’t know. In all likelihood, Tom didn’t either. What I do know is that discernment doesn’t always lead to happiness. Sometimes just the opposite.”
“Well,” DeMarco said. Then, a moment later, “Do you know which club it is? Where Annabel works?”
“I know that Tom had been visiting various clubs for a couple of months now, trying to find the one girl who seemed to have the qualities he was looking for. The one who wasn’t faking it, you know? He said that some of them were very good at faking it.”
“Faking interest in him?”
“Faking innocence.”
“Is that possible? For a woman to work as a stripper and still be an innocent?”
“Apparently Tom thought so.”
“And you?”
Briessen shrugged. “I guess it’s fair to say that my own view of life isn’t quite so…conciliatory. Not that I don’t wish I could share Tom’s view. And you, Sergeant?”
“Excuse me?”
“How do you view the world?”
DeMarco smiled. “Did Professor Huston happen to mention the name of the club where Annabel works?”
“He mentioned others, ones he had crossed off the list. But this new one? I don’t think so. I know he’d visited it three, maybe four times already before he invited me to go along. I think he just wanted me to look at the girl too, you know? See if I thought she was the real thing.”
“Very strange place to go searching for innocence.”
“I made the same comment. And you know what he said?”
“I’d like to.”
“He said that’s what makes it worth writing about. The apparent dichotomy. The internal conflict.”
“The human heart in conflict with itself.”
Briessen cocked his head and smiled. “You’ve read Faulkner.”
“Once upon a time,” DeMarco said. “As for the name of this strip club…”
“It wasn’t anything local, I know that much.”
“He couldn’t risk being seen by someone he knows.”
“Right. I mean his wife knew, but even so.”
“She knew he was going to strip clubs?”
“It was research. She understood. They trusted each other completely.”
“And this you know because…?”
“He told me.”
DeMarco smiled and nodded. We believe what we want to believe. He said, “So it wasn’t a local club. Can you give me anything more than that?”
“I think he said something about going north. The first time he went to this club, I mean. Must have been three, four weeks ago.”
“North to Erie?”
“No…no, he asked me about a golf course that was nearby. Twin Oaks something. Twin Oaks Country Club, that was it. He asked if I knew how to get to Twin Oaks Country Club because the strip club was off the same road, just a couple of miles away.”
“Twin Oaks straddles the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. Just north of Pierpont.”
“There you go. That’s where the club is. Somewhere not far from there.”
DeMarco smiled. “You’ve been a great deal of help today.”
“I only wish I knew more.”