Gerald's Game(103)
Brandon and Gerald worked together a lot over the last fourteen months of Gerald's life-a suit involving one of the major supermarket chains up here. They won whatever it was they were supposed to win, and, more important for yours truly, they established a good rapport. I have an idea that when the old sticks that run the firm get around to taking Gerald's name off the letterhead, Brandon's will take its place. In the meantime, he was the perfect person for this assignment, which Brandon himself described as damage control during his first meeting with me in the hospital.
He does have a kind of sweetness about him-yes, he does-and he was honest with me from the jump, but of course he still had his own agenda from the beginning. Believe me when I say my eyes are wide open on that score, my dear; I was, after all, married to a lawyer for almost two decades, and I know how fiercely they compartmentalize the various aspects of their lives and personalities. It's what allows them to survive without having too many breakdowns, I suppose, but it's also what makes so many of them utterly loathsome.
Brandon was never loathsome, but he was a man with a mission: keep a lid on any bad publicity that might accrue to the firm. That meant keeping a lid on any bad publicity that might accrue to either Gerald or me, of course. This is the sort of job where the person doing it can wind up getting screwed by a single stroke of bad luck, but Brandon still took it like a shot... and to his further credit, he never once tried to tell me he took the job out of respect for Gerald's memory. He took it because it was what Gerald himself used to call a career-maker-the kind of job that can open a quick shortcut to the next echelon, if it turns out well. It is turning out well for Brandon, and I'm glad. He treated me with a great deal of kindness and compassion, which is reason enough to be happy for him, I guess, but there are two other reasons, as well. He never got hysterical when I told him someone from the press had called or come around, and he never acted as if I were just a job-only that and nothing more. Do you want to know what I really think, Ruth? Although I am seven years older than the man I'm telling you about and I still look folded, stapled, and mutilated, I think Brandon Milheron may have fallen a little bit in love with me... or with the heroic Little Nell he sees in his mind's eye when he looks at me. I don't think it's a sex thing with him (not yet, anyway; at a hundred and eight pounds, I still look quite a bit like a plucked chicken hanging in a butcher shop window), and that's fine with me; if I never go to bed with another man, I will be absolutely delighted. Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like seeing that look in his eyes, the one that says I'm part of his agenda now-me, Jessie Angela Mahout Burlingame, as opposed to an inanimate lump his bosses probably think of as That Unfortunate Burlingame Business. I don't know if I come above the firm on Brandon's agenda, or below it, or right beside it, and I don't care. It is enough to know that I'm on it, and that I'm something more than a
Jessie paused here, tapping her left forefinger against her teeth and thinking carefully. She took a deep drag on her current cigarette, then went on.
than a charitable side-effect.
Brandon was right beside me during all the police interviews, with his little tape-recorder going. He politely but relentlessly pointed out to everyone present at every interview-including stenographers and nurses-that anyone who leaked the admittedly sensational details of the case would face all the nasty reprisals a large New England law-firm with an exceedingly tight ass could think up. Brandon must have been as convincing to them as he was to me, because no one in the know ever talked to the press.
The worst of the questioning came during the three days I spent in "guarded conditional Northern Cumberland-mostly sucking up blood, water, and electrolytes through plastic tubes. The police reports that came out of those sessions were so strange they actually looked believable when they showed up in the papers, like those weird man-bites-dog stories they run from time to time. Only this one was actually a dog-bites-man story... and woman as well, in this version. Want to hear what's going into the record books? Okay, here it is:
We decided to spend the day at our summer home in western Maine. Following a sexual interlude that was two parts tussle and one part sex, we showered together. Gerald left the shower while I was washing my hair. He was complaining of gas pains, probably from the sub sandwiches we ate on our way from Portland, and asked if there were any Rolaids or Turns in the house. I said I didn't know, but they'd be on top of the bureau or on the bed-shelf it there were. Three or four minutes later, while I was rinsing my hair, I heard Gerald cry out. This cry apparently signalled the onset of a massive coronary. It was followed by a heavy thump-the sound of a body striking the floor. I jumped out of the shower, and when I ran into the bedroom, my feet went out from under me. I hit my head on the side of the bureau as I went down and knocked myself out.
According to this version, which was put together by Mr Milheron and Mrs Burlingame-and endorsed enthusiastically by the police, I might add-I returned to partial consciousness several times, but each time I did, I passed out again. When I came to the last time, the dog had gotten tired of Gerald and was noshing on me. I got up on the bed (according to our story, Gerald and I found it where it was-probably moved there by the guys who came in to wax the floor-and we were so hot to trot we didn't bother to move it back where it belonged) and drove the dog off by throwing Gerald's water-glass and fraternity ashtray at it. Then I passed out again and spent the next few hours unconscious and bleeding all over the bed. Later on I woke up again, got to the car, and finally drove to safety... after one final bout of unconsciousness, that is. That was when I ran into the tree beside the road.