The Name of the World - Denis Johnson [12]
“I’m sorry,” J.J. said, “excuse me—”
They both looked over at us. J.J. said to them, “Trevor Watt is dead?”
They looked at each other for a second, and then back at J.J. “Yes—he’s dead.” It came out of both their mouths at once.
The man said, “He had a heart attack last Saturday.” J.J. cleared his throat. He looked stunned. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “He was a pretty good acquaintance of mine. Where was he?”
“He was at Brown,” the woman said.
The man said, “Well, but he’d retired. He was living in—”
“Down in Alabama someplace,” the woman said.
While we paid our bill, J.J. went on chatting with them, and I urged him to take his time. I stepped outside and stood smoking a cigar on the sidewalk. Casually I drop that fact, but actually I’ve never smoked. This one had been given to me. People gave me gifts, people liked me, maybe because they sensed I was virtually dead and couldn’t hurt them.
I’d been waiting for J.J to take up the subject of his wife, to open a window on his bitterness this day of his divorce. But nothing of the kind had happened. He and his wife had been separated a couple of years. Crossing the legal finish line seemed to have made him pensive today, but I supposed in general he’d mended.
As a matter of fact, just a few weeks previous I’d met J.J.’s wife. This was at a large dinner party at a Dean’s house, one of those old-fashioned affairs where many had come for dinner but most—the students—would be booted out after cocktails. She’d been traveling through with T. K. Nickerson, the writer who’d won her away from us. Everybody called him “Kit.” Her name was Kelly. Kit and Kelly had been on their way to, or from, Europe in the dead of winter. Kelly was a beautiful woman, striking without having to be glamorous. She just dropped a purple silk dress over her head and she was ready to spend an evening in a room full of men trying not to go crazy in her presence. Tiberius Soames, my Haitian colleague in the Department of History, attached himself to her early that evening and never left her side. Her eyes looked sleepy, but her gaze was vibrant. She had very pale eyelashes. Straight strawberry hair to her shoulders.
Another redhead was also there at the dinner party that night, the redheaded cellist, the creator of the Cannon Performance, that is. She was working for the caterer of this affair, helping in the kitchen and bringing around the food. She wore a gray-and-white uniform and had her hair bunched under a black net, and she looked very plain. But that only accentuated the aura of her mischief. She moved among us with a tray like the secret queen of some criminal enclave, casing the joint. As I reached for one of her hors d’oeuvres, she smiled and said, “Hello, Michael Reed.”
It had been a month or so since we’d met at Ted MacKey’s, and then only briefly. Tonight I’d noticed her right away, but I hadn’t expected to be remembered. I was astonished. I probably looked it. She smiled and passed by.
Before we all sat down to eat, I made sure to find out her name. This was a nerve-racking endeavor, not entirely to my surprise. Less than two weeks earlier, I’d been staring at her naked privates. I tried to intersect her path as if by accident. I sidled around and we approached each other at a drift, like objects in outer space. “You’re overly fond of these little numbers,” she said of the items on her tray.
“No. I was trying to remember your name. I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”
“Flower.” After a small challenging beat of silence during which I managed not to ask if she was kidding, she said, “Yes. Flower Cannon.”
“Oh!—Cannon.”
“Oh?”
“I must not have heard it, back when we met.”
“You’d have remembered.”
“Yes.”
“But you saw one of my performances last month, I think.”
“Well,” I said.
“Did you like it?”
“Well…” But I was stalled. I’d become completely stupid. “That is the full text of my remarks,” I said.
Flower Cannon laughed at me and moved along.
As for Kelly Stein, J.J.’s wife, I didn’t pass one word with her beyond a glancing introduction, because during dinner she sat way down the