Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

dolls, the Swissons bowed and bowed. Then at last the clapping diminished and died, and Britt Swisson went back to the piano. He and his wife watched each other, nodding to an inaudible beat, nodding like two children about to leap into the flip of a jumprope; then suddenly, exactly together, they started singing and playing. Mickelsson lowered himself in his seat a little and sullenly closed his eyes. “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse,” Kate Swisson sang, her blue eyes round as saucers.

“Who would’ve believed from meeting them,” Phil Bryant said when intermission came, “that the Swissons would turn out to be comics!”

Mickelsson, for civility’s sake, said nothing. He thought again of old Pearson’s idea of the Mormon God, alien and terrible, watching the activities of humanity with the detachment of a spider.

“They must’ve had the most fun working up their act!” Edie cried, bending toward Mickelsson and Jessica to make herself heard.

Jessica called back, laughing, “You make them sound like a vaudeville team!”

“But what else?” Edie cried, tossing her curls and merrily batting the air; then, turning to draw in Mabel Garret, “They’re a team, Mabel, aren’t they? Nobody doubts they’re artistes, of course!”

Mabel said nothing, smiling rather oddly at Mickelsson, her brown eyes hooded, as if she’d heard some terrible rumor about him and had not yet definitely made up her mind.

“Well I approve,” Edie said, dictatorial. “Whatever says that serious art can’t be playful? Why, isn’t all art play?” She turned suddenly to Mickelsson. “What do you think, Peter? You know all about aesthetics!”

“Yes,” he said, slightly bowing, like a count, intentionally off register.

She smiled as if it were exactly what she’d hoped he would say, and as she turned back to the Garrets, then quickly to her husband, realizing just an instant too late how difficult it would be to play off doom-faced Mabel, Mickelsson backed off a step, getting out his pipe, and edged into the chattering, smiling crowd, toward the double doors. When Jessica glanced at him, as if surprised at his abandoning her to the Bryants, Mickelsson smiled and held up his pipe as explanation. She made a face, then turned back to Edith.

In the commons outside, it was still snowing, large flakes falling softly, thickly, so that the tower of the Ad Building was a barely visible wedge against the night. Large and noisy as the crowd was, both inside the building and here, spilling out past the doors behind him, there was no one about on the commons. Under the long lines of goose-necked lamps the falling snow bloomed brighter, the whole scene forming some pattern he recognized. It came to him at last: ballet; London; his daughter Leslie in the seat beside him, holding his hand, leaning forward with an expression of intense concentration, taking in the dance just as, once, in Paris or Rome—some old, high-ceilinged, inexpensive hotel—she’d sat up suddenly in the darkness, bending forward intently, as Mickelsson and Ellen abruptly broke off their love-making.

He gripped his pipe between his teeth and raised a match to it. As he did so, it came to him that something was standing just behind him in the darkness, almost at his elbow, though most of the others stayed close to the building, out of the cold. When he turned, he saw Tom Garret smiling at him sociably.

“Oh, hello, Tom,” Mickelsson said. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” Garret said, and grinned, holding up both hands to show that they were empty. “Can’t afford it; too many mouths to feed. Just came out for the air. Enjoying the concert?” From his cherub, squirrel-cheeked grin it was clear that he, like Jessica and the others, was having a dandy time.

Mickelsson blew out smoke and half turned away. “I guess I must not be in the mood,” he said.

“That’ll happen,” Garret said lightly, as if Mickelsson’s remark were not evasion but familiar truth. “Sometimes the waters just aren’t flowing.”

For some reason the observation stirred Mickelsson’s feelings. He was reminded of old John Pearson, marching up and down the mountain with his dowsing rod; and he remembered Pearson’s saying, “Seems like the land’s gaht a spell on it.” Mickelsson cleared his throat and said, “I see the Blicksteins have their friend with them.”

Garret nodded. “Yeah. I guess they take her everywhere.”

Mickelsson moved closer to him. “Why is that, do you know?”

“You didn’t hear?” Garret asked. He brushed snowflakes from his nose.

“I know her husband was murdered. That’s about all I know.”

Garret looked out into the empty commons. He stood with his arms folded on his banty chest, stomach thrown forward, and he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “That’s about all anybody knows,” he said. “Awful thing.” His tone was oddly light, conversational, though it was clear enough that he took the matter seriously. “They’d only been married a month or so, very happy, and so forth and so on.”

“I’m sorry. What was the connection with the Blicksteins?”

“The husband worked part-time in Blickstein’s office, some kind of administrative assistant or something—rest of the time in the Chem Department. I guess the Blicksteins got friendly with ’em.”

“And nobody has any idea who killed him?”

“Apparently not, or if they do they’re still keeping it under their hat.” He leaned his head way over, looking at Mickelsson. Garret’s hair and shoulders were white with snowflakes. “Worst part of it is, it was apparently someone the Warrens knew. I forget the details. The girl was away at the time, visiting her parents or something. Mabel can tell you the parts I’ve forgotten. Husband was alone in the apartment, let in the murderer, apparently had a chat with him, and so forth and so on. You’d think the police could solve a thing like that.” He shook his head.

“Awful,” Mickelsson said. “Let him in, did you say?”

“Him, her, them …”

He thought of asking if it were true that the man was homosexual, then decided against it. Anyway, Nugent wouldn’t have been