Fall Guy

first. It was a deep closet, one rack in back of the other, everything in the back in garment bags. I figured that would be the winter clothes, the things in front for summer. Except for the coat that had been on the arm of the couch. That was now hanging among the lightweight clothing. I wondered if whoever had hung it up had paid any attention to which closet was Tim's and which was Parker's. I wondered if I would know whose things were whose, until I looked under the clothes, at the shoes. I took the clothes off their hangers and carefully laid them on the couch. When the front was empty, except for the hangers swaying there like dancers at the end of a long marathon, I unzipped the garment bags and took out the woolen sport jackets, a navy-blue suit, sweaters in bags from the dry cleaner, folded over hangers waiting for their season to arrive again.
    I pulled the shoes out, cop shoes, all of them, except for one pair of loafers. In the very back, there was some luggage. I thought I could pack up the clothes and put the suitcases back in the closet, see if Maggie wanted any of it for any reason. If not, they'd be ready to go to Housing Works. I wondered whether, if I waited until the end, they'd send a truck, take everything at once—the furniture, the pots and pans, even the books. It was the sort of recycling I thought Tim might have approved of: his things sold, the money used to help people with AIDS, people with nowhere else to turn. Not exactly what he'd been doing with men like Parker, but not entirely unrelated either.
    I saved a cashmere sweater and a particularly beautiful scarf and set those aside for Maggie. I left the shelf—I'd need a ladder or a chair to reach the things up there—and started the second closet. As soon as I opened this one, I knew I was no longer in Kansas. There weren't as many clothes, but the ones there were seemed new. I thought about all those notations in Tim's checkbook. „For Parker.“
    ■ Expensive sweaters and slacks, sandals, boots, the inside of the closet door plastered with pictures cut from magazines: horses running at full tilt, a skull and crossbones, pictures of rocks. But then I spotted the shelf. And now I didn't want to wait. I took one of the kitchen chairs, carried it over to the closet and climbed up. There were no clothes on this shelf. There was, instead, a sort of shrine, maybe one hundred tiny objects spread out in what seemed like, but I was sure wasn't, random order: the skulls of tiny creatures and the claws of others, bits of marble, like steles, standing between them; a tiny American flag; feathers, rocks and tiny figures, some human, some not, grouped together or standing singly, as if in prayer. There was hair there, too. I didn't know the nature of the creature it had come from. There were coins, some foreign, one gold. There were beads and thread and string that had unevenly placed knots in it, a woman's antique pearl ring. I ran my finger on the shelf between the objects. No dust. Someone took good care of his shrine.
    I closed the closet door, trying to figure out if there was a way I could get Parker's things to him without having him come here. Things were starting to add up in a way that made me want to avoid him.
    Of course, I could simply empty the second closet and pack it up. Even if everything in it wasn't his, I was sure he wouldn't refuse anything. Did I have an obligation to let him come and pick and choose what he wanted to take, even if some of what he picked and chose wasn't his in the first place? I thought of calling Brody, not to ask him to be here, but to ask him what he thought. Getting Brody to talk? That might be as easy as threading a rabbit through the eye of a needle. So I didn't call. I went back to work.
    It was hazy, hot and humid out, but not in O'-Fallon's apartment. With the air conditioner humming, I couldn't hear any street noises, nor was it too warm. The shutters were the way I found them, closed on the bottom and partly open on top, letting the late-afternoon light filter gently into the room.
    I tried the cabinets under the bookshelves next and found them locked. No matter, I thought, you could open those locks with a nail file. Instead, I went back to the desk to look for a key, not finding it. I sat in O'Fallon's chair, trying to slip inside the man who used to sit there. Wasn't it James Thurber who said, „I hate women because they always know where things are“? Hands flat on the desk, eyes