What I Loved

preceding events, made another one, and then another. He deliberated on several possibilities until he lost hope and hauled his miserable body into a cab, which drove him to the airport. I felt sorry for him, because he had understood so little.
    Three mornings after I returned to New York, I was moving easily around my apartment, thanks to Dr. Huyler and a drug called Relafen. At about the same time, two plainclothes detectives came to Violet's door asking for Mark. I didn't see them, but as soon as the policemen were gone, Violet came downstairs to tell me about their visit. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and Violet was wearing a long white cotton nightgown with a high neck. When I first saw her, I thought she looked a little like an old-fashioned doll. She began to talk to me, and I noticed that her voice fell into the half whisper she had used when she'd called me from the studio the day Bill had died.
     
    "They said that they just wanted to ask him some questions. I said that Mark had been traveling with Teddy Giles and that the last place I knew he had been was Nashville. I said that he had had problems, that he might not call me at all, but if he was in touch, I would tell him they wanted to talk to him"—-Violet took a breath—"in connection with the murder of Rafael Hernandez. That was all. They didn't ask me any questions. They said 'Thank you,' and then they left They must have found his body. It's all true, Leo. Do you think I should call them and tell them what we know? I didn't say anything."
    "What do we know, Violet?"
    She looked confused for a moment. "We don't really know anything, do we? "
    "Not about the murder." I listened to the word as I said it. So common. The word was everywhere all the time, but I didn't want it to come easily from me. I wanted it to be difficult to say, more difficult than it was.
    "There's the message on Bill's machine that says Mark knows. I never erased it. Do you think he knows?"
    "He said he did, but then he changed his story and said the boy was in California."
    "If he knows and he stays with Giles, what does it mean?"
    I shook my head.
    "Is it a crime, Leo?"
    "Just knowing, you mean?"
    She nodded.
    "I suppose it depends on how you know, if you have any real evidence. Mark might not believe the story at all. He might really think that the kid ran away..."
    Violet was shaking her head back and forth. "No, Leo. Remember, Mark mentioned that two detectives were asking questions at the Finder Gallery That was when Giles left town. Isn't there some law about aiding a fugitive?"
    "We don't know that there's a warrant for Giles's arrest. We don't know that the police have any evidence at all. To be honest, Violet, we don't even know that Giles killed that boy. It's unlikely but possible that he might be bragging about a murder he didn't commit—simply because he knew about it. That would make him culpable, but in a different way."
    Violet looked past me and over at the painting of herself. "Detective Lightner and Detective Mills," she said. "A white man and a black man. They didn't look young, and they didn't look old. They weren't fat, and they weren't thin. They were both very nice, and they didn't seem to expect anything from me. They called me Mrs. Wechsler." Violet paused and turned back to me. "It's funny, since Bill died I like being called that by strangers. There's no Bill anymore. There's no marriage anymore, and I never changed my name. I've always been Violet Blom, but now his name is something I want to hear over and over again, and I like answering to it. It's like wearing his shirts. I want to cover myself in what's left of him, even if it's only his name." Violet's voice carried no emotion. She was just explaining the facts.
    A few minutes later, she left me to go upstairs. An hour after that, she knocked on my door again and explained that she was on the way to the studio, but she wanted to give me copies of Bill's tapes to watch when I had the time. Bernie had been dragging his feet, she said, because he had so much to look after, but he had finally handed over copies of the videos. "Bill didn't know what the work was going to look like. He talked about building a big room for watching the tapes, but he kept changing his mind. He was going to call it Icarus. I know that, and that he made lots of drawings of a boy falling."
    Violet looked down at her boots and chewed on her lip.
    "Are you okay?" I said.
    She lifted her eyes and said, "I have to