Chapter 33
After a week of interviews and appearances—each more focused on the possible truth about Judith’s death than the last—Paul returns early one Friday evening, exhausted and profoundly relieved to be home.
He’s so glad to have changed his telephone number.
He’ll have silence tonight, after a day filled with noise—most of it coming from his own mouth.
He drinks a cool glass of water from the tap, folds his suit over a bedroom chair, takes a hot shower, and slides into worn pajama pants and an old white T-shirt.
He sits in his chair with his whiskey glass and a cigarette and feels like himself for the first time in days.
Like the old Paul, the guy he was so eager to shuck off.
Now he revisits the comforts of this former self—tartan plaid slippers, his view of the neighboring brick wall—and tries to sink back into them. Hide in them.
But it doesn’t quite work. He can’t fully relax, hard as he tries.
Part of him remains rigidly observant, on alert to answer a question like, Why do you think Judith’s earlier trauma affected her the way it did?
That was one he got today from a New York Times reporter, and he desperately wanted to answer with, I don’t fucking know, man.
Maybe he should have. It would have been more honest. Instead, he theorized—bullshitted—for several minutes with the journalist staring at him as if he could see right through Paul’s skull to his squirming, scrambled brain.
Paul sighs, takes a long swallow of whiskey, and stares at a brown grocery bag bulging with letters by his dining room table.
Maybe this is another reason why he can’t relax: the letters.
They’ve poured in since that first fateful television interview—in such great number that his landlord, Cyrus, collected the mail and left a note in his otherwise empty mailbox that said, See me.
Paul expected to get a lecture from the old grump, but instead he greeted Paul with a painfully wide grin that bared his yellowed teeth and said, You’ve hit the big time now, ain’t ya?
while licking his lips and handing over the bag.
Paul didn’t answer; he wondered how much Cyrus knew.
Had he seen the interview? Had he seen multiple interviews?
And what did someone like Cyrus think about all of it—all the art world drama, the psychological intrigue?
Maybe he didn’t think about it at all, Paul mused.
Maybe he just saw his tenant, newly notorious, and the bright light of that revelation blotted out everything else.
Paul grabs the bag and reaches in for a handful of envelopes.
He riffles through, his eyes half closed.
He’s doing it aimlessly, with no intention of opening and reading any of them now, before a well-earned early bedtime, when he spots it: the slanting block letters screaming his name.
He tears the envelope right open, all the while knowing he shouldn’t.
He shouldn’t, but he has to. The letter inside reads:
PAUL SORENSON
YOU’VE SHOWN YOURSELF TO BE
A LEECH
A NOTHING
A THIEF
AND NOW A LIAR, TOO
HOW DARE YOU SPEW LIES ABOUT JUDITH???
ALL FOR MONEY the I was less concerning.
What if Charlie is gathering a tribe around her?
A tribe that loathes him. A tribe of angry women bent on delivering justice.
This isn’t an idle threat; it’s one promising action.
If it were still just an I, just a Charlie, it wouldn’t bother him so much—but what if there’s really a we?
A we with a plan. Maybe he should call the police?
Then he remembers he’s aired Schuyler’s semi-unspoken theory on television and needs to avoid him.
He’s surprised the detective hasn’t come knocking already.
Paul lights a cigarette, takes a quick, harsh drag, and sets the letter aside.
Gently, as if it were made of a volatile substance.
He tells himself to calm the hell down, to move on and read something normal and nice to take the sting out of Charlie’s—or whoever’s—poison.
The next letter he opens is from a retired schoolteacher in New Jersey who raves about the Harper’s portfolio.
After that, a man in Ohio who describes himself as “an avid collector” thanks him and asks about acquiring Judith’s work.
Paul sets this one aside for Jahan’s team; the man seems like a legitimate potential buyer.
He’s glad to be doing this, to be moving on through his correspondence with calm and poise.
He’s a professional, isn’t he? He’s such a professional, in fact, that he can glance at the wrinkled letter now and then and feel nothing at all.
A letter from “Barbara” in New York starts by praising Judith’s work but ends badly: “I saw your first interview, and some of your subsequent interviews. You should be ashamed of yourself, dragging Judith’s personal history into the light.
It isn’t your business. And it’s overshadowing her work, which was your intention, I suppose?
It will sell more photographs, I know.” Paul grunts in disgust; he hates the way she calls Judith by her first name, as if she’d known her.
I knew her, you stupid cow, he thinks, but Barbara can’t hear.
She wouldn’t hear him, anyway, even if she were here, spouting her nonsense to his face.
He opens more letters, each time thinking he’ll find something that will give him a hint of satisfaction.
But more and more of the letters mirror Barbara’s now: expressions of admiration for Judith’s photographs interspersed with disgust or even outrage.
It’s as though a knitting circle were railing against him with a set of stock phrases: You have no right, You should be ashamed, Your greed is astonishing.
It would almost be laughable if there weren’t so damned many of them—at least forty so far, and he’s only halfway through the bag.
Female soldiers for Judith, Paul thinks with a laugh that sounds strange and lonely in the air of his apartment. Possibly led by the dark-haired girl who used to sit near the great photographer in class. What would Judith think of that?
Paul lets the letters drop back into the bag and kicks it away from him. The action helps return him to himself—to his armchair, his glass of booze, his burning cigarette, his warm slippers. He’s had enough. Whatever the rest of the mail says, it can wait until after the show—or forever.