Free Constance by Patrick McGrath

that way. She said her father wanted her dead too. It occurred to me that one day she’d think the same of me.
    While I watched them, they watched me. The doctor’s manner toward me was affable but undemonstrative. I’d passed some kind of a test–I wasn’t an out-and-out cad–and he was in no hurry to force the acquaintance. Time would serve us in that regard. I was of course much older than Constance, and this counted in my favor. As for Iris, she was eager to see some display of prowess from the man about to marry her sister.
    —So Sidney, how smart are you, scale of one to ten?
    Elbows planted on the table, leaning in, gazing at me with bright-eyed, vinous warmth, clearly she’d been told by Constance that I was a brainy chap.
    —Twelve.
    —You have to say that but I’m serious. How would you fix the problems of New York?
    —No, Iris, don’t do this to him, said Constance.
    —How long have I got? I said.
    —Iris is eager to be mugged, said the doctor. We could put her down in an alley on the way back to the hotel.
    —I’m not afraid of New York, she cried. When I live here I’ll never be mugged!
    This bravura statement provoked various reactions all at once. I asked her how she’d achieve invulnerability where so many before her had tried and failed. For it was becoming apparent that nobody was safe here anymore.
    —Sidney, she said, laying a hand on my arm, trust me.
    When the meal ended and we rose to our feet, that section of the tablecloth controlled by Iris resembled the sort of blighted neighborhood she was confident she could survive in. It was a mess of salt, crusts of bread, ash, spilled coffee, burned-out tenement buildings and broken government. She moved at once to her father’s side and slipped her arm in his.
    —I’ll take this old man home, she said. Constance can have the other one.
    —You’re such a child, said Constance.
    When I kissed Iris good night, she murmured in my ear.
    —Sidney, with Constance it’s important to wind her up regularly, otherwise she runs down.
    As I hailed a cab I thought it a not unperceptive remark. But a woman isn’t a clock! A clock can’t decide what time it is, its movements are determined by its mechanism. And I asked myself, not for the first time, if the same could be said of Constance, and was that what Iris meant?
    We were all subdued in the morning when we met outside City Hall. It was a clear, cool day. City Hall is a fine old public building in the classical manner. It has a white portico with pillars. Inside, there’s a rotunda with a grand marble staircase. Abraham Lincoln lay in state there. As did Ulysses S. Grant. In the park over which City Hall presides stands the statue of one of my heroes, Nathan Hale. He was hanged by the British early in the War of Independence. On the gallows he said he regretted having but one life to give for his country. He was a foolish boy but he certainly showed courage at the end, but when I told Constance the story she yawned. She said she’d heard it already.
    We were shown into a large waiting room to join the otherprospective brides and grooms and their families. It was as richly diverse a cross section of the city’s grand mosaic as you could hope to see. We sat on hard benches until we were called in to go before the judge. Constance clung to me, and not for the first time I felt a whisper of anxiety. She was a mystery to me, this pale serious girl, she was opaque, oblique—what was I thinking of? Iris was watching me. She knew what I was thinking of. Grinning that toothy grin of hers, she made a small private solidarity gesture with her fist, and from that moment I loved her like a brother.
    When it was all over we walked to the old Italian restaurant on Chambers Street. My mother had arrived from Long Island earlier that morning. She was dressed all in black for reasons nobody understood. She’d acquired many eccentricities over the course of her long widowhood. It was oddly wonderful to see