Duplicate Keys by Jane Smiley Page A

no longer considered the four of them supportive. “Ray,” she said, “I want my key. And Noah, too. Do you have a copy of Noah’s key, Rya?” Rya nodded her head. “That, too. And I want a list from each of you stating to whom you have lent or given your keys to my apartment for as long as you can remember.”
    “But Susan, you had the lo—,” began Alice. Susan glared at her.
    Rya said, “Do you think—”
    “What do
you
think?”
    Rya shrugged. Noah didn’t say anything. Susan said, “Alice knows she can keep hers, and besides, she would never lend itor give it away.” With her tiny fork, she dug a garlicky snail dripping out of its shell and popped it into her mouth. Alice’s own mouth watered. Rya began to sniff. Susan helped herself to another snail. “Everything’s going to be different now,” said Rya. “Different and worse.” Alice said, “Maybe not.” Susan glared at her again. “I mean, it is different and worse already,” she amended, “but—” Susan seemed to grow larger before them, as if Rya’s complaints expanded her into anger. Still, though, she didn’t say anything, and finished her snails with her usual neatness, wiped up some of the butter sauce with a crust of bread, patted her lips, and cleaned her fingers on her white napkin. She had gone out before the funeral. Thinking of it now, Alice wondered if she had gone to see Honey, for she seemed to look at them with Honey’s eyes. To speculate about them. Over and over, her gaze dropped on Noah and Ray. Alice’s response to this was to wish she could eat everything on the table. The waiter cleared their dishes.
    In addition to Susan’s green-peppercorned fillet and Alice’s golden slices of roast chicken napped in a smooth pale sauce, he brought medallions of veal for Noah, chicken Kiev for Rya, and lapin à la moutarde for Ray, which everyone stared at when it was set before him. The vegetable of the evening was spooned onto each of their plates. After the waiter had departed everyone seized their utensils and dove at the food, as if, Alice thought, it were trays of Big Macs and fries. Her own fork she dipped in the sauce embracing the chicken and touched to her tongue. A flower, savory and sharp, seemed to open in her mouth. Rya snuffled deeply, wiped her eyes, and drove her fork into the little balloon of chicken on her plate. Susan, who rarely drank, poured herself a second large glass of wine.
    “The service was nice,” said Ray.
    “Don’t even talk about it,” ordered Susan.
    “I want to talk about it,” he began, in his wise mentor manner. “We should talk about it. It’s a horrible thing.”
    “We keep having these dinners,” said Susan, “as if they were killed in a car accident or died of pneumonia. We keep embracingeach other, and wiping away each other’s tears and calling each other on the phone and saying, significantly, ‘How
are
you, dear?’” Ray reddened.
    “Who did you give the keys to my apartment to?”
    Ray twisted a bone out of some meat on his plate and laid it aside. Indignant? Alice wondered. Afraid? Would a trained observer, like Honey, draw a conclusion or only leap to one? Ray said, “That’s a valid question for you to ask and I’m trying to think. I sent one of the kids from Studio Midtown up there a few weeks ago to pick up Noah’s bass, but he gave me the key back that day. Zimmerman had the key for a few days last week. I was negligent there, I admit. That’s all I can think of. But didn’t Alice say something about the locks being changed?” Ray opened the clip of his key ring and put two keys on the table.
    “Who else might you have loaned them to?” Susan picked up the keys.
    “Like I said. Nobody.”
    “Well, what were you doing that night? Where were you at zero hour?”
    Ray was casual. “With some friends.”
    “You don’t think any of your other circle of friends might try to force himself on someone in our circle, do you?”
    Delicately, Ray allowed,