"Nothing fair about any of it, is there, Don?"
"You ever thought any different?"
At which point Head Nurse pushed imperiously in to begin reciting the litany of reasons I could not, absolutely could not, leave.
"Probably shouldn't block the door," Don said. "And I'd stand back if I were you. I know this man."
She ignored him. "You insist on this, I'll be forced to call Security."
Her beeper went off. She ignored that as well.
"Call whomever you want. But you'd be well advised to call your administrator first, to check on legalities."
Exasperated: "It's five in the morning."
"Hey, he'll appreciate it. Let him get an early start."
She swung about and fairly steamed out of port.
Hand against my elbow, Don guided me to the door without seeming to do so.
"What do you think, Lew? Deal with paperwork later?"
"Man after my own heart."
We went down halls smelling of disinfectant, defecation and despair. Stood in a kind of lobby area, voices all a jumble, waiting for the elevator. "Take care, Mr. Griffin," Cindy said as the doors closed. I hadn't known until then that she was there.
"Heading for LaVerne's, I assume," Don said.
"Ifshe'llhaveme."
Elevator doors whispered open.
"Oh, she'll have you, all right. Fact is, we shut down your apartment, hope that's okay. Your things are in my garage. Didn't think you should be alone-for a while, at least. You okay, Lew?"
"Fine."
"Car's just over diere."
His trusty Electra, Don took the suitcase from me, stashed it in the trunk among jugs of water, half a case of oil, jumper cables, medical kit, sheathed shotgun, as I climbed in the passenger door.
He fired up the car and let it idle. Punched in the lighter.
"Always room at my place for you, Lew, things don't work out."
I nodded.
He lit his Winston, which smelled like burning twigs, and eased the Buick around and down, past the pay booth, onto Prytania, then right towards the river.
"Scenic route, huh?"
He grunted.
"Kind of wasted on me."
"I doubt it Besides, the air's better over here."
We planed slowly along the curve of riverand road. The occasional car passed. This is our new Chevy Occasional, sir. As fine a car as you'll find anywhere. Twice within a single block we bucked across railroad tracks. Then things grew quiet. Don and Lewis in the forests of night. Keeping order here at the edge of civilized space.
"Guess I'll have to find this Dana Esmay person."
A block or two later he responded.
"Yeah. Figured that's what we might be doing. Already penciled it in on my calendar."
Dawn broke about us as I cranked down the window and felt fresh air cascade over my face. Always new beginnings. Something in the backseat, a hat, a plastic cup, went airborne in the sudden tide and flew against a door.
"Whatever works," LaVerne would say years later in similar circumstances. "You wait and see."
So you do.
3
Years later I wrote a book tided No One Looks for Eddie Bone. At the time I was laid up with multiple sprains and a couple of broken bones and I was bored. I'd turned my back on a man who borrowed capital to open an antique shop on Magazine and because the shop wasn't doing well thought he could lay off the payback. I'd been hired as a tutor to help him gain an understanding of basic economics. Knew better than to turn my back, of course, following the brief first lesson. I was thinking that even as the Thirties walnut wardrobe, a real beauty, fell on me.
I'd been a fan of mysteryfiction since high school days back in Arkansas, back when I did little else but read, three or four books a day sometimes, Crime and Punishment lit off the smoldering butt of Red Harvest.
Lying there years later, stove up as my old man would have said, one state east and another south, not so very much later, really, diough it seemed easily half a lifetime and altogether a different world, I read a paperback Don had brought me, Such Men Are Dangerous. It told of a sol dier who'd long ago lit out for the territory, away from civilization and all its Aunt Sallys, choosing isolation and a life so simple, so pared down to basic function, as to be virtually a human. But the world comes after him there on his tiny island and breaks his solitude, shatters the rigid simplicity that holds him in check.
When I finished the book I didn't go on to another according to habit, but instead turned back to the first and began again. That time I reached the last page thinking maybe this was something I could do. It was not a thought I'd had before, and it was occasioned as much as anything else by the simple fact that I didn't want the story to end.
Stories never do end, of course. That's their special grace. Lives end, people die or walk away from you forever, lovers depart in moonlight with paper bags of belongings tucked beneath arms, children disappear. Close Ulysses and nothing has ended. Molly's story, Leopold's, Stephen's, Buck Mulligan's-they all go on, alongside yours.
LaVerne brought Big Chief tablets and Bic pens when I asked. What with drugs and pain, I wasn't sleeping much. I started writing one night at eleven or so, Such Men Are Dangerous propped (and prop it was, in every sense) against the bedside lamp.
When I first met Eddie Bone he was wearing a tuxedo jacket shiny as a seal's skin with wear over fatigue pants held up with a rope at his waist. The pants were so big and shapeless it looked like he was wearing a gunnysack. He told me he'd lost his turkey. I'd heard about Eddie on the street. God knows where he got it, but he had this young turkey, walked around with the thing on a leash. He'd give it the food he pulled out of trash cans out back of fast-food places and restaurants. Plan was, he was gonna fatten the turkey up and sell it just before Thanksgiving. Not too long after that, Eddie himself got lost-just disappeared off the street. And no one seemed to care, no one went looking for him. Except me.
'That friend of yours still doing freelance secretarial work?" I asked Verne on her regular visit a couple of mornings later.
"Roberta? I think so. Sure."
Roberta had been Chee-See, Honey Brown and Baby Blue before she'd turned intelligence, determination and substantial savings towards classes at LSUNO and a business degree. In the life, crowding thirty she'd looked sixteen, rare capital. Dividends came in fast, and most of it (over ninety percent, she once told Verne) had gone unspent I handed Verne three of the tablets.
"Think she could type this for me?"
"She getsfifty cents a page, Lew."
"So I'll take out a loan."
LaVerne stood reading down through the pages.
"Hey, this is good."
I shrugged and stood slowly, using lots of arm on the dismount, making sure I had my balance before I moved farther. Still hurt like hell. Ribs taped. Muscles that came out of nowhere to settle in like squatters, building fires.
"Get you anything?" I asked LaVerne. "A drink, cup oftea?"
"Beer would be nice."
She carried the tablets over to the swayback couch by the window. I brought her a Jax and, settling alongside, feigned interest in a biography of H. G. Wells, a curious artifact prepared by one of Wells's contemporaries, a diehard Fabian. Its thesis seemed to be that Wells never put leg in pants, word on paper or penis in vagina without first considering how such activities might be entered by accountants looking after his Socialist ledgers.
When Verne reached out, groping blindly only to find the bottle empty, I brought her another Jax.
Finally she looked up, closing the last tablet, Indian head nodding shut. She sat there a moment.
"It's so sad, Lew."
She tiltedthe can twice, drank off the last of her fourth beer.