"Thanks, Zeke. We could probably all use it."
"The two of you could for sure. I 'Ve got to scoot on out of here." At my glance he held up an admonitory hand. "Told you. Talk about it later."
He carried his coffee to the counter, began pulling out eggs, bread, onions, a potato.
"Fifteen minutes," he said. "Meanwhile, you go start excavating the pharaoh. Oh, and Lewis?"
"Yeah."
"You might want to give some thought to checking your messages ever' week or so. Last I counted, there were a stone dozen of them out there on the machine. How long they had those things out, anyway?" Chopping onions, he shook his head. "What else they goan come up with?"
Don proved a most reluctantpharaoh, starting up instantly, wild-eyed, when Ifirst approached, settling back at once into shadowy, encumbered sleep. I poked at him, shouted, passed steaming coffee under his nose. Finally levered him up and out to the kitchen, where Zeke had filled the table with food. Don ate, drank most of a pot of coffee and shambled back to the couch. Zeke left to be about his business. I did dishes and sat staring at the blinking light on the phone machine.
This is one of the ways our past finds us. Dots we connect to make a shape on the white page.
First was Deborah: "Hey, big boy. Remember me?"
Two and three were from the university. Please call.
Four was Sam Delany.
The next couple, I don't know what they were. People didn't seem to have much idea who they were calling but left rambling, incomprehensible messages nonetheless.
Seven was Deborah again: "Guess not."
Then another from Dean Treadwell's office, someone offering me a bank card, an old client from my PI days wondering if I'd be able to help him again, my agent saying there'd been a Hollywood nibble on one of my books and how was I these days, a couple more junk calls.
I dialed the flower shop.
"Rumors of my death, and all that," I said when Deborah answered.
"Lew! Everything okay?"
I told her aboutfinding Shon Delany, then about Don's son.
"I'm so sony, Lew. How's Don?"
"Tough, as always."
"Sounds like you've had a couple of tough days yourself."
"I distinctlyremember easier ones."
"Don't we all. When can I see you?"
"This point, I don't have a clue what the day's likely to turn into. Not another grade-A mess like yesterday is what I hope. Okay if I call you later?"
"Sure it is. Or just come by."
"Right."
I took the last of the coffee out back, sat on the wooden bench layered with bird droppings under the tree out there. The bench's underside was a thicket of cnmibling leaves and spiderwebs. Been years since I last did this. LaVeme and I spent a lot of time on that bench. Go out there late at night, take glasses of wine out while dinner simmered on the stove, coffee first thing in the morning.
I'd sat out here like this the morning I learned of David's disappearance. Later I'd written that a toad had jumped into my face, but the toad was becoming only history, and bearable.
Through the kitchen window I heaitl the radio playing. Wagner's overture to The Flying Dutchman, whose questionable hero the devil overhears saying he'll round the cape if it takes forever and decides to take at his word, turning him into a marine version of Sisyphus. An equally questionable angel intervenes, doling him out one day every seven years on diy land, telling the Dutchman he can be releasedfrom this if only he's able to finda woman who'll follow him into death.
Much like that questionable hero or angel, Don appeared in the doorway.
"Tell me it's still Tuesday."
"Yep. Ticking away like all the rest of them. Time goes, we stay."
"What time?"
"Around eleven, I think. I called the department, told DeSalle you wouldn't be in. He said no problem, no one expected you to be. Wanted me to let you know he was thinking about you."
"Good man."
"You could be right about that."
Don nodded and dropped onto the bench beside me. For a long time he sat vaguely looking off at the house's back wall. The wall was covered in green, runners and vines that had started inching up it years ago. Chameleons darted in and out among them.
I had no idea what thoughts were turning, surfacing, sinking back down in Don's mind. When do we ever, however close we are to someone?
"Lot of years between us," hefinallysaid.
I nodded.
"Lot of horses shot out from under us. Both of us."
"No doubt about it. But we always managed to get up again and walk on."
After a moment he said, "Maybe there were times we shouldn't have."
The Flying Dutchman ended. The phone rang. I listened for the message and couldn't make it out. I put my hand atop my friend's. He looked down at them together there on the bench as though they were some new kind of life he hadn't seen before, something strange and ultimately unknowable, generated from the muck and silt of leaves below, maybe.
"I've been telling you for a while now that it was time you actually found someone-one of these people you're forever looking for."
"Yeah. And I always said you were probably right"
"Now I'm thinking maybe that someone should be David."
We sat watching vines and runners that didn't move, chameleons that didn't stop. Inside, the phone rang again. Don's beeper went off.
"Together, I mean. We could look for him together. I have a lot of time coming to me."
When I didn't respond, he said, "We did it before, Lew."
We had indeed. The way we met And how often in all the years since? Too many to count.
"Maybe it's time we did that again, Lew."
Maybe it was.
I nodded.
"Good," my friend said. "Good."
27
It was good, having old friends greet me. They all stood at the doors of their cells watching. A few of them nodded. I walked down the wide corridor, between the high tiers. Behind Stanley, who used to tell me about his kids and the old Dodge he barely kept running. I was thinking how all my life I never felt I belonged anywhere. Now I knew I did. I belonged here.
I HIT SAVE, backed the last twenty or so pages onto a disk to join the rest, then started a printout.
My letter to Vicky, which had turned into a reinvention of The Old Man, then into a memoir of LaVerne, later into some Cocteauesque fantasy of men in black tuxedos and women in white dresses emerging from cave mouths or subways, had resolved with absolute simplicity, in a matter of twelve or fourteen intense, ever-surprising hours, into a sequel to my prison novel, Mole.
I woke on the floor.
The printer had stopped for lack of paper. The phone had stopped too-a couple of times at least, I realized. But now it was ringing again.
"You there?" Walsh said when I picked up. "Hello? Intelligent life?"
"Semi, anyway. Listen, Don, I haven't got any sleep yet. Not so you'd notice it, anyway. You want to call me back later?"
"Sure I do. Guess I'll have to, to get your sorry ass off the dime. But if you haven't been sleeping, then just what the hell is it you have been doing?"
"I'm as surprised as you are, believe me-but I guess I've just finished a new book."
"A new book. Another book. No hope for you, is there, Lew? I leave you alone for just a few hours-I mean, I figurethis is safe, we'll both grab some sleep, get out there and take care of business-but no. You decide to spend your time on a book."
"Just what my mother used to say. Only then it wasreadingbooks, not writing them."
"Yeah, you told me. Also told me your mother was flat-out bonkers. So." Don paused-to drink coffee, from the sound of it "This a good one?"
"Never sure at first I think it is."
Don made an ambiguous sound somewhere between grunt and laugh. "Call me when you're back up to speed?"