He found an architectural book on Tallum, a cemetery in a forest south of Stockholm, and impulsively flew there on his son’s BBJ. The memento mori above chapel portico was worth the trip: a Brothers Grimm oak zealously overtook the plinth of a columned temple, and between its pillars was carved HODIE MIHI CRAS TIBI (Today Me, Tomorrow You) … yet so far away, in the cold Swedish ground! What could he have been thinking? Besides, all those ramrod trees and open spaces reminded him of the freakish cloister he had made for Katrina as a gift on her wedding day. Fifteen years had passed since he’d created the storybook meadow, with its perfect replica of the famed folly of Désert de Retz — La Colonne Détruite. He sometimes wandered there, but made certain she never knew.
A gypsy, a nomad, a vagabond of death, Mr. Trotter had loitered the twenty-six cemeteries of greater Paris (for a seven-figure fee, a dubious realtor promised a shadier berth at Père-Lachaise near one of two pairs: Abélard and Héloïse or Gertrude and Alice B.) — on to Venice, then Campo Verano in Rome — Malta and Milan, Staglieno in Genoa and Almudena in Madrid — St. Petersburg, Cambria, Prague, Turkey, Cairo, Scotland … Brompton, Kensal Green and Highgate (they’d plant him, said yet another Underworld broker, “not sixteen meters from George Eliot”) with jaunts to the thirty-one necropoli of New Orleans — Metairie, Lafayette and Odd Fellow’s Rest — then on to the song-line haunts of the Outback — squatter-infested mausoleums of Manila, Ecuador, Brazil and beyond the infinite. Yet all roads led to Westwood, and he had to laugh. Wasn’t it always like that? If his soul was in Bel-Air, then its gloved hand could the more easily reach over to that humble little place in the Village; you-can’t-go-home-again be damned. Here would lie Louis Trotter, in a mildly meditative, sedately urban place, proximal to the variegated myths of his life. Yet who would build his tomb?
As usual, the quandary made him chuff; Dot’s chafing panty hose, sounding not unlike sandpaper, made him turn.
“We haven’t seen you in a while!”
She was a plain, doughty nurse and he tolerated her well enough — no sense alienating the afterlife custodians. (Once, he’d almost done just that by proffering her a hundred-dollar bill to leave him in peace.) She wore a heinous frock, one in a series which he detested and thought almost an incentive to be elsewhere interred.
“I’ve been traveling,” he said, with a wince.
“I used to have the travel bug. But it’s important to be safe, don’t you think? World’s become such a dangerous place. I’d like to go to New York, where my sister Ethel lives; they’ve done a marvelous job getting the murders down. Nothing could be as terrible as this town — my Lord, you’re as likely to be killed by the police as you are by a rapster. The police used to be helpful, but now, well they gun you down for jaywalking. Plant dope on you without batting an eye. But the terrorists! I think the McVeighs, the homegrowns, are worse than the Jackal types any day — that’s what Ethel says and I agree. There was a man on the morning show, his entire job is smuggling guns through airport metal detectors, looking for weak spots. Works for the government. Even he said there’s nothing you can do. Did you read in the Times about the man who impersonated a pilot? Everyone knew him at LAX — well, he stole baggage and came and went just as he pleased for five years! Lived in Venice. Police found a whole room full of Tumi luggage; he took them right off the conveyor! They said once he even got in the cockpit. Now, what in the world would he be doing in a cockpit? Just chatting away! The man on the morning show was saying that kind of thing wasn’t even the problem. It’s the viruses—and I’m not talking computer. Oh, I am sick to death of the viruses! Did you know that if someone blew a cloud of anthrax in over Manhattan — and believe me, they’re out there figuring out how to do it — it would be three days before anyone even got symptoms?”
The old man smiled and floated backward like a jack-o’-lantern putting out to sea; she went after him with a long pole.
“This was on the morning show, can you imagine? I’m not sure I want to start my day hearing it. Anyway, he said that by then — by the time they even found out about it — a lot of folks who were exposed would’ve already disappeared and gone back home: you know, tourists flying all around, some of ’em right back to Westwood for all we know. And the way the planes recirculate the air — well if someone in the last row of coach so much as clears his throat, first class gets it right in the lungs at the speed of sound. You’re minding your own business watching one of those dreadful movies or munching on honey-coated peanuts — I love those things! — and well now evidently with anthrax — and this is what the morning-show man said — with anthrax the infection starts with a little cold, but then you get all better. There’s even a medical term he used for that … what was it? The ‘eclipse’ or something. Yes! The anthrax eclipse. Well it goes away, then before you know it you’re sick again, but this time instead of a cold, it’s a terrible hemorrhaging pneumonia. I think syphilis is like that too — I mean, with an eclipse. The man on the morning show said people clutch their throats and die right in the middle of a sentence, like bad actors in a play. And the doctors—well your doctor won’t have a clue. Did you know that when Ethel had shingles, it took him a full week to diagnose? Mind you, he’s a cardiologist, so that’s partially explainable. But when it came time to prescribe, she said he had to peek inside a book — the older ones don’t even know how to use the Internet. Now, this is a top doctor, a Park Avenue man. And we’re not talking anthrax, we’re talking shingles. And Ethel said that whatever he gave her made it worse!”
“Yes! Well!” he said, backing off as if she had the pox herself. “It’s a difficult time! The world can be very unpleasant! And you, Dot, you have a good afternoon!”
He bared a bucktooth, winced, chuffed and slunk off.
“Mr. Trotter,” she called out. “What a marvelous coat! Never saw such a fabric.”
“Thank you,” he said vainly, pleased at being out of her clutches; he had almost reached the car. “A tailor found it, in London. Bespoke, of course.” He instantly regretted the use of the word.
“What?”
“The ensemble — it was custom-made. Custom-made!”
“I’m reserving a place for you in Dot Campbell’s Best-Dressed Hall of Fame — and that’s a hard thing to achieve!”
“Thank you!” he said, shivering at the rebarbative honor, doffing and chuffing and shambling toward the black-sapphire Silver Seraph, where Epitacio waited dutifully by open door. The eavesdropping Sling Blade still raked at the lawn; Mr. Trotter caught his eye, nodding as he climbed in.
The tinted window came down and the old man made sure to see Dot’s back before gesturing him over. Sling Blade approached and looked in, where the visitor sat as if floating upon the French navy — piped Cotswold hides; perched on a shiny ascot, the elfin face twisted up and fairly twinkled, an odd vintage brooch in a velvety box. He pressed a business card and some green to Sling Blade’s hand and smiled perspicaciously. A secret covenant had been made — the car sped away.
It was almost time to lock the gate. The caretaker strolled to his benefactor’s plot. A shallow wind cinematically stirred the leaves while he stared at the grass, wondering what stony monument would there be born.