I don't know when we fell asleep but I awoke in the middle of the night with her hair across my throat and a quiet, sleepy voice somewhere nearby singing Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl." At first I thought we'd left the radio on, but then remembered there had been no radio on. Then through the cobwebs of sleep I thought it came from out on the street until I realized the singing was too close. I pushed the hair off my face and turned toward the woman I'd fallen asleep next to.
"Veronica?"
"Uptown Girl . . ."
"Veronica?"
"You've been livin' . . ."
"Veronica?"
Her head was turned away from me. It came slowly around. "Hi," in that same sweet singing voice.
"You sing in your sleep!"
"I know."
"You were singing 'Uptown Girl'!"
"Press my nose and the song'll change. Kiss me?"
In the morning I woke before her and had a chance to look around. Her apartment and the things in it kept saying the word shipshape to me. It was tidy but not obsessively clean. There were a few hairpins and women's things lying around the bathroom, some dirty cups in the kitchen sink. Despite that, there was an overall pleasing neatness and order to the place. There was only a bedroom and a living room that doubled as her study. The nicest thing about the apartment was sun, which came through the windows making everything feel more airy.
Writers are inveterate snoops and these are some of the other things I noticed about my new lover's home. She read mostly books on film, some history, poetry and biographies of artists. The furniture was cozy rather than sleek and her living room was full of exotic cut flowers in vases of wildly different colors and sizes.
What was most interesting was an unfinished letter that had been left on her desk. I glanced at it, then looked again because the handwriting was magnificent. If I hadn't known it was hers, I would have thought a man had written it. Each letter was bold and perfectly vertical, extremely distinctive and artistic. Nearby was a fountain pen. Very large, it was a luminous blue with gold cap. I carefully picked it up.
"Isn't it a beauty?"
"I love fountain pens."
She came over and leaned her chin on my shoulder. "Are you looking around? That's what I like to do too after I've spent a night with someone. See them through where they live. What conclusion did you reach? Don't lie."
I put the pen down and kissed her temple. "Shipshape. Everything is right where it should be. You'd make a good sailor."
"Fair enough. And what about my things? Do you get a read from them?"
"Let's see. You like bundles of color, yet none of your flowers are alive. Which says you're not into high maintenance. Biographies of mostly maniac geniuses, but your apartment says you're orderly. Books on how great films were made and how things are designed. Let me guess – you're an Aquarius?"
"Nope. Virgo."
"Veronica, one of my wives was a Virgo. You are not a Virgo. Virgos don't make love like you do. They make fists and look at the ceiling."
She yawned and stretched languorously. When she was done, she brought those long arms down around me. Her breath was stale and warm and I wanted to kiss her.
"I make love the way I am, not because I'm a Virgo."
The next time I went back to Crane's View, Cassandra came along. It was the week before school started and she was supremely cranky about having to go back to the grind for another year. When I suggested we spend a day in my hometown she lightened up and agreed to go on the condition I didn't regale her with stories of my glorious good old days. I said that was no problem because I didn't have many of them back then. I was a good enough student, I had some unmemorable experiences, I watched too much television.
"Okay, Mr. Happy Days, so what is your greatest memory of high school?"
"I guess finding Pauline Ostrova."
"Dad, that's not a memory, it's a horror. I mean normal stuff. You know, like the prom or the homecoming game."
"Being in love. Learning how to be in love. One day girls went from just being there to being the center of everything."
"When did it happen with you?"
I lifted a hand off the steering wheel and turned it palm up. "I don't really remember. I just know I walked into school one day and everything was different. There were all these swirling skirts and bosoms and beautiful smiles."
She rolled down the window. The wind whipped her hair across her face. "You know what I think sometimes? When I'm really sad or depressed, I think he's out there somewhere and sooner or later we'll meet.
"Then I wonder, what's he doing this minute? Does he ever think the same thing? Does he ever wonder what I'm like or where I am? He's probably reading Playboy and dreaming of boobs."
I thought about that a moment and had to agree. "Boys do tend to do that. Judging from my own experience, he's either already somewhere in your life but hasn't materialized in your thoughts yet. Like people when they're beaming up in Star Trek? You know, when they're halfway there but still look like club-soda bubbles? Or else he's in Mali or Breslau and you won't see him for a while. But you can be sure no matter where he is, he thinks about you a lot."
She shrugged. "Speaking of such things, what's with your new girlfriend?"
"I don't know yet. She's still in a fuzzy pink frame for me."
"What does that mean?" Cass put her bare feet up on the dashboard.
"It means she's still too much of a sweetie pie for me to have any perspective on the situation. Everything she does is adorable."
"What's her name again, Greta Garbo?"
"Don't be a wise guy; you know her name – Veronica Lake."
"When do I get to meet her?"
"The next time I come into the city and can wrest you away from your mother. We're all going to have dinner together."
We stopped for lunch at Scrappy's Diner and surprisingly Donna the waitress remembered me from the last visit. She asked if I had gone to see her uncle Frannie yet. I said today was the day. She looked at Cass curiously so I introduced them.
"Donna, this is my daughter Cassandra. Donna's uncle is Frannie McCabe."
Cass whistled loudly, thoroughly impressed. "Frannie McCabe is my father's hero. Every bad guy in every book he ever wrote has some of Frannie in him."
Donna giggled and asked if I would like her to call the station to see if he was in. I said sure. She went off and was back in five minutes. "He remembered you! He says to come down."
Half an hour later we walked through the door of the Crane's View police station. I found myself unconsciously shaking my head. "The last time I was in here, a whole bunch of us were dragged in for fighting at a football game."
A young policeman passed on his way out and gave Cass an appreciative look. The dad in me clenched but I kept moving. Just inside the door a woman in uniform sat at a desk. I asked if we could speak to the chief. After asking my name, she picked up a phone and called. A moment later the door behind her opened. A gaunt man in an expensive dark suit emerged wearing a smile I'd know a thousand years from now.
"Fuckin'-a, it's Bayer aspirin! I just want to know one thing – you got cigarettes?"
"Frannie!"
We shook hands a long time while staring at each other, checking the wrinkles, the signs, the years across each other's faces.
"You aren't dressed too sharp for a famous author. That last book of yours – I laughed so loud at the end, I got a sore throat."