“Fun?”
“A lot in common,” I said. “Movies, books. We found the same things funny. Monty Python, Thin Man movies, Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Moose and squirrel,” Ann said in a terrible imitation of either Natasha or Boris. “What?”
Something must have broken through. I bit my lower lip.
“Sometimes she called me Rocky,” I said. “If I was being particularly dense, she called me Bullwinkle. I… I called her… No more.”
Ann clapped her hands and rocked forward once.
“Perfect. Are you still going to the beach?”
“When I can.”
“And the gulls, do you still hear them speak?”
“Gulls don’t speak,” I said. “Sometimes their squawk… I’ve told you this… Sometimes their talk sounds like they’re saying, ‘It’s me.’”
“You like the gulls?”
“Yes.”
“And the pelicans?”
“And the pelicans who dive like clumsy-winged oafs into the Gulf literally going blind from the constant collision with the water in search of food.”
“You are getting very literary, very poetic,” said Ann.
“As my friend Flo would say, ‘Bullshit.’”
“You are the gull crying, ‘It’s me.’ You are the pelican going blind while it dives for food.”
“I’m literary. You’re cryptic.”
We went on like that for a while. I glanced at the clock on the wall over her desk. Five more minutes.
“You ever read Conrad Lonsberg?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Compelling, disturbing, elevating. Isn’t that what the reviews said? All true but there was a true despair behind those poems and stories. I met him once, briefly, here in Sarasota. I recognized him from the old photograph on the jacket of Fool’s Love. He was more than forty years older than the man in the photograph leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets. But the eyes were the same. I remember. Our eyes met. It was at Demitrio’s on the Trail. Melvin and I were there. Lonsberg was with a young woman. Our eyes met for an instant and he knew I recognized him. I think I smiled to let him know his secret was safe and I would not bother him. I wonder if he has had any therapy. Judging from his books, I would say it would be a good idea as long as he didn’t go to one of the quacks with shingles. Why the interest in Conrad Lonsberg?”
“Remember Adele?”
“Vividly,” said Ann. “There is a connection between this evocation of Conrad Lonsberg and Adele? It is not a simple stream of consciousness, a seeming non sequitur?”
“No.”
“You want to tell me what you are talking about or, rather, what you want to ask me?”
“Too long to tell the whole story,” I said, looking at the clock on the wall. “Our time is just about up and I hear your next client coming through the outer door.”
“Give me the question,” Ann said. “In your eyes, you have a question.”
“Why would Adele, who Lonsberg has been working with, deface her copy of one of his books and not just tear it up or throw it away?”
“You want a two-minute answer, which is the time we have left?”
“What I want and what I get are almost never the same,” I said.
“She is angry with him, very angry, feels betrayed, but can’t bring herself to throw away the book. Something is unfinished. Something went very wrong. In that which we call reality. In the reality of Adele’s mind. Lewis, I would need more information. Ideally, I would need Lonsberg and Adele together in this room. I think that unlikely. Meanwhile, I’ll end with a question. Why did you leap the chasm of thought from being angry with me and identifying with seagulls to Adele and Lonsberg?”
“I don’t know.”
“Next time,” she said, rising. “Think about it. Come with an answer.”
“I’ll try.”
“It’s an assignment,” she said. “Like college. You fail to answer, you get an F and I make you do it again.”
I fished out two tens, Marvin Uliaks’s tens, and handed them to her.
“You should read Fool’s Love,” she said as I moved toward the door.
“I did.”
“When?”
“A long time ago,” I said.
“You read it as a boy. Read it as a man. You think it’s hot in here?”
“Maybe, a little.”
“Monday?”
“Monday, same time?”
“Yes,” she said, moving to the thermostat.
In the small reception office, a woman-slim, long blond hair, well dressed, eyes down and covered with thick sunglasses-looked down. I walked past her and out into the sunshine.
3
I stopped at Brants Book Shop on Brown Street, a short street with Bee Ridge on the north end and the shopping mall with Barnes amp; Noble on the south. Brant’s is a one-story used-book institution that looks as if a good wind would blow off the roof or an NFL lineman would step through the creaking wooden floor. But there wasn’t much you couldn’t find there.
I picked up a copy of Fool’s Love for a dollar and a quarter and walked over to Rico’s, great prices, good food, terrific calamari, nearly perfect lasagna, just like my mother didn’t make. I had a Gorgonzola sandwich on a roll with a diet Coke and watched a court show on the big-screen television. A stern-looking wizened woman in a black robe was calling a stupidly grinning teenager a liar. He seemed like a liar to me too. She ruled against him. I don’t know what he did, kicked a dog, stole a CD player. The girl he had to pay a hundred thirty-four dollars to looked about Adele’s age-thin, dark, pretty, a ring through her eyebrow. I figured she had done some lying too before I started watching. Almost everybody lies. Everybody lies. Everybody dies.
“I read that,” said the young woman who waited on me, pointing at Fool’s Love. She was dark, looked a little like my cousin’s daughter Angela, and smiled.
I didn’t know her name but I had seen her in Rico’s before. At this hour of the afternoon, business was slow. I was the only customer.
“You like it?” she asked, nodding at the book.
“Read it a long time ago,” I said. “I’m thinking of reading it again. You like it?”
“Great book,” she said. “I don’t read books, and that one, they made us read that one in school, Mr. Gliddings at Riverview. You know Pee Wee Herman went to River-view?”
“I heard,” I said.
“Only book they made me read that I liked, you know?”
“Must be good. You know he lives here?”
“Who?”
“Conrad Lonsberg, the guy who wrote the book,” I said.
She stood up straight and her smile broadened.
“He’d have to be a couple hundred years old,” she said.
“No, it’s true. He’s alive. He’s here.”
“I believe you,” she said. “That’s interesting. Want another diet Coke?”
I declined, paid my bill, left her a twenty-percent tip, and got back in the white Cutlass. The drive down Tamiami Trail to Blackburn Point Road took me less than fifteen minutes. I turned right on Blackburn Point, crossed the small bridge over Little Sarasota Bay, turned right again, and kept going on Casey Key Road past houses great and small, many hidden by trees and bushes.
Flo’s directions had been perfect. The walled-in fortress of Conrad Lonsberg was down a paved culde-sac. There was a gate. I parked just past it and walked back. There was no name on the door, not even an address, but there was a bell semihidden in the stone wall on my left. I pushed it, heard nothing, and waited. Nothing. I pushed it again. Nothing. Then I saw the camera. It was on the right at the top of the wall, its lens pointing straight down at me, camouflaged by a plant with big leaves.
I wasn’t sure if I could be heard but I said, “My name is Lew Fonesca. I’m a friend of Adele Hanford’s. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
I don’t know why but I held up my copy of Fool’s Love for the camera.
Nothing happened. I stepped back and noted that the camera lens didn’t follow me. I got in the car, turned around, and parked where I could watch the gate. The Gulf was behind me. I turned off the engine, opened the windows, and listened to the surf. A few gulls drifted by, most of them made their squawking sound. A few said, “It’s me.”