"It does, doesn't it," I said. I was ready to nudge this conversation back to vague and more comforting terrain, the creeks and dales and low rolling slopes of universal disappointment. Something about this story, its specificity, bothered me, more so now that I seemed part of it, part of the future of it, or why else would I be hearing this?
"Time goes by," said Purdy.
"Having no alternative."
"Don't be cute. Time goes by. Nathalie recedes in my mind."
"What about you in Nathalie's mind?"
"How the fuck would I know? Just listen, Milo."
"Okay."
" 'Recede' is a weird word. This isn't so easy. So linear. But I do, on some level, just ball up the memory of my time with her, throw it on the sentimental-education heap. Then, a few years ago, I got a letter. It was sent to the company, before I sold it. She'd read something about me in one of those new-media magazines. Of course, the article she mentioned was already years old. I was a business hero in that issue. If she'd read the takedown they wrote later, maybe she wouldn't have contacted me."
"That piece was bullshit."
"No, it wasn't, Milo. But thank you. Still, it doesn't matter. Anyway, the letter wasn't very long. Chatty, even nostalgic for a while. Then she caught me up. She was living somewhere upstate. Working in what sounded like a sweatshop. Taking classes somewhere inane. Still reading Schopenhauer. I remember she used to say she read Schopenhauer because he hated women so much. She said it was instructive. But the letter. There's a kicker at the end of the letter. She has a sixteen-year-old son. Do I need to elaborate?"
It took me a few seconds but he did not need to elaborate.
"But how could you be-"
"Trust me, I submitted the kid to tests."
"What was it like when you met him?"
"Who?"
"Your son."
"I never met him. Nathalie wouldn't let me. Didn't tell the kid anything, either."
"That's ridiculous."
"It's fair enough."
"No, it's not. Nathalie should have told you."
"It was her call. A dumb call, given my resources, but hers to make. Anyway, I started sending them money. Set them up. Lee handled it all for me. Lee Moss. Lee's the only one who knew about this. Except for Michael here, of course. Lee was my father's lawyer, a mensch. But he's been very sick. Cancer. Pancreatic."
"That's one of the worst. A killer."
"Yes, the ones that kill you are definitely the worst. Anyway, Lee's still doing a bit of work around the office. Putting things in order. He noticed that the last few checks were never cashed. He tried to contact Nathalie. When he couldn't find her, he called around up there, found out… well… found out about Nathalie."
"Found out what?"
"That she was… it's hard. It's really weird how hard it is."
Purdy pinkied away a tear. There was something actorly in the gesture, but at least it seemed improvised.
"She died, Milo."
"Died?"
"Car crash."
"Oh… I'm sorry."
"Yes. Well. Thanks. Or…"
"Melinda doesn't know?"
"No."
"About any of it?"
"I just never saw a reason to tell her. Maybe I could have told her before. But I didn't. Now it's too late. She's kind of into the whole trust thing."
"So, you want to keep a lid on your history."
"Isn't that what we all want?"
"What about the boy?"
"Don?"
"Don?"
"I didn't name him. It's Don. Don Charboneau. Well, this is the really fucked-up part."
"Oh, there's a fucked-up part?"
"Don's been in touch. Don is just back from Iraq. Can you believe that? He's only twenty-one. And now he's got titanium legs."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Jesus."
"Usual roadside shit. And both of them."
"Man, that's bad. But there's that guy, that runner-"
"This kid's not there yet. Moves around like a drunk cross-country skier, according to Lee. It's pretty sad. I mean, I feel for him, I really do."
"He's your son."
"Right. He's my son. We think so."
"I thought you did tests."
"Science isn't everything."
"How did he find out about you?"
"We wondered what had happened to him, but he'd sort of dropped out of Nathalie's life for a time. I think she was mad at him for enlisting. Then she dies and he comes back. I guess he went through Nathalie's stuff, figured some things out. He started sending itemized bills for his expenses to Lee. Even showed up at his office once."
"Really?"
"Yeah, pretty aggro, right? Then he sends me a letter with a return address in Jackson Heights. Says he looks forward to the healing."
"Jackson Heights. That's near me."
"I know."
The car was turning onto my block.
"How did you know where I lived?" I said to Michael, the driver.
"What," said Michael, nodded at the navigation screen on his dashboard. "You think you're living off the grid? You have a listed phone number."
There was something in the tweaked amusement of his voice I recognized. It made me think of late nights over a CD jewel case, razor blades, long-winded denunciations of world banking cabals.
"Michael Florida," I said. We had always referred to him by his full name. I never knew how it started but the nature of the name and the nature of the man made it seem correct.
"Long time, brother."
Michael Florida's eyes shone in the rearview mirror. Even in the dark of the car I could make out his face now, the pocked cheeks, the pointy chin.
"How have you…" I said. "How did you-"
"Figured I was dead by now?"
"Or working in a halfway house in Arizona."
"Nice." Michael Florida laughed. "But it was Missouri."
The car slid up to my building. I looked up and saw the front room lit. The lamp near the sofa threw light on the ceiling cracks.
"We'll have to postpone the reunion," said Purdy.
"Seems like my life is one big reunion these days."
"I'm sure it seems that way," said Purdy. "Me, when I make a friend, I try to keep him."
"Point taken."
"Don't take it too hard, Milo. You're a good man."
"You think so?"
"I'm betting on it. Michael?"
Michael Florida twisted around and slid a large envelope between the bucket seats. Purdy handed it to me.
"I could have sent you an email and wired some money, but this is more fun, no? Fun's hard to find. You have to make your own. Look this material over."
"I will," I said.
"Goodnight, Milo."
"Goodnight, Purdy. Michael."
I ducked out of the car. The sofa lamp went dark.
Thirteen
The next morning I found a note from Maura in the kitchen. She'd written it in the margins of an unpaid cable bill, slipped it beneath a kiwi. I'd always loved Maura's handwriting, its swoops and swells, its queer collapses. She wrote like somebody half trapped by her bubbly grade school script, still trying to ungirl it:
Milo-Working late tonight. Please pick up Bernie at H. Salamander. He can have the other cupcake in the fridge, but only after he eats his dinner. He can have one show before his bath and two books after. Call if there's a problem. Please don't have a problem.
The absence of a sign-off did not seem strange. Once she might have written one of our pet names, along with a coded reference to some salacious act. But those names, like most of the acts, had vanished. Bernie had begun to suss them out anyway, and it could be rather unnerving to be addressed by your son as "Smoof" or "Turbs" or "Provost Cavelick," to hear the words wedged so unevenly in his mouth, the way they must have been in ours. That the pet names harkened back to lost years of sustained laughter and lovemaking made me somewhat grateful for Bernie's interventions. Besides, I knew who wrote the note.