“I don’t know,” I said.
Music started. It came down from a speaker mounted high on the wall. Lilly Allen was singing one of those songs that sways gently but carries lyrics as sharp as the edge of a sheet of newspaper.
“Lewis, how many times in the more than two years we’ve known each other have we made love or even had sex?”
“None,” I said.
“I’ve respected your memory of Catherine with you, but we both have to move on. How many times have we kissed, really kissed?”
“Seventeen.”
“I make it twenty, but you’re almost certainly right. You never forget anything.”
“My curse,” I said.
“It’s the way you want it,” she said.
“When are you leaving?”
“As soon as the school year ends, so the kids won’t be too disrupted.”
“Seven weeks,” I said.
“Seven weeks,” she repeated.
The girl with the tattoos came back and placed the drinks in front of us and the cake between.
“Two forks. Enjoy.”
I would not cry, but not because of pride. It just wasn’t in me, but I would feel it. I would feel it, alone, sitting on the toilet, lying on my bed, listening to someone speak or Rush Limbaugh rant. I would feel it.
“I’m sorry,” Sally said.
I handed her a fork and answered without saying that I was sorry, too.
“It’s banana-chocolate,” I said.
7
"Seven weeks,” Ann Hurwitz said, dunking one of the two biscotti I had brought her into the cappuccino I had also brought to her office. A bribe.
“Seven weeks,” I said.
“How do you feel about it?”
“Helpless. Relieved. I’m thinking of buying a cheap car and leaving.”
“Again.”
“Again,” I said. “This time maybe I’ll go west till I hit the Pacific Coast somewhere.”
“And you’ll look out toward Japan but see nothing but water.”
“Maybe it will be clean.”
“Pollution is everywhere.”
“Sally’s leaving me. Someone is trying to kill me or at least frighten me. I have a new client I don’t like and another client who lied to me and may be a child molester.”
“Lied about what?”
“I don’t know, but I know he lied. Lies are heavy, dark, deep behind too much sincerity. And there are people depending on me, Ames, Flo, Adele. And Victor.”
“Your house guest from Chicago.”
“Yes. And I don’t like my new rooms. Too big. I like things, and places, small.”
“Cubicles,” she said, leaning forward to ensnare the moist end of a biscotti with her teeth. “What else are small places?”
“Boxes, caskets, car trunks, jail cells, monks’ cells, closets.”
“You can hide in all of them,” she said. “You can even die in them. All both protect and threaten.”
“I guess. You’re supposed to tell me that people can’t run from their problems, that nothing is solved by running away.”
“No,” said Ann. “You got these biscotti at News and Books?”
“Yes. I always do.”
“They taste different. Very good. Sometimes things are solved by running away.”
“I should run away?”
“If you feel that you must,” Ann said, wiping her chocolate-tipped fingers with a napkin and then discarding it in her almost empty wastebasket. “I would miss you. You would miss Ames, Flo, Adele, and the baby.”
“Her name is Catherine,” I said.
“I know. I wanted you to say it.”
“Because she was named for my wife, and it ties me to Sarasota.”
“It ties you to people,” she said. “You’re not going to run away.”
“I suppose not.”
I leaned forward, my head between my legs.
“Are you all right? Are you going to be sick?”
“No,” I said. “I’m trying to find a box to hide in.”
“Have you been having nightmares again?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
My head still down, I said, “I’m in New York City, at a hotel. I look out the window, across the street, at another hotel. On the seventh floor of that hotel, there’s an open window. A child, about two, is about to climb out the window. It’s New York during the day. The distance and the city noise let me know it would do no good to yell.”
“So what do you do?”
“Nothing. I stand there, looking, hoping, praying. I can’t move away. I can’t close my eyes. I’m crying, muttering.”
“Muttering what?”
“Oh, no. God, no. Jesus, no.”
“Does the child fall?”
“The child looks over at me and smiles over the chasm, the canyon of buildings and streets. I try to wave her back, but she just smiles and waves back at me. I push my hands forward. I’m afraid to scream or make a frightened and frightening face for fear she will fall.”
“She?”
“Did I say she?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you think?”
“The child is Catherine or the baby we never had. She is about to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“What does the child look like?”
“Dark curly hair. Wide eyes, brown eyes. Even at this distance I know they are brown.”
“And,” said Ann, “Catherine’s hair was curly?”
“No.”
“Not even as a child?”
“No,” I said.
“And her eyes were wide and brown?”
“No, her eyes were blue.”
“Who is the baby?”
“Me,” I said. “She looks just like my baby pictures.”
“Breakthrough,” Ann said, sitting up in her well-padded swivel chair.
“But why is it a girl?” I asked.
“We save that for another time, to give you something to think about between now and then. Time for one more quick dream.”
Knowing I would stare into the eyes of that baby who was me, looking for answers, I said, “Thalidomide man.”
“Thalidomide man?”
“You know. About fifty years ago in Chicago a lot of women who were given thalidomide and had deformed babies, withered arms or legs or both. In my dream I see a man with a deformed right hand advancing toward me in slow motion. He’s smiling and holding out his hand to shake my hand. I don’t want to shake his three-fingered stump of a hand, but I extend mine to him. I always wake up then, and almost always it’s 4:13 in the morning.”
“How did you know about thalidomide?” Ann asked.
“I’m not sure. I think my mother and father talked about it, or I ran across it in a newspaper or magazine.”
Ann looked puzzled, as if there were something she was trying to recall.
“Lewis, think.”
I thought. Nothing came.
“The man with the withered right arm?” she prompted.
Nothing.
“The boy whose parents abandoned him.”
I remembered. “I forgot.”
“You never forget anything,” said Ann.
“That’s what Sally said.”
“The boy?”
“His name was David Bryce O’Brien. I met him when I was investigating a homicide for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. You know this.”
“Tell me again,” she said. “I’m ancient and often forget what I move from one room to the next for.”
“His father was a suspect.”
“And?”
“His father was the murderer. He killed his dry cleaner. Then he killed his wife and son.”
“David Bryce O’Brien.”
“Then he killed himself.”
“And what did he do to the body of his son?”
“No,” I said.
Ann went silent. So did I. A waiting game. I could get up and leave, but I didn’t. Then I said, “He cut off his son’s withered arm and left a note saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s the most common suicide note in the world.”
“Biblical,” she said.
“Biblical?”
“If my right hand offends…,” she said.
“It wasn’t his right hand.”
“How old was David Bryce O’Brien?”
“Almost two years old.”
“About the same age as the child in the window in New York?”
“Yes.”
“That feels true?”
“Yes. You want me to think about it?”
“Yes, but not consciously. Let it go. When the time comes to talk about it, you will. You forgot to bring me something, Lewis.”