'Thanks,' Sam said. 'I guess.'
' . . . and you seemed so ... so bewildered on the telephone. I asked Dave what it was about, but he wouldn't tell me anything else. All I know is what I heard ... and how he looked when he was talking to you. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.'
No, Sam thought of telling her. I was the one who saw the ghost. And this morning I saw something even worse.
'Sam, you have to understand something about Dave ... and about me. Well, I guess you already know about Dave, but I'm - '
'I guess I know,' Sam told her. 'I said in my note to Dave that I didn't see anyone at Angle Street, but that wasn't the truth. I didn't see anyone at first, but I walked through the downstairs, looking for Dave. I saw you guys out back. So ... I know. But I don't know on purpose, if you see what I mean.'
'Yes,' she said. 'It's all right. But ... Sam ... dear God, what's happened? Your hair . . .'
'What about my hair?' he asked her sharply.
She fumbled her purse open with hands that shook slightly and brought out a compact. 'Look,' she said.
He did, but he already knew what he was going to see.
Since eight-thirty this morning, his hair had gone almost completely white.
4
'I see you found your friend,' Doreen McGill said to Naomi as they climbed back up the stairs. She put a nail to the corner of her mouth and smiled her cute-little-me smile.
'Yes.'
'Did you remember to sign out?'
'Yes,' Naomi said again. Sam hadn't, but she had done it for both of them.
'And did you return any microfilms you might have used?'
This time Sam said yes. He couldn't remember if either he or Naomi had returned the one spool of microfilm he had mounted, and he didn't care. All he wanted was to get out of here.
Doreen was still being coy. Finger tapping the edge of her lower lip, she cocked her head and said to Sam, 'You did look different in the newspaper picture. I just can't put my finger on what it is.'
As they went out the door, Naomi said: 'He finally got smart and quit dyeing his hair.'
On the steps outside, Sam exploded with laughter. The force of his bellows doubled him over. It was hysterical laughter, its sound only half a step removed from the sound of screams, but he didn't care. It felt good. It felt enormously cleansing.
Naomi stood beside him, seeming to be bothered neither by Sam's laughing fit nor the curious glances they were drawing from passersby on the street. She even lifted one hand and waved to someone she knew. Sam propped his hands on his upper thighs, still caught in his helpless gale of laughter, and yet there was a part of him sober enough to think: She has seen this sort of reaction before. I wonder where? But he knew the answer even before his mind had finished articulating the question. Naomi was an alcoholic, and she had made working with other alcoholics, helping them, part of her own therapy. She had probably seen a good deal more than a hysterical laughing fit during her time at Angle Street.
She'll slap me, he thought, still howling helplessly at the image of himself at his bathroom mirror, patiently combing Grecian Formula into his locks. She'll slap me, because that's what you do with hysterical people.
Naomi apparently knew better. She only stood patiently beside him in the sunshine, waiting for him to regain control. At last his laughter began to taper off to wild snorts and runaway snickers. His stomach muscles ached and his vision was water-wavery and his cheeks were wet with tears.
'Feel better?' she asked.
'Oh Naomi -'he began, and then another hee-haw bray of laughter escaped him and galloped off into the sunshiny morning. 'You don't know how much better.'
'Sure I do,' she said. 'Come on - we'll take my car.'
'Where . . .'He hiccupped. 'Where are we going?'
'Angel Street,' she said, pronouncing it the way the sign-painter had intended it to be pronounced. 'I'm very worried about Dave. I went there first this morning, but he wasn't there. I'm afraid he may be out drinking.'
'That's nothing new, is it?' he asked, walking beside her down the steps. Her Datsun was parked at the curb, behind Sam's own car.
She glanced at him. It was a brief glance, but a complex one: irritation, resignation, compassion. Sam thought that if you boiled that glance down it would say You don't know what you're talking about, but it's not your fault.
'Dave's been sober almost a year this time, but his general health isn't good. As you say, falling off the wagon isn't anything new for him, but another fall may kill him.'
'And that would be my fault.' The last of his laughter dried up.
She looked at him, a little surprised. 'No,' she said. 'That would be nobody's fault ... but that doesn't mean I want it to happen. Or that it has to. Come on. We'll take my car. We can talk on the way.'
5
'Tell me what happened to you,' she said as they headed toward the edge of town. 'Tell me everything. It isn't just your hair, Sam; you look ten years older.'
'Bullshit,' Sam said. He had seen more than his hair in Naomi's compact mirror; he had gotten a better look at himself than he wanted. 'More like twenty. And it feels like a hundred.'
'What happened? What was it?'
Sam opened his mouth to tell her, thought of how it would sound, then shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'not yet. You're going to tell me something first. You're going to tell me about Ardelia Lortz. You thought I was joking the other day. I didn't realize that then, but I do now. So tell me all about her. Tell me who she was and what she did.'
Naomi pulled over to the curb beyond Junction City's old granite firehouse and looked at Sam. Her skin was very pale beneath her light make-up, and her eyes were wide. 'You weren't? Sam, are you trying to tell me you weren't joking?'
'That's right.'
'But Sam . . .' She stopped, and for a moment she seemed not to know how she should go on. At last she spoke very softly, as though to a child who has done something he doesn't know is wrong. 'But Sam, Ardelia Lortz is dead. She has been dead for thirty years.'
'I know she's dead. I mean, I know it now. What I want to know is the rest.'
'Sam, whoever you think you saw -'
'I know who I saw.'
'Tell me what makes you think -'
'First, you tell me.'
She put her car back in gear, checked her rear-view mirror, and began to drive toward Angle Street again. 'I don't know very much,' she said. 'I was only five when she died, you see. Most of what I do know comes from overheard gossip. She belonged to The First Baptist Church of Proverbia - she went there, at least -but my mother doesn't talk about her. Neither do any of the older parishioners. To them it's like she never existed.'