“You can’t read the papers yourself?”
“No.”
“What about the pictures?”
“Only a blur — even with my glasses. Damn, where could they have run off to?”
Good, thought Joseph. His nervous system seemed to exhale. “Don’t you have other boarders?”
“Just Dolly, that’s the cat, and Molly, that’s the dog. There was a young girl living here until two weeks ago. She disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” asked Joseph. There was something about the way she said it.
“You know. Packed up and went.”
Joseph nodded. His fingertips were stinging now. As the days passed, they would crack and begin to bleed. They seemed just to come apart along the whorls, as if whatever holds skin together dried out. In the nine years he’d spent at the hospital, not a single doctor could explain this condition. It happened twice a year or so — no explanation. But Joseph had noted that it seemed to come either when things were going very well for him or very badly. It would become painful before long. “I’ll be more reliable than that, Mrs. Fostes.”
“Would you like to see your room, Joseph?”
He stood, smiling. “Sure.”
He followed her from the living room, lifting her glasses off the TV on his way by, and dropping them into his box.
The room was upstairs, at the end of a short dark hallway, last on the right. It was larger than both rooms of the El Mar Motel put together, with one window that looked over a sideyard crowded with trees and another that faced the street. The floor was hardwood that no longer shined. A cheapish fluffy blue rug lay in the center. There was a large desk along one wall, with two box-shaped items on it, each draped with a folded white sheet that was then taped snugly to the desktop.
How interesting, thought Joseph. He set his box on the floor, and asked what was under the sheets.
“A computer and a printer,” said Mrs. Fostes. “I bought them for my granddaughter, but she never used them. I have no idea how it all works.”
Joseph, who had never used a computer, nodded. “They all operate on the same... principles.”
“Well, the principle I use is to keep the dust off it in case she ever decides she needs it. There’s a bathroom across the hall.”
Mrs. Fostes walked slowly to the window, felt for the curtains, then grasped them in both hands and threw them open. “You could see the water when the trees weren’t so high.”
“I like the trees,” he said.
In the pale stream of sunshine, Joseph studied Mrs. Fostes’s eyes, the way they absorbed the light like old glass but didn’t send much back out. It must be sad to have your eyes quit working. Magdesh, at State, had taken out his own eyes with a pencil nub.
Suddenly, Joseph sensed a third presence in the room. He turned quickly. Standing in the doorway was a pretty young girl — she couldn’t have been more than eighteen — with her arms crossed and her head at an inquisitive angle. She had on a pair of stone-washed jeans, high-tech athletic shoes, and a Fine Young Cannibals T-shirt. Her hair was honey-colored and fine, and she wore it straight, gazing past a shining wall of it now as if she was looking around a corner at him. “The computer’s mine.”
Mrs. Fostes’s head turned suddenly in the girl’s direction. She had been trying to get a closet door open to show the new boy where his clothes could go. “I thought you were out, dear.”
“I’m going out.”
“This is our new boarder.”
“I’m Joe,” he said.
“I’m outta here,” said the girl. She turned and vanished, then her diminishing footsteps sounded down the stairway.
“She’s my granddaughter, not very manageable,” said Mrs. Fostes. “She lives here?”
Mrs. Fostes nodded. “She won’t read me the paper, or cook with me, or take her meals with me. She’s at an age. I understand... I was like that once. I’m surprised she was still home.” Mrs. Fostes gathered her robe up close to her chin again, and started toward the door. “She won’t bother you, Mr. Gray.”
Joseph knew some nicety was called for, but he couldn’t imagine what.
“Come down now and we’ll sign the agreement.”
Joseph heard the front door slam. “What’s her name?”
“Lucinda.”
Joseph’s entire inner being felt as if it were about to wrench itself inside out, like a sock. Lucy. For a brief moment, everything in the room went bright, so bright that he could hardly keep his eyes open. He slipped his sunglasses back on. His legs felt thick and his heart was throbbing up in his temples. “Well,” he said quietly. “That’s a nice name.”
“Don’t worry, she’s hardly ever here. Let’s go down and sign the paper now. Then you can unpack and get to know your room. I like to eat at seven, so we can start the dinner at six.” Mrs. Fostes hobbled to the door, steadying herself against the wall as she passed through. “I sure wish I could find those glasses of mine.”
An hour later, Joseph was lying on the bed, his hands crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Would Lucinda recognize him from the TV, the papers? She didn’t seem like a cognizant person, but who could know? Maybe the best thing was just to avoid her. His temples were still pounding, but not as hard now. The sun had gone past the window and a comforting shade had crept into the room.
The more Joseph tried to relax, the clearer became his memory of what had happened in the last few hours. They were on to him. They were close. They wouldn’t give up. That first electric shock he’d felt as he watched the cop loitering across the boulevard repeated itself up his backbone now, a dizzying comet of energy that shot into his head, dashed against his skull, and showered sparks back down onto the tops of his eyes. His fingers were beginning to burn.
He climbed off the bed, took the leather-bound journal from the closet shelf, and sat down at the desk. He had to pull up the tape to move the computer away to make room. He peeked under the sheet: a tan plastic box with a Japanese company name on the front.
Joseph smoothed his hand over the soft leather of the journal, arranging it perfectly before him. He took a deep breath, turned to the postcard of Poon’s Balboa, and opened. Seeing Ann’s handwriting — her actual handwriting — was something that still loosed armies of emotion inside of him. He could hear her voice as he read.
I sent my letter to Dave Smith at Cheverton Sewer & Septic, not exactly a romantic address, but romance was not what I was after — not yet. David’s letters back to me were waiting in box 2212. My father was the one who gave me that box, not long before he died. He used it for the same kind of thing and told me to keep it secret. I’m always up for a secret — secrets are soul-builders — but I ended up telling my mother a year or so later. She wasn’t surprised. Living with Poon for thirty years is enough to take the surprise out of anyone.
Our first letters — this was late January — were all about the big, general things — politics, religion, people. Funny how the better you know someone, the smaller the things you talk about get. I think that David was getting the same pleasure I was from writing: When you tell someone about what you really think, well, it can seem interesting in new ways. Why do we share things with strangers we never tell our closest friends and family?
At the end of his third letter, David asked if I would tell him about Paris. Now, David was one of the few people who knew I never went to France, and he knew basically what happened that summer when I was fifteen. But he asked the question so tentatively, I realized how little he actually knew, how deeply he had buried it all.