“Do you have his home address or phone number?” I ask. “I’d rather not talk to him at his office.”
“Not anymore, but you could ask Karen. She knew him pretty well; she was friendly with his sister.” He smiles. “Karen, in case you haven’t guessed, is friendly with everybody.”
“I’ve picked up on that.”
“Have you picked up anything else about her?”
The question surprises me. “Just that she designs dresses and would rather talk about you than herself.”
He nods with some sadness. “She designs dresses so well that she has a standing offer to do a show in Rome. But she won’t go, because she doesn’t want to leave me. It’s the same reason she left school.”
“Where did she go to school?”
“Yale, majoring in English literature with a 3.8 average.” He notices my surprise and then continues. “Then this happened. She’s decided that if my life is going to be wasted, she’ll join the party. She thinks she’s helping me, but it makes it worse.”
These are things about Karen that I never would have guessed. “You want me to try and talk to her?”
He shakes his head. “That won’t help.”
“What will?” I ask.
“Getting me out of here.”
I nod and tell him that we have applied for a hearing and that it could take place within a couple of weeks. He is excited by the prospect, but it is tempered by concern. “What if we don’t get the hearing?”
“Then we keep digging until we turn over more evidence, and then reapply,” I say. “Nobody’s abandoning you, Richard.”
“Thank you.”
“But it may feel like that for a while. I’m concerned for your safety, so we’re requesting that they put you into a more secure area.”
“Solitary?”
I nod. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be asking for it if I wasn’t worried.”
“Why would anybody want to go after me? I’ve been in here five years; who could I be a threat to?”
“Richard, when we answer that question, we’ll know everything.”
* * * * *
HAVING LAURIE WAITING for me at home is as good as it gets.
Her pasta sauce is simmering on the stove while she’s in the backyard playing with Tara and Reggie. I see them before they see me, and it’s such a perfect sight that I almost want to hide and watch.
I try to be as positive a person as I can, but my logical mind always forces me to see the imperfections in any situation. In this case, the fact that Laurie and I are together maybe six or eight weeks out of the year is not exactly a subtle imperfection, and it sure as hell doesn’t fully satisfy my enjoyment drive.
Laurie sees me and yells, “Daddy’s home!” and the two dogs run over to me, tails wagging, to receive the petting that is their due. We grab a couple of leashes and go for a walk in the park, and midway through, a thunderstorm hits. It’s one of those warm rains that feel great, and none of us is of a mind to let it curtail our walk. By the time we get home we’re all drenched and happy.
After dinner we sit down to watch a DVD of The Graduate. For some reason, Laurie feels about movies the way most people feel about wines, that they get better with age. The Graduate is barely forty years old and is a little current for Laurie’s taste, but she relaxes her standards because it’s so good.
We sit on the couch and drink chardonnay as we watch, and Tara and Reggie are up there with us. It’s such a wonderful moment that it’s hard for me to concentrate on the film, but I try to focus mainly because I need dialogue lines to compete with Sam Willis. Unfortunately, it’s going to be tough to get “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” into a conversation with Sam. Maybe I’ll just scream “Elaine! Elaine!” at him the next time I see him. That should throw him off.
When the movie is over, I realize I haven’t called Karen to ask if she can put me in touch with Keith Franklin. When I do, she says that she hasn’t seen him in a while, but still knows his sister and will do whatever is necessary to make this happen.
“I’ll get right on it,” she says. “I’m on the case.”
Laurie’s already in the bedroom, which is sufficient incentive for me to sprint there. She’s lying on the bed, writing in a journal that she keeps, recording the day’s events and her thoughts about them. Laurie has told me that she has kept a journal since she was nine years old.
If you supplied me with all the paper and time in the world and paid me in solid gold coins, I would still not keep a journal. I’m going to go back and read about my own life? To learn my own point of view? Why would I want to know what I think after the fact? I already know what I think during the fact. I’ve always felt that the purpose of reading is to find out what other people think.
Would I want to be able to refresh my memory of how miserable I was at being rejected by Linda Paige in high school? I don’t think so. Or reconnect with my feelings about giving up a game-winning home run in the Lyndhurst game? Not in a million years. Journals make retroactive denial impossible, and that happens to be one of my specialties.
Yet there Laurie is, busily chronicling whatever the hell she is chronicling. After about fifteen minutes, during which I have looked at my watch maybe two hundred times, I ask, “Must have been a busy day today, huh?”
“Mmmm,” she mumbles, not willing to be distracted from her literary efforts.
“Are you up to the late afternoon yet?”
“Mmmm,” she says.
“You want me to write some of it? To save time? For instance, I know what you had for dinner, and what movie we saw. I can jot down stuff like that.”
She puts down her pen and stares at me, an ominous sign. “Let me guess,” she says. “You think we’re going to make love tonight, and you’re impatient to get started.”
I put on a look of feigned horror. “You read my journal!”
She smiles, puts her journal on the night table, and holds out her arms to me. “Come here; I’ll give you something good to write about.”
And she proceeds to do just that, though it leaves me too tired to pick up a pen.
It also leaves me too tired to talk, and far too tired to stay awake. Regrettably, it doesn’t seem to have had that effect on Laurie.
“Andy, when I’m here with you it feels like I never left. It feels like home.”
I feel a twinge of hope through the fatigue; the possibility that Laurie will return here permanently is with me at all times. But I have recently become smart enough not to try to advance the idea myself. If she’s going to decide to come back, she’s going to reach the decision on her own.
“My home is your home,” I say with mock gallantry.
“But when I go back to Findlay, that feels like home as well. I’m totally connected there.”
So much for a seismic shift. “Why don’t we see how you feel in the morning?”
“Andy, is this working for you? I mean, how we are together… when we see each other. Are you happy with how we’re handling this?”
“It’s not my first choice, but it’s a solid second.”
She thinks about this for a few moments, then seems to nod and says, “Good night, Andy.”
Good night, Andy? Is that where we’re going to leave this? I need to have a little more insight into her thinking. “Is there something else you wanted to say, Laurie?”
“I don’t think so… maybe tomorrow. Good night, Andy.”
I could pursue this further now, or I can wait until “maybe tomorrow.” I think I’ll wait.
Tomorrow actually starts earlier than I would like, as Karen Evans calls me at six o’clock in the morning. She apologizes for calling so early, but she wanted to get me before I went to work. She must think I’m a dairy farmer.