And all at once I began
to laugh
Kamen sat with his huge dark brown hands on his
doorstop knees, looking at me with his little
I've-seen-everything smileExcept on his face
nothing was littleHe let my laughter run its
course and then asked me what was so funny
"You're telling me I'm too rich to kill myself," I
said
"I'm telling you not now, Edgar, and that's all
I'm telling youI'm also going to make a
suggestion that goes against a good deal of my own
practical experienceBut I have a very strong
intuition in your case - the same sort of
31
intuition that caused me to give you the dollI
propose you try a geographical
"Beg pardon?"
"It's a form of recovery often attempted by latestage
alcoholicsThey hope that a change of
location will give them a fresh start
I felt a flicker of somethingI won't say it was
hope, but it was something
"It rarely works," Kamen said"The old-timers in
Alcoholics Anonymous, who have an answer for
everything - it's their curse as well as their
blessing, although very few ever realize it - like
to say, 'Put an asshole on a plane in Boston, an
asshole gets off in Seattle'"
"So where does that leave me?" I asked
"Right now it leaves you in suburban St
What I'm suggesting is that you pick
fake gucci fabric someplace far
from here and go thereYou're in a unique
position to do so, given your financial situation
and marital status
"For how long?"
"At least a year He looked at me inscrutably
His large face was made for such an expression;
32
etched on King Tut's tomb, I believe it might have
made even Howard Carter consider"And if you do
anything at the end of that year, Edgar, for God's
sake - no, for your daughters' sake - make it look
good
He had nearly disappeared into the old sofa; now
he began to struggle up againI stepped forward
to help him and he waved me awayHe made it to
his feet at last, wheezing more loudly than ever,
and took up his briefcaseHe looked down at me
from his height of six and a half feet, those
staring eyeballs with their yellowish corneas made
even larger by his glasses, which had very thick
lenses
"Edgar, does anything make you happy?"
I considered the surface of this question (the
only part that seemed safe) and said, "I used to
sketch It had actually been a little more than
just sketching, but that was long agoSince then,
other things had intervened
Both of which were now going or gone
33
I thought of telling him I'd once dreamed of art
school - had even bought the occasional
cartier replica watch ladies santos 100 steel book of
reproductions when I could afford to - and then
didn'tIn the last thirty years, my contribution
to the world of art had consisted of little more
than doodles while taking telephone calls, and it
had probably been ten years since I'd bought the
sort of picture-book that belongs on a coffee
table where it can impress your friends
"Since then?"
I considered lying - didn't want to seem like a
complete fixated drudge - but stuck to the truth
One-armed men should tell the truth whenever
possibleWireman doesn't say that; I do
"Take it up again," Kamen advised
"Hedges," I said, bemused He looked surprised and a little
disappointed, as if I had failed to understand a
very simple concept"Hedges against the night
vi
34
A week or so later, Tom Riley came to see me again
By then the leaves had started to turn color, and
I remember the clerks putting up Halloween posters
in the Wal-Mart where I bought my first sketchpads
since collegehell, maybe since high school
What I remember most clearly about that visit is
how embarrassed and ill-at-ease Tom seemed
I offered him a beer and he took me up on itWhen
I came back from the kitchen, he was looking at a
pen-and-ink I'd done - three palm trees
silhouetted against an
cheap rolex watches expanse of water, a bit of
screened-in porch jutting into the left foreground
"This is pretty good," he said"You do this?"
"Nah, the elvesThey come in the nightCobble my
shoes, draw the occasional picture
He laughed too hard and set the picture back down
on the desk"Don't look much like Minnesota,
dere," he said, doing a Swedish accent
"I copied it out of a book," I saidI had
actually used a photograph from a Realtor's
brochureIt had been taken from the so-called
"Florida room" of Salmon Point, the place I had
just leased for a yearI had never been in
Florida, not even on vacation, but that picture
35
had called to something deep in me, and for the
first time since the accident, I felt actual
anticipationIt was thin, but it was there"What
can I do for you, Tom? If it's about the business-
"
"Actually, Pam asked me to come out"I didn't much want to, but I didn't
feel I could say noOld times' sake, you know Tom went back to the days when The
Freemantle Company had been nothing but three
pickup trucks, a Caterpillar D9, and a lot of big
dreamsI'm not going to bite
you
"She's got herself a lawyerShe's going ahead
with this divorce business
"I never thought she wouldn't
I still didn't remember choking her, but
balenciaga replicas handbags I
remembered the look in her eyes when she told me I
hadAnd there was this: once Pam started down a
road, she rarely turned around
"She wants to know if you're going to be using
Bozie
I had to smile at thatWilliam Bozeman III was a
dapper, manicured, bow-tie-wearing sixty-five,
36
wheeldog of the Minneapolis law-firm my company
used, and if he knew Tom and I had been calling
him Bozie for the last twenty years, he would
probably have suffered an embolism
"I hadn't thought about itWhat's the deal, Tom?
What exactly does she want?"
He drank off half his beer, then put the glass on
a bookshelf beside my half-assed sketchHis
cheeks had flushed a dull brick red"She said she
hopes it doesn't have to be meanShe said, 'I
don't want to be rich, and I don't want a fightI
just want him to be fair to me and the girls, the
way he always was, will you tell him that?' So I
am
I got up, went to the big window between the
living room and the porch, and looked out at the
lakeSoon I would be able to go out into my very
own "Florida room," whatever that was, and look
out at the Gulf of MexicoI wondered if it would
be any better, any different, than looking out at
Lake PhalenI thought I would settle for
different, at least to begin
dior monogram bag w