“Christ. I hate it when it’s kids.”
Marino pushed back his chair and rubbed his temples. “Damn. Every time you get rid of one toad there’s another to take his place.”
After Marino left, I sat on the hearth in the living room watching coals shift in the fireplace. I was weary and felt a dull, implacable sadness that I did not have the strength to chase away. Mark’s death had left a tear in my soul. I had come to realize, incredibly, just how much of my identity had been tied to my love for him.
The last time I saw him was on the day he flew to London, and we managed a quick lunch downtown before he headed to Duller Airport. What I remembered most clearly about our last hour together was both of us glancing at our watches as storm clouds gathered and rain began to spit against the window beside our booth. He had a nick on his jaw from where he’d cut himself while shaving, and later, when I would see his face my mind, I would envision that small injury and fork some reason be undone by it.
He died in February while the war was ending in the Persian Gulf, and determined to put the pain behind me I had sold my house and moved to a new neighborhood. What I accomplished was to uproot myself without really going anywhere, and the familiar plants and neighbors that once had given me comfort were gone, Redecorating my new home or redesigning the yard only added to my stress. Everything I did provided distractions for which I had no time, and I could imagine Mark shaking his head.
“For someone so logical…” he would smile and say.
“And what would you do?” I would tell him in my thoughts some nights when I could not sleep. “Just what the hell would you do if you were still here instead me?”
Returning to the kitchen, I rinsed out my glass and went into my study to see what awaited me on my answering machine. Several reporters had called, so had. my mother and Lucy, my niece. Three other messages, were hang ups.
I would have loved an unlisted number but it was not possible. The police, Commonwealth’s Attorneys, the four hundred or so appointed medical examiners statewide had legitimate reasons to reach me after hours. To counter the loss of privacy, I used my answering machine to screen calls, and anyone who left threatening or obscene messages ran the risk of being tracked by Caller ID.
Pressing the review button on the ID box, I began scrolling through the numbers materializing on the narrow screen. When I found the three calls I was looking for, I was perplexed and unsettled. The number was curiously familiar by now. It had been appearing on my screen several times a week of late when the caller would hang up without leaving a message. Once, I had tried dialing the number back to see who answered and had gotten the high-pitched tone of what sounded like a fax machine or a computer modem. For whatever reason, this individual or thing had called my number three times between ten-twenty and eleven P.M., while I was at the morgue waiting for Waddell’s body. That didn’t make sense. Computerized telephone solicitations should not occur so frequently and at such a late hour, and if one modem trying to dial another was getting me instead, shouldn’t someone have figured out by now that his computer was dialing a wrong number?
I woke up several times during the few hours left of the early morning. Every creak or shift of sound in the house made my pulse pick up. Red lights on the burglar alarm’s control panel across from the bed glowed ominously, and when I turned or rearranged the covers, motion sensors I did not arm while I was home watched me silently with flashing red eyes. My dreams were strange. At five-thirty I turned on lamps and got dressed. It was dark out and there was very little traffic as I drove to the office. The parking lot behind the bay was deserted and littered with dozens of small beeswax can dies that brought to mind Moravian love feasts and other religious celebrations. But these candles had been used to protest. They had been used as weapons hours before. Upstairs, I fixed coffee and began going through the paperwork Fielding had left for me, curious about, the contents of the envelope I’d found in Waddell’s back pocket. I was expecting a poem, perhaps another meditation or a letter from his minister.