And Sometimes I Wonder About You

48

I spent that night at the Hotel Brown. Looking back on it, I might have spent the time at home but whatever there had been between Katrina and me was over in the marriage department; and, anyway, with a woman like Marella there had to be some time to say good-bye.

When I awoke the next morning she was already awake and dressed and packed. Her black-and-pink-polka-dotted bag was at the door. I sat up and found a cup and an aluminum thermos-pitcher on the nightstand next to my side of the bed.

“I’ll go downstairs and check out while you get dressed,” she said. “Meet you at the front desk.”

Her tone was curt and she wasn’t smiling at all. The fact that she didn’t kiss me was more an expression of love than any sex could have ever been. Marella was facing the unfamiliar task of weaning herself off of emotional dependence upon another human being. I knew this to be true but it hurt me anyway. There aren’t many times in life that you meet another person cast in the same kiln, formed by the same dispassionate hand.

I drank my coffee before putting on my pants; browsed the headlines on my smartphone while tasting the bitter dregs that I needed to stay sharp and focused.

Aldo Ferinni, Max White, and Josh Farth — all from Boston — had been shot dead on the fifteenth floor of the Tesla Building by a squad of New York policemen. The three men had been identified by a private detective, me, to the NYPD as persons of interest in two murders. Two officers were wounded in the firefight. No bystanders were harmed.

Twill was sitting at the nearest round table in the first-class waiting room for the Acela to Boston. He wore a very nice dark gray suit with a bright white shirt and a razor-thin blue, green, and yellow tie. His shoes were matte black and tied with perfect bows.

When we approached him the smile that had been missing returned to Marella’s lips.

“You must be the Twill that gives him such sleepless nights,” she said, holding out a hand.

“And you’re Marella,” he said, surprising her with a kiss, “that kept him company through that hard time.”

The three of us would have been perfect together for as long as the gravy train ran.

“Son,” I said, using the word as an anchor as well as a greeting.

“Pops.”

We had stopped playing chess after Twill turned thirteen. From then on Go was our game. Twill set out a tablet device between us on the table in the block of four seats, two facing two. He hit an app that brought up a Go grid and we began to play.

After half an hour or so Marella asked, “What’s the purpose of this game?”

She had deigned to sit next to me with her hand lightly on my thigh. Having seen me at my best, or worst, she knew that I had a romantic bent and remained close to keep me going in a straight line.

“It’s a game of war,” Twill said, studying his next move. “The purpose is to defeat the enemy by surrounding him while maintaining your army if you can.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marella decreed. “In a war it all happens at once, not one move at a time.”

“That depends,” my old-soul son replied.

“On what?”

“On if you think a mathematician learns how to add before he takes on calculus.”

Twill was never very good in math class but that didn’t mean that he lacked understanding.

At South Station in Boston my forces were beleaguered but Twill was hurting also. I had a couple of stones on him but that didn’t matter; it was the kind of war that the United States liked to make happen between its enemies. That was a lesson too.

Twill went off for a moment to call his clients while Marella and I had a talk.

“I do believe that that son of yours would have been just as effective as you if he was on that train from Philly,” she said.

“He’s something else,” I said with pride.

“You know I’m trying my best to forget you, Lee.”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” I said. “A whole life.”

“You’re never going to come with me, are you?”

Instead of answering I took her by both hands.

“It’s like we were almost real for a few days there,” I said. “I don’t think that anybody could ask for more than that.”

We, all three of us, checked into a suite that Zephyra had booked for us at the Hotel Bombay.

After I’d shown my ID and credit card I asked the desk clerk, “Shouldn’t you be calling this the Hotel Mumbai?”

The red-brown Indian woman, PASHA her nametag read, smiled and nodded. She was in her forties and a beauty on any continent.

“You have to call it that,” Pasha told me. “But my husband, who owns this hotel, is from Bombay, not Mumbai. Maybe our children will change the name.”

“Do you have a conference room available tomorrow afternoon?” I asked.

“What time?”

“We don’t know for sure but we’ll definitely need it. Can I take from noon to six?”

“I’ll have to check and get back to you later.”

After we’d lugged Marella’s hundred-pound suitcase to the rooms I kissed her on the lips.

“We have to go out and do what needs doing,” I told her.

She smiled and said, “You’ll know I believe you if I’m still here when you get back.”

Twill and I walked to Cambridge. It was little more than a mile.

“She somethin’ else, Pop,” he said as we were crossing the footbridge that led over to Harvard Square. “I mean that’s a woman you could write about in the history books.”

“You know what we’re doing here, right?” I said, avoiding his invitation to the truth.

“Sure do. If what your girl Celia says is right it should be a breeze.”

Melbourne Westmount Ericson was waiting for us near the entrance of the Enclave building. He’d come alone, as I’d asked him to, wearing khaki cargo pants and a pink short-sleeve Polo pullover shirt.

We shook hands and I introduced him to my son.

“You look like a good personal assistant,” Melbourne said to Twill.

“That’s the job.”

“Did you call them?” I asked the billionaire.

“Said that I was considering an endowment,” he said. “After reading about them online I might really do it. It’s really a very interesting enterprise. Combining historical and literary provenance with the weight of ownership, there could be all kinds of interesting study. But there’s one thing.”

“And what thing is that?”

“I’m uncomfortable stealing from these people.”

I might have hated my father. I might have come to the realization that ants and termites were more socialist than Lenin or Marx could ever be when I hadn’t yet reached the age of twenty. But no matter how I feel about blood and philosophy — when I hear a truly wealthy man tell me that he’s uncomfortable with theft I have the desire to wring his neck.

Suppressing my natural response, I said, “Only the book was bequeathed to this institution, and that was a mistake, it doesn’t even show up on the list of gifts. The papers inside are of a personal nature. Imagine if those pictures of Marella got into the hands of some newspaper in DC or New York. Wouldn’t you want me to retrieve them by any means necessary?”

“It’s that bad?” he asked.

“Worse by a factor of forty-nine.”

“Let’s get going,” he said to my son.

I sat down at a bus stop across the street, unsure of what to do with my strangling hands.

Maybe the rage I felt had some kind of outward expression, making me look like a threat while sitting on a wooden bench on an autumn day.

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice said six or seven minutes after I sat.

I looked up and saw a young white cop. He had a pale complexion and a partner that looked nothing like him and yet also would have claimed to be a white man. Something about the disjuncture of their appearance and supposed race reminded me of the rich man who claimed to disdain theft.

“Yes, Officer?”

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting.”

“There’s only one bus that stops here and it just went by,” the second cop said.

“I said I was sitting, not waiting for the bus.”

“This is a bus stop,” the second cop said.

“Is there some kind of law in Massachusetts saying that a tired man can’t sit down at a bus stop without taking a ride?”

“Stand up, sir,” the second policeman ordered.

If I wanted to stay on the case I should have popped up like a tulip in the spring. But there was too much weighing on me: Marella and her man, Jones and those kids, Hiram Stent and his inability to make the right decision.

I looked up at a tree in front of the Enclave across the street. There was a red bird of some kind flitting around the branches, enjoying the experience of dexterity and flight, singing his heart out. For a moment, maybe two, I forgot those cops existed.

Then I felt the hand under my right arm. He, the first cop, tried to lift me. I tensed my muscles and his fingers were trapped. He must have looked frightened because his partner pulled out his gun and said, “Down on your knees!”

I might have died then and there. And those policemen were in as much danger as they feared — maybe more.

But I lowered to my knees while putting unclenched hands in plain sight. That didn’t assure my survival but it was the best choice I had.

Sometimes you might forget who you are and where, but that’s okay because there’s always somebody around that’s happy to remind you.