When the Thrill Is Gone

16

On the street I felt like an adolescent again — on the run, back under the radar of the foster-care system. This was due to the broken family, missing sister, and words of Nathan Chambers.

...dreams are like oceans...

All the years I had spent hating my father for his laser-like attention and then abrupt abandonment, and it only took these few words to explain him in a way that the twelve-year-old in me could understand. Dreams are like oceans and sometimes they pull the dreamer down.

Just a few blocks from the Schmidt Home, Azure Freshstone-Chambers’ residence, I came upon a desolate park. It was a patch of concrete, devoid of vegetation, with three benches set in a circle, looking out. One of these benches was occupied by a street denizen with a shopping cart, three suitcases, and at least eight neatly squared and piled blond nylon bags. I couldn’t tell if the heavily clothed traveler was male or female, black or white. But these details hardly mattered. I sat down, facing the Hudson, though not looking there.

...dreams are like oceans...

Four words and my whole history had been turned on its head, like my father told me Marx had done to Hegel. Forgiveness for his inability was ripped from my chest by this slightly older man who blamed himself for shining a similar light in his own kids’ eyes.

I could smell my neighbor. The odor was musty, dusty, and yet rich like loam. I wasn’t thinking anything, not really. Nate left no room for conjecture. He told the truth, whether he believed it or not, and I was left with consequences that he’d never know he’d wrought.

I needed to go on with the case, but there wasn’t room for it in my mind right then. I might have sat there in the company of that fragrant phantom for hours if my phone had not sounded.

It was the growling of a bear, a stranger — maybe.

“Hello.”

“What’s wrong, Lenny?” Harris Vartan asked. “You sound upset.”

The tide of my thoughts receded. Vartan was another kind of force of nature.

“I’ll look for the guy,” I said.

“I appreciate that.”

“Tell me something, Uncle Harry.”

“What’s that, Lenny?”

“Did you talk to my father before he left the country the last time?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That he didn’t want to go but, knowing what he knew, he didn’t know how to stay.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right. That’s right.”

“I begged him to stay,” Harris said. “I told him what would happen if he died.”

“So,” I said, the period of his guilty sentence, “what do you have for me?”

There was only a brief pause on the line, Harris paying deference to the pain he knew in me.

“Corinthia Mildred Highgate,” he said.

“Who’s that?”

“She knew Williams and last saw him somewhere between ten and twenty years ago. She lived in Manhattan then. Maybe she still does — if she’s alive.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. Williams knew this Highgate. If you can locate her, and she’s still alive, I’d like you to ask where he might be.”

After getting off the phone with the ghost of Christmases past, I called another number.

“Hello?” he said, panting like a fat dog after a young bitch in heat.

“What’s up, Bug?” I asked the systems whiz kid.

“How many push-ups can you do, Mr. McGill?”

“Eighty or so — if I get warmed up first.”

“Eighty?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Straight out? I mean, not on your knees or an incline?”

“Straight out.”

“I have to stop after three.”

“Three months ago you’d have stopped before you started.”

He took in a breath, tried to talk, inhaled again, and said, “What can I do for you?”

“You know those messages Twill’s been getting on Twitter?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to send the eleven dollars to him and give that fake address Zephyra has for me in Queens.”

“What’s the address?”

“I don’t remember. Call her and find out.”

“Um...”

“What?”

“Uh... you want me call her?”

“I take it you want to do a lot more than talk with Zephyra.”

“Yeah but... I mean, um, you know.”

“Listen, kid, the girl wants something from you. There’s no doubt about that. Maybe she just wants to be friends, but if that’s so, why’d she say that you should get in shape?”

“We only saw each other alone that one time.”

“I’m not askin’ you to go see her. Just call.”

I broke off the connection and glanced over at the resident of the adjacent bench.

What might have been a black man was in reality a middle-aged white woman rearranging her nylon bags to achieve some aesthetic effect that escaped me.

She looked up at me with her broad potato face and smiled.

Taking this as a good omen I waved, then set my feet back on the path to Azure.