A Long Line of Dead Men

"If he doesn't get sick of pointing at the wall and talking about warm fronts and cold fronts, he probably doesn't ever get sick of anything. When you see him pointing at a map or a chart, he's not really, you know."

"Somebody else is pointing for him?"

"He's pointing at nothing," she said, "and the image of him pointing is superimposed on another image of a map or chart. So it comes out looking right, but he's got to stand there and point at a blank wall. That's probably the hardest part of his whole job, remembering what part of the wall is Wyoming."

We fought over the check. She wanted to pay it because she'd sold one of the paint-by-number paintings for approximately a hundred times what she'd paid for it. I pointed out that that was still only a couple of hundred dollars, while I'd just scooped up a nine-thousand-dollar retainer.

"You still have to buckle down and earn it," she said. "The painting, on the other hand, is out of my hands and out of the store. The transaction is completed. Done, finis, finito."

"Too bad," I said. "This one's on me."

Back home, I checked the answering machine. Jim Shorter hadn't called, and I'd expected that he would. I tried him and he didn't answer. Then I tried my own number across the street, to see if I'd forgotten to engage Call Forwarding, but I got a busy signal, which indicated that I'd remembered.

I tried Alan Watson's widow in Forest Hills. No answer.

"You're restless," Elaine said. "Do you feel like a movie? Or do you think you ought to go to a meeting?"

I said, "I was thinking of taking a cab up to Yorkville."

"What's there?"

"A meeting."

"St. Paul's is handier. Why go all the way up there? You want to check up on your new sponsee, is that it?"

"He's not my sponsee."

"Your unofficial sponsee. He didn't call and you're worried about him."

"I suppose so. What would your friends in Al-Anon say about that?"

"They'd tell me it's none of my business how you work your program."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know. You meant what would they tell you to do, and if you want to know that you'll have to ask them yourself."

"I should leave him alone," I said.

"Think so, huh?"

"I should go to meetings for myself, not for anybody else, and if he gets sober that's fine, and if he goes out and drinks again that's fine, too."

"So?"

"So I'm afraid he'll drink," I said, "and I'm afraid it'll be my fault. But it won't be my fault if he drinks, and it won't be my doing if he stays sober, and anyway he's got his own Higher Power. Right?"

"Everything you say is right, master."

"Oh, boy."

"So what are you going to do? Grab a cab uptown?"

"Nah, fuck him," I said. "Let's go to a movie."

The movie we saw starred Don Johnson as a homicidal gigolo and Rebecca De Mornay as his attorney. As we left the theater, Elaine said, "I cannot believe how much she looked like Hillary." Who was Hillary, I wanted to know, and who looked like her?

"Hillary Clinton," she said. "Who else? And De Mornay looked enough like her to fool the president himself. You didn't notice? I can't believe it. Where were you, anyway?"

"Lost in space, I guess. Regretting the past, dreading the future."

"Business as usual. Just to keep you abreast of things, Don Johnson was the bad guy."

"I got that much," I said.

"Well, how much more do you really need to know? I think it's finally going to rain. I just felt a drop, unless it dripped from somebody's air conditioner."

"No, I felt it, too."

"Dueling air conditioners? Unlikely, I'd say. What do you want to do now?"

"I don't know. Go home, I guess."

"Sit around and stare out the window? Make a few phone calls to people who aren't home? Pace the floor?"

"Something like that."

"I've got a better idea," she said. "Walk me home and then go see if Mick wants to make a night of it. Get blitzed on coffee and Perrier. Watch the sun come up. Go to mass, take Holy Reunion."

"Communion."

"Whatever."

"Goyim is goyim, huh?"

"You said it."

In front of the Parc Vendôme she said, "It's definitely raining. You want to come upstairs and get an umbrella?"

"It's not raining that hard."

"Want to see if anybody called? Want to catch the weather report and see what color bow tie your friend Gerry Billings is wearing? Naw, you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the rain is falling."

"No."

"Of course not. You just want to get to Grogan's. Give Mick my love, will you? And enjoy yourself."

22

"You just missed him," Burke said. "He stepped out not fifteen minutes ago. But he'll be along. He said you might be in."

"He did?"

"And that you should wait for him as he'll not be long. There's fresh coffee made, if you'll have a cup."