The Shadow Catcher

The room goes suddenly astonishingly quiet. It’s almost like a stunned reaction to my saying That’s what my book’s about. It’s frightening. You can hear a pin drop. It’s as if every sound has been sucked out of the room and then I feel A PRESENCE loom and a beautiful tanned hand falls on Stacey’s shoulder. Don’t mean to interrupt, the car is waiting for us, and there He is. Like a vision. Probably the most beautiful human I have ever seen and Stacey is saying You know Jon and Jon is shaking hands with Him and Stacey is saying And this is Marianne who’s going to write the Curtis project for us and He flashes me a smile and extends his perfect hand in my direction saying I’m really looking forward to hearing your ideas, and I lift my hand and slide it into His, look up into His eyes and tell Him, “Ga.”

Thousands of women have probably said exactly the same thing to Him since He was twelve so He fields my stupefaction with impeccable grace and then Stacey tells Jon she’ll call him to confirm a meeting for next week and she tells me that she’s looking forward to reading The Shadow Catcher on the weekend, then they’re gone and Jon and I are left there all alone, at the table, in His life-altering absence.

“Ga?” Jon asks. “—that, and being fifty minutes late,” he summarizes. He picks up my Polaroid of the Curtis gravesite. “Worth the trip?”

“Did you know He was going to be here?”

“He’s been living in hotels. Since the separation.”

“You might have warned me.”

“So you’d come on time? Or so you’d come with better hair. I meant this. Is-it-worth-the-trip-to-Forest-Lawn? I’m curious what you found there. ’Cause it’s not in the novel.”

“I thought I owed it to him.”

“And, so…what? — he spoke to you?”

“They did.”

“The…Indians?”

“His children.”

“I thought they were dead.”

“—and buried. Right there. All four of them. Two on either side of him. Not even with their own spouses. It’s as if they thought they might finally get his attention. For all eternity.”

“They idolized him,” he estimates.

“There must have been something wonderful about him, for all four grown-up kids to want to be there.”

“My daughters won’t want to be buried by my side, and I’m pretty wonderful.”

“Yeah but, you haven’t disappeared.”

“—those adventuring types: I’ve always been suspicious. What are they running from? Do any of those guys who discover the North Pole ever have a wife and kids?”

“Sure, but the archetype of THE COWBOY is a loner. Man, a horse, the open country — that’s the movie these birds want to make. I could tell them fourteen different ways it’s not the story of Curtis’s life, they’ll still want to make a cowboy movie out of it.”

He walks me out and pays the valet and sees me to my car. “Know where you’re going?”

“I’m gonna stay on Sunset to the 405.”

“I’ll call you when I know something,” he says. “Take care,” he adds.

I start the car, he backs away.

I wave.

And suddenly he signals, STOP.

“On second thought—” he calls out:

“—take Sepulveda!”

reds