'Why?'
He didn't answer, but walked back to the window. I tried to imagine, to summon up within myself, what he was seeing out there. Pinpricks of stars. Diminutive fires of the planet. Everything, as he said, gray. As though we were in some reverse aquarium, a cube of air complete with its own strange creatures, with water all around.
I never found out exacdy what it was that had hurt my friend so-something working in him a long time, that finally found purchase. In future years I'd come to recognize similar things scrabbling for footholds within myself. They were already there, of course, even then. Sometimes at night I heard them breathing.
'We care about you, Lew. That's not enough?'
Guess it would have to be.
'I've got a story to write,' Hosie said, and left.
Days marched in and out much as Hosie had, appearing unannounced, just as suddenly gone, banners bright or damp. Elsewhere in the world, wars were declared or fought undeclared, sons left home, workers tore open fingers and drove steel rods into their eyes, history smoothed its skirt in place over lap and legs. LaVerne and Hosie brought me tapes: T. S. Eliot, Yeats and Dylan Thomas reading their own work, a five-cassette Dead Souls, Francois Villon.
Two times a day someone appeared, generally an intern or resident, infrequently a nurse, to clean and dress wounds in chest and thigh. Med school professors swept through with students like so many gulping pilot fish in their wake. Meals arrived on covered trays, medications came, phlebotomists entered apologetically, social workers asked about diings that were none of their business and went away when I made no response.
LaVerne, Don and Hosie were there frequently, from time to time others: Sam Brown from SeCure Corps, Frankie DeNoux, Bonnie Bider, Achilles Boudleaux. Doo-Wop even stopped by one morning on his rounds. Things awful slow out there, Captain, he told me.
I listened to the Folkways poetry tape till I'd got it mosdy by heart.
One morning LaVerne climbed into bed beside me as the tape played. We'd done this before. Basically the nursing response was threefold. Some thought it was great, no problem. Others insisted it was against hospital policy. (One foot on the floor at all times?) A handful thought it abominable. Nurses in this last category had a penchant for wheeling about and storming back through the door.
'What do you think, Lew? Enough time out? Dinner's been on the table awhile now. Getting pretty cold.'
I could smell her perfume, the scented shampoo she'd used, breath sweet with champagne and cheese. Her sweat, that smelled like no one else's. That distant odor she always insisted I imagined, of other men.
'Sooner or later-some things-you have to decide, Lew.'
She burrowed closer against me, as into covers on cold mornings.
'I miss you so much, hon.'
Some code in their bodies, in our own, stamped and trampled deep, a code we never understand, never learn to read, but respond to.
'And I'm sotired, Lew.'
We listened to traffic build outside. How many mornings had we lain like this, LaVerne newly home from work, light filling the world's wide-mouthed jar, all our city's good citizens slipping back into their lives.
Must have been a hard night. LaVerne's breathing slowed, her hands twitched a few times and were still. Within moments she was snoring.
'Love you,' I told her.
Boudleaux had picked up whatever jobs stumbled towards me, handling most of them himself, farming out others to Sam Brown, still with SeCure as consultant but mostly freelancing now.
Once the thought came, I realized it had been at the back of my mind for some time. I tripped the call button.
Moments later a nurse's aide entered. 'Yes, Mr. Griffin?'
I held out the card I'd fishedfrom the nightstand.
'Cindy, can you have a look at this, let me know if it's Lee Gardner's card, New York?'
She stepped close to take the card. Her body smelled faintly of garlic and recent sex. It occurred to me that with a peculiar sort of intimacy I knew her voice-and absolutely nothing else about her. Was she twenty, forty? Fat, thin? Plain, pretty? Did she live alone, have a family, kids? Happy to go home at the end of the day, or were nights and days alike just things somehow to be gotten through, endured?
I think that was when (though still I could discern only light and shadow, movement, mass) I knew I was back. Hello world. Miss me?
'Park Avenue. Yes, sir.' She read off die number for me. 'Would you like me to get it for you, Mr. Griffin?'
About to say I could manage, I thought better. 'If you don't mind.'
'No sir, I don't mind at all.' I sensed her bending beside me for the phone, could see the darkness of her body move against window light. She spoke briefly to the hospital operator then dialed, handing the phone to me.
'Thanks, Cindy. I appreciate it.'
'What they all say.'
Without visual cues, even the most ordinary social interactions could become problematic. What, exacdy, was intended, implied? Confusion must have shown in my face.
'Joshing you, Mr. Griffin. Don't you pay me any mind. I'll check in on you later.'
I'd have continued, but just then someone with a clarinet voice said thank you for calling Icarus Books, could she help me.
'Lee Gardner please.'
A pause.
'I'm afraid Mr. Gardner is no longer with Icarus Books, sir. Would you care to speak with another editor?'
No.
I see. Well.
Might there be anodier number at which I could reach him?
Well. Unofficially, of course, you might try reaching Mr. Gardner at 827-7342. Thank you for calling Icarus Books.
Alto sax this time, reed gone bad: 'Popular Publications.'
'Lee Gardner please.'
'May I say who's calling?'
I told her.
'Hang on, Mr. Griffin. Lee's probably at lunch. Most everyone is. But I'll give it a shot.' She clicked off the line and back on. 'Hey. You're in luck.' Then her voice sank towards some phonal purgatory, half there, half not: 'A Mr. Griffin for you on line two, Lee.'
'Yes?'
I didn't often have a phone those days, phones requiring such middle-class imponderables as references and credit, but when I did, I often answered the same way. Or else I'd just pick the thing up and wait.
'How are you, Mr. Gardner?'
'Busy, thank you.'
Nothing more forthcoming. Momentsticked like tiny bombs on the wire. I heard his radio move from the Second Brandenburg with screaming pocket trumpets to a jazz station, vintage Miles from the sound of it. Pure jazz stations still existed back then.
'Lew Griffin. We met here in New Orleans. You were looking for one of your writers. Amonas, Amana, something like that.'
A brief pause. 'Latin.'
'Guess it does sound that way, now you mention it.'
'You hate Latin much as I did?'
'Never had a chance to. They stopped teaching it the year I hit high school. Stopped teacliing all languages that year. No money for it, they claimed. No money, no teachers, no interest. Has to be some advantage in knowing what words like tenable really mean, though. Not many do.'
'Hell, most don't even have a clue where commas and periods go. Let alone that subjects and verbs should agree.'
