“I agree with that,’” said Walter.
“Five of ’em. Can you?” Ike persisted, now apparently blowing smoke through every bodily orifice. Walter admitted his bankruptcy with a shrug. Ike took on Billy, “Who you think’s better?”
“The Paragons,” Billy said. “I’ll take them on ‘Florence’ alone.”
“I heard that,” said Ike. “You may have got me there.” He threw his head back and launched a mangled falsetto, “ Fah-lah-ho-rance-hoooo weeee…”
Billy turned to Walter at the end of the bar. “What beats ‘Florence’? Nothing does. Even Ike knows that.”
He put Walter’s usual beverage on a new Billy’s coaster. But he kept his thin, white fingers around the bottle. Walter had to speak up for his drink.
“‘Gloria,’” Walter said.
“The Cadillacs,” Ike nodded his approval, and his tortured falsetto took off again, “Glaw-haw-ree-ha oh oh-it’s not Mah-ree-hee-hee-Glaw-haw-ree-ha-it’s not Sher-ee-hee.”
“The best,” said Walter. “You ever have a girlfriend named Gloria?”
Billy shook his head.
“Me neither,” said Ike in a very soft, strained voice. He knew the name of Walter’s ex-wife.
“I did once,” Walter said. “I think of her when I hear that song. It’s been a long time. But even that brought it back.” He raised his bottle to Ike in salute.
Ike said, “You know Enchantment?”
Billy said, “I know the word, but you mean something else?”
Ike lit another cigarette. “The group Enchantment. One of them one-hit groups. They did a cover of ‘Gloria’ in, I don’t know, mid-eighties. Damn good too.”
“Enchantment,” said Billy. “You want me to write it down?”
Walter said, “Write down Cadillacs and also Paragons. Ike, you still need to give us one. Just one.” The old man mulled it over. Walter sipped contentedly. Ike chuckled and dragged on the evil stick he was smoking. “Close as you boys are to me, I feel better the closer you are. Gentlemen, I offer you The Channels.” Billy picked up the chalk and wrote it all down: Cadillacs/Paragons/Channels. All three of them took special pleasure watching Billy’s regulars, as well as the tourists, mull over their choices and cast their votes. The delight was all the greater since nobody had any idea why they were voting at all. Someone would yell out their selection and Billy dutifully lifted his chalk and made a slash mark beneath it.
“The Channels,” said Ike. “That’s nice. Very, very nice.”
Atlanta
Leonard showered, shaved, and found clean clothes. He raised the blinds and opened all the windows. The kitchen doors leading to the deck were thrown wide open for the first time since… since that terrible day in June. The winter air blew through the house and out again, taking with it the stink of Leonard’s isolation that had settled in over eight months. He cleaned everything. He rubbed and scrubbed and vacuumed, washed the dirty toilets, and wiped the dust from the furniture. It took him all day and most of the evening. It made him feel good again. The next morning he got a haircut, and before he returned home he shopped for fruits and vegetables and fresh-baked bread. He tossed out all the liquor still in the house. That night he couldn’t sleep, so instead he began taking inventory of his belongings.
Leonard Martin sold everything. Everything.
His contacts in the real estate community connected him with the right agent to sell his house in Alpharetta, for which he got top dollar. The same agent was able to refer Leonard to a realtor on Hilton Head. He did better with the Hilton Head condo than he thought he would. Before he closed on his house he disposed of his personal property-furniture, art, and Nina’s jewelry-for which he sought help from a diamond dealer with whom he had worked on a series of rental property purchases.
“You want to sell everything?” the diamond dealer asked him. “You might want to keep something. This was your wife’s.”
Leonard replied, “All of it.”
“I can help you. I know someone who can handle the jewelry. I will take the diamonds myself, if that’s alright with you. The art work too?”
“Yes.”
“And the books, the music, the furniture?”
“All of it.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Sell it all,” Leonard said.
“I understand. I’m sorry Mr. Martin. I’m so sorry.”
Leonard nodded, but said nothing more.
He went to cash with his portfolio and then moved the cash and closed his brokerage account. He called Nick Stevenson and told him he wished to exercise his option to sell his interest in the firm. He insisted on accepting only twice his best year’s salary.
“Lenny, your share is worth much more. Much more. You must know that.”
“It’s okay Nick. That’s what I want.”
“What do you say we just keep you as a partner-inactive-but still a partner? You don’t have to sell.”
“I know, Nick. Thanks, but this is what I want.” Arrangements were made. The money was transferred to Leonard’s bank.
It all came to just about twelve million dollars, including the money from the Knowland settlement. He told Nick and Harvey that he was moving to the Bahamas, that he planned to buy a boat, that he would write when he settled himself. He said goodbye to Carter and Carter’s family, telling them the same story. He didn’t bother calling his sister. And then, he was gone.
He bought a house in Jamaica that was little more than a hut. He bought a boat not much bigger than a dinghy. He also bought a vacant lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 270 acres in the high desert north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. These properties were titled in the name of a corporation he set up in North Dakota. After the closing, each was quitclaimed twice until the property belonged to Evangelical Missions Inc., a North Carolina entity with an address that was the empty lot. Leonard bought an SUV in North Carolina. He drove to New Mexico, and as soon as he arrived there, the vehicle was titled to Evangelical Missions Inc. In New Mexico, his nearest neighbor was eight miles away, an Indian ninety years old and half blind. He never went near the Bahamas.
By mid-April he had settled into his new home, a renovated hillside hunting cabin hunched into a thicket of brush, at the end of a winding dirt road miles off the main road into his own property. The cabin had electricity, but no phone. The front porch stood above a clearing that marked the end of the dirt road. Inside, made entirely of logs, he had a living room with a vaulted ceiling and a large fireplace, a small kitchen area, and, down a short hall, a small bedroom and a toilet and shower. He had a radio, plus the one in his SUV, but no television. His laptop computer connected to the Internet via the cell phone belonging to Evangelical Missions Inc. In nearby Taos, he bought simple, wooden furniture, a table and some chairs, a small couch, a couple of lamps. He did not buy a bed. For months Leonard had been having nightmares, awful dreams where strange creatures reached out for him only to grab Nina, Ellie, and the boys instead. The monsters savaged them while Leonard watched helplessly. One night, while still in Alpharetta, he awoke suddenly, disoriented, shaking, and tearful, and tumbled out of bed onto the floor. He didn’t get up. He stayed on the floor and fell back to sleep. He slept the rest of that night without further attack by the demons. He hadn’t slept in a bed since. Each night he climbed into a sleeping bag on the hard wooden floor of his small bedroom, zipped himself in, and waited for the bad dreams. They came, but not every night, and he credited this partial success to his new sleeping arrangement.
Leonard had a single goal in mind, a simple objective, but one he knew would take time. It didn’t matter. Time had no meaning. He had infinite patience. He established a vigorous program of physical exercise- rehabilitation for his abused and obese body. He limited his diet to a thousand calories a day, mainly eating vegetables, fruit, and soups. He drank enormous amounts of water. He stopped eating meat altogether. Once a
