'I don't think so. Not yet.'
'But you're thinking he hangs where he is, it's only a matter of time.'
I nodded.
'Good kid.'
'I know.'
'But he has that hitch in his eye. Looking for something. Hungry.'
I nodded again. Wondering if I had ever come across anyone, any age, who understood people the way Keith LeRoy did.
'Well. You are what you eat. Nothing larger than your own head, right?'
He smiled.
'Delany told me he had to have the money. Don't hold your breath, I said-anyway it's only a few dollars. He says, hole he's in, a few dollars could just make a difference.'
LeRoy saw the question before I asked it. He shrugged.
'Who knows? That kind of need, it's got its own language.'
'You think he'll call back?'
'I think he would of, yeah. But I told him I wouldn't be there-got my rounds to make, pickups and deliveries and the like. Be gone most of the day. Asked what part of town he was in, maybe we could meet up somewhere nearby later on. First he didn't answer. Then he said, 1 don't know…''
Keith LeRoy grinned.
'You free 'round six o'clock, Mr. Griffin?'
'I could be.'
'Good. Then you just might want to come along with me to the Funky Butt Bar, midcity. Have a sandwich, maybe a couple of beers, see what happens?'
Someone at the office door cleared his throat.
'I'll come by where you stay,' Keith LeRoy said, 'pick you up. That okay? 'Round five, five-thirty.'
He nodded to me, then to my newest visitor, who stepped back out of the door to let him pass.
One last dance on my card, this time strictly %, a fox-trot, maybe.
Dean Treadwell wondered aloud just how serious was my dedication to teaching, to the university. He knew that I had a drinking problem, of course-and raised his hand when I started to protest. He understood, too, that my creative work, my own novels and stories, were of primary importance to me. He'd read and admired several of them himself, at his wife's urging. And devoted as it was to liberal arts, the university was happy to make certain concessions and accommodations. But.
Surely I understood that the university's obligation.
That the department must.
That I, as an untenured assistant professor, perhaps especially as an untenured assistant professor.
After all, we're all of us, students and faculty alike, on campus for.
Mind you, Treadwell's as fine a man as you're likely to pluck out from among these academic brambles and thickets. I'm sure he resented giving the lecture as much as I did receiving it.
So when he was done, I said 'You're absolutely right' and handed over the office key. 'You have to hold on to the lock, push in on it, to get it open. There's probably a trick to getting the computer to work too, but I haven't found it. The students pretty much take care of themselves.'
'Mr. Griffin,' he said. 'Lewis. Please. Wait.'
But I was in the doorway now, canceling out the rest of my dance card.
'I have been,' I said. 'Waiting. For far too long.'
23
So, newly unemployed, I lay on the couch belching beans and Crystal hot sauce, waiting for Keith LeRoy. Bat kept strafing the room: he'd dash in, jump on a rug and ride it across the floor till it crashed into wall or furniture, then retreat I'd fed him, so this had to be some kind of higher complaint. Maybe he was afraid I'd no longer be able to provide for him in the manner to which he'd become accustomed.
I drifted as though on a raft: asleep, awake and somewhere in between, sounds around me settling in half- acknowledged, setting off sparks that caught at the dream-tinder.
Clare sat at the table by me. The sound of cars passing outside became her fingers on the keyboard. I'd just surfaced from a quart of gin, lying on the couch: she was home. Another review? Yes. It's going well? Fairly well, yes. Then, in the dream, I was again asleep.
Without transition I stood inside the ER doors, watching all those people rush towards Clare's room. White tile and bright light everywhere. Her overnight bag in my hand. Hairbrush and toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, one of the oversize T-shirts she wore to sleep in, all her usual meds.
Then in a dimly lit room I sat beside LaVerne as she poured martinis from a chilled pitcher, telling me about her childhood, her mother, and trains.
I looked up at her photo, the one Richard Garces gave me.
So many things I wanted to tell you, Verne.
I know.
I loved you more than any.
But with the same disabilities. Yes.
We can make up for our actions. But for our inactions, what we fail to do…
Do you think it's any different with me, Lew? With any of us? Let it go. This new woman you've met.
Deborah.
She makes you happy?
Yes.
Then cherish Iwr, Lew. Tell her the things you never told me. Hold her close. And let her hold you.
I'll try… Verne?
She was gone.
When I was a kid, twelve, thirteen, my father built a shoe-shine box for me. I'd said I wanted to earn my own money and a week later he handed me this thing. Solid hardwood box with a drawer for supplies, steel footrest above, a rod on the side for shoe-shine rags. Amazing piece of workmanship. He'd even stocked it with polishes, a brush, pieces of old towels. That Saturday he took me along on his usualrounds, Billy's D-light Diner, Clcburne Hotel Barber Shop, Blue Moon Tavern, DeSoto Park, and introduced me to his friends, many of whom, it happened, needed shoe-shines. I came home that day with almost eight dollars. I don't think I ever touched the box again. I spent the money on books. Paperbacks were a quarter back then. Seven dollars and change bought a lot of books. And earned a lot of grief from my mother, who for weeks complained of my wasting all that money, buying more books when I had a room full of them already.
When my own son was nine or ten, he asked for a magic cabinet. You'd put a ball in there, open doors and it would vanish, then you'd close and open the doors again and the ball would reappear. He'd come across the design for it in an old Popular Mechanics he found somewhere. So, calling upon what little I could rememberof my father's skill, I built the cabinet for him, even painted on mysterious Chinese symbols. The cabinet sat on a shelf in his room for years, Janie told me, never used but always in clear sight.
'You comin' 'long or not?' Keith LeRoy said above me.
I looked up, for a moment disoriented.
'Let myself in, since you wouldn't answer the door. Hand got sore, standing out there knocking. You really oughta get a decent lock, man, you care about any of this shit.'
I swung my legs over the side of the couch and sat up.
'Say that 'cause something for sure been goin' on 'round here, way there's eyes behind every window while I'm comin' down the street.'
I told him about the juvenile muggers.
'Damn, they do be startin' early nowadays, don't they. So… You coming with?'
