“Yeah.”
“Possible,” Quirk said.
“If it is, there may be an actual name attached to that number,” I said.
“The death camps were liberated more than sixty-four years ago,” Quirk said.
“Nazis woulda kept good records,” I said.
“You think the efficient cocksuckers kept a record of the numbers and the names?” Quirk said. “And saved them?”
“You know what they were like,” I said.
Quirk nodded.
“Okay,” Quirk said. “They kept records.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So where do we find them?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
27
I met Rosalind Wellington outside of a poetry-writing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Brattle Street.
“Remember me?” I said.
“You’re that man who was with my late husband when he died,” she said.
“Spenser,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I remember you.”
“May I buy you a drink?” I said.
She paused for a moment and then nodded.
“Why?” she said.
“See how you are, talk about your husband,” I said.
“I guess we could go to the Harvest, next door,” she said.
We sat at the bar. The Harvest was a bit elegant for the likes of me. I was probably the only guy in the place wearing a gun. I asked for beer. Rosalind ordered Pernod on the rocks. When it came, she took a considerable swallow of it.
“So how are you?” I said.
“Life is for the living,” she said. “I’ve never been one to indulge the past.”
I nodded.
“So you’re okay,” I said.
“Loss is the price we pay for progress,” she said. “Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “I’m glad you are able to be so positive.”
She had cleaned up her Pernod, and I nodded at the bartender to refill.
“Life is neutral,” she said. “We can choose to make it positive or negative.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s very insightful.”
“I’m a poet,” she said. “Life is my subject.”
“And you’ve chosen to make it positive.”
“I choose every day,” she said.
Her second Pernod arrived. She seemed positive about that, too.
“Was your husband as, what, philosophical as you are?”
She sucked in a little Pernod.
“My husband was greedy,” she said. “And self-serving and sexually addicted and very concerned with what others thought.”
“Bad combination for a philosopher,” I said.
“Covert and driven,” she said.
“ ‘Covert’?” I said.
She smiled sadly and swallowed some Pernod.
“ ‘A life of quiet desperation,’ ” she said. “To borrow from Emerson.”
I was pretty sure she was borrowing from Thoreau, but I felt my cause would be better served by not
