She held up her glass to drink to the name. There wasn’t much left to drink.
I knew Lonsberg had a place in Sarasota. He was seldom seen and never attended any literary parties or gave talks or went to the Sarasota Reading Festival. Once in a long while his photograph would appear in a big magazine, People, Vanity Fair, places like that. But there was never much text.
I had read his classic Fool’s Love when I was about seventeen. I guess almost everyone had read it. It was now over forty years old and still selling along with his two collections of short stories, mostly reprints from the series he did for The New Yorker, and his second novel, Plugged Nickels, which had stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for one hundred twenty weeks. Plugged Nickels came out in 1978. That was the year his wife died. And that was it. I seemed to remember that Lonsberg had moved from someplace east, I think Connecticut, to Sarasota. He had two children, a son and daughter. He gave no interviews, allowed no photographs of his children. Seemed to have no friends and made it clear he wanted minimal contact with the world. Lonsberg was a Sarasota legend. People reported Lonsberg sightings along with Stephen King, Monica Selles, and Jerry Springer glimpses.
I sympathized, empathized, sometimes envied Lonsberg’s decision. I didn’t remember Fool’s Love very well. It was a short novel about a teenage girl from a small town who leaves home and heads across the country to live with her aunt who has a supposedly wild lifestyle. The girl meets all kinds of people on the way and when she finally gets to her aunt finds that the aunt is basically no different from the mother she left behind.
“Lonsberg?” I prompted Flo who was looking up at the stag head.
“Remember when Adele got that story published?” she asked. “First prize, right in City Tempo. Her picture in the newspaper.”
“I remember,” I said.
The story had basically been autobiographical, loose ends tied together by fiction and the names of all the characters changed. I was in the story, sort of. There was a detective hired by the girl’s mother to find her. The detective’s name was Milo Loomis. He was big, tough, and had a sense of humor. No one would recognize me in Milo, but it wasn’t hard to spot her central character, Joan, as Adele. The story was honest. Joan wasn’t spared her responsibility for the things that had happened to her.
“Lonsberg read the story,” said Flo. “A few days after the magazine came out, he called, gave me his name, asked if I was Adele’s mother. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know who the hell Conrad Lonsberg was, but Adele did. She’s been great, Lew. These months… her grades went up. She pretty much stayed home though she worked on the school paper. She started going with this Mickey kid. Seemed okay. Friendly. Things were going great. Then this Lonsberg calls. I sort of remembered the name, I think. He asked if he could talk to Adele. Adele was shaking when she took the phone. Anyway, Lonsberg told Adele that he had read her story and would like to meet her. She stood there holding the phone waiting for me to give her permission.”
“And you did?”
“Adele’s picture had been in the paper, remember? She had been interviewed by Channel 40. Adele is one beautiful sixteen-year-old. But then again I seemed to remember Lonsberg was an old guy, older than yours truly Florence Ornstein Zink.”
She drank to that too.
“So,” she went on, “seemed okay to me and I figured from the look she had that she would probably see him even if I said ‘no,’ but thanks for asking, I thought.
“They set up a time the next day after school,” Flo went on. “He gave his address on Casey Key, north end. I drove her down, a thick folder full of her stories and poems in her lap. You know that big stone wall on the north end of the Casey?”
“Which one?”
“The one out toward the water. White stone walls maybe nine feet high?”
“I think I know the place. That’s where Lonsberg lives?”
“That’s where,” she said, looking at her now-empty glass. “Adele rang a bell. Few minutes later the gate was opened and she went in.”
“And you?”
“Wasn’t invited,” she said, getting up with a sigh. “Sat in the van reading something. I can’t remember what. Sat for about an hour. I was thinking of ringing the bell when she came out, all excited. Lonsberg wanted to work with her, wanted her to come every Saturday morning. So, that’s what we did. She told me he was a nice old man. I know about nice old men. Old men are still men. So, every Saturday we drove to Casey Key and I sat in the car reading. Son of a bitch never invited me in, never so much as came over to the car and introduced himself. I kept asking Adele if he tried to get in her pants or touch her. She said he didn’t Went on like this for five or six months, then six weeks ago Saturday she came out, got in the car, and said, ‘Let’s get away from here.’ We got away. She was mad as a cougar with an arrow in his ass and she was shaking. Adele’s been through a lot we both know about, and she can handle herself. She wasn’t handling herself after that visit. She wouldn’t talk about it. And she never went back to Lonsberg’s place. A couple of days later she started going out with this kid Mickey, the one from Burger King, almost every night. I saw some of the old Adele coming back. Smart-ass talk, schoolwork just barely getting done. She stopped writing and I think she was making it with this Mickey.”
“So something happened at Lonsberg’s that day and she’s run away with Mickey,” I summarized as Flo went to the wooden liquor cabinet to pour herself another drink.
“Lonsberg called last week,” she said, bottle in hand closing the cabinet door. “Adele talked to him for maybe thirty seconds, mostly she listened and then at the end said ‘yes’ and slammed down the phone.”
Flo brought her bottle to the sofa and poured herself another drink, putting the bottle on the table in front of the Remington horse.
“She tell you what the call was about?”
“Nope,” said Flo, taking a drink. “Not a word. Then, like a fast fart from a buffalo, she leaves a note and takes off.”
“I’ll find her,” I said.
“Good,” Flo said, toasting.
“Does Sally know?”
Flo shook her head “no.”
Sally Porovsky was a social worker with Children’s Services of Sarasota. Adele was one of her cases. I was also seeing Sally and her two kids from time to time. In a way, Adele had brought us together.
“I’ll let her know,” I said.
“She’ll call in the cops,” said Flo. “They’ll find her, put her someplace. They won’t let her come back here. I’m one tough old bitch, Fonesca, but I need that girl back here and I think she needs me.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“I’ll write you a check,” she said, putting down her glass and starting to rise.
“No,” I said.
She looked at me, closed her eyes, and shook her head in understanding.
“But I do want two things.”
“Name ‘em,” she said.
“I want to look at Adele’s room and I want you to stop drinking.”
“My drinking is none of your fuckin’ business,” she said, now standing over me.
“Back on the wagon or I tell Sally this isn’t the place for her.”
“You little pope-loving wop son of a bitch,” she said.
“I’m immune to flattery, and besides, I’m Episcopalian,” I said. “Flo, the wagon’s making its rounds. Climb in.”
“God’s truth,” said Flo, sagging, “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” I said. “You want Adele back?”
“Oh, shit,” she said, putting down the half-full glass in her hand. “How about beer? Two a day, no more.”
“Deal,” I said, getting up and holding out my hand. She took it and held on.
“I’m sorry what I said,” she said softly. “I was wrong to call you…”
“I can live with it,” I said, still holding her hand.
“Find her for me, Lew,” she said.
