“Too long to tell the whole story,” I said, looking at the clock on the wall. “Our time is just about up and I hear your next client coming through the outer door.”
“Give me the question,” Ann said. “In your eyes, you have a question.”
“Why would Adele, who Lonsberg has been working with, deface her copy of one of his books and not just tear it up or throw it away?”
“You want a two-minute answer, which is the time we have left?”
“What I want and what I get are almost never the same,” I said.
“She is angry with him, very angry, feels betrayed, but can’t bring herself to throw away the book. Something is unfinished. Something went very wrong. In that which we call reality. In the reality of Adele’s mind. Lewis, I would need more information. Ideally, I would need Lonsberg and Adele together in this room. I think that unlikely. Meanwhile, I’ll end with a question. Why did you leap the chasm of thought from being angry with me and identifying with seagulls to Adele and Lonsberg?”
“I don’t know.”
“Next time,” she said, rising. “Think about it. Come with an answer.”
“I’ll try.”
“It’s an assignment,” she said. “Like college. You fail to answer, you get an F and I make you do it again.”
I fished out two tens, Marvin Uliaks’s tens, and handed them to her.
“You should read Fool’s Love,” she said as I moved toward the door.
“I did.”
“When?”
“A long time ago,” I said.
“You read it as a boy. Read it as a man. You think it’s hot in here?”
“Maybe, a little.”
“Monday?”
“Monday, same time?”
“Yes,” she said, moving to the thermostat.
In the small reception office, a woman-slim, long blond hair, well dressed, eyes down and covered with thick sunglasses-looked down. I walked past her and out into the sunshine.
3
I stopped at Brants Book Shop on Brown Street, a short street with Bee Ridge on the north end and the shopping mall with Barnes amp; Noble on the south. Brant’s is a one-story used-book institution that looks as if a good wind would blow off the roof or an NFL lineman would step through the creaking wooden floor. But there wasn’t much you couldn’t find there.
I picked up a copy of Fool’s Love for a dollar and a quarter and walked over to Rico’s, great prices, good food, terrific calamari, nearly perfect lasagna, just like my mother didn’t make. I had a Gorgonzola sandwich on a roll with a diet Coke and watched a court show on the big-screen television. A stern-looking wizened woman in a black robe was calling a stupidly grinning teenager a liar. He seemed like a liar to me too. She ruled against him. I don’t know what he did, kicked a dog, stole a CD player. The girl he had to pay a hundred thirty-four dollars to looked about Adele’s age-thin, dark, pretty, a ring through her eyebrow. I figured she had done some lying too before I started watching. Almost everybody lies. Everybody lies. Everybody dies.
“I read that,” said the young woman who waited on me, pointing at Fool’s Love. She was dark, looked a little like my cousin’s daughter Angela, and smiled.
I didn’t know her name but I had seen her in Rico’s before. At this hour of the afternoon, business was slow. I was the only customer.
“You like it?” she asked, nodding at the book.
“Read it a long time ago,” I said. “I’m thinking of reading it again. You like it?”
“Great book,” she said. “I don’t read books, and that one, they made us read that one in school, Mr. Gliddings at Riverview. You know Pee Wee Herman went to River-view?”
“I heard,” I said.
“Only book they made me read that I liked, you know?”
“Must be good. You know he lives here?”
“Who?”
“Conrad Lonsberg, the guy who wrote the book,” I said.
She stood up straight and her smile broadened.
“He’d have to be a couple hundred years old,” she said.
“No, it’s true. He’s alive. He’s here.”
“I believe you,” she said. “That’s interesting. Want another diet Coke?”
I declined, paid my bill, left her a twenty-percent tip, and got back in the white Cutlass. The drive down Tamiami Trail to Blackburn Point Road took me less than fifteen minutes. I turned right on Blackburn Point, crossed the small bridge over Little Sarasota Bay, turned right again, and kept going on Casey Key Road past houses great and small, many hidden by trees and bushes.
Flo’s directions had been perfect. The walled-in fortress of Conrad Lonsberg was down a paved culde-sac. There was a gate. I parked just past it and walked back. There was no name on the door, not even an address, but there was a bell semihidden in the stone wall on my left. I pushed it, heard nothing, and waited. Nothing. I pushed it again. Nothing. Then I saw the camera. It was on the right at the top of the wall, its lens pointing straight down at me, camouflaged by a plant with big leaves.
I wasn’t sure if I could be heard but I said, “My name is Lew Fonesca. I’m a friend of Adele Hanford’s. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
I don’t know why but I held up my copy of Fool’s Love for the camera.
Nothing happened. I stepped back and noted that the camera lens didn’t follow me. I got in the car, turned around, and parked where I could watch the gate. The Gulf was behind me. I turned off the engine, opened the windows, and listened to the surf. A few gulls drifted by, most of them made their squawking sound. A few said, “It’s me.”
I opened Fool’s Love and began to read:
By the time Sherry Stephens hit State Highway 71 at Weaver’s Texaco station, she had become Laura Or- dette. She shifted her full duffel bag, the green one her brother George had given her when he got back from Korea, into her left hand.
Laura Ordette didn’t look back. Laura Ordette was not the kind of woman to look back. Sherry Stephens would probably be crying now walking along the roadside of Martin’s Lagoon Street, probably be looking back, thinking about what she was leaving. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about the small room she shared with her sister. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about her sister and her mother. Her mother was at work now answering calls at Rowlinson’s Real Estate. Sherry’s mother had a good telephone voice, deep and friendly. Those who actually met Grace Stephens were often surprised to see a small, serious woman in no-nonsense suits. Sherry’s father? Was he worth thinking about? Not by Laura Ordette. He was a red-faced, red-necked slab of beef who drove trucks across six states. Sherry would be worrying about missing school. Not Laura Ordette. Sherry was fifteen. Laura was eighteen and had three hundred dollars in her pocket. Sherry had saved it working after school at Pine’s Drug Store. Well, she had worked for most of it. About half she had taken from the cigar box in the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser.
A car passed going in her direction. It stopped. “Want a ride?” the man asked. He was as old as her father. He smiled like he meant it but she knew he didn’t. He might be harmless. He might be hoping. Sherry would have said “no” and kept walking without looking at him. Laura looked, appraisingly, sighed, and said, “What kind of car is that?”
“Buick.”
“I don’t ride in Buicks,” Laura said. “My parents died in one.”
