“Yes.”
“Because you’re a good driver?”
“Yes.”
“Progress. More.”
“She was always telling me to stand up straight, sit up straight. We’d be out somewhere and she’d come up behind me and press her hand into my lower back to remind me to straighten up.”
“She press you hard? Did it hurt?”
“No, it wasn’t that she was wrong. I guess I didn’t like the criticism.”
“Keep going.”
“She was almost always late when we had somewhere to go. She’d tell me she would be ready in five minutes and it was always fifteen or even twenty and we’d have to drive like hell to get where we were going on time.”
“And she would be telling you how to drive during all this?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you want to cry?” Ann asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Because you feel disloyal to her memory?”
“Because I miss her faults,” I said.
“So cry?”
“I can’t.”
“I’m pushing too hard,” Ann said. “You want a Diet Coke? I’m still thirsty. I’ve got some in the refrigerator.”
“Sure,” I said.
While she left the office to get the Cokes, I tried to imagine Catherine reacting to the joke about the Wongs. I tried to see her face. She would groan and then she would smile supportively. Or maybe she wouldn’t.
Ann came back with the two Diet Cokes, sat down, and said, “So, in the time we have left, do I tell you what I’ve learned about recently discovered innovations in surgery that were employed by the South during the Civil War or why Serbians are so good at preparing Middle Eastern food, or do you tell me what you’ve been doing for the past three days?”
I opted for the last three days. I had already told her about Hoffmann and Stanley and Roberta Trasker, so I told her about Digger and the boy named Darrell Caton and his mother in Sally’s office. I told her about Dr. Obermeyer. I told her about Ames’s little gun. And I told her about the Severtsons.
“And this is all true?” she asked with great interest. “You’re not creating any of it?”
“I don’t know how to create it,” I said. “And why would I make it up?”
“To please your therapist,” she said. “People do it all the time. I suggest something and the patient, wanting to please me, agrees even if they don’t believe it. Don’t try to please me. It gets in the way.”
“I didn’t make any of this up,” I said.
“For a man who is trying to hide from the world, you seem to have been drawn very deeply into it.”
“Not by choice,” I said.
“You could have said no. No, I won’t look for the woman and her two children. No, I won’t try to find the county commissioner. So, why did you say yes?”
“I don’t know. You want me to think about it?”
“Yes, but not consciously. The dead woman,” Ann said. “The actress. You want to know who killed her.”
“Of course.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Closure,” I said.
She said nothing, just looked at me till I said, “The closure I can’t find with my wife’s death. You think the reason I take on these searches for people, why I’m a process server is to find people responsible for things they know or have done wrong? You think I do it because I don’t know who killed…”
“Catherine,” Ann supplied. “And do you know who killed Mrs. Trasker?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“But?”
“Nothing’s ever simple about death. Nothing’s ever simple about murder.”
“We are once again out of time.”
I got up and handed her a twenty-dollar bill. She placed it on her desk and rose.
“Remember, tell the jokes to Catherine.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
The sky was threatening but no rain was falling. The homeless, shirtless black man who slept in the park right across the street, with traffic whizzing by on Tamiami Trail, was sitting on the green metal bench on the corner, his arm spread out along the back of the bench. He was talking to himself. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Hi,” I said.
He nodded back.
“Want a cup of coffee?” I said.
He nodded back again. I didn’t have to tell him to wait. I went back to Sarasota News amp; Books, got him a coffee and a bran muffin, and went back to the bench.
He took the coffee cup in one hand and the muffin in another.
“You want to hear some jokes?” I asked.
11
Heavy black clouds were moving in quickly from the east, pushing the heavy, slower-moving gray clouds out of the way.
Dr. James Obermeyer’s office was in a three-building complex on East Street right across from Michael’s on East restaurant. I’d been in one of the buildings a few months ago for an eye exam.
The picture on my television had started to look fuzzy, but Dave had come up to take a look at it and pronounced the television healthy and me in need of an eye doctor. I went to his.
The eye doctor examined me, told me I didn’t need glasses, and asked me how much television I watched.
“Too much,” I had told him. “Mostly movies on tape.”
“How much do you watch?”
“A lot, whenever I can.”
His advice was simple. Stop watching so many videos, read books, go to the movies, see a baseball game, or bowl. I thanked him, paid him, and ignored what he had told me.
Obermeyer’s office was in the building directly across from the ignored ophthalmologist. It was just before ten when I went through his outer office door and faced one of those glass partitions, behind which sat a young woman talking on the phone and nibbling at the ends of her hair.
I stood waiting till she hung up.
“Yes?” she asked with a tired smile.
“You eat your hair.”
“What?”
“You eat your hair,” I repeated.
“I…what’re you, a doctor?” she asked without interest.
“You can develop a fur ball just like a cat,” I said. “Only you can’t cough it up. It gets big enough and you need surgery.”
“You want an appointment with the doctor?” she asked with a look that made it clear she thought I needed a psychiatrist, not an internist.
