had been there for conferences twice. He had given a paper, “A Theory of Collision of Sub-Organic Particles in High Density.” There had been no questions.
The car he hit bounced away, almost collided with a pickup truck, came to a halt. The car he had hit was now a miniature in the mirror world. He sped. He hit the steering wheel with the heels of his hands till they hurt. He wept.
The ride back ended, the driver a different Victor Lee from the one who had left five hours and twenty-seven minutes earlier. He had arrived home.
He told his wife he wasn’t feeling well.
When the job offer came the next day, he turned it down. He told his wife that he had thought about it on his way home, found too many problems.
He held onto his job at Mentic, lived in the penumbra of a dream, bought the painting of the dark canyon of the city with the single apartment of dim light.
Three years and four months later, Victor Lee, who had made his own and the life of his wife and child a misery, left his home and moved into an apartment, taking with him only the framed painting, his University of Illinois degree and a canvas and a slightly dented aluminum Samsonite bag.
He had lost his ability to read for more than half an hour. He lost track of television shows. At first he could lose himself in his work, the numbers, the formulas, the possibilities. Then that too had changed and all that remained was the memory of the day, from morning to night, that he had killed Catherine Fonesca.
Every night when he lay in bed or on the sofa or on the floor with a pillow in his arms, he had repeated in his mind a forty-minute movie of imagination.
And so, Lew realized, there had been no murder.
If Catherine had a secret file, it had nothing to do with her death. Pappas, Posno. The murder of Santoro and Aponte-Cruz. Nothing to do with Catherine’s death. But it did have something to do with Catherine. There were loose ends. He wanted to get back to Sarasota, his cell, but he owed it to Catherine, and whatever peace of mind he could hold, not to leave loose ends.
“I’ll go back with you,” Lee said, sitting up with a sigh.
“Why?”
“I killed her.”
“Will turning yourself in bring her back?” asked Lew.
Lee’s shoulders dropped forward and his eyes turned to the last bubble of his almost-finished drink.
“No,” said Lee.
“Do you want to go to prison?” asked Lew.
“Yes… no. I…”
“You’re going to pay,” said Lew.
“Yes.”
“I mean for the drinks.”
“Yes.”
Lew stood. Lee looked up and said,
“I had considered killing you. To protect my family. Hide my shame.”
Lew said nothing.
“I couldn’t, can’t do it,” said Lee.
Lew turned and headed toward the door.
The grandparents at the bar had shown their last photograph. The card players were showing their final hands of the night. “And here comes the River,” called out one of the players slapping down a card.
Lew had seen a pay phone on the wall at the end of the bar. He decided to find a different one somewhere in a darkened motel room where he could hear traffic, turn on the television, find an old movie, anything in black and white, and try to pretend that he was back in Sarasota.
He knew it wouldn’t be easy.
And he was right.
It was dark, starless, the threat of rain had turned into the reality of a cold drizzle. Lew began silently singing “Adeste Fidelus” to the beat of the windshield wipers.
Off of I-56, he found a one-story pink concrete block of rooms. Under the parking lights, the rain reflected the neon of the North Star Motel’s office. It wasn’t up to the ambiance or quality of the Bates Motel. It looked more like the stone-and-sand jails in Westerns, the kind the good guys or bad guys blow holes in to escape. It would do.
When he entered the office, he could see the television on the other side of the desk and a man sitting in a wooden swivel chair. The man’s back was to Lew and his front no more than six feet from a rerun of Jeopardy!. The man didn’t turn.
“Hi,” said Lew.
The man didn’t answer. He was absorbed in trying to come up with the question to “It saves nine.”
“Jesus,” the man said. Then he urged, “Morons, Jesus saves lives. No, a cat has nine of them. That’s it. What does a cat have? Nine lives. Right?”
The thin man stood now, still staring at the screen. He was wearing a wrinkled long-sleeved white shirt that wasn’t fully tucked in. On his head was a dish towel.
“Head cold,” the man explained, pointing to the towel.
The man’s nose was puffy and pink, his eyes wet. He sneezed, possibly to convince what he thought was one who doubted his distress.
Lew said, “A stitch in time.”
The thin man turned to face him. Time was running out. The clock was ticking. The clerk held up a finger showing that Lew should wait for one second, minute, turn of a century.
“Gina?” asked Alex Trebek in a rerun from a time when Alex’s hair and mustache were black and his dark eyes amused.
“A stitch in time, Alex?” the chunky mother of four or five said.
Lights flashed. Bells rang. The audience applauded. The desk clerk turned off the television and said, “Wrong fucking answer. What can I do you for?”
The man’s lean face was weathered. He could be almost any age. He wore a thin green tie loosely under his collar and the word etched on on the shirt pocket was SALUKIS.
“A room,” said Lew.
“A room?” the man said.
“This is a motel. You have a room?”
“You headin’ to or from a place?”
“Does it matter?” asked Lew.
“Sometimes.”
He took the towel off of his head, examined it, smelled it and returned it to his head.
“Heading north.”
“You got cash or a credit card?”
“Cash.”
The man smiled.
“You’re in luck. We’ve got eleven empty rooms. Price for a man of distinction like yourself is twenty-one dollars and I’ll put you right next to the Coke machine.”
“Is it loud?” asked Lew.
The man wiped his nose with the towel and said, “Silent as the few seconds before a church hymn.”
The man reached under the counter and came up with a key. He held the key till Lew handed him a twenty and a single.
Lew filled out the guest information card.
“Don’t have all the amenities,” said the man. “But the place is quaint. We still use real keys ’stead of those plastic things with black strips and blue arrows and such. Room Six should do it. Clean towels, washed ’em myself, soap still wrapped, sheets clean.”
