Lew and Ames had rescued from a daddy-sanctioned life of prostitution. Adele had an infant baby named Catherine. The baby had been named for Lew’s dead wife. When he said goodbye at twilight, Flo was holding the baby. Jimmy Wakely and the Rough Riders were singing “When You and I Were Young Maggie Blues” through speakers placed throughout the house. Adele was out but would be back in an hour. Lew couldn’t wait.
Flo held Catherine out for Lew. He was afraid to touch her. He didn’t have bird flu or the plague but he knew his depression could be infectious.
Finally, Lew stopped back at his office and called Ann Horowitz, his eighty-two-year-old therapist whose main, but not only, virtue was that she charged him only ten dollars a visit. He was, she said, an interesting case.
“Lewis,” she said. “You’re leaving in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Call me if you need me. You have a joke?”
Getting a joke from a chronic depressive is not that hard. Getting the depressive to appreciate the joke, to smile, to laugh, is almost impossible.
“Yesterday I called the makers of Procrit, Ambien, Lipitor and Cialis and asked them if my doctor was right for me. They all said no.”
“Lewis, you make that up?”
“Yes.”
“I told you there was hope,” she said. “Now go find the man who killed your Catherine.”
Thirty-four thousand feet above the Gulf of Mexico, Lew sat in an aisle seat at the very back of the Southwest Airlines plane out of Tampa. The back seats didn’t recline, but they were the closest ones to the restroom. There is no real silence on an airplane. The flying machine is constantly roaring, whistling, grinding and changing its mind about the thrust of the engines. Inside the plane, children whine, adults lie to just-met seatmates, a couple hugs, their eyes shut. Flight attendants up and down the aisle pass out cholesterol chips in little bags you can’t open.
Ames had given Lew a book to read, A Confederacy of Dunces. It lay in his lap unopened.
The young man next to Lew scratched his cheek as he looked at the screen of his laptop computer and tapped in something. He was wearing headphones and humming a song Lew didn’t recognize. The image on his screen was the Warner Brothers black-and-white shield. Then came the words, Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce. Lew closed his eyes, trying not to watch, trying not to say the words as the characters spoke.
He didn’t concentrate. He drifted through a dark sky. Lew was floating, tumbling in nothingness. Then sudden panic. He tried to open his eyes. Couldn’t.
“You okay?” the young man with the laptop said with concern.
Lew’s eyes opened. He was panting. The man was about thirty, with dark curly hair. He was looking at Lew with concern. His left eye was green. His right eye was too, but a darker, lifeless green. The right eye, he could see now, was definitely glass.
“Yes,” Lew said, sitting up. “Bad dream.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said, but he wasn’t.
When Catherine was alive, he had dreaded flying, had held her hand tightly when they took off and landed, had silently cursed the madness of the other passengers who didn’t realize that the odds of their dying were higher than they thought, that they were in a machine, a very heavy machine, that could lose an engine, a single bolt, a stretch of wire, and they would all be dead.
When Catherine died, that had all changed. Flying presented no problems, no fears. The worst that could happen was that the plane would crash. He could live with that. He could die with that.
He must have slept, because the captain was announcing the beginning of the plane’s descent into Chicago’s Midway Airport. The young man closed his laptop, looked at Lew with his bad and good eye, and smiled. Lew nodded.
When the plane landed, Lew went to the exit, duffel-shaped carry-on in hand, between baggage claim 3 and 4. Outside Lew saw his sister’s husband, Franco, in his white Ford tow truck at the curb, looking across at Lew and holding up his hand.
Lew knew why he had panicked on the plane. He was going back to Chicago. Now that he was here, the panic threatened to return.
He climbed up into the passenger seat and put his bag on the floor. The interior of the truck smelled of grease and oil.
“Lewie,” Franco said, reaching over to hug him. “Lewie.”
“Franco,” Lew responded.
Lew had known Franco Massaccio since childhood. A barrel of a man with an easy grin. Genius didn’t run in Franco’s family, but hard work and loyalty did. Franco was loyal and a good husband to Lew’s sister Angela. He liked talking religion. He was a reasonably good Catholic. Lew considered himself a reasonably bad Episcopalian.
“You never get used to the smell, huh?” asked Franco. “‘I like the smell of the streets. It clears my lungs.’ You know who said that?”
“No.”
“Bobby De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America, ” said Franco. “An Italian playing a Jew. Well, listen, what are you gonna do? Right?”
“Right.”
“You have it?” Lew asked as Franco looked over his left shoulder and eased into the traffic.
“It’s at home,” Franco said.
Lew nodded and looked out the window. Standing at the curb was the one-eyed young man with the laptop. He was looking back at Lew.
“Friend or something?” asked Franco. “That guy back there?”
“Something, maybe,” Lew said, looking back.
The young man with one eye focused on the back of the tow truck. He was looking at the license plate number.
“Want to know about what’s going on in the family, Lewie?”
“Later,” Lew said, looking over his shoulder at the one-eyed man who got into a green Buick that pulled up to the curb.
“Want the radio?”
“No,” Lew said.
“Want to go into outer space in a Russian shuttle?”
He was looking ahead and grinning. Franco had a strange sense of humor, but at least he had one.
“Would I be alone?” Lew asked, looking at the familiar brick bungalows on Cicero Avenue.
“No, you’d have to go up with the national baton-twirling champion and an abusive long-retired astronaut.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself,” Franco said with a shrug. “Like a miniature Snickers bar left over from Halloween?”
“Yes.”
“Glove compartment,” he said.
Lew opened the glove compartment and small wrapped bars of Twix, Snickers, Milky Ways, and Twizzlers tumbled out. He leaned over to scoop them up and put them back.
“I’ll take a Twix,” Franco said.
Lew handed him one and took a Snickers for himself.
“Two things I gotta tell you,” Franco said, opening the candy wrapper and popping the mini-Twix bar in his mouth while Lew carefully tore the Snickers bag and took a bite.
“First,” he said. “Terri, Teresa, is a freshman at Northern Illinois. Doing great. You know that?”
“No.”
Teresa was Angela and Franco’s daughter.
“Political science,” he said.
