died … your mother keeping the chair warm for your Aunt Francine …”
Roberta appeared to be listening carefully.
“There was some confusion,” she said.
“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”
“You can’t understand everything that happens,” Roberta said. “I tell that to my students. You can try to understand, of course. You can even act like you understand, when you don’t yet. But some things …”
“What are you saying?”
“I hear jogging’s good for the soul. Turns you philosophical.”
“Especially on Sunday mornings.”
“Here, we go back this way.”
They ran together in silence for a while.
“Nice of you to come by,” she said again, finally. “There was no need to. Do you intend to see Tom, too?”
“Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. He’s busy with his premed studies, you know. What a grind! How that kid works! Let’s just consider this incident closed. Okay?”
“Trying to do the decent thing.”
“Well, you’ve done it.” They were approaching the dormitory house. She said, “I’ll be sure and tell Tom you stopped by.” Then she said again, “Okay?”
Fletch said, “Was that really two miles we just ran?”
“Two measured miles. You can go around again, if you want.”
They stopped in front of the house.
“No, thanks.”
She was looking him over. “Looks like there’s an envelope about to slip out of your pocket.” She pointed to the back pocket of his jeans.
“Oh, that. Thanks.” He slipped the sealed envelope containing the ashes deeper into his pocket.
The house reverberated with giggles and shouts.
“Good thing you didn’t lose it,” she said. “You’d have to run around again to find it.” She took the porch steps two at a time. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll tell Tom.”
“You want to see Tom?” The responsive, open face of Thomas Bradley Jr.’s college roommate was almost as wide as the dormitory room door he held open to Fletch. “He’s here but he’s gone.”
At Fletch’s puzzled expression, the roommate said, “We keep him in the bathtub.”
He led Fletch around scrungy doorways to a scrungy bathroom.
In the bathtub, back and head resting on pillows, was a twenty-year-old man. His hair stuck up in stalks; his thin whiskers stood out from his chin and cheeks in patches, his eyes were closed. He looked a sad young man seriously contemplating the state of the universe.
“Figure he can’t hurt himself so much in there. It’s hard for him to get out. Hard for him to climb the sides, you know?”
“What’s he on?”
“Downers, man. Downers all the way.”
The roommate leaned over and opened one of Tom Bradley’s eyes with his thumb. “Hello,” he said. “Anybody home? Anybody in there?”
Fletch had told the roommate he had wanted to see Tom Bradley on
“Hey, man,” Fletch now said. “He can’t live this way.”
“Well, he does. Mostly. Sometimes he’s cleaner than others. Gets up a bit, goes home, gets money. This is a new down.”
“When did it start?”
“Friday. Two days ago. Was that Friday?”
“Shit. I was told he was a hard-working premed.”
“Never was, really. He’s always goofed. Came back to school last fall without much decision left. Attended classes irregularly a few weeks. Kept it up until, I guess, November—long after there was any reason to, he was so far behind already.”
“So how come he’s still living at the college?”
“What are we gonna do with him? Tried mailing him home, but the post office said he was too bulky a package. No, seriously. We carried him—physically carried him to the infirmary one night. Next day he was gone.”
“When was that?”
“Way back before Christmas. Showed up here two weeks after New Year’s all beat up. Looked like he had walked the jungles of Borneo. So we let him drive the bathtub some more. I went out to his house in Southworth— his mother’s house. I told her she has a problem. Tom has a problem. At first, she looked frightened out of her wits. Then she denied everything I said. She said Tom shows up at the house every week or two, and I guess he does. She said he’s just tired from his studies. Bullshit. Said he’s been under heavy strain lately.”
“What strain?” Fletch asked. “Did she say what strain?”
“Said something about his father’s death.”
Supposedly that was a year ago.”
Kneeling by the bathtub like a child playing with toy boats, the roommate looked up at Fletch. “Why do you say ‘supposedly’?”
“He’s got a pretty nice sister,” Fletch said. “Healthy.”
“Ta-ta? Yeah, I’ve talked to her, too.”
“What does she say?”
“She says this is a world in which everybody’s got to go for himself. She’s a wind-up toy, and she thinks everybody else is, too. She says there’s no understanding some things. There’s no understanding her.” Leaning over the tub side, the roommate slapped Tom Bradley’s face a few times, lightly, until Tom opened his eyes. “Hey, Tom. Person to see you. Says his name is Satan. Wants to interview you for a job as a stoker.”
Tom Bradley’s glazed eyes were aimed at the ceiling. They darted to his roommate’s face.
“Come on, Tom. You awake?”
Tom’s eyes passed over Fletch and settled about a half meter to Fletch’s left.
The roommate stood up. “Get somebody to do something about this kid, willya? I feel like someone who inherited an aquarium, you know? I have to take care of it and keep looking at it, when I’m not a whole lot interested, you know?”
“I don’t know what I can do,” said Fletch. “Not much, right away.”
“Besides,” the roommate said at the bathroom door. “I like to take a bath, you know?”
After Fletch heard the outer door close, he sat on the edge of the tub, near the faucet.
“Tom, people call me Fletch,” he said. “I’ve talked with your mother and your sister. Wanted to talk with you.”
As Fletch had moved, Tom Bradley’s eyes had remained looking a half meter to the left of Fletch’s head.
“I wrote something about your father in the
“My father?” Tom braced his neck against the back of the tub. His voice was louder than Fletch expected. “You going to tell me my father’s dead again?”
“Hey, man.”
“You talked to my father, lately?”
“Could I have?”
“Sure.” Tom’s smile came slowly, and his words were coming slowly. “Just go to the mantelpiece over the fireplace, open the little box, and say what you want to say. Or …” His unreal smile broadened. “You could use the telephone.”
“Tom: is your father dead?”
