—Oh, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Write a book if you feel like it. Everybody seems to be inventing their own history and finding a publisher. Just don’t write a tiresome biography—they all end the same way. But it’s getting late, and since Albany is so nearby, we might reconvene to talk more next Sunday.
—Of course.
—Come about noon. I’ll arrange lunch here, or maybe we’ll picnic at the races. I like to see the little jockeys in their silk clothes and the green grass and white fences and big trees. But mostly I love looking at the horses beforehand more than the race itself. I rode well when I was young and can see things in their eyes and facial expressions and deportment that tell me how they feel about running that day. Sometimes I just know it’s their day, a feeling not like a wave raging and breaking but a smooth swell almost ready to curl over. I bet a few dollars at a time and win more than I lose. I pay for my entertainment.
As James stands to leave, V says, When I was younger, I might have dreamed your arrival beforehand like I did that place where we were all captured. Every feature of south Georgia landscape exact—the road, a swale down to a creek, pine trees, fallow fields. Even the placement of the tents on either side of the road. But that gift or curse left me soon after the war. I still have vivid dreams, but now they never correspond with reality.
Second Sunday
Saratoga Springs
THE SARATOGA RAILWAY STATION PULSES WITH RACE-DAY foot traffic, the energy of hope funneling people out the doors and toward the track. James Blake, blue book in hand, weaves his way to a clear space at the end of the platform. That scream down the hall of The Retreat repeats in his head. He’s tried all week to decode the tone, whether it arose from some specific marital fight or from general anger, anguish, fear, frustration with life.
He raises a finger to a redcap porter and asks the man about The Retreat. What kind of place? Surely just what it appeared, an exclusive resort hotel?
The redcap is about fifty, not tall but big shouldered from shifting baggage all day for thirty years. Brass buttons shined bright down the breast of his uniform jacket. He is darker than James by several degrees.
He studies James carefully and says, Looking to take a room?
—No.
—Good. You’re not close enough to passing to test them. Sundown’s probably their borderline. Like little towns bragging no black man ever spent the night there and lived to tell it. Except polite about it. Plenty welcome during daylight hours to build roads, lay brick, plow gardens, clean houses, swing nine-pound hammers.
James says, Last Sunday, about this time, they let me sit in the lobby. But they made sure I knew it was grudging. I’ll be back for the six-thirty-five to Albany. I just need to know what the place is.
—Hotel. People stay there because it’s nice. The view and the food and the service. But they’ve got doctors. Guests can get treatments.
—Treatments for what?
—I couldn’t tell you what ailments those people come down with. Tired of living, mainly. Must get dreary having nothing useful to do.
James laughs and says, Thank you, sir. You’ve set me straight.
He reaches out a coin, and the man pinches it out of habit but then lets go. He says, Save that for The Retreat. Might need it.
THE OPHELIA in the guests’ upcoming production of Hamlet—a woman of twenty or so named Laura—stops by V’s room. She doesn’t knock but opens the door and drifts right in without a word. She wears a thin nightgown and light shawl and goes barefoot though the day is coming toward midmorning. Her hair, a beautiful blond tousle, holds light from the window in an aura around her face.
She is the youngest daughter from a cigarette-paper fortune, and her skin stretches over her bones pale and thin as the diaphanous rectangles that pay for therapy to ease her only two defects—which are that she sometimes seems to be hearing conversations different from the ones actually taking place, and that she sometimes becomes excessively demonstrative in her attraction to men.
She comes to V’s chair and without a word climbs into her lap and wraps her arms around V’s neck and rests her head on V’s chest. She draws a long deep breath and hums a bit of “Sunflower Slow Drag,” her fingers twitching to press imaginary keys. Soon she falls asleep. Her bony body relaxes and settles deep against V. Her skinny feet hang almost to the floor. V brushes her lips against the mass of blond hair and tries to shape her mind still as a mud puddle on a windless day. Tries to sit and wait quiet inside her head until the particulates settle to the dirty bottom and the water becomes clear as glass. But no matter how much she instructs her thoughts toward stillness, they circle, loop, and repeat, churning against themselves, whitewater climbing and spraying over rocks already passed.
When V returns to New York she plans to seek instruction on this topic from a Yogi or some other Eastern mystic. The city is full of them lately. Or maybe she’ll find a piano teacher to remind her how to play, and she’ll sit doodling repetitive minor key largos for a couple of hours a day to shape her mind in a helpful calm direction.
Laura wakes after perhaps half an hour and looks up. Her eyes are hazel with striae dark as walnut.
She says, Did you come to me, or did I come to you?
Her voice vibrates with a thin hoarse crack.
—The latter, V says.
—Has breakfast been served?
—Some time ago. Luncheon will be in a couple of hours.
—Oh, good. I could nap longer.
Laura breathes deep, one cycle through her mouth and two through her nose, and then she’s gone again. V reaches to
