Bluebottle

the wit and wisdom of Richard Nixon. 'I don't know, Lew. Way too much time sitting behind a deskfilling out paperwork, humping the phone. Ever since I came off patrol and started wearing these monkey suits. I see the street, it's out the window, like some painting, you know? Hanging on the wall. Hung up there myself.'

I heard him sink into the chair alongside. One chair leg was short. He eased his weight off and moved the chair around, trying for better topography.

'So how you doing?'

'Hell if I know. Have to ask the experts.'

'I did. Just camefrom a long talk with Dr. Shih. She's pretty sure the blindness is temporary. Happens sometimes with major trauma, she says. They don't know why.'

She proved to be right. In following weeks sight returned by increments. Veil after veil fell away. Light swelled slowly till I was aware of its presence. Then light became motion, mass, oudine, form-at last shaped itself again into the world I knew, or something close enough.

'You remember my being here before?'

I shook my head.

'I've been by every day. It's Thursday. You were brought in over a week ago. We've had conversations, some of them truly strange. One time you went on for better than an hour about Roshomon and Ahab's gold sovereign. Then you had to tell me about some book called Skull Meat. Plot, characters, what the neighborhood looked like. Set over in Algiers. Couldn't tell whether you were supposed to have read it or written it, that kind of wobbled back and forth. Told me the book's hero finally got fed up with the whole thing and walked out-right off the page. Now that's a real hero, you said.'

'Must be the drugs they were giving me.'

'Yeah. Must be.'

'The part about the character stalking off's stolen from Queneau, of course.'

'Of course.'

Don shifted again in his chair. Any moment, things can fall on you, disappear from under you. What you hope, all you hope, is that the seat you're on just now's a safe one.

'Shih asked me about your drinking, Lew. Halfway through the operation you started waking up from the anesthetic. Shih says people only do that when their bodies are accustomed to high levels of depressives.'

A bird alit (I guessed from the sound) on the sill outside, then with a sudden whir of wings was gone. Shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure of the windowpane.

'I know it's been bad. Maybe some of it has to do with what happened up there in Baton Rouge. God knows what else. Maybe it's worse than either of us thought. Maybe someday we ought a sit down and talk about it.'

We were quiet for a time then.

'LaVerne's been here too, you know, two, three times a day.'

Sudden aromatic assault as he took the lid off a cup of cafe au lait.

'One for you,' holding it out, waiting as my hand groped and made contact. I pushed up in bed, against the headboard. Heard him peel the lid off another cup. He blew across its mouth. The smell grew stronger.

'Shih says you shouldn't worry over the gaps for now. That some memories may come back in distorted form or not at all, but that most will come back, and for the most part whole.'

There were memories, parts of my life, I wouldn't have minded losing, even back then. Don knew that's what I was thinking.

'Verne's okay?'

'Sure she is. Worried about you, like the rest of us.'

We were quiet again. I imagined Don looking off the way he did, watching nothing in particular.

'You remember what happened, Lew?'

I shook my head. 'Pieces. Fragments that don't fit together. Images. Some of what I do remember seems more like a dream than anything real.'

'You met a woman in a bar downtown, said she was a journalist.'

Random moments surfaced. Denim skirt, silk jacket. One eye peering at me through a glass of Scotch. Glass none too clean and Scotch raw as rubbing alcohol: that kind of bar.

'You stayed there just over three hours. Buster Robinson was playing. Lady's got a taste for the music, it seems. Taste for something, anyway. Last month or so, she'd made herself a regular down there along Poydras.'

'But not before.'

'So far as we can tell, nobody ever saw her before that. Nor will any newspaper for a hundred miles around lay claim to her.'

We sipped cafeau kit.

'Between you you threw back close to thirty dollars' worth. She tried to put it on American Express and they just looked at her. Get serious, you know? Wound up giving them a fifty and said keep the change.'

'Wanted to make sure she was remembered.'

'As though a white woman down there wouldn't be already, yeah. The two of you left together then, most likely to get something to eat. Barmaid heard you talking about Ye Olde College Inn and Dunbar's. The name Eddie B. also came up a couple of times, she says. You told this Esmay woman you had to make one quick stop first.'

'I was meeting Eddie Bone.'

'That's how we figure it'

'Why would I do that? No one looks for Eddie Bone.'

'Yeah, people've been known to leave town to avoid lookingfor him.'

Holding the cup two-handed, I dropped an index finger to measure liquid level, brought the cup to my face, cautiously sipped.

'Give it time, Lew. You're just gonna have to pull back here all around, give things room to happen.'

'And hope they do.'

He must have nodded, then caught himself. 'Yeah,' he said.

'You'd barely stepped outside when the shots came. Couple of kids from the cleaners next door were in the alley out back on a break, passing joints and a botde of George Dickel back and forth. They tell us you two came out the front door and stood there a minute talking, then you stepped around and embraced her. One of them remembers saying Now that's something you ain't gonna see uptown and handing the bottle over. Then the shots came. Guy reaching for the bottle dropped it.'

I sipped coffee again. Sartre's got this long rap in Being and Nothingness about smoking in the dark, how different the experience becomes. In my own dark now, I was forced to admit this was one time he seemed to be onto something. Ordinary coffee, the drinking of it, had become a kind of sacrament. Visual clues missing, true. Sartre pointed out one's inability to see the smoke, to observe one's own breath course in and out. But whatever the loss, there was greater gain: the physical world, its smells, its heats and anticipations, fell upon you with unsuspected intensity.

'The shots were meant for her,' I said.

Don's chair creaked.

'It's a possibility we've considered.'

Finishing my coffee, I set the cup on the bedside table and heard Don's empty cup click down beside it. A group of visitors or new employees passed as though on tour at a museum in the hall outside. A young man with a voice like a rapidly dripping faucet guided them, pointing out the hospital's various departments and unique services.

'We haven't had any luck tracking her down. Maybe she's gone to ground, scared of what almost happened.' Don shifted again in his chair. 'For all we know, maybe it was just coincidence.'

'Or a setup.'

'Yeah. Have to tell you the thought crossed my mind.

Mine and some others' as well. Then, the morning after this shooter takes you down, Eddie Bone himself turns up dead. He's got this room all set up at home, must be eight, ten thousand dollars' worth of gym equipment in there. Squad responding to an anonymous callfinds him slumped over the handlebars of his exercise bike, naked. They figure at firstit's a heart attack, something like that, but then they see something hanging out of his mouth.