scared her to death, but took the papers. My God, he's a souvenir collector. I bet he's got a pocketful of train ticket punchout confetti and Scott Joplin's peeled-off head, too.'
'Scott Joplin's what?'
He didn't want to, but at last Crumley came to look at the bottoms of the cages.
'Find those newspapers and you'll find him,' I said.
'Easy as pie.' Crumley sighed.
He led me down past the turned-to-the-wall mirrors that had not seen anyone come up during the night and did not see him go. In the downstairs stairwell area was the dusty window with the sign in it. For no reason I could figure, I reached out and pulled the sign away from its flaking Scotch-taped frame.
Crumley was watching me.
'Can I have this?' I asked.
'It'll hurt you, every time you look at it,' said Crumley. 'Oh, hell. Keep it.'
I folded it and tucked it in my pocket.
Upstairs, the birdcages sang no songs. The coroner stepped in, full of mid-afternoon beer and whistling.
It had begun to rain. It rained all across Venice as Crumley's car drove us away from her house, away from my house, away from phones that rang at the wrong hours, away from the gray sea and the empty shore and the remembrance of drowned swimmers. The car windshield was like a great eye, weeping and drying itself, weeping again, as the wiper shuttled and stopped, shuttled and stopped and squeaked to shuttle again. I stared straight ahead.
Inside his jungle bungalow, Crumley looked in my face, guessed at a brandy instead of a beer, gave me that, and nodded at the telephone in his bedroom.
'You got any money to call Mexico City?'
I shook my head.
'Now you have,' said Crumley. 'Call. Talk to your girl. Shut the door and talk.'
I grabbed his hand and almost broke every bone in it, gasping. Then I called Mexico.
'Peg!'
'Who is this?'
'It's me, me!'
'My God, you sound so strange, so far away.'
'I am far away.'
'You're alive, thank God.'
'Sure.'
'I had this terrible feeling last night. I couldn't sleep.'
'What time, Peg, what time?'
'Four o'clock, why?'
'Jesus.'
'Why?'
'Nothing. I couldn't sleep either. How's Mexico City?'
'Full of death.'
'God, I thought it was all here.'
'What?'
'Nothing. Lord, it's good to hear your voice.'
'Say something.'
I said something.
'Say it again!'
'Why are you shouting, Peg?'
'I don't know. Yes, I do. When are you going to ask me to marry you, damn it!'
'Peg,' I said, in dismay.
'Well, when?'
'On thirty dollars a week, forty when I'm lucky, some weeks nothing, some months not a damn thing?'
'I'll take a vow of poverty.'
'Sure.'
'I will. I'll be home in ten days and take both vows.'
'Ten days, ten years.'
'Why do women always have to ask men for their hands?'
'Because we're cowards and more afraid than you.'
'I'll protect you.'
'Some conversation this.' I thought of the door last night and the thing hanging on the door and the thing on the end of my bed. 'You'd better hurry.'
'Do you remember my face?' she said suddenly.
'What?'
'You do remember it, don't you, because, God, just an hour ago this terrible, horrible thing happened, I couldn't remembours, or the color of your eyes, and I realized what a dumb fool I was not to bring your picture along, and it was all gone. That scares me, to think I could forget. You'll never forget me, will you?'
I didn't tell her I had forgotten the color of her eyes just the day before and how that had shaken me for an hour and that it was a kind of death but me not being able to figure who had died first, Peg or me.
'Does my voice help?'
'Yes.'
'Am I there with you? Do you see my eyes?'
'Yes.'
'For God's sake, first thing you do when you hang up, mail me a picture. I don't want to be afraid any more…'
'All I have is a lousy twenty-five-cent photo machine picture I…'
'Send it!'
'I should never have come down here and left you alone up there, unprotected.'
'You make me sound like your kid.'
'What else are you?'
'I don't know. Can love protect people, Peg?'
'It must. If it doesn't protect you, I'll never forgive God. Let's keep talking. As long as we talk, love's there and you're okay.'
'I'm okay already. You've made me well. I was sick today, Peg. Nothing serious. Something I ate. But I'm right now.'
'I'm moving in with you when I get home, no matter what you say. If we get married, fine. You'll just have to get used to my working while you finish the Great American Epic, and to hell with it, shut up. Someday, later on, you support me!'
'Are you ordering me around?'
'Sure, because I hate to hang up and I just want this to go on all day and I know it's costing you a mint. Say some more, the things I want to hear.'
I said some more.
And she was gone, the telephone line humming and me left with a piece of wire cable two thousand miles long and a billion shadow whispers lingering there, heading toward me. I cut them off before they could reach my ear and slide inside my head.
I opened the door and stepped out to find Crumley waiting by the icebox, reaching in for sustenance.
