THREE NIGHTS later I dreamed of my father’s funeral. Miss Quinlan was at the graveside across from Mario, and they were smiling intimately. Nearby was a hearse drawn by four black horses adorned with silver harnesses and white plumes. My wife and sons were in the driver’s seat, smirking at my mother as she spaded earth into the grave, and a score of mourners chatted and laughed without reverence, like revelers at a picnic. I was only an observer, but my presence was not in the dream. I was sodden with the residual effect as I wakened at ten o’clock and walked into the kitchen and poured coffee. Through the window I saw my mother in the backyard, throwing grain to her chickens. The phone rang.
It was Dr. Maselli calling from the hospital.
“Have you seen your father this morning?”
“He’s in the hospital.”
“Not anymore. I just came from his room. His clothes are gone and so is he.”
I laughed. “How long has he been gone?”
“He left between seven and eight this morning.”
I laughed again.
“What the hell’s so funny?” the doctor said. “The old cocker hasn’t had his insulin this morning.”
“Is that bad?”
“If he stops to gas up in some saloon it could be another coma.”
“Maybe he’s on a bus back to San Elmo.”
“Better check and see. Try the Onyx and the Café Roma.”
I asked if he had tried any of the saloons near the hospital.
“I’ve got patients here. I can’t leave now.”
“How about the police?”
“What for? He’s not a criminal, he’s just a goddamn fool.”
“What do I do if I find him?”
“If he’s in San Elmo, get him to my office. I’ll be there in an hour. Or put him in a car and bring him back to the hospital.”
I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house and into the cool and lucid morning, fresh upon my skin.
My old man! What a treasure he was, what excitement he kicked up! That was his genius, a talent for shaking up the small world in which he lived. I walked quickly toward town, laughing quietly, so pleased with him. He might die, but what of that? Dostoyevsky was dead, yet very much alive in my heart. He had come to me like the grace of God, a flash of lightning that illumined my life. My father had that same iridescence, a nimbus around me, my own flesh and blood, a poet asserting his will to live.
I stopped at the Onyx Bar first. Art Pinto was behind the counter, serving beer to a couple of brakemen. I asked if he had seen my father.
“Not anymore, Henry. He ain’t allowed.”
The Café Roma was deserted except for Frank Mascarini, polishing glasses behind the bar. He had not seen my father in days.
I asked, “Where’s Zarlingo this morning, and Lou Cavallaro?”
“They don’t get here till noon.”
I walked out. The day was warming up. Standing in the shade under the awning of the Leroy Hotel, I pondered the problem. Where would a man leaving the Auburn Hospital find a drink? Obviously, the nearest saloon. That had been my hunch in the first place. He wouldn’t waste time waiting for a bus to take him back to his hometown if he was in flight from the hospital. Chances were he’d duck into the first saloon in sight. He had to be in Auburn somewhere, in a saloon on Chop Suey Street not far from the hospital. I walked up the street to the Hertz people and rented a Chevy for the drive to Auburn.
Chop Suey Street was a block long, the Chinese section of Auburn. It consisted of six saloons squeezed among the crumbling frame and brick buildings. I parked at the end of the old, elm-lined block and entered an establishment called the Silverado. It was cool and dark inside and fragrant with the vapors of beer. The young bartender paid no attention to me.
“I’m looking for my father,” I explained. “Old guy, about my size. Seventy-six years old, wearing khaki pants and shirt. Has a mustache.”
He nodded toward the dark interior.
“Take your pick. We got several answering that description.”
Back in the gloom I walked among the tables where a dozen old guys sat in somnolent silence, sipping beer and sherry. It surprised me how much they all looked like my father, the same gnarled hands, the same scuffed, turned-up shoes, the same battered hats, the same opaque eyes staring into nowhere. Nick was not among them, nor was he in any of the other bars along the street.
I walked back to the rented car and drove a few blocks to the Auburn downtown area. He wasn’t in the bus depot, and the cocktail lounges along the main street were too fancy for his taste and I didn’t stop to look for him there. Instead I drove to the hospital, wondering doubtfully whether he had returned.
Miss Quinlan and another nurse were at the desk on the second floor as I stepped from the elevator. Miss Quinlan was talking into the phone. She was startled to see me.
“It’s your father,” she said, handing me the phone.
I took the phone.
“Hello, Papa. Where are you?”
He hung up.
I cradled the phone and asked Miss Quinlan if she knew where my father had called from.
“Some place on the highway. A winery.”
“The Angelo Musso winery?”
“That’s the place.”
“How did he sound?”
“I think he’s been drinking.”
“Does he need help?”
“Without insulin he’s in desperate need of help.”
“Why did he call, Miss Quinlan? What did he want?”
She hesitated. “He asked me to come out there and meet him.”
“What for?”
“He wanted to show me the vineyard.” It made her smile. “The old rascal…”
I spun around and started to leave, but what she had said troubled me, and I turned back and drew her away from the desk and the other nurse standing there.
“Miss Quinlan,” I said. “That ‘old rascal’ remark, what did you mean by it?”
She studied me with wide sky-blue eyes, carefully sorting out her answer: “Last winter I had a patient on a kidney machine, a fine old gentleman, ninety-two years old. The dear man died in my arms, with his hand in my panties. You know what I mean, Mr. Molise?”
My libido began to hiss and a spell of lust fell around me, heat in my throat and knees, my eyes diving into the blue of hers, the heavy breasts pulling me toward her; her white neck softly turned and I wondered irrationally if her pussy was blond too, and I shuddered, ashamed, wondering, my God, what am I thinking at a time like this?
“Miss Quinlan,” I groped. “Is that why my father ran away from the hospital?”
“It was the insulin injection. He wouldn’t take it. Orinase—the kind you take in a pill—it didn’t work on your father. He had to have the insulin by hypodermic, and it made him climb the walls, he hated it so.”
I thanked her and asked her to get in touch with Dr. Maselli. “Tell him my father’s at Angelo Musso’s winery. Maselli knows all about it.”