16

After the reception, Nona and I found a favorite restaurant for a continuing celebration.

The owner welcomed us with a cry. I felt slightly embarrassed at his apparent delight in seeing us. We made our way to a secluded corner.

“You’re a champ, Strater,” said Nona, lifting the flute of yet more champagne. Her eyes dazzled me, the candlelight reflected in them.

We touched glasses, the crystal making the appropriate music, and I made a heartfelt but flowery comment about being inspired by her presence.

The award, the champagne, the North Beach restaurant to which we had retreated, were all like the facets of a new kingdom. Even the sight of Fern at a corner of the bar, sipping what looked like a diet cola with an impressive amount of ice, made the evening all the more perfect. Shouldn’t someone as splendid to the eye as Nona have a courtier or two, a palace guard this late in the evening?

She ran her forefinger over the lip of her crystal, and it made the slightest ringing chime. This should be the beginning of a new point in our affair. I knew that she wanted it to be, as badly as I did.

But she had a report to write, a proposal to fax to Brussels, an article to finish on neuropathology, and we both knew that this was going to be little more than an interlude between obligations. Even now, she should be in her apartment, revising her proposal.

“They’re cutting back the number of beds in my ward,” she said. “There’s talk of eliminating my ward totally.”

I was incredulous. “How can they justify that?”

“My kids generate publicity during the Shriners’ game, and from time to time a basketball player drops by to have his picture taken with someone like Stuart. But my patients aren’t going to get better. They aren’t suffering dramatic illnesses. They’re just kids facing death.”

Her offhand way of discussing it made her message all the more impressive. I said, truthfully, “The kids are lucky to have you.”

“There’s a problem, though. I don’t spend enough time with you,” she said.

I knew enough to keep silent.

“I’m always flying to Detroit, or Brussels, or Guadalajara to give a paper on dream imagery among critically injured children. Or childhood reformation of earliest memories. Or any of a dozen other subjects. They are all important. More important than people think. I think no one really understands children. I think I have a chance to open the subject to the eyes of the world. To make them realize how wise, and alive, children are.”

I took her hand.

“I know I keep promising this,” she said. “But someday we’re going to have a life together.”

Someday, I thought. That vague day, that smudge on the horizon that never arrives.

Fern drove the armored Mercedes, the big car rolling up and down the San Francisco hills. There was a blush of city lights in the clouds overhead, and the night was cool.

Nona and I kissed, and I let her slip into her apartment.

I would happily put the evening on rewind all the way back to the restaurant owner crying, “The beautiful couple! Over here—I have your special place,” in a voice so loud everyone in the restaurant turned to look. I could replay our time together over and over, tirelessly.

When Fern and I were on Nineteenth Street, he said, “There’s someone following us.”

I craned, looking back. Perhaps I was out of practice. There were headlights. Municipal railway tracks gleamed in the dark.

I settled back into my seat. “It’s like the old days. Kidnappers. Terrorists.”

Fern did not speak, and he did not glance into the rearview mirror.

“Maybe my ex-wife hired a private detective,” I said. “Satisfying her curiosity. Keeping track of my love life.” I could not keep a certain grit from my voice with the last two words.

Margaret would never have hired someone to follow me. On the other hand, Rick was always being followed. Some woman’s husband had him trailed—it happened fairly often. Or else he owed people money, strong-arm Vegas types.

“Remember that time you dropped that photographer’s camera at the film festival?” I said.

“These aren’t reporters.”

“How do you know? You’re always making these pronouncements. And of course neither of us will ever know whether they were reporters or insurance salesmen, so you end up sounding like you know everything.”

“It was a nice reception,” said Fern. “Congratulations.”

Fern drove to Lake Merced. I did not ask him to. Perhaps he knew my moods, after all these years. This was like the old days, too. I used to come here at night. The lake was a surprise to the eye, even when one expected it, and at night as at day it was a chance to look upon something not made by human beings. In the months after Margaret and I split up, Fern and I would drive here, and I would stroll to the edge of the lake and skip stones, sipping cognac from a flask, Fern waiting patiently.

But Fern did not stop the car. He drove into the neighborhood adjoining the lake. I waited for his professional opinion.

He said, “Maybe it’s the police.”

“Looking after me. How thoughtful.”

He drove, his broad shoulders at ease, his head tilted sideways. “Making sure you aren’t heading for the airport.”

“The idea has a certain appeal. But why should they care?”

He did not answer directly. Silence was one of Fern’s devices. He was a quick man who worked slowly. “How are you going to handle DeVere?”

“The police will protect me,” I said. I meant this ironically, and Fern laughed silently.

He turned a corner. Shadows of trees rippled over us. “Maybe it’s DeVere people,” he said. “Showing off.”

“What’s he got to show?”

Fern said nothing.

“Are you trying to make me nervous?”

“If he hurts Nona, what are you going to do?”

I was ready to laugh. Fern was being ridiculous. Then I couldn’t laugh. “That kind of thing isn’t going to happen.”

When Fern did not respond to this, I continued, “Don’t worry about DeVere. I can handle him. The world isn’t the kind of place you think it is.”

Fern parked the car in the garage. He locked the garage and muttered something about doing a “visual” on the interior of the house.

“It’s all right, Fern. You’re going to make me nervous squinting around at things like that. I think you guys get most of your training watching television, I really do.”

He did not laugh.

“The kind of thing you’re worried about,” I began. “That kind of violence. We don’t live like that.”

“If you say so,” said Fern, and he left me.

I entered the house. I switched off the burglar alarm, locked the door, loosened my black tie.

Upstairs, I hurried through my studio, into the bedroom. I splashed a little postaward cognac into a glass, and as I slipped out of my jacket I felt something in the pocket. I was puzzled, because I could see the Milton there on its shelf.

But it was an envelope, not a feather. Inside was the award. That’s all it was: paper.

This was the prize. Once I really looked at it, it did resemble one of the more elaborate stock certificates, or the sort of diploma one could buy from the University of Beverly Hills, except smaller, small enough to fit into a pocket.

All of that fuss, I told myself, all of that ambition over a little piece of paper, a wedding invitation, the announcement of a new partner.

I had been aware of something as I moved about my room. The light was not the same as it should be. My house lights are on timers, and timers can fail. But this was not too little light. Nor was it too much. I gazed about me.

And it became clear. I could not tell how I knew, but I did. Was it a trace of perfume in the air, or the weight of a presence, a special, pregnant variety of silence?

I was not alone.