CHAPTER TEN

FUGUE

If my mother had kept a gun in her apartment, I would have shot myself within the first twenty-four hours of my visit, and then every hour on the hour thereafter.

“If she doesn’t want to marry you, there’s no sense in making a heroic effort to convince her,” my mother said. “There are plenty of other girls out there who would suit you better. Danielle is very nice. And pretty. And she’s more our kind of people.”

Children are like computers. They do what you program them to do, and for the first time it occurred to me that I’d been programmed to fail. Lacking a gun, my three day visit turned into a six day fugue that was only broken when Celeste called.

“Lionel Petrie called to talk about scheduling for them to shoot you,” she said, but she was only talking about the stupid commercial. “He said they’re doing it here at the house?”

“Yes, put it on the calendar.”

“When will you be back?” she said. According to Celeste’s calendar I was already back. Reality was starting to scare her with its unpredictability. “There are a lot of things that need your signature. Should I overnight them to Boston?”

“No, I’m coming back.”

“Oh, and only because you said I should let you know if anything came up, Meda called yesterday looking for you. I thought she knew you were away.”

“I don’t know.”

“She had car trouble, so I called Ron Grabling for her. I hope that’s okay, since you pay his salary.”

“Sure, whatever.” I deserved to be shot for that. “Look, take this afternoon and go buy her a car.”

“Buy her a car? What kind of car?”

“Something practical, reliable. Something nice.” I wished I had better guidance to offer her, but what I knew about cars wasn’t worth mentioning. Then because she didn’t say anything else, I filled in the blanks for her: “You’re a signer on the household account. Honestly, it’s not that hard to walk into a dealership and buy a car. Tag and title. Put it in her name. Then call the insurance agent.”

“Okay,” Celeste said in a careful voice. She thought I was off my rocker. “Mr. Cantrell called to say that the mausoleum is completed, so as soon as you’d like, they can schedule the re-interments.”

“Whenever is fine.”

“I think he thinks that you’ll want to be there.”

“I don’t.”

I ended the call, hating myself, mostly for saying things that weren’t true. I wasn’t indifferent about Meda. I wasn’t indifferent about my family being moved from their graves. I didn’t know why indifference had to be my default setting. In a sane world, in a world where I wasn’t pathetic, in a world where I didn’t deserve to be shot, that call would at least have gotten me out of bed, but it took my mother’s sinister machinations to get me up two days later.

“Bernie, I called Dr. Rosenwasser this morning to come see you. You remember him? It was a mistake going off your medication. I’m going to have him prescribe something for you. You’re not well,” she said.

I opened my eyes to see her frowning down at me. Her look of concern, the one that masked her indifference, got me out of bed. I started putting on my clothes.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the airport.”

“But you don’t have a flight booked. You missed your flight.”

I knew it was her intention to wear me down, that she was in fact wearing me down. I was so weak I couldn’t imagine how I was going to resist her, until I remembered that awful summer before I moved to Atlanta, and how she’d convinced me to check into the clinic. If I hadn’t done it myself, she would have done it for me. To me. I wondered if she would send Dr. Rosenwasser’s minions to the airport after me.

“There are other flights. I’ll get one,” I said.

“But you haven’t showered in days. You look terrible.” Standing there, trying to figure out how to put everything into my suitcase, I felt panicked, but I didn’t dare let her see it. Instead, I opened my carryon bag and put in some clean clothes and my shaving kit.

“I’m going to send for my suitcase later, if you can have Mrs. Vasquez pack it up for me,” I said.

“What do you mean, you’ll send for it?” There was an edge of hysteria to her voice that produced an eerie calm in me. I could see the horizon of the moment and feel the curvature of the earth under me. For the first time, the unspeakable weight of her disappointment steadied me.

“I don’t want to mess with it right now.” I don’t know if she thought about stopping me, but she made a moue of distaste when I hugged her. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”

The doorman got me a cab and held the door for me like there was nothing amiss. I didn’t get the same reservation of judgment at the airport, and in an effort not to terrorize my fellow passengers, I took advantage of the three hours before my flight to shave and to brush my teeth. The scar on my cheekbone was a fading apostrophe that nagged me like a clichéd string tied around my finger as a reminder of…something. What was I supposed to remember?

Storm

Meda

The rain turned into sleet in the afternoon and I hoped Loren and her friends wouldn’t come because of the weather, but they did. Loren couldn’t make up her mind if she hated me or if I was her best friend. I was starting to figure out that was how money worked. Maybe it wasn’t what Bernie intended, but he told me to spend the money on whatever I wanted, so I bought a new TV with some of the money he gave me. All of a sudden Loren liked me enough to want to bring her roommate and boyfriend over to watch TV.

Loren’s boyfriend said. “Straight six, right? Four liter? What, it’ll do 130, 140? Sweet ride.”

It was the first thing I’d ever heard him say, and I didn’t have any idea what it meant.

“Her boyfriend bought it for her,” Loren said.

“I wish I had a boyfriend who’d buy me a BMW,” Loren’s roommate said. They started talking about what they’d do if they had a rich boyfriend, and it wasn’t what I was doing with Bernie.

When somebody knocked at the door halfway through the movie, I thought it was another one of Loren’s friends, but it was Bernie. If he was looking for pity, he could have mine, because he looked terrible. His hair was dripping wet, and he looked dead on his feet, with dark circles under his eyes.

“I’m sorry it’s so late. I just wanted to see you,” he said. That’s what he wanted, I guess, because all he did was look at me.

“You want to come in?” I said.

He looked surprised. He’d really come out there just to see me and get sent on his way.

“Hey, Bernie, will you buy me a new car?” Loren said.

“Shut up and watch your movie,” I said. Bernie didn’t look like he was up to fighting with Loren, so I took him into the bedroom.

The Verb That Created God

“You bought me a BMW,” Meda explained, after she shut the bedroom door. I glanced around at her room, looking at all the landmarks of happiness and misery.

“I hope that’s okay.”

I’d almost forgotten about the car, and I was half afraid it was going to cause an argument. When I looked at her, though, she wore a smiling frown. Concerned and a little embarrassed wasn’t a look I recognized on Meda.

“I went with Celeste to pick it out, so it’s what I wanted. It’s really nice. I never thought I’d have a station wagon. Or a BMW. Thank you.”

“I wanted to be sure you had reliable transportation, since I haven’t been here much. And I know how you feel about driving the Rolls.”

“Where were you?” she said.

“I had to go to New York to sort out a problem with a piece of real estate that’s a historical property. Pen was in the middle of a lawsuit, so I went to an arbitration meeting. And I went to Pennsylvania on some foundation business. And Boston to see my mother.” I heard myself talking, just to be talking. Meda reached out to me, so I said, “I just wanted to see you, I wasn’t thinking of—I need a shower.”

“I know how to fix that.”

Because there was so much kindness in the offer, and none of her usual bristling, I let her take me into the bathroom and turn on the shower for me. It was an old house, so there was a window over the bathtub. Standing there with hot water vapor clouding around me, I looked out the top half of the window and watched the sleet glazing every surface in the backyard: the dead grass, the sagging clothesline, the shed, the house next door, the line of dilapidated houses beyond it.

I didn’t resist Meda when she led me to her bed. I put myself in her hands, knowing she wanted to redraw the lines of me. She insisted on it, knowing my intentions when I touched her, how my hands shaped her flesh.

My scars were the places she didn’t attempt to rework with her hands and her mouth. It seemed only natural. When I remade her in my mold, I never attempted her mouth. Her throat, her earlobes, her breasts and the crease beneath her breasts, her belly, the heat sink of her vulva. When I touched them, she ceded them to my design. Her mouth was a thing set in stone, an immutable icon to be adored but unchanged unless by the caressing hands of ten million pilgrims. When I kissed Meda, I knew her mouth came before any creation I commanded. Her mouth was not God, but the verb that created God.

She exhausted me with every technique I knew existed and some that were new to me. I think she intended to assert her power, unnecessary as that was, and if it had been only a matter of wanting to submit, I would have. I would have relished the act of submission if I’d been able, but I felt everything receding from me. All I wanted was to stop that going away, to stop watching the world’s destruction from a distance.

Frankenstein

Meda

“Stop, stop, please stop, please stop,” Bernie said, fast and hoarse. I did, and felt guilty, because he sounded upset and he was shaking all over. We lay next to each other until he was calm enough to talk.

“You could have said stop sooner and I would have stopped,” I said.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have said stop sooner.” He put his arm around me to show he wasn’t mad, but I wanted to defend myself.

“I would have stopped,” I said. “That’s the worst feeling ever, knowing that saying stop won’t mean anything. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know you wouldn’t. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t stop him from hurting me.” The back of my neck prickled when I understood he meant the guy who kidnapped him. Bernie was quiet, and I didn’t even know what to say. I turned my head into his shoulder, because I didn’t want him to see my face. “I mean, it was that, but it poisoned everything, like you said. It changed the way I see the world.”

“And yourself.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“What Ray did to me changed how I saw myself. For the longest time, I felt like a monster. You know, like Frankenstein. Like there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t made like other people. That’s what Gramma always told me. We’re not like other people. And after it happened, that was what she said, too. It’s what happens to people like us. She said, ‘People eat chickens because that’s what chickens are for.’“

“Oh, Meda,” he said. He kissed my forehead, and I felt guilty, because I’d wanted to make him feel better, and he was trying to take care of me.

“Do you ever feel that way, like there’s something wrong with you because of what happened?” I already knew the answer.

“There is something wrong with me.”

“There isn’t either,” I said.

“There is. You said it. I’ve just—I’ve been amputated. Something’s been cut off, so that I can’t—. Maybe it’s silly, but I always thought it was my soul. Like they opened me up and cut out that part of me, and after that I was always separated from myself. I can’t get back into myself.” He sounded so exhausted and sad. “Do you still feel like you’re a monster?”

“No. Not anymore. That was the best part about having Annadore. Not in the beginning when I didn’t want to be pregnant. But the labor wasn’t as bad as everyone said it would be, and when they gave her to me, the first time I nursed her, I felt better. I didn’t feel like a monster, because a monster couldn’t do something beautiful like that.”

“I like that. I wish I could have a baby.” He laughed.

“You’re going to.”

“Not like that, though,” he said. “Are you at least a little happy about this baby?”

“I’m not sorry I’m going to have this baby. I hope—” I was scared to say what I hoped.

“I’m sorry it has to be over between us.” He whispered it, almost crying, I think because of how tired he was. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked his age. He looked even older than he was.

“It’s not over. It’s just complicated. You need to sleep.”

“No. I’m awake,” he said, the way Annadore sometimes did. He was fading and, after a couple of tries, he let me leave. It was after midnight by the time I got rid of Loren and her crew, so I made a bed for myself on the couch. I woke up at about six, thinking I would make Bernie some breakfast, but he was already gone.

Headache

“Are you okay? Do you need some aspirin?” Celeste asked.

“Did I ask for some aspirin?” I’d gotten in from Boston Sunday evening, and except for the blessed but brief rest I’d gotten in Meda’s bed, I hadn’t been able to sleep.

“You were rubbing your head like you had a headache.”

“You’re giving me a headache.”

I breathed in, out. I apologized. It wasn’t her fault. I had to keep reminding myself of that. The first meeting of the foundation’s board of directors was scheduled for the following evening, but at that moment there was a film crew set up in the study, displacing Celeste and me into the dining room.

To spare me from Celeste and vice versa, I went into the study, where Lionel Petrie greeted me effusively. He loved “the opulent, old world atmosphere” of my grandfather’s study. He didn’t mention if he also loved how the wood paneling made the room like the inside of a coffin, or how the desk brooded like an Easter Island monolith. For the commercial, they’d brought a giant painting of my grandfather, father, and uncle from the corporate office, and hung it on the wall behind the desk, displacing the painting of my grandmother that had hung there my entire life.

The commercial was a toll. It was a price I had to pay. I had survived the shareholder meeting. If I could make it through the commercial, I would make it through the meeting with the foundation’s board members. If I made it through that meeting, I would be my own man for a few weeks. There would be nothing looming over me, and then. Then, I didn’t know.

“Are you about ready in here?” I said abruptly, and heard the truth of Meda’s accusation: my grandfather’s voice.

I regretted my impatience once filming began, because everyone was unhappy with how it went. I looked terrible, my voice was hoarse, and I hated the script. It started out, “Sixty years ago in this office, my grandfather had a vision, blah, blah, blah,” and it got worse from there. At one point, I was supposed to fold my hands on the desk, right over left. Right over left. Half the time, I did it the wrong way, revealing what no one, least of all me, wanted revealed: that ugly stump of a finger. Subconsciously perhaps, I was indicting my grandfather.

By two o’clock, Lionel looked nervous, and everyone else was cursing the misbegotten marketing brainstorm that had brought us to that point. We agreed to try again the next day.

Reburying the Dead

Aunt Ginny

Meda answered the door in her housemaid disguise and kissed me on the cheek. With a laugh, she said, “Consider yourself warned. He’s not in a good mood today.” She was already the lady of the house, whether she wanted to admit it or not. I hated myself for being a snob so late in life, but it was clear to me that Meda was who she was all of her own doing. Her family was not charming enough to have produced her. I couldn’t help thinking it was imperative for Bernie to marry her, primarily to improve himself, and secondarily to rescue her from her family.

Bernie came out of the study just then, and Meda’s warning was quite accurate.

“Celeste, why is everything scheduled for today?” my not-so-sweet nephew snarled when he saw me.

“You said, I’m sorry, sir, you said you didn’t care. That I should schedule it whenever. I’m sorry.”

Bernie gave the poor girl a look that was dangerously like Pen.

“Now, Bernie. If we’re a little late, I suppose that Mr. Cantrell will wait on us. There’s plenty of daylight left,” I said.

He nodded and apologized to the girl, but the dark look stayed.

At the cemetery Mr. Cantrell awaited us with a crew of workmen. The air felt wonderfully sharp and a little damp. The sort of air that reminded me, even in a cemetery, that things were done with winter and ready to start growing again.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to say a few words. We have Mr. Raleigh here as well.” He gestured in the direction of a hearse parked nearby.

“It was all said at the funeral,” Bernie said. I agreed, and once the facing marble from the vaults had been removed, the business of moving coffins began.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked Bernie. He looked ill.

“I don’t think I could.” He seemed about to say something else, but the workmen came by with the first coffin, and Bernie said, “This is the one from the top right? It’s Uncle Alan.”

He brushed the dust from the top of Alan’s coffin with his bare hands. I was touched that seeing his uncle carried out should affect Bernie so deeply, more so than his father and brother did when their coffins were brought out a few minutes later. Once the moving had been finished, Pen’s coffin was carried in, and at Bernie’s suggestion, we stepped into the emptied mausoleum.

I didn’t want to upset him, but because she had called me, I said, “Your mother was worried about you.”

“She was going to Baker Act me.”

“Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t.” I had feared she might, particularly since she’d done so before.

I was reluctant to part with Bernie for the night. Not that I was convinced I could do anything for him, but I was frightened of the black mood on him, maybe even a little afraid of Pen’s ghost. I put my arm into his as we walked back to the car. Wanting to make him think about something positive, I said, “Now that I have some money of my own, I want you to tell me what you think I should do with it. To help with the foundation, the work you’re doing.”

“I think you should hold onto it, and if you like you can leave it to the foundation in your will.”

“I hope I can do a bit of good before I’m quite dead.” He didn’t even smile at my little joke.

Medicine

“I’d like to go to pray, if you wouldn’t mind taking me,” Aunt Ginny said, as we were leaving the cemetery. I didn’t have the energy to resist. When we went into the chapel, I half expected to see a casket flanked by flowers at the front. I looked around like you can’t at a funeral, at the holy water font, the banks of candles, and the discreetly martyred saints. It was all in good taste, with none of the garishness that bespeaks real passion. I dutifully went through the motions on Aunt Ginny’s behalf, but seeing her fragile neck bowed so earnestly, I was ashamed of my cynicism. For the first time in my adult life, I tried to pray.

It was more like wishing on the candles of a birthday cake, because I remembered only my childhood prayers, the calling down of God’s blessings on a list of people. I stumbled in making that list, because most of the people I had been taught to bless were dead. So I prayed for something good for the people I could think of. That was all, just something good for Meda and Annadore, and for Aunt Ginny, and for Muriel and Miss Amos, even for Mrs. Trentam, Mrs. Bryant, Celeste, and Loren. For my mother, too.

My spiritual healing or whatever it was didn’t survive the preparations for filming the next day. To get past the taboo about drinking in the morning, I told myself it was like taking medicine. I needed something to calm my nerves, I thought, and then I knocked back a glass of scotch. Once I’d crossed that invisible line, I felt I was capable of a number of things that had been prohibited before. It wasn’t a good feeling. When Mrs. Trentam and Meda came into the kitchen, I was relieved. As bad as it was, at least it wasn’t a secret then. There were witnesses to the appalling depths to which I had sunk.

“What are you doing?” Meda said.

“I’m getting ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” Missed reference. They stared at me. I could see my epitaph so clearly then. Moody, alcoholic billionaire with a bad habit of knocking up his employees. On my headstone, something fit for the 19^th century: “He was a bad ‘un and we’re well shut of him.”

“You’re drinking, what?” Meda picked up the bottle. “Scotch, at nine in the morning.”

“But it’s good scotch.”

I offered her my glass to refill, and she poured in more than I thought was necessary to make her point. Watching her pour, I marveled at how her face seemed to be lit from within, ruled by its own mystical chiaroscuro. I wanted to ask her if it was a dream that she had said our relationship wasn’t over, but I was afraid it was.

“Aunt M., maybe you could go outside for a sec,” Meda said. After her aunt was gone, she looked at me and shook her head. She put her hand on my arm, her touch as insubstantial as a snowflake. “You don’t look very good.”

“You’re about the fifth person to tell me that this morning.”

Lionel Petrie wasn’t any happier about my appearance. I had a tic over my left eye that I hoped the alcohol would cure. Meda’s face was so kind I couldn’t bear to look at her, and she started to put her arms around my waist. I pushed her away from me and barely made it to the sink before I vomited.

“What’s the matter? Please don’t say it’s because of me.”

“It’s not you. It’s this stupid commercial.”

“Don’t do it, if you don’t want to,” she said.

“I have to.”

“You have to?”

“I’m trapped. There are all these things I’m responsible for. That’s bad enough, and then there’s this thing with you. You used to make me happy.”

“I’m sorry you’ve got all these things weighing on you, but I can’t be the one who decides if you’re happy or not. That’s not right.” She said it like an apology, but with the confidence that she was right.

The library had made me happy, but it was no use to me there. I couldn’t win. If I didn’t do the commercial it was one more thing I failed at, one more responsibility I shirked. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The camera, the eye of the world, that was the most monstrous part of it.

“I can see why you don’t want to marry me,” I said. “I really am messed up.”

“It’s not so much you. It’s this whole situation.” I didn’t press her on that, not wanting her to withdraw the kindness.

Bernie’s Close-Up

Meda

One of the guys on the film crew opened the door and said, “Mr. Raleigh? Lionel says we’re ready for you.” Bernie looked horrible, leaning over the sink. I thought he was going to puke again.

“He’ll be ready in a minute.” I wasn’t so sure, but the guy nodded and left.

“I don’t like them filming me. I hate the idea of being on television, of being filmed. It makes my flesh crawl,” Bernie said.

I remembered what his aunt had said about him not wanting to be noticed, and then I thought of something that scared me so much, I was glad Bernie wasn’t looking at me. To keep from freaking out, I pinched the inside of my arm as hard as I could. Somewhere out there was the guy who hurt Bernie. He was out there, sitting around, watching TV. I put my hands on Bernie’s back and hoped he wouldn’t feel how much they were shaking. I made my voice as cheerful as I could and said, “When you were little didn’t you like to perform? Your aunt said you sang and danced and put on little shows. Think of it that way, like you’re performing. I used to pretend I was a queen getting crowned when I went to those pageants. Or sometimes I pretended I was a slave getting sold at market.” He gave me a funny look over his shoulder. “You know when you’re a kid, weird stuff seems cool. Seems romantic.”

“I thought a drink would calm my nerves. What should I do?” I thought he meant about the commercial, but then he said, “Just tell me what you want me to do. Do you want me to stay here to try to work this out? Or should I go back to Kansas City and leave you alone? I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I think you should do what you want to do,” I said, even though I didn’t like to give people advice. Since I’d already done it once, I did it again. “Sing something. Sing that Oklahoma song you sing in the shower sometimes.”

He started laughing. “I’m not doing a musical number for you in the kitchen.”

“Not here, out there. Go out and sing that first and then do the commercial. You’ll look stupid right off the bat, so you can get that out of the way, and it’s something you’re good at.”

Giving advice is dangerous. Bernie was drunk enough that he did it. I followed him into the study and on the first take they did, he sang that goofy song about farmers and potatoes and Oklahoma. He sang it like he did in the shower, belting it out like he was on stage. After Bernie finished the song, he bowed. Then he walked out, leaving the director and the camera crew with their mouths hanging open.

Usefulness

I went to the airport with nothing but my briefcase and the clothes on my back, and got on a plane to Kansas City.

I returned to the library with the vow that I would be useful, so on my first day back, I asked Beverly what needed to be done.

“The usual,” she said. She wasn’t sure what to think of me being back.

“No, I mean what really needs to be done around here that isn’t getting done?” She opened her filing cabinet, and pulled out four large manila folders.

“This needs to be put in the database.” It was records of missing and replaced items, changes in volume numbers and editions. It took a week of tedious ten-hour days, but I finished it.

“It’s not in the budget for overtime,” she said when I was done.

“I hope you’re not paying me anymore.”

She blushed, the first time I had ever seen her so out of sorts.

“I forgot. I just forgot that you’re, that you’re who you are.”

“What else needs to be done?” I said.

“You know we’ve been wanting to relocate the children’s section for years.” Beverly suggested it tentatively, not quite daring to hope that I’d take it on. If she had said, There are these thousand horse stables that haven’t been cleaned in ten years, I would have accepted the task. I wanted to do something that offered tangible proof of the effort involved.

I began drawing diagrams of what would have to be moved to make the relocation possible. It required the piecemeal removal and relocation of two aisles of reference books and another four aisles of adult fiction, plus five computer terminals and the ancient card catalogs, which had taken on a Cheopsean aura of immovability. That was to clear the space for the children’s section. The children’s section involved moving nine freestanding bookcases and seven sections of half-shelves, as well as all the tables and chairs. The books of course had to be moved in some orderly fashion, temporarily stacked until the shelves were moved and then re-shelved. Somehow simultaneously, the books from the displaced reference section and adult fiction needed to be re-shelved once the shelves had been relocated to the old children’s section. Additionally, the displacement would disrupt the order of the adult fiction, putting the T—Z section in front of the A’s, requiring that all the books and signs be incrementally shifted to properly order the alphabet again. It had only been talked of for years for a good reason. It was Herculean.

Beverly came out of her office while I was working out my calculations with a tape measure, and I knew she wanted to revoke my commission. She believed I would never finish the job. I decided to view her pessimism as a challenge instead of a prediction.

Spiritual Contract

Meda

Bernie didn’t come back after he walked out on the commercial. The film crew wandered around for a few hours, but he never came back. I didn’t hear from him that night, and when I went to work the next day he still wasn’t there. As much as I didn’t want to, I asked Celeste.

“Oh, he flew to Kansas City after his meeting yesterday. Do you need something?” I didn’t really, except I wanted to see him. It wasn’t a stupid romance novel moment. I just felt sad that he was gone and he hadn’t even bothered to tell me. I hoped he was doing what he wanted.

When he called me two weeks later, I had started to think he was moving on with his life. He acted like we’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“I miss you,” he said when I answered the phone, no hello or anything. “Do you remember what you said about feeling badly that I’d given you so many gifts and you didn’t have anything to give me?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I was thinking there's one thing you could give me that I would really like. A gift you could give me.”

“You can’t ask me that,” I said. It made me crazy the way he acted. “Even some obscenely expensive old diamond necklace and a brand new car don’t give you the right to ask me for something like that. That’s not a gift. That’s a—a—I don’t care if you believe in it or not, but that’s a spiritual contract.”

“Well, that wasn’t what I was going to ask for, but the invitation is still open, as you like to say.”

I wanted to start the phone call over. “I’m sorry. What can I give you, as a gift?”

“Come visit me. I want to see you.”

“Why do I have to go there?”

“You don’t, but I’m asking you to.”

“What about Annadore?”

“I’d like to see her, too. It’s not a romantic trip. I promise I won’t bother you about that. If you don’t want to, just say so.” He sounded a little sad, but not that awful sadness he sometimes had. I think his feelings were hurt.

“It’s not that. It’s just…I’ve never flown before.”

“It’s no big deal. I’ll send the jet for you.”

“Please, don’t. I’d rather fly like a normal person.”

I felt like a big dummy, but I made him tell me about what you do when you get to the airport, and what you do with your luggage and how you get to your plane and all that stuff. He waited while I went to get a pen and paper, and then he walked me through it. I didn’t know how to feel when I hung up. He sounded so normal.