I AWOKE TO THE PHONE.
“I didn't wake you up, did I?” she asked.
“No. I'm still unconscious, so it's not a problem.”
“I'm sorry I laughed at you last night.”
“If you laughed, I guess it was because I was funny.”
“Yup.”
“At least it's over.”
“And you got your money.”
“This is true.”
“That's good, Al.”
“Is it?”
“Baby, even if the new regimen doesn't end up better, you'll have changed your problems.”
“I know. I know.”
“I've got to go cook now. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Cook? As in food?”
“You can't come over, Al.”
“I can't?”
“You're talking to Frank at three.”
“Oh hell. Was that this year?”
“Good luck.”
I held my face in my hands for a couple of minutes. Frank.
I found the Sunday Star inside the door that connects my rooms to the rest of the living quarters above the luncheonette. Mom must have brought it up before she went out for her Sunday Expedition. Its presence was recognizable as a gesture of support.
Bud's Dugout empties on a Sunday. Mom goes to anything, preferably something with a bit of spectacle. Because it was May she would be at the time trials for the 500 but at other times of year it could be a Colts game or even the Children's Museum—she likes the interactive exhibits. She used to frequent the zoo. But that was before that nasty male polar bear ate one of its cubs.
Norman, her twenty-year-old live-in tattooed rude inarticulate griddle man, uses his Sundays off to prowl. He might go out causing spectacle, for all I know, but I don't get along with him well enough to ask.
I made coffee and took the paper back to bed. It was full of the Scum Front because there had been yet another antipollution bomb. That made six. One a week. Each timed to make the Sunday paper. Seven including the one in the Lebanese cornfield.
The curious thing about it all was that the longer it went on, the more sympathetic the general public became to the “terrorists.”
Oh, the idea of bombers in Indianapolis . . . That was awful. Terrifying. The people responsible had to be nuts and the longer it went on, the more frustrated they would become. It was only a matter of time, surely, before the bombs started getting wired up. Before they started going off. Before they started killing people.
It would end in grief. Had to.
But meanwhile the irreverence reflex that jerks whenever people are told the same thing too many times had led to a growing undercurrent of civic pride: our bombers didn't hurt anybody, got their message out and still hadn't been caught.
There was no diminishment in the massing of the forces of law and order, but meanwhile the bombers were hot. They were a sporting event. If there'd been someplace to go and watch. Mom would have been there.
This time the Scum Front had managed to leave their contribution in one of the “Pyramids”—three bizarre eleven-story office buildings up north.
How did they get one in there?
As before, a warning was issued and the bomb had been recovered without an explosion. Channel 43, “Environment TV,” on the Cab-Co cable system had, again, been the vehicle by which information was given to the police.
From the timing to hit the Sunday papers, it was obvious that the Chief had already known about this week's bomb at the Saturday night party.
But I didn't read all the bomber stories. The psychological profiles, the speculation about Middle Eastern connections, the analyses of their “demands.”
I had something else to read in this week's paper.
Finally I found it: Dust off that family skeleton today. Albert Samson, Private Investigator.
Appearing bare like that, boxed at the bottom of a page, it didn't look nearly as amusing to me as when I'd placed it.
Maybe the youthful Frank was right. Maybe my advertising campaign did need more pizzazz, more client targeting. More other stuff I couldn't remember.
And then there was a knock at the door.
But it couldn't be Frank, my woman's immature daughter's immature fiancé. The filmmaker. Who was making “industrials”—commercials to you and me—thereby learning his craft so he would be ready for his big break when Hollywood called.
Because it wasn't three yet. Was it?
The doorbell rang.
I did not feel like talking to Frank about the virtues and power of television advertising. Even if that was the way Go-for-It Detectives went for it on a Sunday afternoon.
Even if it did guarantee my woman some time alone with the headstrong daughter, time for her to deliver the latest barrage of “But Lucy's.” “But Lucy, marriage has life-affecting implications that aren't immediately obvious . . .” “But Lucy, what's wrong with just shacking up with the guy for five or ten years first . . .?”
Keep taking them pills, hon . . .
The bell rang again.