NIGHT SEEMED TO FALL with a thud. Right on the back of my neck. Being alive became uncomfortable. There was nothing I wanted to do. The last thing in the world I wanted to be was a Go-for-It Detective. Or any kind of detective. Or even a major-league pitcher: it was that bad.
I hate it when I have gut feelings and can't sort them out.
I want to wave a wand and stop time and be presented with a set of life footnotes.
But it never happens.
Time limped on, and after twenty profoundly uneasy minutes I finally did a constructive thing: I wrote a list of the things I didn't want to do.
Then I decided to write my daughter a letter.
I got out a piece of paper. I filled my fountain pen.
But I didn't start it. Instead I sat and doodled and wondered where she was. I didn't know, except that when she and her sculptor parted, she left France and was somewhere else in Europe. I could write to Switzerland where her mother had lived since . . . Since forever. Since marrying her fancy husband, having shed the original plain one.
Daughters. What was she doing? I knew she had taken to hanging around with some highbrow musicians. Was she involved with a musical Frank? How could one explain to a woman in her early twenties what was wrong with a Frank? Apparently acceptable, by the standards of society. But not a person to trust something precious to.
Like so many men, his bottom line read, “How was it for me?”
Pointless, pointless, pointless ruminating.
I hit myself in the head. Doing what a just God would do, if he or she existed. Saving him or her the effort if he or she didn't.
What kind of value can you give to the opinion of someone who just nods and smiles when he gets called “soulmate” by a Quentin Crispian Quayle?
I took a coffee cup and threw it at the door. Because it's the kind of thing that I never do.
The cup broke, of course. I looked at the pieces on the floor. I began to count them. I played a game. How many could I see without getting up from my chair? But what constituted staying in my chair, my “Detective's Chair”?
First I sat still with my elbows on the desk. Then I stretched as far as I could to right and left. Then I drew my feet up and stood on the seat.
Then I sat down again and, carefully, tipped the chair over while doing my best to maintain fundamental contact.
Once sprawled on the floor, I began to laugh and laugh and laugh and become wholer again.
And then, to punish my return to non-wand-waving humanity, I heard heavy footsteps on the outside stairs.
The doorbell rang.