After we hung up, I tried to keep my dark speculations about Angela from interfering with my work at the gallery. Why had she never previously complained about Paul Morse? When did she get enlightened, and did the key information really come from Melissa? What was Angela’s response? Remembering how she dealt with that nurse in Bronxville, I wondered if she had ever paid a visit to Paul, just to straighten him out.
Well, let Hogan do his work, I told myself—if he can tear himself away from Angela’s bed long enough to think straight. Meanwhile, I’ve got a gallery to run.
Laura had scheduled Mick Tarkower for our second show of the season. I set my mind on selecting the best three suites of photographs for our space. The shot of rows upon rows of fluorescent-lit grocery store shelves, in or out? The chained vulture? The Japanese teens with fuchsia hair and pacifiers in their mouths?
In the midst of my deliberations, Angela called to give me an update on Philip. She didn’t want to talk about anything else—not the opening, the party, her work, or Paul Morse. Patient care was her whole concern now.
“They’re moving him to a hospice,” she said.
“He’s that bad?”
“There’s nothing much left of him. The doctors can’t do any more, and he only annoys the nursing staff. The same question over and over again. He wants to know that everything has been paid in advance.”
I thought for a moment about the way Philip had lived, and the way he was dying.
“Tell him yes,” I said. “He’s paid up in full.”
How peculiar it must be for him now, I thought. Before Mandy’s murder, the accelerating loss of his brain cells had presented Philip, subjectively, with a faultless and loving spouse, a thriving business, innumerable friends, a magical influx of unceasing wealth. In a sense, he had pulled off a great coup: he had solved the problem of happiness. Wolfsheim’s Syndrome was a form of intoxication with no sobering up, a drug without any impending crash. Except death, of course.
But after Amanda was killed, cruel mysteries began to plague my friend. His beloved wife was missing, the business was out of his hands, most friends seemed to pity him, his money was as abstract as a calculus formula. Unable to remember the source of his distress, he was forced to ask about it again and again—like a boy who begs his father repeatedly to explain the loss of a favorite puppy.
“Oh, and Jack,” Angela said, “I enjoyed our chat today. Do feel free to come down for coffee with me in the mornings.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“Not a bother at all. In fact, it’d be nice to have someone I can really talk to. Kids, you know—all demands and silliness. I need a transition, an adult voice, to get into my work after Melissa leaves for school.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“And there’s no sense you prowling around upstairs all alone.”
“No sense at all. That’s very kind of you, Angela.”
“Is it?” She smiled. “I don’t know what’s come over me lately.”