Bag of Bones 13 страница

“Like a liar, ” I said, and then:

“Ah, fuck. ”

“Fear not, Mike. Be of good cheer. ”

“What should I do? ”

“Spike their guns before they can fire them. Tell Durgin exactly what happened. Get it in the depo. Emphasize the fact that the little girl thought she was walking safely. Make sure you get in that ’crossmock’

thing. I love that. ”

“Then if they have a tape they’ll play it and I’ll look like a story-changing schmuck. ”

“I don’t think so. You weren’t a sworn witness when you talked to Devore, were you? There you were, sitting out on your deck and minding your own business, watching the fireworks show. Out of the blue this grouchy old asshole calls you.

Starts ranting. Didn’t even give him your number, did you? ”

“No. ”

“Your unlisted number. ”

“No. ”

“And while he said he was Maxwell Devore, he could have been anyone, right? ”

“Right. ”

“He could have been the Shah of Iran. ”

“No, the Shah’s dead. ”

“The Shah’s out, then. But he could have been a nosy neighbor. . . or a prankster. ”

“Yes. ”

“And you said what you said with all those possibilities in mind. But now that you’re part of an official court proceeding, you’re telling the whole truth and nothing but. ”

“You bet. ” That good my-lawyer feeling had deserted me for a bit, but it was back full-force now. “You can’t do better than the truth, Mike, ” he said solemnly. “Except maybe in a few cases, and this isn’t one. Are we clear on that? ”

“Yes. ”

“All right, we’re done. I want to hear from either you or Mattie Devore around elevenish tomorrow. It ought to be her. ”

“I’ll try. ”

“If she really balks, you know what to do, don’t you? ”

“I think so. Thanks, John. ”

“One way or another, we’ll talk very soon, ” he said, and hung up.

I sat where I was for awhile. Once I pushed the button which opened the line on the cordless phone, then pushed it again to close it. I had to talk to Mattie, but I wasn’t quite ready yet. I decided to take a walk instead. If she really balks, you know what to do, don’t you? Of course.

Remind her that she couldn’t afford to be proud. That she couldn’t afford to go all Yankee, refusing charity from Michael Noonan, author of Being Two, The Red-Shirt Man, and the soon-to-be-published Helen’s Promise. Remind her that she could have her pride or her daughter, but likely not both. Hey, Mattie, pick one.

I walked almost to the end of the lane, stopping at Tidwell’s Meadow with its pretty view down to the cup of the lake and across to the White Mountains. The water dreamed under a hazy sky, looking gray when you tipped your head one way, blue when you tipped it the other. That sense of mystery was very much with me. That sense of Manderley. Over forty black people had settled here at the turn of the century—lit here for awhile, anyway—according to Marie Hingerman (also according to A History of Castle County and Castle Rock, a weighty tome published in 1977, the county’s bicentennial year). Pretty special black people, too: most of them related, most of them talented, most of them part of a musical group which had first been called The Red-Top Boys and then Sara Tidwell and the Red-Top Boys. They had bought the meadow and a good-sized tract of lakeside land from a man named Douglas Day. The money had been saved up over a period of ten years, according to Sonny Tidwell, who did the dickering (as a Red-Top, Son Tidwell had played what was then known as “chickenscratch guitar”).

There had been a vast uproar about it in town, and even a meeting to protest “the advent of these darkies, which come in a Horde. ” Things had settled down and turned out okay, as things have a way of doing, more often than not. The shanty town most locals had expected on Day’s Hill (for so Tidwell’s Meadow was called in 1900, when Son Tid-well bought the land on behalf of his extensive clan) had never appeared. Instead, a number of neat white cabins sprang up, surrounding a larger building that might have been intended as a group meeting place, a rehearsal area, or perhaps, at some point, a performance hall.

Sara and the Red-Top Boys (sometimes there was a Red-Top Girl in there, as well; membership in the band was fluid, changing with every performance) played around western Maine for over a year, maybe closer to two years. In towns all up and down the Western Line—Farmington, Skowhegan, Bridgton, Gates Falls, Castle Rock, Morton, Fryeburg—you’ll still come across their old show-posters at barn bazaars and junk-atoriums. Sara and the Red-Tops were great favorites on the circuit, and they got along all right at home on the TR, too, which never surprised me. At the end of the day Robert Frost—that utilitarian and often unpleasant poet—was right: in the northeastern three we really do believe that good fences make good neighbors. We squawk and then keep a miserly peace, the kind with gimlet eyes and a tucked-down mouth. “They pay their bills, ” we say. “I ain’t never had to shoot one a their dogs, ” we say. “They keep themselves to themselves, ” we say, as if isolation were a virtue. And, of course, the defining virtue: “They don’t take charity. ”

And at some point, Sara Tidwell became Sara Laughs.

In the end, though, TR-90 mustn’t have been what they wanted, because after playing a county fair or two in the late summer of 1901, the clan moved on. Their neat little cabins provided summer-rental income for the Day family until 1933, when they burned in the summer fires which charred the east and north sides of the lake. End of story.

Except for her music, that was. Her music had lived.

I got up from the rock I had been sitting on, stretched my arms and my back, and walked back down the lane, singing one of her songs as I went.

Dring my hike back down the lane to the house, I tried to think about nothing at all. My first editor used to say that eighty-five percent of what goes on in a novelist’s head is none of his business, a sentiment I’ve never believed should be restricted to just writers. So-called higher thought is, by and large, highly overrated. When trouble comes and steps have to be taken, I find it’s generally better to just stand aside and let the boys in the basement do their work. That’s blue-collar labor down there, non-union guys with lots of muscles and tattoos.

Instinct is their specialty, and they refer problems upstairs for actual cogitation only as a last resort.

When I tried to call Mattie Devote, an extremely peculiar thing happened—one that had nothing at all ro do with spooks, as far as I could tell. Instead of an open-hum line when I pushed the cordless’s on button, I got silence. Then, just as I was thinking I must have left the phone in the north bedroom off the hook, I realized ir wasn’t complete silence. Distant as a radio transmission from deep space, cheerful and quacky as an animated duck, some guy with a fair amount of Brooklyn in his voice was singing: “He followed her to school one day, school one day, school one day. Followed her to school one day, which was against the rule. . . ” I opened my mouth to ask who was there, but before I could, a woman’s voice said “Hello? ” She sounded perplexed and doubtful.

“Mattie? ” In my confusion it never occurred to me to call her something more formal, like Ms. or Mrs. Devore. Nor did it seem odd that I should know who it was, based on a single word, even though our only previous conversation had been relatively brief. Maybe the guys in the basement recognized the background music and made the connection to Kyra. “Mr. Noonan? ” She sounded more bewildered than ever. “The phone never even rang! ”

“I must have picked mine up just as your call was going through, ” I said. “That happens from time to time. ” But how many times, I wondered, did it happen when the person calling you was the one you yourself had been planning to call? Maybe quite often, actually.

Telepathy or coincidence? Live or Memorex? Either way, it seemed almost magical. I looked across the long, low living room, into the glassy eyes of Bunter the moose, and thought: I3s, but maybe this is a magic place now. “I suppose, ” she said doubtfully. “I apologize about calling in the first place—it’s a presumption. Your number’s unlisted, I know. ” Oh, don’t worry about that, I thought. Everyone’s got this old number by now. In fact, I’m thinking aboutputting it in the Illow Pages. “I got it from your file at the library, ” she went on, sounding embarrassed.

“That’s where I work. ” In the background, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” had given way to “The Farmer in the Dell. ”

“It’s quite all right, ” I said.

“Especially since you’re the person I was picking up the phone to call. ”

“Me? Why? ”

“Ladies first. ” She gave a brief, nervous laugh. “I wanted to invite you to dinner. That is, Ki and I want to invite you to dinner. I should have done it before now. You were awfully good to us the other day. Will you come? ”

“Yes, ” I said with no hesitation at all. “With thanks. We’ve got some things to talk about, anyway. ”

There was a pause. In the background, the mouse was taking the cheese.

As a kid I used to think all these things happened in a vast gray factory called The Hi-Ho Dairy-O. “Mattie? Still there? "

“He’s dragged you into it, hasn’t he? That awful old man. ” Now her voice sounded not nervous but somehow dead. “Well, yes and no. You could argue that fate dragged me into it, or coincidence, or God. I wasn’t there that morning because of Max Devore; I was chasing the elusive Villageburger. ” She didn’t laugh, but her voice brightened a little, and I was glad. People who talk in that dead, affectless way are, by and large, frightened people. Sometimes people who have been outright terrorized. “I’m still sorry for dragging you into my trouble. ” I had an idea she might start to wonder who was dragging whom after I pitched her on John Storrow, and was glad it was a discussion I wouldn’t have to have with her on the phone. “In any case, I’d love to come to dinner. When? ”

“Would this evening be too soon? ”

“Absolutely not. ”

“That’s wonderful. We have to eat early, though, so my little guy doesn’t fall asleep in her dessert.

Is six okay? ”

“Yes. ”

“Ki will be excited. We don’t have much company. ”

“She hasn’t been wandering again, has she? ” I thought she might be offended. Instead, this time she aid laugh. “God, no. All the fuss on Saturday scared her. Now she comes in to tell me if she’s switching from the swing in the side yard to the sandbox in back. She’s talked about you a lot, though. She calls you ’that tall guy who carrot me. ” I think she’s worried you might be mad at her. ”

“Tell her I’m not, ” I said. “No, check that. I’ll tell her myself. Can I bring anything? ”

“Bottle of wine? ” she asked, a little doubtfully. “Or maybe that’s pretentious—I was only going to cook hamburgers on the grill and make potato salad. ”

“I’ll bring an unpretentious bottle. ”

“Thank you, ” she said. “This is sort of exciting. We never have company. ”

I was horrified to find myself on the verge of saying that I thought it was sort of exciting, too, my first date in four years and all. “Thanks so much for thinking of me. ” As I hung up I remembered John Storrow advising me to try and stay visible with her, not to hand over any extra grist for the town gossip mill. If she was barbecuing, we’d probably be out where people could see we had our clothes on. . . for most of the evening, anyway. She-would, however, likely do the polite thing at some point and invite me inside. I would then do the polite thing and go.

Admire her velvet Elvis painting on the wall, or her commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint, or whatever she had going in the way of trailer decoration; I’d let Kyra show me her bedroom and exclaim with wonder over her excellent assortment of stuffed animals and her favorite dolly, if that was required. There are all sorts of priorities in life.

Some your lawyer can understand, but I suspect there are quite a few he can’t. “Am I handling this right, Bunter? ” I asked the stuffed moose.

“Bellow once for yes, twice for no. ” I was halfway down the hall leading to the north wing, thinking of nothing but a cool shower, when from behind me, very soft, came a brief ring of the bell around Bunter’s neck. I stopped, head cocked, my shirt held in one hand, waiting for the bell to ring again. It didn’t. After a minute, I went the rest of the way to the bathroom and flipped on the shower.

The Lakeview General had a pretty good selection of wines tucked away in one corner—not much local demand for it, maybe, but the tourists probably bought a fair quantity—and I selected a bottle of Mondavi red.

It was probably a bit more expensive than Mattie had had in mind, but I could peel the price-sticker off and hope she wouldn’t know the difference. There was a line at the checkout, mostly folks with damp tee-shirts pulled on over their bathing suits and sand from the public beach sticking to their legs. While I was waiting my turn, my eye happened on the impulse items which are always stocked near the counter.

Among them were several plastic bags labeled ^C, NABET, each bag showing a cartoon refrigerator with the message BACK SOON stuck to it. According to the written info, there were two sets of consonants in each Magnabet, PLUS EXTRA VOWELS. I grabbed two sets. . . then added a third, thinking that Mattie Devore’s kid was probably just the right age for such an item.

Kyra saw me pulling into the weedy dooryard, jumped off the slumpy little swingset beside the trailer, bolted to her mother, and hid behind her. When I approached the hibachi which had been set up beside the cinderblock front steps, the child who’d spoken to me so fearlessly on Saturday was just a peeking blue eye and a chubby hand grasping a fold of her mother’s sundress below the hip. Two hours brought considerable changes, however. As twilight deepened, Kyra sat on my lap in the trailer’s living room, listening carefully—if with growing wooziness—as I read her the ever-enthralling story of Cinderella. The couch we were on was a shade of brown which can by law only be sold in discount stores, and extremely lumpy into the bargain, but I still felt ashamed of my casual preconceptions about what I would find inside this trailer. On the wall above and behind us there was an Edward Hopper print—that one of a lonely lunch counter late at night—and across the room, over the small Formica-topped table in the kitchen nook, was one of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers series. Even more than the Hopper, it looked at home in Mattie Devore’s doublewide. I have no idea why that should have been true, but it was. “Glass slipper will cut her footie, ” Ki said in a muzzy, considering way. “No way, ” I said. “Slipper-glass was specially made in the Kingdom of Grimoire. Smooth and unbreakable, as long as you didn’t sing high C while wearing them. ”

“I get a pair? ”

“Sorry, Ki, ” I said, “no one knows how to make slipper-glass anymore.

It’s a lost art, like Toledo steel. ” It was hot in the trailer and she was hot against my shirt, where her upper body lay, but I wouldn’t have changed it. Having a kid on my lap was pretty great. Outside, her mother was singing and gathering up dishes from the card table we’d used for our picnic. Hearing her sing was also pretty great. “Go on, go on, ” Kyra said, pointing to the picture of Cinderella scrubbing the floor. The little girl peeking nervously around her mother’s leg was gone; the angry I’m-going-to-the-damn-beach girl of Saturday morning was gone; here was only a sleepy kid who was pretty and bright and trusting.

“Before I can’t hold it anymore. ”

“Do you need to go pee-pee? ”

“No, ” she said, looking at me with some disdain. “Besides, that’s you-rinating.

Peas are what you eat with meatloaf, that’s what Mattie says. And I already went. But if you don’t go fast on the story, I’ll fall to sleep. ”

“You can’t hurry stories with magic in them, Ki. ”

“Well go as fast as you can. ”

“Okay. ” I turned the page. Here was Cinderella, trying to be a good sport, waving goodbye to her asshole sisters as they went off to the ball dressed like starlets at a disco. ”

“No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna—’”

“Those are the sisters’ names? ”

“The ones I made up for them, yes. Is that okay? ”

“Sure. ” She settled more comfortably on my lap and dropped her head against my chest again. “" No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna than a bright light suddenly appeared in the corner of the kitchen. Stepping out of it was a beautiful lady in a silver gown.

The jewels in her hair glowed like stars. ’”

“Fairy godmother, ” Kyra said matter-of-factly. “Yes. ” Mattie came in carrying the remaining half-bottle of Mondavi and the blackened barbecue implements. Her sundress was bright red. On her feet she wore low-topped sneakers so white that they seemed to flash in the gloom. Her hair was tied back and although she still wasn’t the gorgeous country-club babe I had briefly envisioned, she was very pretty. Now she looked at Kyra, looked at me, raised her eyebrows, made a lifting gesture with her arms. I shook my head, sending back a message that neither of us was ready quite yet. I resumed reading while Mattie went to work scrubbing her few cooking tools. She was still humming. By the time she had finished with the spatula, Ki’s body had taken on an additional relaxation which I recognized at once—she’d conked out, and hard. I closed the Little Golden Treasury of Fairy Tales and put it on the coffee-table beside a couple of other stacked books—whatever Mattie was reading, I presumed. I looked up, saw her looking back at me from the kitchen, and flicked her the V-for-Victory sign. “Noonan, the winner by a technical knockout in the eighth round, ” I said. Mattie dried her hands on a dishtowel and came over. “Give her to me. ” I stood up with Kyra in my arms instead.

“I’ll carry. Where? ” She pointed. “On the left. ” I carried the baby down the hallway, which was narrow enough so I had to be careful not to bump her feet on one side or the top of her head on the other. At the end of the hall was the bathroom, stringently clean. On the right was a closed door which led, I assumed, into the bedroom Mattie had once shared with Lance Devore and where she now slept alone. If there was a boyfriend who overnighted even some of the time, Mattie had done a good job of erasing his presence from the trailer. I slid carefully through the door on the left and looked at the little bed with its ruffled coverlet of cabbage roses, the table with the doll-house on it, the picture of the Emerald City on one wall, the sign (done in shiny stick-on letters) on another one that read CASA KYRA. Devore wanted to take her away from here, a place where nothing was wrong—where, to the contrary, everything was perfectly right. Casa Kyra was the room of a little girl who was growing up okay. “Put her on the bed and then go pour yourself another glass of wine, ” Mattie said. “I’ll zip her into her pj’s and join you. I know we’ve got stuff to talk about. ”

“Okay. ” I put her down, then bent a little farther, meaning to plant a kiss on her nose. I almost thought better of it, then did it anyway. When I left, Mattie was smiling, so I guess it was okay.

I poured myself a little more wine, walked back into the scrap of living room with it, and looked at the two books beside Ki’s fairy-tale collection. I’m always curious about what people are reading; the only better insight into them is the contents of their medicine cabinets, and rummaging through your host’s drugs and nostrums is frowned upon by the better class.

The books were different enough to qualify as schizoid. One, with a playing-card bookmark about three quarters of the way through, was the paperback edition of Richard North Patterson’s Silent Witness. I applauded her taste; Patterson and Demille are probably the best of the current popular novelists. The other, a hardcover tome of some weight, was The Collected Short Works of Herman Melville. About as far from Richard North Patterson as you could get. According to the faded purple ink stamped on the thickness of the pages, this volume belonged to Four Lakes Community Library. That was a lovely little stone building about five miles south of Dark Score Lake, where Route 68 passes off the TR and into Motton. Where Mattie worked, presumably. I opened to her bookmark, another playing card, and saw she was reading “Bartleby. ”

“I don’t understand that, ” she said from behind me, startling me so badly that I almost dropped the books. “I like it—it’s a good enough story—but I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. The other one, now, I’ve even figured out who did it. ”

“It’s a strange pair to read in tandem, ” I said, putting them back down. “The Patterson I’m reading for pleasure, ” Mattie said. She went into the kitchen, looked briefly (and with some longing, I thought) at the bottle of wine, then opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of Kool-Aid. On the fridge door were words her daughter had already assembled from her Magnabet bag: KI and MATTIE and HOHO (Santa Claus, I presumed). “Well, I’m reading them both for pleasure, I guess, but we’re due to discuss “Bartleby’ in this little group I’m a part of. We meet Thursday nights at the library. I’ve still got about ten pages to go. ”

“A readers’ circle. ”

“Uh-huh. Mrs. Briggs leads. She formed it long before I was born. She’s the head librarian at Four Lakes, you know. ”

“I do. Lindy Briggs is my caretaker’s sister-in-law. ” Mattie smiled. “Small world, isn’t it? ”

“No, it’s a big world but a small town. ” She started to lean back against the counter with her glass of Kool-Aid, then thought better of it. “Why don’t we go outside and sit? That way anyone passing can see that we’re still dressed and that we don’t have anything on inside-out. ”

I looked at her, startled She looked back with a kind of cynical good humor. It wasn’t an expression that looked particularly at home on her face. “I may only be twenty-one, but I’m not stupid, ” she said. “He’s watching me. I know it, and you probably do, too. On another night I might be tempted to say fuck him if he can’t take a joke, but it’s cooler out there and the smoke from the hibachi will keep the worst of the bugs away. Have I shocked you? If so, I’m sorry. ”

“You haven’t. ” She had, a little. “No need to apologize. ” We carried our drinks down the not-quite-steady cinderblock steps and sat side-by-side in a couple of lawn-chairs. To the left of us the coals in the hibachi glowed soft rose in the growing gloom. Mattie leaned back, placed the cold curve of her glass briefly against her forehead, then drank most of what was left, the ice cubes sliding against her teeth with a click and a rattle.

Crickets hummed in the woods behind the trailer and across the road.

Farther up Highway 68, I could see the bright white fluorescents over the gas island at the Lakeview General. The seat of my chair was a little baggy, the interwoven straps a little frayed, and the old girl canted pretty severely to the left, but there was still no place I’d rather have been sitting just then. This evening had turned out to be a quiet little miracle. . . at least, so far. We still had John Storrow to get to. “I’m glad you came on a Tuesday, ” she said. “Tuesday nights are hard for me. I’m always thinking of the ballgame down at Warrington’s.

The guys’ll be picking up the gear by now—the bats and bases and catcher’s mask—and putting it back in the storage cabinet behind home plate. Drinking their last beers and smoking their last cigarettes.

That’s where I met my husband, you know. I’m sure you’ve been told all that by now. ” I couldn’t see her face clearly, but I could hear the faint tinge of bitterness which had crept into her voice, and guessed she was still wearing the cynical expression. It was too old for her, but I thought she’d come by it honestly enough. Although if she didn’t watch out, it would take root and grow. “I heard a version from Bill, yes—Lindy’s brother-in-law. ”

“Oh ayuh—our story’s on retail. You can get it at the store, or the Village Cafe, or at that old blabbermouth’s garage. . . which my father-in-law rescued from Western Savings, by the way. He stepped in just before the bank could foreclose. Now Dickie Brooks and his cronies think Max Devore is walking talking Jesus. I hope you got a fairer version from Mr. Dean than you’d get at the All-Purpose. You must’ve, or you wouldn’t have risked eating hamburgers with Jezebel. ” I wanted to get away from that, if I could—her anger was understandable but useless. Of course it was easier for me to see that; it wasn’t my kid who had been turned into the handkerchief tied at the center of a tug-of-war rope. “They still play softball at Warrington’s?

Even though Devore bought the place? ”

“Yes indeed. He goes down to the field in his motorized wheelchair every Tuesday evening and watches.

There are other things he’s done since he came back here that are just attempts to buy the town’s good opinion, but I think he genuinely loves the softball games. The Whit-more woman goes, too. Brings an extra oxygen tank along in a little red wheelbarrow with a whitewall tire on the front. She keeps a fielder’s mitt in there, too, in case any foul pops come up over the backstop to where he sits. He caught one near the start of the season, I heard, and got a standing O from the players and the folks who come to watch. ”

“Going to the games puts him in touch with his son, you think? ” Mattie smiled grimly. “I don’t think Lance so much as crosses his mind, not when he’s at the ballfield. They play hard at Warrington’s—slide into home with their feet up, jump into the puckerbrush for the flyballs, curse each other when they do something wrong—and that’s what old Max Devore enjoys, that’s why he never misses a Tuesdayevening game. He likes to watch them slide and get up bleeding. ”

“Is that how Lance played? ” She thought about it carefully.

“He played hard, but he wasn’t crazed. He was there just for the fun of it. We all were. We women—shit, really just us girls, Barney Therriault’s wife, Cindy, was only sixteen—we’d stand behind the backstop on the first-base side, smoking cigarettes or waving punks to keep the bugs away, cheering our guys when they did something good, laughing when they did something stupid. We’d swap sodas or share a can of beer. I’d admire Helen Geary’s twins and she’d kiss Ki under the chin until Ki giggled. Sometimes we’d go down to the Village Cafe afterward and Buddy’d make us pizzas, losers pay. All friends again, you know, a ter the game. We’d sit there laughing and yelling and blowing straw-wrappers around, some of the guys half-loaded but nobody mean. In those days they got all the mean out on the ballfield. And you know what? None of them come to see me. Not Helen Geary, who was my best friend. Not Richie Lattimore, who was Lance’s best riend—the two of them would talk about rocks and birds and the kinds of trees there were across the lake for hours on end. They came to the uneral, and for a little while a ter, and then. . . you know what it was like? When I was a kid, our well dried up. For awhile you’d get a trickle when you turned on the tap, but then there was just air. Just air. ” The cynicism was gone and there was only hurt in her voice. “I saw Helen at Christmas, and we promised to get together for the twins’

birthday, but we never did. I think she’s scared to come near me. ”

“Because of the old man? ”

“Who else? But that’s okay, life goes on. ” She sat up, drank the rest of her Kool-Aid, and set the glass aside. “What about you, Mike? Did you come back to write a book? Are you going to name the TR? ” This was a local bon mot that I remembered with an almost painful twinge of nostalgia. Locals with great plans were said to be bent on naming the TR. “No, ” I said, and then astonished myself by saying: “I don’t do that anymore. I think I expected her to leap to her feet, overturning her chair and uttering a sharp cry of horrified denial. All of which says a good deal about me, I suppose, and none of it flattering. “You’ve retired? ” she asked, sounding calm and remarkably unhorri-fled. “Or is it writer’s block? ”

“Well, it’s certainly not chosen retirement. ” I realized the conversation had taken a rather amusing turn. I’d come primarily to sell her on John Storrow—to shove John Storrow down her throat, if that was what it tookand instead I was for the first time discussing my inability to work. For the first time with anyone. “So it’s a block. ”

“I used to think so, but now I’m not so sure. I think novelists may come equipped with a certain number of stories to tell—they’re built into the software. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. ”

“I doubt that, ” she said. “Maybe you’ll write now that you’re down here.

Maybe that’s part of the reason you came back. ”

“Maybe you’re right. ”

“Are you scared? ”

“Sometimes. Mostly about what I’ll do for the rest of my life. I’m no good at boats in bottles, and my wife was the one with the green thumb. ”

“I’m scared, too, ” she said. “Scared a lot. All the time now, it seems like. ”

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