SQUEEZE THE FEELING by John Dufresne

Murder Your Darlings

My honey Annick had been after me to write a thriller, a potboiler, a beach and airplane paperback, a page-turner, a murder mystery, a sizzling suspense novel, a read, as opposed to a book. She thought it was time I had a savings account, a 401(k), and decent health insurance. She said every writer in South Florida writes thrillers, and they all make money. “What makes you so special?”
“I make money.”
“Real money,” she said. “Just write one thriller.”
“They don’t let you write just one.”
“And then you can go back to the squalid and the quirky. You have to kill someone, Johnny.”
I said, “What kind of pillow talk is this?” We were in bed, and I was feeling frisky. I’d been trying to get Annick to take off her “10 Most Wanted Squirrels” T-shirt. Annick smelled like patchouli and soil.
Then this woman who loved me said, “Why don’t you want to write a book that someone would like to read?”
This was not the foreplay I’d been expecting. My new novel, The Bright Sun Will Bring It All To Light, was about to be published, and I was anxious about its critical reception. I needed a snuggle and squeeze. I was off on a promotional book tour in a few days and was frazzled just thinking about it.
Spot sneezed. He was in the closet, spying on us through the slats in the folding door.
Annick thought I was being irresponsible. She thought I was afraid to fail, and that’s why I wouldn’t tackle a thriller. I told her every story’s a failure. She rolled her eyes.
She said, “It’s not a sin to write for money.”
I nuzzled my face into her neck.
“Writing for your art doesn’t make you a saint.”
“I write for the reader.”
“Write for an audience.”
“I don’t have an audience. I’m not the Pope.”
“You are so Catholic.”
“Lapsed.”
“The worst kind,” she said. “You think you’re holier than the Church.”
Annick had found “The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot” on the Internet and printed it out for me. She said, “Just follow the directions.”
“That’s not writing.”
“Johnny, you know plots give you trouble.”
She gave me Raymond Chandler’s “Ten Commandments for the Detective Novel.” Number Five: “It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes.”
“Annick, I write what I have to write.”
Spot pushed open the closet door, walked to the bed, laid his muzzle on the mattress, snorted, sighed. I said, “Are we keeping you up?” He put his paw on the mattress. I warned him. “Spot, you know the rules.” He scratched my arm.
Annick said, “Maybe he needs to go o-u-t.”
Spot woofed that he did. Then he bounded out of the room. I got out of bed, slipped on a T-shirt and shorts. “You’re not going to fall asleep, are you?”
Annick smiled, yawned theatrically, pulled the sheet to her chin. Spot pranced back to the room with the leash in his mouth. I told him, “We’re only going as far as the Llinas’s house.” He dropped the leash, sat, stared at me. “Okay, we’ll go to Mr. Parkyn’s, but that’s it. Capisce?” Spot turned to dash out of the room and smacked his head against the door jamb.
When we got back, Annick wanted to talk. I nestled against her. She had come up with a story that I could write about a private investigator. “He used to be a hair stylist and make-up artist. He’s a master of disguises. And, yes, he’s gay. Right off, you’ve got yourself a niche market.”
“I’m listening.” I slid the sheet down to Annick’s waist.
“Mostly he spies on spouses, handles some insurance fraud cases.”
“But then he gets his big break.”
“He’s also a dresser at the opera. Opera’s his passion. And the extra income doesn’t hurt.”
“He’s supporting his ailing mother.”
“The night before the opening of La Boheme at the Center for the Performing Arts, the renowned, but thoroughly obnoxious tenor is murdered at a supper club in Wilton Manors. In a very gruesome way.”
“His understudy did it!”
“Everyone has a motive. This particular Rodolfo was an odious and despicable human being.”
I heard Spot lapping the water in his bowl. When he gulps like he was then, he ends up pushing the bowl with his muzzle, and he has to keep walking after it as it scrapes across the terrazzo floor.
“Eamon Ruiz.”
“Pardon me?”
“Our hero.”
I kissed her nose. Then I kissed Sammy Seeds and Frankie the Feeder. Annick pulled the T-shirt over her head. I kissed her belly. Then we heard someone singing, “It wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t been so good.” Spot must have stepped on the TV remote and turned on CMT.

In a Volatile State

Annick sat in the living room watching the news, drinking her first cup of coffee. She was talking to the TV, which meant she was talking to me. She didn’t want to disturb me while I wrote, but she did want me to know that she was distressed and angry about the five hundred children in Florida’s welfare system who’ve gone missing, and why wasn’t I out there on the couch with her and Spot, venting my outrage? Why wasn’t I composing scathing letters to the editor of the Sun-Sentinel?
Florida is a dangerous place for children. Part of the reason for the disappearance of the five hundred children might be that the state hired 183 convicted felons (yes, that includes child molesters) as child-care workers. One of the non-felonious workers recently passed out drunk in her car with an infant strapped in the back seat. The worker had been unconscious, snoring and drooling, for nine hours when the cops found her and the dehydrated baby.
Babies get lost here, and they get pummeled, get dropped in Dumpsters, tossed out apartment windows, thrown from highway overpasses. They are stolen from hospitals, sold for drugs, kidnapped off the streets, murdered by boyfriends because they soiled their diapers or murdered by dads because they wouldn’t stop crying. A Seminole father drowned his two sons on the reservation to get back at his ex-wife. The tribe refused to prosecute him. A mom drove her car into a canal, killing herself and her three babies, so that the welfare workers wouldn’t take them away. A dad sodomized his three-month-old son while Mom was off at work.
Babies are left home while moms go to bingo. Or they are suffocated in locked cars while dads run into the bar for a drink. Children are gunned down in drive-by shootings, are struck by hit-and-run drivers, are raped by teachers, by priests, by coaches, by counselors. They are allowed to live in filth and to starve. They are scalded with boiling water. Their bones are broken, their skulls fractured, their teeth shattered. Their skin is burned with cigarettes. Their bodies are stuffed into backpacks and buried in shallow graves. Annick says we only have one job to do, and that’s to protect and care for our children, and we don’t have the will to do it.
Florida’s not only a harrowing place for kids, it’s tough on fiction writers. How do you compete with daily life here? Right now a hospital is accusing labor organizers of using voodoo to frighten the workers into voting for union representation. A recent Miami City Manager was arrested for stealing money from the “Do the Right Thing Foundation” so he could buy tickets to sporting events and nights out with his mistress. In Hialeah Gardens, the “Mini-skirt Mayor” was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill her husband. Her husband testified on her behalf. A County Commissioner went to jail for voter fraud. His wife was having an affair with his lawyer. He appealed his conviction. He also said, “If you’ve been here long enough, you know that nobody gives a flying fuck if you ran a clean campaign. Nobody gives a shit if you’re involved in absentee ballot fraud or what have you. The bottom line is that you won.” Crazy Eddie and the Z-man squared off in the Miami mayoral race which Z apparently won until they tallied up the number of dead people who voted for him, some, apparently, more than once. Z showed up in the middle of the night in his robe at a woman’s house carrying a gun and wanting to know why she didn’t vote for him. Crazy Eddie was arrested for throwing a statue of St. Barbara at his wife in a domestic disturbance. At a County Commission meeting Chairwoman Marge Gwinn tried to cut off Commissioner Eleana Mazpul, and Mazpul responded with “You’re going to leave here in a body bag if you keep this up.” After corporate raider Chick Kachedorian was convicted of securities fraud, he built a $10-million, 36,000-square-foot house with twenty-one bathrooms and a basketball court, hid his money in his own Spirit of Love Foundation, and declared bankruptcy, owing creditors $200 million. He coaches Little League. The president of the Miami-Dade County teachers union was convicted of embezzlement. The president of the Broward County teachers union was convicted of child pornography. It goes on and on.
You might wonder why we have so many political and corporate reprobates living down here. We have a Homestead Exemption law, which, among other things, insures that no matter what crime you’ve committed, no matter whose money you’ve stolen, no one can seize the house you live in. And so the stock swindlers buy some land, pump their cash into multi-million dollar mansions, and all their wealth is safe. That’s why everyone from Al Capone to the Salvadoran Generals who ran the death squads move to the Sunshine State. It used to be patriotism, but now it’s Florida that is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I heard Annick use the words “electric chair.” I put down my pen.

In a Delicate Way

Annick said, “Guess what I am?”
“You’re a set designer.”
“That’s what I do. What am I?”
We were on the beach promenade walking to Angelo’s for pizza. “You’re hungry.”
“Guess what we are?”
I watched a man on Rollerblades with a python around his neck and a tattoo of a flaming Sacred Heart over his heart weave between pedestrians. I said, “In love.”
“We’re pregnant.”
I stopped walking, took her hand, and gave her a second to burst out laughing at her joke.
“According to the Pregnosis test.”
“Holy shit.” I shook my head and smiled. “You need to see a doctor.”
“I’ve got an appointment with Khani in the morning.”
So just when we were sure that Annick would never get pregnant, she got pregnant. Just when I had resigned myself to fatherlessness, I was becoming a father. And just when it had become conspicuously apparent that Florida was hazardous to children’s health, we were having a kid.
Annick said she couldn’t eat cheese and couldn’t even look at anything fried, so she ordered linguine with oil and garlic. I ordered beer with my pizza. I said we should probably get married, make it all official, and we should sell one of our houses or maybe both and move somewhere else. Somewhere safe and sane.
She said, “Whoa, Johnny. A pregnancy at forty-two is more problematic than a pregnancy for a younger woman. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I tried to imagine this new baby. He was wearing, or she was, I couldn’t tell, a cloth cap at a rakish angle. She had violet eyes and flushed cheeks. The middle of her upper lip was pointy like a beak. Over the sound system, Rosemary Clooney sang “Mambo Italiano.” The talk at the next table seemed to be about nihility, non-existence, and I thought we’re getting a more philosophical class of tourist than we used to, but then I heard the woman repeat “facility” and understood her to mean the ladies’ room. Next door at the ice cream shop a mother shook her crying child, telling him, Stop it right now, you hear me. A chevron of pelicans glided over the surf. In the dusky light, the first twinkle of gambling ships on the horizon. I squeezed Annick’s hand.
Annick was five weeks pregnant, we found out. We were to keep an eye on her blood pressure. We bought a blood pressure cuff and monitor and a stethoscope. Dr. Trask, the obstetrician, said we should consider an alpha fetoprotein test to check for spina bifida and Down syndrome. And what if we found out in the affirmative? What then? Well, we chose not to think about that until and if we needed to. If Annick found herself getting fatigued or achy, she was to get rest immediately. Everything looks great, Dr. Trask said. We bought zinc, folic acid, and multi-vitamins. We bought leafy green vegetables, multi-grain cereals, Evian water, and Toll House cookies.
I bought a used walnut cradle at Babycakes – we’re going to be needing it anyway – and an incredibly lifelike vinyl “So Truly Real” baby doll. I wrapped the doll in her receiving blanket, laid her in the cradle, and put the cradle by the bed. I called Spot. He moseyed in and stopped when he saw the cradle. He sniffed it, backed up and barked. I told him, No! He stuck his nose through the slats and woofed. He put his paws up on the cradle and when he tried to stand, the cradle rocked and he smacked his chin on the top bar. This was going to take a while. When I picked up the doll, Spot leaped at it. I slapped his nose. He sneezed. Twenty minutes later I had Spot licking the doll’s arm. Licking and growling, I’ll admit, but more licking. Whenever he stealthily opened his mouth, I said Tut! and he stopped. Good boy, Spot! But then he grabbed the doll’s arm in his teeth and took off for the kitchen. Better, I thought, he gets this out of his system now.

Dog Mental

Spot hates a closed door. He likes to pad around the house, following his nose from room to room, sniffing about to see that all is well. What he’s really doing is he’s looking for trouble. Like maybe he can accidentally bump his clumsy self into the TV tray and knock over the microwave pizza I was about to have for lunch or maybe there’s a line of white-footed ants crawling out of the electrical outlet, and he can bark at them. Or there’s a scrub lizard loose in the house that he can scare up and chase behind the furniture. I eased the bedroom door shut – just the slightest snick as the latch bolt slipped into the well of the strike plate. But that was like a gunshot to Spot the Vigilant. He scratched at the door. I told him I was just making the bed. When he heard the purr of the zipper on my roll-on luggage bag, he woofed and dug at the floor, trying to burrow under the door. I put the luggage back into the closet, the socks back into the drawer, rumpled the bedspread, and opened the door. I said, “How’s my sweetie pie?”
Spot sniffed the floor, the bed, under the bed, under the cradle. He walked into the closet and barked at the luggage. I told him, Okay, you caught me, but I was only packing for our sleepover at Annick’s. I couldn’t tell him the truth – not yet – that I was off on a two-week book tour. Spot can’t handle the truth. The phone rang. Annick asked me if she could buy a small BB gun. I said, “Annick, listen to yourself.”
“But the friggin’ squirrels are driving me crazy. They’re eating all the bird food, digging up my garden. And the raccoons are worse. It’s not fair.”
Annick’s preferences in wildlife ran to the winged and the colorful. She had planted milkweed, verbena, and shrimp plants to attract butterflies, and soon the yard was busy with metalmarks, zebra longwings, American ladies, and red admirals. She put up feeders to attract birds. She imagined a little paradise of hummingbirds, painted buntings, and palm warblers. What she got were grackles, mourning doves, and blue jays, and the jays quickly developed a taste for red admirals. Eventually, a pair of cardinals arrived, and then a northern parula, and the occasional monk parakeet. Annick was in heaven.
When the squirrels began raiding the feeders, Annick set out ears of corn and Squirola cakes. And that worked until the raccoons appeared – a mom and her three adorable and ravenous kits. Annick was briefly charmed by the babies, even put out puppy chow and unsalted peanuts for them. They ate the chow, the nuts, the corn, and the cakes. They climbed the banana tree and ate the fruit. The squirrels returned to the feeders. The birds vanished. The raccoons dug up the yard. Annick ordered quart jars of fox and coyote urine and broadcast the pellets along the perimeter of the yard. The urine had no deleterious effect on the raccoons and squirrels, but did seem to attract possums and the occasional iguana. Annick went to Home Depot and bought a bag of decorative Jersey Shore Stones and hurled them at the animals.
“One of the raccoons came after me this morning with his teeth bared. He was hissing.”
“Annick, you can’t buy a gun. It’s illegal to fire a weapon in the city limits. This isn’t Hialeah.”
“Jimmy Spillane shot the coconuts out of his tree.”
“Jimmy Spillane is psychotic.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Get rid of the feeders, you’ll be rid of the pests.”
“I saw a marsh rat and a squirrel fighting over birdseed this morning and I was rooting for the rat.”
“We’ll be over after I take Spot to therapy.”

See Spot Run

When Spot disrupted a canine wedding ceremony (between Casimir, a Lithuanian hound, and Bijou, a rat terrier) at Bark Park, he was given a choice: sixty hours of community service or permanent banishment from the park. (This was not his first offense.) When I suggested to the pig-tailed park ranger that sixty hours seemed excessive, she told me that she considered the attempted rape of the bride at the altar a particularly shameful crime. I said, “Spot’s fixed. There was no ravish in his rapture.”
She took the citation book out of her breast pocket. “How do you think poor Casimir must feel right now? His little jewel defiled.”
I said, “Spot’s mount was not Vesuvian.”
She asked me for my identification.
“His rapier has been dulled. There’s no starch in his noodle. Bijou remains Casimir’s exquisite and chaste trinket.”
She said, “Can we please talk like adults.”
I registered Spot as a therapy dog at the Prince of Peace Nursing Home in Hollywood. His affability and charm were meant to “bring sparkle to a sterile day.” He was there to offer comfort and companionship to the residents, to ease their stress and lift their gloom. Spot was a natural. He likes everyone, is completely indiscriminate in his relationships. His community service should have been a breeze.
On our first visit, Spot pranced into the lounge like he owned the joint, saw all the new, if not especially bright, faces and wagged his mighty tail at the prospect of all the delectable petting he was in for. The errant tail swept a water glass off Mr. Torrey’s tray. Stefan, the aide, went for a mop, a broom, and a dust pan. I picked up the larger pieces of glass. Mr. Torrey woke up, looked at Spot, and said, “O’Neill, you son of a bitch. I thought I killed you in 1955.”
Stefan said how Spot was maybe a little too rambunctious for this kind of work. Mrs. Agajanian yelled “Bad dog” at Spot, and Spot barked at her, one of those get-out-of-your-wheelchair-and-we’ll-see-who’s-a-bad-dog kind of barks. Stefan said he wouldn’t tolerate any more of this disruptive behavior. I cut my finger and asked Stefan for a Band-Aid. He could give me one, but I’d have to fill out an insurance form. I used a tissue.
Mr. Ujjalroop wanted Spot to do some tricks. I explained how we weren’t entertainers, just visitors. He waved us away. I introduced Spot to Mrs. Borzilleri. He sweetly laid his paw on her knee. She screamed bloody murder. Stefan said, “A polite dog does not touch a person unless invited.”
On our next visit, the residents were celebrating Mr. Reyes’ ninety-first birthday. Spot got a pointy party hat and a dish of Neapolitan ice cream and angel food cake. He was so wired he couldn’t sit during the balloon volleyball game. He played for both sides. Just as Mr. Ujjalroop, one hand on his turban, reached to swat the balloon, Spot leaped and struck the balloon with his nose. Then he ran under the net, muscled Mrs. Borzilleri out of the way and punched at the balloon. When it popped, a startled Mrs. Fangboner fell to the floor and broke her delicate wrist.
So now Spot was on both probation and a short leash. When we got to the lounge, Elvis was there. Elvis Nguyen is a Vietnamese nail tech who spends an afternoon a week doing manicures and pedicures at the home. Turns out the residents had taken a bus to Broward General for their flu shots, so we were alone. Elvis did Spot’s nails a light shade of orchid.
Elvis and I sat on the couch. On the television, a young woman in a red camisole sat up in bed weeping. The man she was with buttoned his shirt and examined himself in the mirror. I wondered if Telemundo was tackling Chekhov. The woman said, “Por que, Enrique? Por que?” Elvis wanted to know how come I didn’t have a job. I told him I wrote stories and mentioned the new book. He said, “Would I like your book?”
“Tell me what you like to read.”
“Louis L’Amour. Everyone in Xa Vo Dat read L’Amour. It’s how we learned English, pardner. L’Amour is America’s Shakespeare.”
We agreed to exchange books – The Bright Sun . . . for Last of the Breed. Elvis told me he wanted to move out west, and he was saving every penny he made to “get out of Dodge.” He said, “I want to be able to look all around me and see the horizon. I want to look for miles in all directions and see that I’m the only person there.”

Wild Kingdom

When Spot and I arrived, Annick was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking herbal tea, eating yogurt and wheat germ, reading a cookbook. Spot blasted through the door, ran to Annick, and sat pretty beside her. He licked Annick’s face and slobbered on her neck while she hugged him, called him her beauty Spot, her prettiest baby. “Yes, he is!”
I poured myself a cup of coffee, kissed Annick, and sat at the table. Spot went to his toy box, slid the cover off with his nose, took out his jollyball and doggie donut and dropped them to the floor. He took out his plush, grunting mallard, gave it a shake, and tossed it over his shoulder. He stuck his nose back into the box and came out with his boingo bunny, which no longer boings. He carried the bunny to the rug and lay down.
Annick said, “How does this sound? Cajun squirrel ravioli?”
“Annick, you didn’t kill a squirrel?”
“Not yet.”
I looked at the cookbooks on the table. Wok on the Wild Side and Game Time.
She said, “Did you see the paper this morning?” She took the local section out of the pile and passed it over.
A mother and her boyfriend locked her seven-year-old daughter in a room for ten months and gave her so little food she weighed twenty-five pounds when she was rescued. She was made to use a closet as her toilet. The boyfriend also punished the child by biting her on the back.
Annick said, “If you wrote a thriller, we could move away.”
The squirrels were running across the window screens in the Florida room and leaping from the screens to the bird feeders. It was like they were at an amusement park. Annick opened the door, and Spot ran out, and the squirrels dove for the mangroves where they sat, flipped their tails, and barked at Spot.
I said, “They sent trappers into the mangroves.”
Annick’s face brightened. “For the squirrels?”
“For the monkeys.”
Five days earlier at dawn, a man driving along Dania Beach Boulevard struck and killed a monkey who’d been crossing the road with a coconut. When the man got out of his car to move the body, a troop of monkeys leaped from the trees and charged him. “They were shrieking,” he said. “Baring their fangs. I just made it to the car. One of them had his tail straight up in the air and a stick in his hand.” Well, that was enough to get the lawsuit-shy city attorneys on the case. They hired a couple of Seminoles to go in and catch every fringe-faced vervet they could find. The trappers stood to clear $800 for each monkey they delivered to a health lab.
In the morning we told Spot we’d be right back. We were running to Petsmart for dog chow and we needed him to stay here and keep the squirrels off the screens. Annick put out a bowl of Spot’s favorite meal, baked kibbee. She and I drove to my place, where I packed my bags and stored So Truly Real on my closet shelf. Annick dropped me at the airport. I told her, Yes, I’ll think about the thriller. You take care of our babies.

On the Road Again

The tour began in New Orleans. I picked up a rental car. (I may or may not have had money on my credit card when I showed up. I held my breath, listened for the whirr of the blessed approval machine. I’d sent the payment in at the last minute.) I’d be driving through Louisiana and Mississippi to Memphis. Redbuds in bloom all the way. I somehow lucked out and got upgraded to a top-floor suite at the Sheraton on Canal. Before bed, I headed down to the Pelican Bar and learned that the American Academy of Dermatologists were convening here. I eavesdropped on conversations about surgical hair restoration and skin lesions. (You don’t want to know.) I made some notes toward my thriller:
Eamon Ruiz is out line dancing at Longhorns. He’s in the middle of a Walk Across Texas when his cell phone vibrates. He checks the caller ID, sees it’s Bronwyn Barnett, his boss, the artistic director of the South Florida Opera. Eamon takes off his cowboy hat, shouts into Orson’s ear that he’ll be back shortly. He goes upstairs to the Black Stallion Saloon where he can hear himself think. Bronwyn tells him that Aldo Tripodi – their Rodolpho – has been murdered behind the Casablanca Supper Club. Eamon tells her to call the cops. She has. She says, We need your help.
Why?
We need to keep this as low-profile as possible. It could ruin the Opera.
Eamon says, Listen to yourself, Bronwyn. You sound like you’re in some pulp fiction novel.
Someone stuck a hose in Aldo’s mouth and poured sulphuric acid down his throat.
Ouch.
Someone with issues.
And thick rubber gloves.
There may have been some hanky-panky going on.
Hanky-panky?
Mifky-pifky, Eamon. Aldo’s pants were down to his ankles and so were his satin panties.
Not a pretty picture.
Why are tenors always so goddamn brainsick?
Meet you at the Casablanca in twenty minutes.
Hector gave the corpse an Italian bath and a trouser adjustment before the police arrived.
Not a wise thing to do, Bronwyn.
Eamon punches Off. His hunch is that the murderer is trying to frame the understudy. The understudy is the killer’s real target, and poor randy, great-bellied Aldo was merely a pawn in the killer’s game. But then Eamon wonders if he isn’t getting ahead of himself.
Back in the room, I called Annick. She and Spot were up watching a pet psychic on Animal Planet. Apparently, this toy poodle named Belmondo was channeling Cromwell, a greyhound who had lived with James II. Annick said she was learning a lot about the Restoration. She said she’d gone to Home Depot, bought a Hav-a-Heart trap, baited it with canned mackerel, and set it out in the yard by the heliconia. Within twenty minutes she’d caught the Harrisons’ cat, Malvolio. I said, Try peanuts. She told me she felt fine – some cramps, a little nausea.
I stuffed plugs into my ears, put on my eyeshade, fell asleep, dreamed of Annick in a red camisole. She was studying her round belly in the mirror. She said, Why, Johnny? Why? So Truly Real fussed in her cradle. I told Annick, I think she’s hungry. At 3 a.m. I got blasted out of sleep by a furious party in the adjoining suite. People banged into my door; women screeched in the hallway. Then the music got louder. I called security. In five minutes, everything stopped, like that! I slept again until six when I got a series of hang-up phone calls from, I imagine, a frustrated cosmetic dermatologist. I’d spoiled his annual dalliance with a perky drug rep, and now he was going back to Decatur unfulfilled. I got a note in the morning from Billy Shelby, security supervisor, thanking me for “taking the time to inform us about the noise issue.”
I showed up for my two o’clock signing at the Booketeria in Gretna. This was a Saturday, and the warehouse was nearly empty. The assistant manager I was to meet had taken the day off to go fishing. A young sales associate, who’d been dusting books, was assigned to help. She announced over the loudspeaker that I was here to sign my new book, The Bright Sun Will Bring Us All Some Light. Close enough. She pointed me to my table. I bought a coffee from a kid who told me he read graphic novels, sat at a table with my stacked pyramid of books, and waited. A woman approached and asked if I’d written any books she’s read. I said, Tell me what you’ve read. She thought about that, then she said, Well, what’s this book about? – a legitimate question, of course, but an impossible one to answer. So I said, It’s about love and death. She cocked her head, lifted an eyebrow. Was I trying to be cute or something? I knew what she wanted. It’s not a romance, I said. Not a mystery. It’s not a thriller. She walked away. I was alone again at the launch of my grand book tour. The kid at the café turned away when I caught him pitying me.
I found a book on childbirth and took it to my table. I saw that a fetus at six weeks looks not unlike a seahorse with fingers. I took out my notebook and got to work on the thriller. Eamon arrives at the Casablanca and sees that the deputy in charge of the crime scene is an old beau, Randy Eversole. I think, Well, this could be interesting. Randy becomes Eamon’s adversary, an obstacle in Eamon’s solving the case. But why would he? Randy has a wife and two teenage boys. So maybe he’s ashamed of his fling with Eamon. Or resentful. Or maybe he’s still in love with Eamon. That’s when I realized that a gentleman in a running suit was standing at the table. He introduced himself – Crumpton Murray. We shook hands. Said he was here to buy my book. I said, Let me buy you a coffee. He said, I got to run. He told me to sign the book for Crumpton and Quennelle, and he spelled the names for me. Crumpton said, Don’t feel bad. You wrote a book; the folks who ain’t here did not.
Meanwhile the corpse is lying in the alley, covered by a blanket. Eamon notices Bronwyn eyeing Randy. Eamon says, Randy, would you mind if I took a peek at the tenor? Randy says, Step away from the body, sir.

Two Thumbs Down

Annick called me at seven on Sunday morning.
I said, “How were the reviews?”
“The guys from Little Rock and Houston think you’re a genius.”
“The Times?”
“Seemed like he praised it in spite of himself.”
“And the bad news is?”
“A couple of people didn’t like it, really didn’t like it.”
I asked Annick to fax the reviews to me at the hotel. She said wasn’t I going to ask about Spot.
“How’s Spot?”
“He misses you. He’s restless, has toys scattered all over the house. He’ll play with his fleecy bone for five minutes and then drop it.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve got an appointment with the doctor. Spotting a little. Just want to be safe.”
I told Annick that people who read potboilers want to be spoon-fed. She said they read more than anyone else and buy books like crazy. They keep the book business afloat and subsidize writers like you. I said, Thanks, honey. She said, It goes like this: A murder happens and many people are suspected. All but one of these suspects – the murderer – are somehow eliminated. The murderer is arrested or is killed.

I stopped at Bo’s Café in Ferriday for breakfast and read the Natchez Democrat. I saw that a local man decapitated his pit bull and kept its head, wrapped in foil, in his freezer. Pit bull’s name had been Manson, and he wouldn’t listen to reason, the owner/killer said. I took out my scissors and clipped out the article. Why does he keep the head? I finished my grits, ordered more coffee, and then I read the reviews.
The first reviewer wrote that my characters (my darlings) were “one-dimensional” and “neither memorable nor deserving of the reader’s sympathy.” Yikes! They were “blurry repositories of clichéd feelings.” And then he got nasty. He was so flustered he misspelled my name throughout the review. The second reviewer found my characters “offputting” [sic] and “superficial,” and objected to what she saw as my “cheap shots at contemporary fiction.”
The two bad reviews I’d gotten were both written by citizens of Iowa City. I figured these dogs in the manger were students at the famous writers school. Annick must have noticed the coincidence, too. She sent along a web page of Iowa facts. Iowa is the thirtieth state in population, the twenty-third in land area, and 90 percent of that land is under cultivation. It’s first in pork production, first in corn production, and second in soybean production. It’s the eleventh smartest state. And here are the top ten fun things to do in Iowa: 10. View the Herbert Hoover birth cottage in West Branch. 9. Eat as much as you want for free at Pancake Day in Centerville. 8. See the country’s largest collection of cotton balls in Waverly. 7. Visit the National Rotisserie Chicken Museum in Sigourney. 6. Attend the Donna Reed Festival in Denison. 5. Tour the American Eraser Factory in Des Moines and receive an eraser in the shape of Iowa. 4. Participate in National Tractor Safety Day, statewide. 3. Visit the Nail Clipper Shrine in Cascade. 2. Play mini-golf at the largest mini-golf course in the world in Dubuque. 1. Visit the Iowa 80 Truck Stop and order a Chubby Burger – two-and-a-half pounds of meat!
This was like a message from above. Move to Iowa, son! Jell-O salads, amber waves of grain, unlocked front doors, 4-H Clubs, the State Fair, sober politicians, Scandinavian Days, Balloon Festivals, living history farms, scenic byways, American Gothic, wholesome after-school activities, the Music Man, half-way to everywhere, Quaker Oats and John Wayne.

In Monroe I checked into the Palms Motel, called my friend Kebo, and asked him to meet me at Enoch’s in thirty minutes. Then I called Annick. I asked her would she want to move to Iowa./
“Do they have squirrels?”
Annick got a clean bill of health from the doctor. She’s a little weak; she should rest. She bought a book of baby names. She bought a stuffed bunny. Spot thinks it’s for him.
My friend Kebo is a character in The Bright Sun, etc. He can’t understand why I make things up about him when his own life is so profoundly and flamboyantly troubled. I told him his troubles had no shape, and his problems never ended.
He said, “Romeo Pargoud’s dead.”
“Does that cancel your debt?”
“Far as I’m concerned.”
“You have anything to do with his demise?”
“I won’t dignify your insinuendo with an answer.”
Kebo’s a big boy, about 320 pounds. He’s been a professional boxer, a chef, a repo man, a lawyer, an inmate, a bouncer, a home builder, a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama, a water-ski instructor, and the automobile mechanic that he currently was.
He said, “I want to be a private investigator.”
“In Monroe?”
“In your next book.”
“You been talking to Annick?”
“I specialize in tabloid crimes. I scour the tabs for cases no one else will touch.”
“I suppose you’ll run into Elvis eventually.”
“Kebo and the King.”
“You don’t really think he’s alive, do you?”
“I’d like to think so. White pompadour, thick spectacles. He’s got a woman who loves him so much she bought him a gun cabinet for Valentine’s Day.”
“He’s a lucky man.”
“Think of the movie rights, Johnny. We’d be rich.”

Evidence

The book tour was enjoyable most of the time (roasted calamari stuffed with chorizo and garlic chips in a lobster tomato reduction at Postrio in San Francisco), ludicrous some of the time (the two-minute News at Noon interview with the anchor who hadn’t read my book, but could tell from the cover it was a hoot), and unpleasant on occasion (airports). I took notes as I traveled.

D.C.: Annick calls and asks me to come home. No, she’s not sick. She just thinks I should be there. I tell her I can’t; this is a book tour; people are depending on me. She says, You can but you won’t. I say if I come home now, then the book reviewers will have won. She doesn’t laugh. She says, I’ve always supported you, but you can’t be there for me the one time I ask, the one time I need you. Mr. Fiction can’t be bothered, is that it? I ask her if she’s been taking her vitamins. She says, Is this how you’ll be as a father? She says, Maybe we should just call this off. Before I can ask her what “this” means, she hangs up. She calls back in twenty minutes to apologize. She’s crying. She tells me it’s her hormones driving her crazy. We kiss good-bye. She calls back in an hour to tell me that if I were at all sensitive I would know that it’s not her hormones at all. It’s her fears. And she hangs up. I call back and get her machine: You’ve reached Annick and Spot. Today’s words are chuff and fantod.

New York: I ask my media escort if she’s had to deal with any literary jerks. She sips her drink and tells me about the writer who has two houses in two cities, one for his wife, one for him. At a reception after a reading, said writer hit on every girl under seventeen in the place and took a blonde high-school girl back to his hotel. The escort said the writer was a pathetic predator (as well as a pompous prig and ponderous prose stylist), but she wouldn’t tell me his name. I bought her another drink.

Cambridge: In the atrium at Au Bon Pain, I sit beside a man wearing seven winter coats and carrying several others. Evidently, he’s looted the Salvation Army donation box. The man beside him has several jackets stuffed inside a plastic sack. Sparrows fly overhead, land on tables, peck at croissant crumbs. A woman with a mat of gray hair stands – she seems to have a single, knee-length dreadlock. Everyone is more interesting than I am.

Portland: A woman at the reading who plans on picking up my book at the library tells me she writes “goddess-based, nude Buddhist guerilla poetry.”

Seattle: I find an Internet café and check my predictably disappointing e-mail – all the usual penis enlargement and mortgage reduction opportunities. I write back to Dr. Olofemi Okoye of the Central Bank of Nigeria and assure him that I am down with sincerity of purpose, mutual understanding, and utmost confidentiality, and if he will just send me a cashier’s check for the US $24.6 million, we’ll get the embezzlement ball rolling. I send an “Expression of Love” bouquet to Annick. I walk to Pike Place market, buy a bowl of chowder and watch the ferries crisscross Elliot Bay. I think about life with baby, and I see myself at my writing desk, the baby cooing in her cradle beside the desk – I can rock her with my foot – and Spot curled by the cradle, snoring and twitching in his sleep. I’m writing about murder and mayhem. I call Annick’s cell and leave a message about how I love and miss her. Annick’s cell used to play “Ode to Joy.” Now it plays the Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

San Francisco: My driver/escort in San Francisco, Felix Shorten, once took Jack Kerouac home to dinner at his mom’s in Jersey. Mom called Jack a bum, tossed him out. Felix writes psychic novels and novelizations of movies, is the lead vocalist in a performance poetry band, and is married to Janis Joplin’s ex-publicist. He likes being early to our appointments. We’re sitting at a sidewalk café in Berkeley waiting to do an NPR show around the corner. Felix tells me he’s into media rights, and I’m not sure what he means. He says he collects them, buys them on the Internet. He’s got twelve of them on his bookcase gathering dust. I realize then that he means meteorites. He’s investing in meteorites. A woman, having an animated conversation with herself, walks toward us. I tell Felix that delusional folks ought to be given fake cell phones, so when they’re babbling to no one, they look the same as all the businessmen at airports. Felix seems a bit uncomfortable. I can tell I’d made a possibly non-PC joke in this most PC of towns. (In Berkeley you can still smoke outside, but you have to keep moving.)

Harlan

Back at the hotel, I put the TV news on mute and called Annick. She told me she’d been on the Internet all night looking at real estate in Iowa. “We could live like royalty.”
On the news, a column of uniformed police officers and citizen volunteers combed through an area of thick brush in Golden Gate Park. Closed captioning told me that a boy had blown off his index finger with an M-80, and the folks we saw were searching for that missing digit.
Annick said, “I found this 120-year-old, two-story, 3/2, in Harlan, porches front and back, three acres of land, cellar, attic, and garage, asking $52,000. Can you believe it?”
“We can sell one house, keep the other, buy the Harlan house –”
“Buy three. Invest in Harlan!”
“Live in Harlan for the summer and Florida in winter.”
“You’re forgetting about school.”
“Home school?”
“West Ridge Elementary.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m allergic to the iron supplements.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Eat more meat.”
On TV a guy in a camouflage outfit pointed to where his dog had found the detonated finger. Had to slap the dog in the head to get him to give it up. As far as he could tell the finger was salvageable. Annick said, “You’ll think about Iowa then?”
“Nothing but.”

I decided to write a thriller set in Iowa about a man named Harlan Audubon, a farmer who grew up in a quiet and unspectacular way out in the western part of the state. As a boy, Harlan rarely spoke up, rarely declared his needs and wants. He tried to please adults who, he hoped, might come to appreciate him. That meant being obedient, industrious, invisible, and god-fearing. He never had a close friend to speak of. Never had a proper girlfriend. Never stood out – just another stalk in an acre of corn. And then came the senior prom at Black Hawk High School, and it was arranged that he would escort Doris Breeding whose parents owned Breeding’s Rexall Drugs in town.
Harlan drove his father’s Chevy pickup to the Grange Hall. He and Doris danced without enthusiasm or rhythm. They skipped the post-prom beer party at the cemetery, drove home in silence, and married two years later. Harlan’s parents moved to town, into a front-gabled Craftsman with a spindlework porch, settled in to enjoy their retirement and await the arrival of their grandchildren. Harlan was to pay his father $300 a month until the mortgage on the farm was paid off. The children arrived, one-two-three. Girl-boy-girl. Eva-Ethan-Emma.
The novel begins with an accident. On their drive home from Eva’s graduation party, Harlan’s beloved daughters are killed when their pickup slams into a bridge abutment on Rock River Road. The girls had been speeding. Alcohol was involved. Doris was numb and desolate, was certain that she would have taken her own empty life had Ethan not been there for her. She quit going to church, told Harlan that the death of children was proof there was no God. Each Sunday morning, Harlan felt the shame of his family’s absence at Shepherd of the Valley Methodist Church, felt the eyes of the congregation on him, felt the weight of their abominable pity. He reminded Doris that he’d been against letting the girls attend a party where there was bound to be drinking going on. If he had been obeyed, the girls would be alive today.
Doris screamed, picked up her coffee mug and struck Harlan on the side of his face. He didn’t mean to, but he did, he punched her, dislocated her jaw it turned out. He apologized immediately and profusely. He was bleeding at the eye, soaked with coffee. Doris fled to her parents who took her to Mercy Hospital. A sheriff’s deputy paid Harlan a visit, but charges were not filed. This was an aberration, wasn’t it? Harlan said it was. Doris came home after weeks of entreaty and moved into the girls’ old room. She and Harlan were civil but not intimate, familiar but not friendly. When Harlan suggested they move away from Black Hawk, get a new start somewhere else, Doris told him Black Hawk was home. But Doris did leave. Not long after Ethan had moved to Des Moines to work at a public relations firm, she left Harlan and moved into town. She found herself a receptionist’s job at Johannsen’s Funeral Parlor and a cozy rent house on Walnut Street. So: Harlan goes after Doris, begs her to come home. He’s desperate, and yet he doesn’t say what he has never said – that he loves her. He says he’ll have to sell the farm. Can’t work it alone. She tells him to go right ahead. Knock yourself out.
The stillness in the house makes him jittery. When he eats, he eats frozen dinners, standing at the sink. He drinks instant coffee, sleeps in his clothes on the Barcalounger. One night Harlan drives into town for a meal at Lundgren’s. He’s got the radio on, and he hears himself singing along with Johnny Cash and realizes he’s feeling lighter-hearted than he has in a dog’s age. He rolls down the window and sings. “I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been everywhere.” He calls Arthur at Nelson Realty on the cell and tells Arthur’s machine that he’s decided to auction off the equipment and sell the farm. Come by in the morning and we’ll set the wheels in motion. He stops at Drucker’s Five & Dime and buys a road atlas of the U.S. He’s never owned a map before in his life.
They’re out of lapskaus, but Astrid recommends the poached halibut. To die for, she says. Harlan sits at the counter, looks around and tries to memorize the place, thinking he’ll never be here again. He remembers eating here with the girls after the father-daughter dance at the middle school. That may have been the proudest night of his life. He opens the atlas. He wonders what state is the opposite of Iowa and figures it must be Nevada, all mountains and desert. Shaped like a guillotine’s blade. He’ll move to Nevada. And that’s when he hears her voice.
Harlan looks in the mirror and sees Doris behind him walking to a table with a man he doesn’t recognize. Astrid brings the halibut and freshens the coffee. And then Doris is laughing at something the fellow has said. Harlan puts down his fork and wipes his lips with his napkin. He walks to Doris’s table and says hi. He tells her about the sale of the farm and about Nevada and all. Doris says she’s happy for him. Doris’s friend introduces himself, holds out his hand. Harlan tells him, Why don’t you shut your cake hole. I’m talking to my wife. The man stands. Harlan pushes him back down in his seat. The restaurant goes quiet. Astrid ducks into the kitchen. The man slaps away Harlan’s hand. Harlan grabs the man’s throat, but before the ruckus gets out of control, Donny Lundgren has his hands on Harlan’s shoulder and leads him back to the counter. He says, We don’t want trouble, Mr. Audubon.
Later that night Doris is found murdered, strangled in her house. Harlan is roused before dawn by a knocking at his door. He lets the deputies in. The younger, familiar looking deputy notices the road atlas opened on the kitchen table. He says, Going to disappear, were you? Harlan is arrested. Open and shut case, the deputies figure. Harlan gets his one phone call. He calls the only man who can help him out, Elvis Nguyen, nail tech, cowboy, private investigator.
I put down my pen, massaged my hand. I wanted to call Annick, but it was 3 a.m. back east. I’d done it – I had my thriller. All I had to do now was write it.

Monkey Business

I threw my suitcase in the trunk, hopped into the car, and kissed Annick. She eased out into the airport traffic. I said, “Where’s Spot?”
“Under the bed. He’s afraid of the monkey.”
“What monkey?”
“The one in the backyard.”
I could see she wasn’t kidding. “The trappers must have driven him out of the swamp.”
“There’s an injunction against the trapping.”
“The monkeys went to court?”
“The PETA people did. The squirrels are gone.”
“One consolation.”
“I miss them.”
On the drive home Annick told me how at first Spot thought the monkey wanted to play fetch. The monkey would toss a banana at Spot, and Spot would get it, bring it back to the tree, drop it, and bark at the monkey. Finally the exasperated monkey snapped at Spot, and Spot backed off. She told me what drove Spot under the bed was what the monkey did to the squirrel.
“The squirrel with the white ears – the cute one – jumped from the chiminea to the fence. The monkey reached out and caught the poor little thing in mid-air. Caught it by the throat in one hand, held it above his head and examined it. The squirrel went limp. You should have seen the monkey’s eyes. He looked like Klaus Kinski. The monkey scowled at the squirrel, then tossed him in the water. Spot saw the whole thing.”
When we got home, Kinski was not in the yard. Annick prepared martinis while I crawled under the bed to talk to Spot. He thumped his tail, whined, licked my face, but wouldn’t come out, not even when I showed him the glow-in-the-dark fetch ball I’d bought him. I told him everything would be fine now that I was back. He woofed. I said I’d be in the parlor with Annick.
We toasted my return. I touched her belly and said, “How’s our baby?”
“I thought I felt him kick yesterday, but I’m not sure.”
I showed her the tie-dye T-shirt I bought for baby in the Haight.
“Can you believe she’ll be this tiny?”
“And you?”
“I’m okay.” She smiled.
“I think I’ve got the start of a thriller.”
Annick said maybe I shouldn’t be writing pulp fiction after all.
“I think I’ll try it anyway.”
“You’ll do something to violate each of the commandments. I know you will.”
“It’s all about misdirection.”
“Then it’s just a trick?”
“It’s magic if you do it right.”
And that’s when we heard what sounded like a gunshot out back. We ran out of the house, heard splashing in the canal and looked over to see Kinski floating face down in the water.
I said, “Thank God I’m your alibi.”
“Who would have done this?”
“He went after my cat.”
“Jesus Christ, Jimmy, you scared the shit out of us.”
Jimmy Spillane tipped his cap and apologized. “Sumbitch had Babytat in his mitts. I warned him off.”
Fish roiled around the monkey carcass, nudging it out to deeper water.
Annick said, “You were protecting your own, Jimmy. No one can blame you.”
“Clean shot. Got him right here.” Jimmy pointed to his forehead. “Ran about ten yards with his brains all over the hibiscus.”
I heard the cruisers on their way.
Jimmy wore a tiny black Speedo, flip-flops, and a too-small T-shirt that said “Big Dick’s Halfway Inn” and had a drawing of a smirking green fish with sunglasses. Jimmy had no place to hide a smoking pistol, or anything else for that matter. I said, “Jimmy, why don’t we go inside for a drink.”
He said, “I want them to know I was stone sober when I shot.”
Something large grabbed hold of Kinski’s leg and pulled him slowly under the water.
“Reckon I’ll turn myself in.” Jimmy walked through the yard to the street and waved down the speeding cruiser. Unfortunately, he waved with the hand that held the gun. In the story I would write, Jimmy is mowed down in a hail of bullets. He dies in Annick’s arms – a man, slightly loco, but good-hearted, a cat lover trying to do the right thing. In the story, Annick, Spot, and I move to Iowa after Jimmy’s death. We buy that house in Harlan. There’s no place to get arepas or empanadas. No media noches, but we adjust. Friendships are purposeful and productive. There’s quite a bit of amiable pressure to join organizations, associations, and clubs. Annick, the baby, and I are visited by Optimists, Lions, Rotarians, Chamber Ambassadors, Foresters, Masons, Owls, Eagles, and Moose. Annick volunteers at Log Cabin Days, directs the play about the history of Harlan. (Many Indians die.) She volunteers at Kinderfarm preschool. I become a Friend of the Library and work the funnel cake booth at the Tiny Lund Festival. We buy Girl Scout cookies, Bible Bars, Christmas cards, magazine subscriptions, and raffle tickets from kids who come to our door. We go to church socials, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti suppers, rummage sales, tag sales, and bake sales. I write my Black Hawk thriller/suspense novel that is a big hit with all but two of the Iowa critics. I make a modest fortune. Meadowlarks perch on the telephone wires and sing.
In real life, Annick and I stay right where we are. I don’t write the crime novel. I lose heart when I realize how Doris had suffered so much heartache, had endured so much coldness, and now she seemed happy for the first time in her life. In real life, the alarmed deputy drives his cruiser into a mahogany tree and is knocked out by the air bag. Jimmy pulls him to safety. In real life, Annick loses the baby.

The Night Is Dark; the Hours Slip By

Eleven weeks into Annick’s pregnancy, as a result of some embryonic abnormality, perhaps, or an insufficiency in the placental bed or a fault of the uterine structure or a hormonal imbalance or an aberration in the inseminating sperm or some other triggering mischance, her womb expelled the fetus. Annick apologized again. I told her she had nothing to apologize for. We were sitting at a picnic bench along the Intracoastal, sipping Irish whiskey, watching the sun go down over the mangroves and the yachts cruise home to Fort Lauderdale: Obsession; Liquid Assets; Yachta Yachta Yachta. Spot was on medication to calm his monkey-rattled nerves, and he was so lethargic we had to tie his plushy Sponge Bob around his neck so he wouldn’t lose it. He was passed out on the grass by a grill.
Annick said she felt like she had the one purpose in life and that was to protect and care for this unborn child, and she couldn’t do it. She told me she knew she should be over the loss, shouldn’t be trying to hold on to what cannot be embraced. I held her, kissed her hair. She said she felt her boundless world had suddenly become circumscribed. “I’m so sad.”
I saw the park ranger’s pickup truck a little too late to hide the whiskey bottle. The truck stopped, shined its headlights on us. I raised my arms above my head like a foiled bandit in a western movie. I picked up the bottle and walked to the truck. “You got me.”
He said, “You know better than to consume alcoholic beverages on county property.” He shook his head and pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket. “I’ll have to write you a citation, sir.” He looked past me to Annick and could see, I guess, that she’d been crying. “Your wife all right?”
I explained about the recent miscarriage. He slid the pen back in his pocket and told me to forget what he said. He waved me away. No, he didn’t want the bottle. He said the proper way to drink in public was to be discreet. I thanked him. He told me he was sorry, very sorry. And he drove away.
Spot stood, stretched, shook his head, yawned, sniffed Sponge Bob, spotted a pelican waddling along the walkway by the water and woofed at it. He lay back down. I told Annick we’d just gotten lucky. We drank to our good fortune. Annick asked me to massage her hands. I did. Her neck. The park ranger returned, cut the lights on his truck, cut the engine, and walked our way carrying a grocery sack. He introduced himself. Carlos Chavez. We all shook hands. He told us that some folks down the way had been having a party. He took out a bottle of Merlot and a bottle of Beaujolais from the sack. And two round loaves of country bread. He pulled out his Swiss Army knife and opened the wine with the corkscrew. He took out plastic cups. He said he knew we wanted to be alone, but please, if we would share the bread and wine with him. Being alone is not good. Annick tore off a hunk of bread. Carlos poured two glasses of Merlot. I stuck with the whiskey. He told Annick how sorry he was. She thanked him.
Carlos said, “My son is dead.” He looked at us, poured wine into his cup, and sipped. “Carlito has been dead for two months, and I haven’t talked to anyone about it.” He put his head into his hands.
Annick said, “We’re listening.”
Carlos wiped his eyes, put a hand to his mouth, and sniffled. “Nine years old.” He breathed deeply. “He fell down roller skating and broke his wrist. They fixed him up at the emergency ward and sent us home. He was so proud of his cast.” Carlos cried. Annick reached across the table and put her hand on his. I squeezed Annick’s other hand. Carlos shrugged away his sorrow for a moment. “That night he got a terrific headache. He woke up screaming. He had a high fever, so we rushed him back to Memorial. While we were standing there in the hallway with Carlito on the gurney, he went into seizures. He was dead two hours later.”
Carlos and Annick cried. I filled our glasses. Spot walked to the table and sat near Carlos. Carlos said, “I had to tell someone about my beautiful boy. I’m sorry.”
We soaked our bread in the wine and ate. We drank some more. And then Annick asked Carlos what was it that had killed Carlito.
“A rare form of streptococcus. Antibiotics can’t touch it. It went toxic and ate its way through the tissues and organs. And there was nothing anyone could do.” Carlos wiped his eyes. He said to Spot, “What’s your name?”
I said, “Spot.”
Carlos tapped his thigh, said, “Mancha!” Spot stepped closer to Carlos and let himself be petted. “Buen perrito!” Spot wagged his sluggish tail.
Carlos said, “Death came to the wrong door.” He told us about the funeral and all the weeping frightened children from Carlito’s school and about Carlito’s room and how he still can’t bring himself to open the door. Carlos told us how he and his wife don’t speak to each other, don’t look at each other. “Too much grief in the house,” he said. “It fills up all the space. We’re all suffocating. My wife, my daughters, myself. And so I stay at work until they’re asleep.” Spot put his chin on Carlos’s knee. Carlos smiled. “Mancha, mi bebé, Carlito es muerto. That’s how it is, boy. Carlito is gone. He never said good-bye to me. Él murió por ninguna razón. No reason at all.”

Please, Consider Me a Dream

I drowsed in bed with my eyeshade on and my earplugs in. It could have been five in the morning, could have been ten. I knew Annick was in there with me when she turned over and yanked the quilt to her side. She can be fierce in her defense of sleep. I like to spend time drifting in and out of reverie and dreams before the cold hand of sensibility slaps me straight, and I have to get up and get on with it. I lay there remembering a telephone conversation I’d had with my cousin Fairly the night before, either in the living room or in a dream. No, not a dream; she called for real, yes, called to tell me her dad, my uncle Romulus, was in recovery. The stomach mass wasn’t a tumor after all. For years, evidently, Romulus had been swallowing coins, 217 of them, as well as paper clips, pins, needles, necklaces, and his dead wife’s amber rosary beads. I said, It’s good to finally know what’s wrong. She said, What’s wrong is there’s no spark in his plugs. The engine’s on, but the wheels aren’t turning. I told her about Annick’s miscarriage. Fairly told me we were fortunate indeed. She’d just read a book – “a true book, not one of your stories” – in which a boy grew up to torture and kill his parents, hacked them to death with a machete. It’s just not worth the risk, having kids. They’re little time bombs, and if you don’t defuse them . . . And then I slipped into a dream, and I’m in the yard with Annick, and she’s gardening in a red camisole, and she’s still pregnant, and I notice that when she touches a flower, her fingernails take on its color, and then my snoring woke me, and I wondered if Babycakes would take back So Truly Real, puncture wounds and all, and then I noticed Eamon, Elvis, Doris, and Harlan, sitting beside each other on an empty stage, house lights up, and I realized they were here to audition for my next novel, and I tell them to put down the scripts, today we’re flying by the seat of our pants, because that’s how I think directors talk, and I say, “You’re in the intensive care waiting room at Memorial. The doctor comes in, pulls down his surgical mask, and says, ‘I’m sorry, we’ve done all that we could do.’ Go with it.” But not much happens, and the doctor keeps repeating his line, and I found myself distracted, awake, thinking about the child we didn’t have and how we ought to try again, but Annick said the pregnancy was a fluke and the fluke fizzled, and we’ll have to live with that, and I wondered what she was dreaming, and I had no idea. Annick never tells me her dreams unless they involve my leaving her, and then she wants an apology.
I lifted the eyeshade and peeked at Annick. She was awake and reading. She wore the flannel cowgirl pajamas I’d bought for her while on the book tour. Annie Oakley had her rifle aimed right at me. She shot the ashes off the Kaiser’s cigarette, remember, so I didn’t make any sudden moves. Annick handed me the local section and opened to the movie page. Spot was snoring over in his faux fleece dog nest under the influence of the last of the doggie Prozac.
“Why don’t you write a screenplay? I’ve always wanted to go to the Academy Awards. Write a movie about a crime novelist.”
“With a handsome dog and a ravishing girlfriend?”
“Make the girlfriend the central character.”
I read about a mother who left her two-year-old son and her infant daughter alone in a flooded apartment while she went out “looking for money.” The state’s child-care workers had been called in twice previously to investigate the woman, but they found no evidence of physical abuse. The children were discovered by firefighters in a locked bedroom. The two-year-old was strapped into a car seat on the bed, his left hand was tied to a closet door. The ten-month-old was tied to the slats of her crib. The heat was on. The temperature in the apartment was 110 degrees. And I wasn’t dreaming.
“Oh, my God, look!” Annick pointed out the bedroom window where a dozen roseate spoonbills had just alighted in a mangrove tree. She said, “They take my breath away.” She cried for several minutes as I held her. She wiped her eyes, and we stared at the brilliant and improbably pink and scarlet birds, hoping they would not be startled into flight, and suddenly there was only now, and this now, I knew, would always be – in ten thousand years we would be right here, nestled in this moment without memory or expectation, Annick and I, rapt by this merciless, this boundless beauty.

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John Dufresne is the author of two short story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and the forthcoming Johnny Too Bad, and the novels, Deep in the Shade of Paradise; Louisiana Power & Light, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Notable Book in 1994; and Love Warps the Mind a Little, a New York Times Notable Book in 1997.