remarked once, is a task—the merit of the task, the evaluation of the task is always fluid, depending on all kinds of factors. Rescuing the drowning baby and playing peekaboo with the same infant may be the same act, same worth, depending on who does the evaluating. You must remember that when you deal with Pam, and when the world deals with your dealing with Pam. Do you understand?).
“Open your eyes,” she says with arch coyness and interest.
It is a small black leather key pouch.
“I made if for you yesterday, when Hillary said you were coming.”
“You made it in one day?”
“In one hour,” she says but without the pride I had expected.
“It’s very nice and I can use it all right. Do you know I’m supposed to get a byline column?”
“You notice how the plastic stitching tucks under there and then you just touch it with a hot soldering iron and it fuses stronger than a knot.”
“I’m not sure what kind of a column. Maybe local stuff. Maybe national commentary . . . once in a while.”
“It’s nice you’ve got something you’re interested in,” Pam says getting back on the bed.
I put the key holder in my pocket and go back over to the window. The black man has splayed his feet out in front of the log. White, chalking dust from the parking lot has settled on his shoes.
“I might be here a long time,” she says drawing out the long. “Dr. Coffee doesn’t think I’m coming along fast enough, not nearly fast enough, but I think I’m doing fine. This morning I remembered my mother very clearly and I remembered us clearly too.”
“How clearly?”
“Clearly enough. Have you reconsidered? I thought you had, else you wouldn’t be here. I remember you said you’d never visit me here again.”
“I thought you’d never be here again.”
“That’s not what you thought—not what you meant.”
“Ah, maybe . . . Anyway, I’m here, aren’t I?”
“And have you reconsidered?”
“Let’s say I am reconsidering.”
“Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.”
Reconsideration seemed the kindest term, since I was visiting her in the first place. Why visit to finish something off and then finish it off only to visit some more? There were attractions, Waldo noted, in a wife who periodically couldn’t remember who you were.
“I told Dr. Coffee this morning that you were the first person I ever had an orgasm with. The first and only.”
“When did you have that?”
“You remember. You have to, because you asked me what was going on.”
“I don’t recall.”
“Does it hurt?” she says smiling, “I mean the shock treatments?”
“Very funny.”
“You can go now, if you want. Is somebody waiting for you in the parking lot?”
“Yes. Why don’t you come over and see.”
She slowly gets off the bed and we stand at the metal screen and I point out the Negro who has slipped off the log. He rests his back against it, and the brown paper bag has become a kind of wet and grey appendage to his left elbow. His hat is pushed down over his face, and his head is slumped forward, sleeping.
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“No. He’s a friend of yours.”
“Well, if he is, I don’t remember him. At least not yet. If he comes tomorrow maybe I’ll remember him then.” She pushes back her black hair, cut Egyptian style, caresses her rather long neck. “Would you like a wallet made from the same material?”
“Sure, if it’s not too fat a one.”
“I’ll make it very thin,” she says, “very, very thin. And you can have it when you come again.”
“That may not be until next week.”
“That’s okay, as long as you’re reconsidering. Then I can keep making it.”
“Could you go out for lunch or something, sometime?”
“Dr. Coffee doesn’t think so. Not for a while, he says.”
“Well, maybe he isn’t the last word.”
“Yes, the last word,” she answers somewhat distractedly. She climbs back up on the high bed, leans back, head against the yellow wall. There is a white track-light just above here left shoulder. In fact, it seems to sit on her shoulder like an owl, a cylindrical owl.
“I should be going. I’ll bring you the first column.”
“Column? About what?”
“They haven’t said yet.”
“You’re writing a column now?”
“Well, I’m starting pretty soon. You’ll get the first one.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t read newspapers much,” she says, smiling, then turning to look at the track lamp. “Do you think this,” she clinks it with her fingernails, “is part of me or apart from me?”
“Depends on how you sit.”
“Well, I think I’ll lie down. Could you lie down with me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on. Just for a minute or two. You could lie right here beside me, and we could talk.”
“I think it’s against hospital policy.”
“Well, goodbye, then. I’ll make your wallet for the next visit. You’ll see me then.” And she nods off, so that in a minute I can stand beside her and listen to very regular deep breathing.
In the parking lot I am tempted to spinout in front of the old Negro flailing up dust enough to cover his whole body, but I realize I only envy his wondrous, un-electrified sleep.
Chapter 3
True to his word, Waldo works his peculiar magic. On Monday Arnold and Phil send a message down that I should meet them in their office foyer, by the coffee machine, a nifty cream and blue Japanese vending machine that Waldo saw in Tokyo and convinced Hillary the paper couldn’t do without. Arnold and Phil look a lot alike. Each wears light grey trousers and a short sleeve white dress shirt, narrow dark brown
