“Does my voice help?”
“Yes.”
“Am I there with you? Do you see my eyes?”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, first thing you do when you hang up, mail me a picture. I don’t want to be afraid any more—”
“All I have is a lousy twenty-five-cent photo machine picture I—”
“Send it!”
“I should never have come down here and left you alone up there, unprotected.”
“You make me sound like your kid.”
“What else are you?”
“I don’t know. Can love protect people, Peg?”
“It must. If it doesn’t protect you, I’ll never forgive God. Let’s keep talking. As long as we talk, love’s there and you’re okay.”
“I’m okay already. You’ve made me well. I was sick today, Peg. Nothing serious. Something I ate. But I’m right now.”
“I’m moving in with you when I get home, no matter what you say. If we get married, fine. You’ll just have to get used to my working while you finish the Great American Epic, and to hell with it, shut up. Someday, later on, you support me!”
“Are you ordering me around?”
“Sure, because I hate to hang up and I just want this to go on all day and I know it’s costing you a mint. Say some more, the things I want to hear.”
I said some more.
And she was gone, the telephone line humming and me left with a piece of wire cable two thousand miles long and a billion shadow whispers lingering there, heading toward me. I cut them off before they could reach my ear and slide inside my head.
I opened the door and stepped out to find Crumley waiting by the icebox, reaching in for sustenance.
“You look surprised?” He laughed. “Forget you were in my house, you were so busy yakking?”
“Forgot,” I said.
And took anything he handed me, out of the fridge, my nose running, my cold making me miserable.
“Grab some Kleenex, kid,” said Crumley. “Take the whole box.
“And while you’re at it,” he added, “give me the rest of your list.”
“Our list,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes, wiped his balding head with a nervous hand, and nodded.
“Those who will die next, in order of execution.”
He shut his eyes, heavily burdened.
“Our list,” he said.
I did not immediately tell him about Cal.