Here in the light of a new day, in the cruel grip of sobriety, the professor understood, as he never quite had before, that his very freedom depended on Lucas remaining free, as well. Therefore, he felt that he should without delay phone his former student and tell him about Mrs. Nozawa’s curious visit to the Alumni Affairs Office. Each time that Lucas changed phone numbers, he gave his mentor the new contact information, though he usually didn’t provide an address or a mail drop. Informed of Mrs. Nozawa’s interest in him, Lucas would most likely want to come to Charleston and take the woman to some quiet and private place, to discover what her true intentions were, since they were surely not related to any act of kindness for which he had not been properly thanked.
Twice, the professor picked up the phone and started to enter Lucas’s latest number, but both times he hung up after pressing fewer than half the digits. Drug-free, Dr. Mace-Maskil’s mind no longer spun in a tornado of paranoia, but he was shrewd enough to recognize in this situation a real danger to himself if his former student returned to Charleston to squeeze information out of the queen of dry-cleaning. Lucas might learn not only why she had an interest in him, but also about his old professor’s strange visit to her shop. By that performance, Dr. Mace-Maskil had made himself a subject of interest when he previously had not been one, and it surely fed the woman’s curiosity and suspicions regarding Lucas, whatever they might be. In a blink, the beloved mentor might become the intolerable burden, and following Lucas’s visit to Charleston, the town’s population might drop by two.
The professor decided to be prudent, to think through all of the possible ramifications, before phoning Lucas. He canceled his Friday classes to give himself time to consider his options, to ferret out the pluses and minuses of each, and to prepare defenses commensurate for the choice he ultimately made.
Although nervous and worried, Dr. Mace-Maskil denied himself any pill or powder that might calm his nerves and turn worry to serenity.
He was thirsty, but he avoided the bourbon and the brandy, and he left the wine corked.
He prepared the coffeemaker. While the brew percolated, he placed a lined legal tablet, a blue-ink pen, and a red-ink pen on the kitchen table.
Sitting there, waiting for the coffee to be done, he realized that he hadn’t dressed for the day. He wore only the boxer shorts in which he’d slept. This oversight disturbed him. If his very existence were at stake, it seemed no less irresponsible to plan his strategy for survival in his underwear than it would have been to do so bareass-naked. He went to his bedroom, where he put on a sapphire-blue silk robe and supple-leather slippers, and he returned to the kitchen in a more cunning and militant frame of mind.
69
Saturday morning, Malcolm and I were sitting at the glass-topped wrought-iron table on the patio behind Grandpa Teddy’s house, playing the game that most inspired a desire for success and independence among young boys of that time: Monopoly. We were buying properties, putting up houses and hotels, bemoaning the unfairness of fines and unearned sentences to jail, when the phone rang in the kitchen. I’d left the back door open so that I could hear the ringing through the screen door, and I sprang up at once and hurried inside, hoping for Mr. Yoshioka’s voice when I plucked up the receiver. “Hello?”
He said, “Jonah, on my way to the bus stop yesterday, I realized that I had forgotten to thank you for the Coca-Cola and the cookie.”
“You brought the cookies,” I reminded him.
“Yes, but you shared them, and you provided the cola. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“You’re welcome. But … I hope you’ve got some news.”
“I do have some news, yes, some hopeful and some frustrating. On his own time, Mr. Otani has identified three buildings in the city that are owned by the Drackman Family Trust. Before he can go to his superiors regarding the opening of a case file and the issuance of a warrant, he needs to discover at which of the three Lucas Drackman is currently living, if in fact he is living at any. Mr. Otani now believes that he will not get a file opened sooner than Monday afternoon.”
“Well, I guess he probably knows what he’s doing.”
“He knows very well, yes. And he is not taking the weekend off, Jonah. He is watching those buildings, one at a time, until he sees whatever he needs to see.”
“Okay, sure. It’s just that I’m spooked. I mean, this whole thing is spookier than ever. I don’t know why, but it is.”
“Remember what you once told me.”
“Huh? What?”
“ ‘No matter what happens, everything will be all right in the long run.’ ”
70
Saturday, Grandpa played both the department store and the hotel gigs. Mom didn’t have to work a lunch-counter shift; but she had made two appointments—auditions—with booking agents, still struggling to find the right person to get her a singing job and put her on a solid career path; she would be out most of the day.
Under threat of having his saxophone taken away, Malcolm was forced to accompany his mother to lunch and a lengthy afternoon visit with her older sister, his aunt Judith. Judith had married well and lived with her husband, Duncan, and a pampered British white shorthair cat named Snowball in an elegant penthouse overlooking the city’s Great Park. “My mother hopes Aunt Judy will take pity on my exceptional geekiness and suddenly decide to make a project of me,” Malcolm explained, “in the process showering money on our entire family, which is no more likely than her roasting Snowball and serving him for lunch.”
Alone, I had books to read, a piano to practice on, and a TV on which daytime movies were always light comedies or love stories, never the late-night voodoo-in-the-city monster-on-the-loose fare that would make me want to hide under my bed. I tried to settle down and get interested in one thing or another, but I kept ricocheting around the house, like a pinball, checking the windows several times to be sure that the screens were intact, rearranging the clothes in my bedroom closet and then putting them back the way they had been, examining the gleaming cutlery in the kitchen knife drawer to decide with which blade I might best be able to defend myself if a horde of barbarians—or Fiona Cassidy—burst into the house with murderous intent.
When Amalia rang the doorbell at 3:10, I was overjoyed, hoping that she had brought her clarinet, which she hadn’t, hoping that maybe she had brought an art book full of Vermeers and Rembrandts, which she hadn’t.
“I’ve got like five minutes, Jonah. I’ve swept the carpets, mopped the kitchen floor, dusted the furniture, changed the paper in Tweetie’s cage while fending off his every vicious attempt to peck out my eyes. I’m making dinner for the family, while my nasty stepsisters dress to catch the eye of the prince at the palace ball this evening, and just to make sure I won’t have a shot at his highness, they smashed my glass slippers. You look weird, Jonah. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m just, you know, kind of bored, that’s all.” I went to the piano and sat on the bench and lifted the fallboard to expose the keys, thinking that if I played for her, she might stay longer.
She came to the piano and stood there, but she didn’t stop talking long enough for me to begin playing. “You don’t know bored until you’ve gone to lunch at Aunt Judy’s. Poor sweet Malcolm. Judy’s husband, Duncan, is ages older than she is. When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, he based Scrooge on Uncle Duncan, who has nothing but deep disdain for anyone named Pomerantz, with some justification. He recently suffered congestive heart failure twice, he’s not long for our world. Aunt Judy isn’t able to have children, so Mom persists in the delusion that Judy will develop a great affection for her socially inept nephew, which she never did with me. Anyway, Mom hopes that when Duncan dies, Judy will turn on the money spigot to help her troubled nephew and his family. Fat chance. Aunt Judy isn’t a moron. What I expect is, if Uncle Duncan hasn’t gone to Heaven by the next time they have lunch, my mother will keep Judy distracted and expect Malcolm to find our uncle and smother him with a pillow or nudge him over the balcony railing and down forty stories to the street. Are you sure you feel all right?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Why do you keep asking?”
“Why do you keep putting a hand to your chest?”