Until I Find You

It was only later--actually, on the night before Alice's memorial service at St. Hilda's--that Leslie informed Jack that she'd called a different threesome of tattoo artists. Alice had given Leslie another list; this one also had "just a few" names to call.

"Who were they?" Jack asked Mrs. Oastler.

"Jesus, Jack--I can't possibly remember their names. You know what their names are like."

"Did you call Philadelphia Eddie?" Jack asked. (Make that Crazy Philadelphia Eddie.) "Or maybe Mao of Madrid, or Bugs of London--"

"There were three guys," Leslie informed him. "They were all in the United States. They all said they'd pass the word."

"Maybe Little Vinnie Myers?" he suggested. Or Uncle Pauly, Jack imagined--or Armadillo Red. He'd never me

t them, but he knew their names.

"Well, they won't come, anyway," Mrs. Oastler said, but she didn't sound so sure.

"What's the matter, Leslie?"

Mrs. Oastler was remembering what one of them had asked her, when she'd given the guy the bad news. "Where's the party?" the tattoo artist had inquired.

"He said 'party'?" Jack asked Leslie.

"Isn't that all they do, Jack? At least that's my impression. All they do is party!"

This gave them both a bad night's sleep. About 2:00 A.M. Mrs. Oastler got into Emma's bed with Jack, but she wasn't interested in holding his penis.

"What if they all come?" Leslie whispered, as if Alice were still alive or somehow capable of overhearing them. "What will we do?"

"We'll have a party," he told Mrs. Oastler, only half believing that it might be true.

In the morning, while Leslie was making coffee, Jack answered the phone in the kitchen. It was Bruce Smuck, a Toronto tattoo artist and a good friend of Alice's; she'd liked his work and had been something of a mentor to him. He'd already called Leslie and offered his condolences; now he was calling to ask what he could bring.

"Oh, just bring yourself, Bruce," Jack answered cluelessly. "We'll be glad to see you."

"Was that Bruce Smuck again?" Mrs. Oastler asked, after Jack hung up the phone.

"He wanted to know if he could bring something," Jack said, the gravity of Bruce's offer slowly sinking in.

"Bring what?" Leslie asked.

Bruce must have meant booze, Jack thought. Bruce was a nice guy--he was just offering to help out. Obviously Bruce expected a mob!

Jack called Peewee on his cell phone and increased the original liquor-store order from a case each of white and red wine to three cases of white and five cases of red. (From what Alice had told Leslie, the majority of tattoo artists were red-wine types.)

"Tell Peewee to go to the beer store, too," Mrs. Oastler said. "The bikers drink a lot of beer. Better fill the fucking limo with beer--just in case." Leslie was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, inhaling the steam from her coffee cup; she looked like someone who'd recently quit smoking and desperately wanted a cigarette.

Jack poured himself a cup of coffee, but the phone rang before he could take his first sip. "Uh-oh," Mrs. Oastler said.

It was a Saturday morning--Alice's evensong service was scheduled for five-thirty that afternoon--but Caroline Wurtz was calling on her cell phone from the St. Hilda's chapel, where she and the organist and the boarders' choir were already practicing. When Jack answered the phone, he could hear the organ and the choir better than he could hear Caroline.

"Jack, a quandary has presented itself--in clerical form," Miss Wurtz whispered. She sounded as if she were in Emma's bed with him--as Jack had so often dreamed--and his mother was within hearing distance, down the hall.

"What quandary is that?" Jack whispered back.

"The Reverend Parker--our chaplain, Jack--wishes to lead the congregation in the Apostles' Creed."

"Mom requested no prayers, Caroline."

"I know," she whispered. "I told him."