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ONE

LOST FOREVER

1

At two-thirty Saturdaya pillow to his chest, calling his lost wife’s nauished and haunted quality of his own voice had shaken him fro veils, as attic dust falls off rafters when a house rolls with an earthquake

When he realized that he did not have Michelle in his arms, he held fast to the pilloay He had come out of the dream with the scent of her hair Noas afraid that any movement he made would cause that meht sweat

Inevitably, no weight of stillness could hold the memory in all its vividness The scent of her hair receded like a balloon rising, and soon it was beyond his grasp

Bereft, he got up and went to the nearest of ts His bed, which consisted of nothing but a mattress on the floor, was the only furniture, so he did not have to be concerned about stuloom

The studio aparte room with a kitchenette, a closet, and a crae in upper Laurel Canyon After selling the house in Studio City, he had brought no furniture with him, because dead men needed no such comforts He had come here to die

For tenwhen he would fail to wake

Thefaced the rising canyon wall, the ragged black shapes of evergreens and eucalyptuses To the as a fat h the trees, a silvery promise beyond the bleak urban woods

He was surprised that he was still not dead after all this time He was not alive, either Somewhere between Halfway in the journey He had to find an ending, because for hi back

After fetching an icy bottle of beer froerator in the kitchenette, Joe returned to the ainst the wall

Beer at two-thirty in the -down life

He wished that he were capable of drinking himself to death If he could drift out of this world in a nu his departure required

Too much booze would irrevocably blur his memories, however, and his memories were as sacred to him as the impression of Christ’s face on the Shroud of Turin was precious to the priests who believed in its authenticity and dedicated their lives to its preservation He allowed hilasses of wine at a time

Other than the faint tree-filtered gliht in the room came from the backlit buttons on the telephone keypad beside the mattress

He knew only one person to whom he could talk frankly about his despair in the h he was only thirty-seven, his one He had no brothers or sisters Friends had tried to comfort him after the catastrophe, but he had been too pained to talk about what had happened, and he had kept theressively that he had offended most of them

Now he picked up the phone, put it in his lap, and called Michelle’s mother, Beth McKay

In Virginia, nearly three thousand‘Joe?’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘You know me, dear — early to bed and up before dawn’

‘Henry?’ he asked, referring to Michelle’s father

‘Oh, the old beast could sleep through Areddon,’ she said affectionately

She was a kind and gentle woman, full of compassion for Joe even as she coped with her own loss She possessed an uncoth

At the funeral, both Joe and Henry had needed to lean on Beth, and she had been a rock for theht, Joe had discovered her on the patio behind the Studio City house, sitting in a glider in her pyjarief,her sobs in a pillow that she had carried with her fro not to burden her husband or her son—in—laith her own pain

Joe sat beside her, but she didn’t want her hand held or an aruish was so intense that it had scraped her nerves raw, until a mur hand scorched like a branding iron Reluctant to leave her alone, he had picked up the long-handled net and skinats and leaves off the black surface at two o’clock in the ri, while Beth wept into the pillow, circling and circling until there was nothing to strain fro stars Eventually, having wrung all the tears frolider, came to him, and pried the net out of his hands She had led hih he were a child, and he had slept deeply for the first time in days

Now, on the phone with her at a lamentable distance, Joe set aside his half-finished beer ‘Is it dawn there yet, Beth?’

‘Just a breath ago’

‘Are you sitting at the kitchen table watching it through the big ? Is the sky pretty?’

‘Still black in the west, indigo overhead, and out to the east, a fan of pink and coral and sapphire like Japanese silk’

As strong as Beth was, Joe called her regularly not just for the strength she could offer, but because he liked to listen to her talk The particular tiinia accent were the same as Michelle’s had been

He said, ‘You answered the phone with my name’

‘Who else would it have been, dear?’

‘Am I the only one who ever calls this early?’

‘Rarely others But thisit could only be you’

The worst had happened one year ago to the day, changing their lives forever This was the first anniversary of their loss

She said, ‘I hope you’re eating better, Joe Are you still losing weight?’

‘No,’ he lied

Gradually during the past year, he had becoan dropping weight He had dropped twenty pounds to date

‘Is it going to be a hot day there?’ he asked

‘Stifling hot and huet rain, no relief The clouds in the east are fringed with gold and full of pink The sun’s all the way out of bed now’

‘It doesn’t seem like a year already, does it, Beth?’

‘Mostly not But soo’

‘I miss them so much,’ he said ‘I’m so lost without them’

‘Oh, Joe Honey, Henry and I love you You’re like a son to us You are a son to us’

‘I know, and I love you too, very h’ He took a deep breath ‘This year, getting through, it’s been hell I can’t handle another year like this’