Oregon Hill by Howard Owen

Author:Howard Owen [Owen, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 1579623239
Publisher: The Permenant Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Andi tells me that she has a dog, actually one that she and someone named Keith take turns taking care of. I know not to blurt out, “Who’s Keith?” In the androgynous world in which she lives, he could be a gay friend or some guy who’s shagging her every night. Best not to know, at this point. OK, I hope he’s gay.

She surprises me by thanking me for paying for her tuition and fees and a few other things.

I give her my standard line.

“Least I can do, considering.”

She picks up her napkin and wipes her mouth, then looks at me. It startles me, somehow. She doesn’t often look at me straight on, I realize, maybe afraid of what she might see.

“I’ll make you proud of me someday,” she says. “I swear I will.”

I clear my throat and tell her that I’ll try to make her proud of me, too. It’s about as close as we’ll come, probably, to really sitting down and having it out about what a chump I was.

One sign of being a grown-up, I’ve come to think, is forgiving your parents. It took me until I was in my thirties to have a sense of humor about Peggy. I think Andi is getting there faster, something I don’t deserve.

I pay the bill. She knows the waitress, both part of the network out there. When I try to leave three dollars to cover our nineteen-dollar tab, she tells me not to be a cheapskate. I leave another buck, looking to her for approval. She nods her head and smiles.

I watch her walk away, toward VCU, while I head toward my uncertain fate in the managing editor’s office.

I think, as she disappears around the corner, about Isabel Ducharme. One year, Kate and I went to Tuscany. This one town, San Gimignano, had a torture museum with all the medieval nightmare apparatuses, many of them with a disturbing sexual undertone. There was nothing there bad enough for the man who cut off an eighteen-year-old girl’s head and mailed it to her father. I wonder how Philippe Ducharme, whatever kind of man he might be, can bear it. I have an urge to speak with him.

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