Music Room by Dennis McFarland

Author:Dennis McFarland [McFarland, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6504-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-18T00:10:00+00:00

Dear Mr. Lambert,

Here is your walit. I kept the $34. Also the watch and the shoes and cloths. There was blood on the pants that cleaned up ok. My brother says this is the stuff of a dead man because of the blood and the tag on the watch. I hope that is not so, if that is so I am sorry. He said I could get money for the i.d. on the black market but I felt sorry in case you were dead. Your Amer. x-press card is expired.

I found this in Perry’s mailbox on our return from Norfolk, written in pencil on brown paper (a cut-up grocery bag), wrapped around a black leather wallet. As I sat at the desk in Perry’s apartment reading this, Molly ambled over, pushed her nose into my hand, then made a couple of turns and lay at my feet. A while earlier I’d left Jane at her apartment, where we’d had a rather public goodbye in the small entryway; just inside the living room was Dorothy’s Monday night support group for women sixty and over. I was holding Molly’s leash in one hand, Molly tugging at it, anxious to go out, and a plastic dog dish and a five-pound bag of Purina Dog Chow in the other. On my way to 46th Street, I had wondered if Jane felt some of what I felt—a need to stay together—but, like me, had not known quite how to accomplish this. Or maybe she was sorry she’d let me persuade her to come to Norfolk in the first place. Possibly, she was sorry she’d ever met me.

In Norfolk, we’d had the house to ourselves. The day after Perry’s funeral, Mother, with Felicia, had flown to Mother’s favorite fat farm in Denver, a place Raymond referred to as the Great Escape. Jane and I spent much of our time together in the pool—the water had provided a balm to the aches and fever of the virus I had—and despite my illness, I’d wanted to think of these days romantically. But always, Jane had been distracted. That first night she visited me in my room (the night of the cold washcloth) had left so much glitter in my eyes that I couldn’t see things properly, I knew that, but I felt sure that Jane was worried about something. And it had been unsettling—as if my head were turned in two directions—to have Jane worried and in her bathing suit at the same time. The truth is, I was a raw confusion of symptoms, amorous and viral. I lectured myself quite a bit: not every one of her gestures, facial expressions, moods, and desires had to do with me. Perhaps even her exceptional sleepiness didn’t have to do with me. She would sleep quite late into the morning, often skip breakfast or have a single piece of toast, then sleep after lunch and again before dinner. She would sleep in the shade of an umbrella on the terrace, on the couch in the library, on an inflatable raft in the pool, and solitary in her darkened room.

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