Someplace Else by Eli Geller

Author:Eli Geller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“HOW IS LANCE GETTING ALONG?” Shirley asked when I returned upstairs.

“How did you know it was Lance?”

“He told me when he called. ‘Is that you, Shirley? Lance Bristow here. How have you been?’”

How is Lance getting along? Before Friday, I couldn’t have cared less. Now I was hoping he was getting along miserably; cancer or something worse. Anything to take him out of my sight and life forever. Those childhood memories belonged in the trash.

Sales. He was in sales, he said. More likely, he was an unemployed bum like Jerry. Meanwhile, he’d spent the hours getting me drunk and milking me for information about myself.

To what end? Was it idle curiosity, something to build conversation around? Or something else?

It had to be something else.

Ma was dead now. And now he was after her money. Not just Jerry wanting a big piece of the action but this nobody out of my past, was looking to cash in on a family inheritance, for Chrissake.

“Have him over to dinner.”

“Huh?”

“Lance. Invite him to have dinner with us one of these evenings.”

“I may do that.”

Yeah, right. I may do that. Like maybe in another life, not this one. He wasn’t the Lance I knew growing up. This Lance made my skin crawl. Maybe I’d finally have some real luck and he’d get hit by a truck or bus like what happened to my dad, something that would get him quickly out of my life, with no chance encounters in the future.

Chance encounter? Friday? That, a chance encounter?

It was looking less and less like one.

“Harold, we’re going to a movie. Would you like to come?”

Dinner was over and I was lying on my bed with a few books. Shirley stood in my doorway, dressed for the evening out.

“Huh? Oh, no thanks. I’ll hang around here and catch up on a little reading.”

“What’s that book?”

“Which? This book?”

“The one you’re reading.”

“This is DEATH IN VENICE.”

“Oh, yes. I read that in college.”

“Somebody I know recommended some authors that would make me better educated than I am. Thomas Mann was one of them.”

Somebody I knew. A hooker named Rae.

“Mann is an excellent choice. How about those other books?” she indicated several additional paperbacks strewn around me on the bed.

“Here, James Joyce … I don’t know what it’s all about. And this one … THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO, by Otto Rank, forget it. Much too deep for me.”

“That deals with psychology, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? Maybe. He loses me, that’s for sure. DEATH IN VENICE I can understand, though.”

“We’ll see you in a little while.”

I was hoping they’d disappear for the evening. I waited a bit, until I was sure they were gone from the building, gone far enough so they wouldn’t return in case they’d forgotten something. Then I sat up and reached for the phone.

“Rae, it’s me, Harold. I want to apologize for behaving like a jerk this morning.”

“Did you behave like a jerk?” she said amiably. “Funny, I never noticed. I was terribly happy to see you, Harold.

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