Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

“No,” I said. “I’m trying to find a box to hide in.”

“Have you been having nightmares again?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

My head still down, I said, “I’m in New York City, at a hotel. I look out the window, across the street, at another hotel. On the seventh floor of that hotel, there’s an open window. A child, about two, is about to climb out the window. It’s New York during the day. The distance and the city noise let me know it would do no good to yell.”

“So what do you do?”

“Nothing. I stand there, looking, hoping, praying. I can’t move away. I can’t close my eyes. I’m crying, muttering.”

“Muttering what?”

“Oh, no. God, no. Jesus, no.”

“Does the child fall?”

“The child looks over at me and smiles over the chasm, the canyon of buildings and streets. I try to wave her back, but she just smiles and waves back at me. I push my hands forward. I’m afraid to scream or make a frightened and frightening face for fear she will fall.”

“She?”

“Did I say she?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you think?”

“The child is Catherine or the baby we never had. She is about to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What does the child look like?”

“Dark curly hair. Wide eyes, brown eyes. Even at this distance I know they are brown.”

“And,” said Ann, “Catherine’s hair was curly?”

“No.”

“Not even as a child?”

“No,” I said.

“And her eyes were wide and brown?”

“No, her eyes were blue.”

“Who is the baby?”

“Me,” I said. “She looks just like my baby pictures.”

“Breakthrough,” Ann said, sitting up in her well-padded swivel chair.

“But why is it a girl?” I asked.

“We save that for another time, to give you something to think about between now and then. Time for one more quick dream.”

Knowing I would stare into the eyes of that baby who was me, looking for answers, I said, “Thalidomide man.”

“Thalidomide man?”

“You know. About fifty years ago in Chicago a lot of women who were given thalidomide and had deformed babies, withered arms or legs or both. In my dream I see a man with a deformed right hand advancing toward me in slow motion. He’s smiling and holding out his hand to shake my hand. I don’t want to shake his three-fingered stump of a hand, but I extend mine to him. I always wake up then, and almost always it’s 4:13 in the morning.”

“How did you know about thalidomide?” Ann asked.

“I’m not sure. I think my mother and father talked about it, or I ran across it in a newspaper or magazine.”

Ann looked puzzled, as if there were something she was trying to recall.

“Lewis, think.”

I thought. Nothing came.

“The man with the withered right arm?” she prompted.

Nothing.

“The boy whose parents abandoned him.”

I remembered. “I forgot.”

“You never forget anything,” said Ann.

“That’s what Sally said.”

“The boy?”

“His name was David Bryce O’Brien. I met him when I was investigating a homicide for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. You know this.”

“Tell me again,” she said. “I’m ancient and often forget what I move from one room to the next for.”

“His father was a suspect.”

“And?”

“His father was the murderer. He killed his dry cleaner. Then he killed his wife and son.”

“David Bryce O’Brien.”

“Then he killed himself.”

“And what did he do to the body of his son?”

“No,” I said.

Ann went silent. So did I. A waiting game. I could get up and leave, but I didn’t. Then I said, “He cut off his son’s withered arm and left a note saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s the most common suicide note in the world.”

“Biblical,” she said.

“Biblical?”

“If my right hand offends…,” she said.

“It wasn’t his right hand.”

“How old was David Bryce O’Brien?”

“Almost two years old.”

“About the same age as the child in the window in New York?”

“Yes.”

“That feels true?”

“Yes. You want me to think about it?”

“Yes, but not consciously. Let it go. When the time comes to talk about it, you will. You forgot to bring me something, Lewis.”

I looked at the empty white bag that had held coffee and biscotti. The pungent smell of coffee and pastry hung lazily. She shook her head.

“I have a joke.”

“Good, but you were supposed to bring something else. You were supposed to bring me the first line of a book. Do you have one?”

“ ‘And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.’ ”

“And that is the first line of what?” Ann asked.

“It’s the last line of the Old Testament. The only line I remember.”

“Come back next time with first lines,” she said. “Who told you the joke?”

“A man with one eye I met outside your office the last time I was here.”

“The joke,” she said.

“Actually, he gave me five of them.”

I took out my index cards.

“One will be enough.”

“Treat each day as if it’s your last. One day you’ll be right.”

“That’s a joke?”

“Yes.”

“You think it’s funny?”

“No.”

“Next time, first lines,” she said.

Augustine was waiting for me outside of Ann’s office again, but this was a very different Augustine from the one who was there the last time I emerged into sun and heavy, moist air.

“Need a ride?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I put your bike in my trunk. I’ll buy you a new lock.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He walked us slowly to the corner and made a right turn onto Main. He was silent. So was I. I was trying not to think about what Ann and I had talked about, but I was doing a bad job.

“How is your eye?” I asked.

His hand reached up to be sure the patch was still there.

“Hurts,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.

“Corkle fired me.”

“What for?”

“Failure to get rid of you.”

We hit the first corner and I was tempted to invite him across the street to News and Books, but I had had enough darkness for one day.

“Get rid of me? He just hired me.”

“He wants to scare you away from the job. He’s nuts. I’m glad I’m no longer in his employ. He gave me a check for five thousand dollars and an instant electric machine that both cores and peels apples, pears, and even peaches and plums.”

“How will you get it on a plane?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why does he want to scare me away?”

“Don’t know. Ask him.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?” I asked.

“I like you,” he said. “And I don’t like loose ends.”

His car, a gray two-door Mazda rental, was parked halfway up the block. Parking space downtown was always at a premium. I didn’t consider telling him he was lucky. He had almost lost an eye. It could have been much worse.

“I think the kid shot at us,” he said when we were driving.

He was one of those people who instantly turns on music when you get into their car. It made intimate conversation difficult. The music was ’40s and ’50s pop. Rosemary Clooney was singing “Come On To My House.” She bounced.

“The kid?”

“Corkle’s grandson, Gregory Legerman.”

“Why?”

“Because Corkle thinks the kid killed Philip Horvecki.”

“And then hired me to find himself?”

“Go figure,” he said, making a turn on Orange and heading south. “We’re talking about crazy people here.”