Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

This book is about a walk, and it seems appropriate to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to some of the people who have provided valuable assistance along the way. I owe much to Thomas Mullane, Marilyn White, and Martin O’Farrell, three among many who taught me to follow the path a step at a time; to Sondra Ray, Fredric Lehrman, Leonard Orr, and Bob and Mallie Mandel, indispensable teachers; to Peter Russell, for The Global Brain, and Raphael, for The Starseed Transmissions; to Durchback Akuete, for his gift of spiritual empowerment; to Lloyd Youngblood and Danny Slomoff, for their example as powerful healers; to Mary Elizabeth Weber and Joan Pancoe, for timely guidance and channeled wisdom; and to Babaji.

I am grateful, too, to William Smart and everyone at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where the actual writing of this book took place.

Finally, I owe more than I can ever say to my most wonderful wife Lynne, to whom Random Walk is dedicated. It could never have come into being but for her incomparable generosity of spirit and her selfless unconditional love.

He was heating water for a second cup of coffee when the phone rang. He crossed the room, answered it.

“Guthrie, it’s Kit. I didn’t wake you?”

“No, the sun beat you to it.”

“Are you sure? Your voice—”

“You’re my first caller. It hasn’t been used.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “There,” he said. “That better?”

“I wasn’t criticizing, I just…” Her voice trailed off. He waited. “Guthrie? I’m not interrupting anything?”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t wake me and you’re not interrupting anything. Hold on, will you?” The kettle was whistling. He measured coffee into the filter, poured water through the grounds, carried the cup back with him and lit a cigarette. Through smoke he said, “Making coffee. Now you’re not interrupting anything. What’s up?”

“You got anything on this afternoon?”

“Not really.”

“Because I was thinking maybe you’d drive me up to Eugene.”

“Sure, I could do that. I guess the car’ll make it.”

“What’s the matter with your car?”

“Nothing in particular. I just—”

“Because we can take my car.”

“We can?”

“Jesus,” she said, “I don’t care whose car we take, we can fucking rent a car if you want.”

“Kit? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, shit,” she said. He waited, drew on his cigarette, took a tentative sip of his coffee. Brilliant invention, the coffee filter. You could make one cup of coffee at a time, and it was as easy as instant and better than what came out of a drip pot or a percolator. And, when you weren’t making coffee, a very tiny person could use the filter to catch very tiny butterflies.

She said, “I don’t need a ride, I need company. I’ve got an appointment at two o’clock.”

“What for?”

“An abortion.”

“Oh.”

“So I sort of thought—”

“You want to figure an hour and a half to drive there,” he said, “plus traffic and time to park.”

“It’s a clinic,” she said. “They have parking.”

“So let’s say I’ll pick you up about noon. It’s ten-thirty now. That give you enough time?”

“Or I’ll pick you up,” she said.

“No, I’ll drive,” he said. “Twelve o’clock, okay?”

She was waiting in front of her apartment building. He watched as she strode to the car, a slender dark-haired woman in Frye boots and straight-leg jeans and an Oregon State sweatshirt. “It doesn’t show yet,” she said. “It’s only nine or ten weeks, for Christ’s sake.”

“Huh?”

“You were staring.”

“Not at your stomach. At your tits.”

“Hah.”

“At your sweatshirt, actually. You didn’t go to State.”

“No, of course not. But I figured since I’m getting the abortion in Eugene, let the people there feel morally superior to a Statie. If I was getting the abortion in Corvallis I’d wear a U of O shirt.”

“I see.”

“If I had a Reed shirt I’d wear that. Everybody likes to feel morally superior to the Greedy Reedies.”

He lit a cigarette. She rolled down her window and said, “Actually, it’s Marvin’s shirt.”

“That asshole.”

“Funny, he always speaks well of you.”

“I’ll bet he does. Is it—”

“His kid? Jesus, no. I haven’t even seen him in six months. Is he even in town? I think I heard he went back to Berkeley.”

“I’m not the person to ask.”

“Well, neither am I.” She fell silent. They were on the Interstate, heading north toward Eugene, when she said, “The thing is, I don’t know whose it is.”

“You’re not talking about the sweatshirt.”

“The kid. There’s three people who might be up for Father of the Year honors. The funny thing is I’ve been a very proper lady lately.”

“I can’t remember the last time you came by Paddy Mac’s.”

“No, I’ve been staying out of the bars. And I’m all alone when I lower my lamp. I haven’t been seeing anybody since Marvin the Asshole, and we broke up in the fall, and it’s June already. Today’s what, the second?”

“I guess.”

“I don’t know how you thought he could have been the father.”

“Well, people have been known to get back together for a quickie even after they’ve broken up.”

“Yeah,” she said, and her face softened into a smile. “Yeah, we did that, didn’t we?”

“Once or twice.”

“Want to pull over at the next rest area? Nothing safer than a pregnant lady. That’s a joke, incidentally.”

“I sort of thought it might be.”

“Because I feel about as sexy as a burn victim.”

“That’s a pretty image.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like it.”

They fell silent. Traffic was light and he kept the speed just over sixty miles an hour. The car, a Buick Century, had been originally equipped with a cruise-control device, but it had been broken when he bought it and he had never bothered to get it fixed. The car had been four years old when he got it and that had been four years ago; when the new models came out in the fall, the Buick would be nine years old. It looked its age, too. Cars rusted quickly in western Oregon, and the Buick, never garaged and rarely washed, was going fast. It ran reasonably well, always started and never stalled out, but there were noises under the hood that might well be cause for anxiety if you knew what you were listening to.

Around Exit 154 she said, “I have to tell you, Guthrie. I hate this.”

“You want me to turn the car around?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because you don’t have to go through with it.”

“Yes I do. If I broke the appointment today I’d make another one tomorrow. I’m not gonna have the kid.”

“Well, that’s up to you.”

She nodded. “It’s not as though I’ve never done this before.”

“Oh?”

“Once at college. Once about — what, five years ago? Something like that.”

“Not when you and I—”

“No, earlier. Months earlier, maybe a year earlier. I wouldn’t have aborted a child of yours without telling you.”

“Jesus.”

“What?”

“I wonder if anybody ever did.”

“Did what? Abort a kid of yours? Didn’t it ever happen that you know of?”

He shook his head.

“You mean this is your first time?” She laid a hand on his. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be gentle.”

“Funny.”

“The irrepressible Kit Winston, cracking jokes even as she goes under the knife. Or under the vacuum cleaner, as the case may be. You could have fathered a child that somebody aborted. I mean, sleeping around, one-nighters. Look at me, there were three guys I slept with during the period of a couple weeks when it must have happened. And they’ll never know. What could I tell them? ‘I just had an abortion and you’ve got one shot in three of being the father’? So if you slept with somebody who slept with other people too—”