Pete Hamill - Loving Women

But as the years slipped by, I would sometimes hear a fragment of a forgotten song, or feel a breeze on a deserted beach; I’d see a river on a summer morning or a house trailer at the side of a road or a woman in red shoes — and I’d want to know what happened to Eden Santana. And across all those years I was afraid to find out. I never went back to New Orleans. I didn’t want to learn that she had grown old. I didn’t want to hear that she had made her peace with James Robinson. I didn’t want to believe that she was dead. But in a thousand places and a thousand dreams she lived on in me as she had said she would one fevered morning long ago, under the chandeliers of the Royal Orleans.

O Eden!

Suddenly, illuminated briefly in the high beams, I see a sailor in dress whites. I haven’t picked up a hitchhiker in twenty years, but I slow down, the car’s momentum taking me past him. I stop and wait and see him in the rearview mirror, running toward me, an overnight bag in his hand. I unlock the door on the passenger side.

“Hey, thanks, man,” he says. He has the two pathetic stripes of a seaman deuce, a sunburned face, crooked teeth. A kid.

“Where you going?” I ask, pulling onto the highway.

“New Orleans,” he says.

“It’s a good town.”

“The best,” he says. “My girl’s there.”

“So’s mine,” I say, driving fast across the dark tidal fields of the Gulf. My heart is racing. My palms are damp. I am no longer old.

FICTION

A Killing for Christ

The Gift

Dirty Laundry

Flesh and Blood

The Deadly Piece

The Guns of Heaven

The Invisible City

NONFICTION

Irrational Ravings

PETE HAMILL was born in Brooklyn in 1935. He has been a professional writer since 1960, when he gave up a career as a graphic artist to become a general assignment reporter for the New York Post . He has since published six novels, one collection of short stories, one collection of journalism, and has written many movie and TV scripts.

He is the father of two daughters, Adriene and Deirdre, and is married to writer Fukiko Aoki. They live in New York City.