Forty Words for Sorrow

Another thump, thump, thump from upstairs.

"Listen to this." Eric read, "I think of you, I dream of you, I miss you. I miss making love with you- you make me feel so good!" There were some very explicit passages after that, and Eric read them in a funny, high-pitched voice that had them both doubled over with laughter, tears rolling down their faces.

"Eric told me they don't have a phone here, but I heard one ringing just now. It's a little disturbing."

"A little disturbing, is it, Keith? You find the phone ringing a little disturbing?"

"We'll show you disturbing, Keith. We'll disturb your balls right off your bloody carcass."

"We'll disturb your brains right out of your bloody head, you little shit. What's wrong?"

Eric had suddenly gone quiet.

"What is it, Eric?"

He showed her the letter, pointing to a line scrawled across the bottom. It was Edie's address. "How did he remember the address, for God's sake? He was drunk as a skunk."

Eric folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope they had steamed open. "I'll throw it away. In fact, I'll flush it down the-"

"What's going on in here? Why didn't you come when I called you?" Edie's grandmother tottered in the doorway, leaning on her walker. Her red-rimmed eyes were pits of accusation.

"Sorry, Gram. We were just listening to some music."

"I don't hear any music. I've been banging and banging, Edie, and you didn't come. Banging and banging. Why is Eric still here?"

"Hello, Gram," Eric said with a sweet smile. "Want me to bash your skull in for you?"

"What's he say?"

"Nothing, Gram. Come on, I'll take you upstairs."

But Gram wasn't finished. You could never shake her off an indictment when she got going. "I don't see why you can't come when I call, Edie. I don't ask you to do much for me. A lot of people would ask a lot more of the person they raised up as if they were their own."

"It's because she hates you, Grammy. Nothing to worry about. She just hates your stinking guts."

"Leave her alone, Eric. I'll take her." Edie helped her grandmother get turned around, glaring at Eric over the old woman's shoulder.

When they were gone, Eric went into the tiny bathroom under the stairs.

There, he stared at the letter for a long time. He had intended to tear it into tiny pieces, but the erotic sections had captured his interest. He closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to read them again. This Karen must be quite an interesting number. It would be a shame not to send her a little something.

27

YOU could have cast Jack Fehrenbach in a magazine ad for hiking boots, all six-foot-eight of him. He looked the perfect outdoorsman- right down to the five o'clock shadow. You would photograph him pitching a tent or frying a freshly caught trout on a Coleman stove. His shoulders were a wide solid shelf, and the rest of him looked to be cut from the same oak. The outdoors effect was softened somewhat by a conservative tie and a pair of bifocals that Fehrenbach snatched from his face to get a better look at Cardinal and Delorme, who had arrived on his doorstep unannounced.

"I hope this isn't about parking tickets," he said, when Cardinal showed his ID. "I've told them five times- I've told them till I'm blue in the face- I've paid the damn things. I have the canceled check, for God's sake, I sent them a photocopy. Why can't they keep track of these things? We have the technology. Do they not have a computer at City Hall? Where exactly is the difficulty?"

"This isn't about parking tickets, Mr. Fehrenbach."

Fehrenbach scanned Cardinal's face for defects and found plenty. "Then what can you possibly want?"

"May we come in, please?"

The man allowed them to penetrate no more than four feet into his home. The three of them were stuffed into a small foyer full of coats. "Is it about one of my students? Is someone in trouble?"

Cardinal pulled out a photograph of Todd Curry. It was a good snapshot that Delorme had sweet-talked out of the boy's mother. His smile was wide, but the dark eyes looked preoccupied, as if the eyes did not trust the mouth. "Do you know this boy?" Cardinal asked.

Fehrenbach peered at it closely. "He looks like someone I met exactly once. Why do you want to know?"

"Mr. Fehrenbach, do we have to stand in the vestibule? It's a little crowded, don't you think?"

"All right, you can come in, but you have to take your shoes off because I've just polished the floor. I don't want you tracking snow in here."

Cardinal left his galoshes behind and joined Fehrenbach in the dining room. Delorme followed a moment later in her socks. The room was light and airy, with plants everywhere. The hardwood floors gleamed, and there was a pleasant smell of wax. Along one wall four massive shelves sagged under their burden of history: Fat tomes were crammed together in rows and stacked at odd angles. Beneath them, a computer was all but buried.