Rapture

His telephone was ringing when he unlocked the door of his condominium. Odd-not just because of the hour, but because he rarely received calls at home.

"Hello?"

"Jeff? Is that you?"

The voice was old and somewhat frail. He hadn't heard it in several years, but he knew it at once. He grasped the situation at once. A scenario he had run through his mind many times over the years was now, finally, about to be played out. He was ready for it.

"Yes, Kitty, it's me."

"Goodness, it sounds like you're just across the street," his aunt exclaimed.

"How are you?" he asked, smiling.

"Jeff, I'm sorry to call so late, but I've been trying to get you all evening and-"

"I was out," Jeff interrupted. "In fact, I just came in the door this minute."

"Jeff, I'm afraid I have some bad news to tell you...."

She was obviously quite uncomfortable at having to use the telephone for this task.

"That's all right, Aunt Kitty," Jeff said, trying to make it a little easier for her. "I expected it sooner or later."

"Yes ... Your father ...

"I know. I understand."

"His heart..."

They talked a while longer, and then Uncle Roy managed to get on the line and exchange a few words. He wanted to assure Jeff that he would make all the necessary arrangements for the wake and the funeral.

"Will you...uh...?"

"I'll be on the first plane I can get in the morning," Jeff said, wondering if they really thought he might pass up his own father's burial.

Jeff reserved a seat on an early flight. Then he dialed a number in Van Nuys. Ted Benedictus, groggy with sleep, was soon alert and concerned as Jeff explained the situation.

The only alcohol in the house was half a bottle of Scotch that Jeff hadn't touched in ages. Now he poured a large measure into a glass with some ice. He smoked a cigarette, drank, and thought.

He hadn't been home in-what was it?-seven or eight years. His whole life was here now, in California. But his past, or at least the most important part of it, was there, on the other side of the country. He felt eager and excited about going back.

And the best part of it was that Jeff had spent the last several hours thinking about Georgianne.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWO

Jeff drove with all the windows down. The air was like warm syrup, but he didn't turn on the air conditioner, because he hated sealing himself in a car, even on a scorcher of a day like this. It was the middle of the afternoon, early May, and Connecticut was experiencing a premature heat wave. Sweat trickled down Jeffs back, sides, and chest beneath his halfunbuttoned shirt.

It should have taken two hours to get where he was going, the town of Millville, up in the Brass Valley, but traffic and tolls had slowed him. The car, which he'd rented at La Guardia Airport, was only a year old, but it moved like a pig. One of the speaker wires must have been loose, because there were bursts of static that soon forced Jeff to turn off the radio.

So his father was dead. Chopping wood on a hot afternoon at the age of seventy-six. The damn fool. What did he expect? Who bothered to chop wood at the beginning of May? Perhaps his father simply didn't care any more. Jeff lit another cigarette.

The wake was tomorrow, the funeral the day after. Jeff thought he should feel sorrier about his father's death, but the truth was he didn't. It was more of an inconvenience than anything else, just about the only thing that could force him to travel clear across the country. But now that he was here, he felt a curious sense of anticipation. It might yet prove interesting, after all this time.

Jeff and his father hadn't been close in a long time, and they had hardly communicated at all since his mother died several years ago. There wasn't any open hostility between them, but neither was there any real warmth. Father and son were alike in this regard: each was a very separate, private person.

The traffic on 1-95 thinned out a little after Westport, and Jeff was able to make better time. Connecticut looked unfamiliar to him, what he could see of it from the highway. He had been living in Southern California for twenty years and had no desire to be anywhere else. He had it made out there.

The Waterbury sign appeared just after Bridgeport, and Jeff drifted into the right lane. He fell in behind a semi with its signal light blinking. He knew the exit was just ahead, although he couldn't see it, but he suddenly felt hesitant and indecisive. The truck stayed on the highway, and he followed it, passing the Waterbury exit. He cursed as he put his foot down and swung the car out to pass, but he didn't know whether he was angry with the truck driver or with himself. Now he would have to take route 63 north, the old New Haven Road. He knew it well enough, having traveled it many times. When you were in high school in the Brass Valley, New Haven was an attractive place to visit.