Osler's Razor

Chapter 4: Spring

Much later Tenerife told me her recurring dream; the Dream of the Field. In the dream, she was a girl of ten with a wild curiosity and a body like the end of a whip, wearing a long shirt and her brother's pants. There were woods near her house, towards the River, and she would explore, looking for rabbits and mushrooms and deer. In the summer, she saw something new each day, turning back and forth through the trees.

In her dream, one day dawns brighter than the others, the hottest day of August. She runs off the back porch and into the southern woods, her Mother calling after her. The woods are cool, and she can hear a boat on the River, its engines charging upstream. She goes a way that she has never been before, and suddenly a field opens before her, rolling slightly upward, short grasses marching up the hill. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in the woods, a lawn tended by no one, made by God. She sits down at its edge. It is grander than the lawns of the big houses in town, larger than the church yard, an enveloping sweep, created for her. She sits and soaks it in until she falls asleep, and when she awakes it is gone.

* * *

On the first true day of Spring, Tenerife called me to her office. The note was marked "urgent," but they all were. I rolled into her office at a gallop; for weeks I had been wondering where the case was going.

Turning from her desk towards the door, Tenerife leaned back and tapped her pen on the desk. "I have a family problem."

I leaned forward, wondering how I could fit into this. "A family problem?"

"Yes, my father has taken ill and cannot come with me to the Cubs game. Would you like the ticket?"

I had never been to an opening day game before, as tickets were highly prized and practically unavailable. I accepted eagerly, wondering why I had been the lucky one chosen.

I left a tiny note tacked to my board indicating that I had gone out of the office, and met Tenerife in front of the building. It occurred to me that this was the first time that I had seen her outside of the office. As we walked towards the El, almost instantly a series of tiny transformations took place, as the tension of work fled from her in increments.

We were surrounded by a happy, rowdy, sweaty throng on the train. Inside the car, the crowd was almost all male, most wearing suit and tie, and excited; all were heading for the game save the old, grizzled black man asleep on one of the train's bench seats. He and Tenerife were the only blacks in the train. Behind us, a small group of middle-aged businessmen were exchanging high-fives and commenting on their sly escape from work.

At the Addison stop, the car emptied as the mob moved as one for the old, green gates which protected the park during its six months of winter dormancy. There was a muffled roar of feet and voices and distant clapping-- the roar of spring.

The seats were good, just on the far side of first base, and I settled in after picking some gum off of the seat. Tenerife seemed to know what she was doing; which gate to go to, the fastest tunnel to the row, what to say to the usher. The day, in deference to the event, was mild, with a warm breeze blowing in gently from the west, crossing the field, and heading onward with good intent over the cold and sullen lake eight blocks away. The house was packed a full half-hour before the game was to start. Wrigley is one of the few stadiums that can accurately be described as a field, a park, a house, and a home in the fullest sense of the words, though lesser ballyards are most often described with those sobriquets while Wrigley is referred to simply by its first name.

"The first thing to remember, Buddy," Tenerife instructed, "is to ignore drunk men, angry women, and Wrigley hot dogs. If you do that, everything will usually turn out fine. You won't get hit, and you won't get sick. And stay away from the nachos, too." She was able to sound stern but kind at once, a way I had imagined my own mother being. She acted as if I had never been to a Cubs game, which was almost right; my father never seemed to have much enthusiasm for it, though he was a fan in a distant, distracted way.

"So why me, Tenerife?" I asked, settling back. "Why did you call me to do this? Lots of the attorneys would love to have gone."

"Here's something you'll learn about attorneys-- they don't have any good mysteries. You, you have some mysteries." She changed her tone, lightening it. "You like the Parsons job?" "The Parsons thing was fun-- we went to some pretty terrible places before we got him. Is he helping you?"

"Damn straight he's helping me. He knows there's bucks in it for him if he joins the suit, which it looks like he'll do. He says that not only did the doctors give him the test too often, but that they refused to even look at him once he got sick. He just rolled around on the floor of the cell and coughed up phlegm."

I watched a rookie outfielder sprint to the dugout as batting practice finished. "Who is our client, anyways?"

"Somebody a lot like Parsons: Fiftyish, smart, convicted fraudster. His name is Dennis Smith, though he used a lot of aliases. Personally, my favorite was "Buzzy Papazallo". Tenerife picked a bit of peanut shell off of her coat and looked stormily behind her at the fat woman who dropped it. "Anyways, he's very articulate and will make a great witness for us, but I've only been able to meet with him once, since they transferee him to Minimum Security over in Rochester, Minnesota. He's got this look in his face, though, like he's a little cross-eyed or something, that's scary. Big guy. Sort of like the deranged rural type in the horror movies."

We stood for the national anthem and the throwing out of the first ball, then took our seats again as the game began. The national anthem had always grated on me, because I was completely incapable of singing it, but that day it seemed more meaningful. Someone behind me was belting it out-- her enthusiasm reminded me of what Lisa Diamond had said to me the night before: "Kiss me like you mean it, Buddy."

In front of us, a hot-dog vendor shouted, his tray loaded with dogs, buns, and mustard. I wanted one, but stifled my urge out of deference to Tenerife's warning. The smell of hot dogs lifted off of the cart to join the warm breeze heading out to the lake beyond the right-field wall. That was enough to satisfy me, and I was content.

Tenerife pulled on my sleeve. "Hey, watch the game, not the vendors!" Tenerife craned her neck to follow the former trajectory of my eyes. "Is it that girl over there with the little... thing on? Is that what you're looking at?" She turned back to me accusingly. "What are you doing oggling some sixteen-year-old? Get a grip on yourself, boy."

I turned back to the field sheepishly, raising my shoulders to protect myself from her barrage. I liked the way she teased me.

"What is your woman story anyways? You have some girlfriend still hanging around from college, or something like that? Or maybe you're gay? What's your story?"

Tenerife caught me by surprise. In Kenilworth, people didn't ask questions about that. I was reluctant to let go with the truth. "I've sort of been dating someone, but I'm not sure she's really a girlfriend or not."

Tenerife laughed. "What is she, some sort of a ghost? Tell, tell! Who is the woman? Is she tall?"

"What kind of a question is that, 'is she tall?' Is that really the first thing you must know?"

"OK, all right, whatever," Tenerife backpedalled, "tell me this then-- how did you meet her?"

"Well the first time,... well, it was sort of at a dinner, but nothing really happened then..."

"All right," said Tenerife, exasperated, "what came next?"

This was the sort of prodding that one supposedly got in locker rooms, but I had never faced such an inquisition at New Trier. "Hey, what do you want here, Tenerife, mash stories or what?"

"All I want is the truth."

"How high-minded of you. All right, I'll tell you the story, if it's the story you must have. At this dinner, I knew that I was interested, but she showed absolutely no interest in me. Anyways, about a month later, a friend and I are at this dance club down in the North Pier, just drinking. I'm starting to think that it's time to go, when I see her fighting off a date, some ogre-with-a-Camaro type. Valiantly, of course, I offered her a ride home, which she accepted."

Tenerife made the connection. "This wouldn't happen to be the same club in North Pier where you found Parsons, on the same night I sent you, with the same friend you went with then, would it? If it was, you owe me this story."

I nodded as the bat cracked behind me and the first hit of the season was made off a Cub pitcher. "It was. Thank you. So, I give her a ride home and we get along pretty well. There was the spark there. You know what I mean, the spark?"

Tenerife nodded vigorously, as the second hit of the year off a Cub pitcher flew into shallow leftfield. "When you need it, you can't find it, and when you want rid of it, it won't let you go," she said.

"It's either there or not, the spark, and it was definitely there with her. I don't think everybody would look at her and say she was beautiful, you know, she's a little short and round, but the spark was there and I wanted to just grab her and kiss her and know her from since she was ten, or something like that. But I didn't. I just sort of waved as she got out."

"Good move."

"I saw that she caught the spark, too, when she left. So about two weeks later I call her at work and ask if she wants to go to dinner; she says she will."

"Where's she work?" Tenerife asked as the Cubs failed to throw out a runner scoring from second on a single.

"Some law firm. Anyways..."

Tenerife cut me off. "Which law firm? Maybe I know her. What's her name?"

"Uh-uh, Tenerife. I told you that I'd tell you the story, not hand you a biography. Anyways, we go out to dinner and everything is going along fine, we order, we start to eat, everything is pretty much normal, given that I'm at dinner with the woman I, um, desire, which makes it a little difficult to choke down food. She's got this look which is just sort of giving; I don't quite know how to describe it. Anyways, after we finish the meal she reaches over the table, takes my hand in hers and says, 'Buddy, I trust you. I don't know why, and I probably shouldn't, but I just feel like that.' So there I am..."

"That must have felt great." Tenerife was talented at remaining engaged in the conversation and the game at the same time through almost imperceptible flips of her eyes to the action on the field.

"Sure it felt great. It was like there was this energy running out of her hands and into mine and filling up my whole body, just this warm energy. I didn't let go of her hand for a while, until I felt like people were staring at us. It was one of those incredible moments that usually mean that the whole relationship is about to go to hell in a handbasket."

"Did it?" Tenerife asked as the Cubs inserted their first relief pitcher of the year.

"Not yet. Not that night anyways."

"Did you kiss her?"

"Yeah, but that was all," I lied. In fact, I had followed her into the apartment at her invitation. We had sat around drinking coffee, moony-eyed, for an hour; eventually, we had resumed the clinch she had left me with in the car the night I found her at Grotar's, and I had spent the night lying on the couch next to her, putting my left hand on the small of her back, where her hips came together into her waist, her hair flowing over the brown leather, her eyes closed.

Tenerife did not push, but rather looked wistfully out onto the field. "The kiss, especially the first kiss, is really under-rated. Think about it--it's the only act I can think of where you use all of your senses. You see him, you feel him, you hear his breathing, which personally really does it for me, you smell him, another important one, and you taste him, all at the same time. Nothing else like that."

The sun came out again, and I leaned back until I was looking straight up at the sky, pondering Tenerife's riddle, as the Cubs' second relief pitcher of the year warmed up in the bullpen and the bleacher bums dumped beer on the opposing team's centerfielder, who didn't know better than to venture near the centerfield wall. Suddenly, the answer came to me from the clouds. "An orange. Eating an orange."

"That's pretty good, another great experience, it's true, but I haven't run into any loud oranges in a while. Keep trying, Buddy." Tenerife looked at me kindly, appreciating the effort. "I've been working on this one for awhile."

Nothing else like it. Sarabeth Jamison had told me as much, in college. She was a tall, earthy, warm person, with long hair she played with as she talked to me. "I'm not one of those little things you can just sweep up in one arm," she told me the night we sat on big chairs in the library, with the Berkshires snow piling up outside. I wanted to be that kind of person, who couldn’t be swept up so easily with one arm.

Out on the field, which was a brilliant, unmuddied green, the shortstop tensed up, rising up on the balls of his feet in anticipation of the hit, rising up on every one of the hundred or so pitches in a game, in each of the 162 games of the season. It was his ordinary motions which made him extraordinary enough to make his living playing ball.

"It's a strange game," I said to Tenerife.

Tenerife, who had returned to watching the game during my reverie, turned back to me, her hand on my shoulder. "You're telling me. Listen, about ten years ago my Mother got seriously into the whole genealogy thing. Dangerous business. Anyways, she found out we had relatives all over the Delta, and at least some that went to Liberia in the 1800's. So she writes to these Liberians, and it turns out that they are big wheels with Goodyear over there and have always wanted to come over here. So my mother invites the whole family, five of them, and they show up in Memphis with all kinds of gifts.

"After about a week of living all packed together in the little house, the father of this family offers to take us all to some city, any city, and we decide to go to Cincinnati. I'd never been there before, and I was home from college for the summer without a job, so I went with them. The Liberians put us all up at this big hotel, and I get elected to take them all to the ball game, the Reds. They thought that was a funny name, until they found out that there was also a team called the Red Sox. They still talk about that, probably.

"The game was fun, but it was impossible to explain the culture of it all to them. They had played softball, but baseball at this level was something new. Slowly, though they started to like it.

"The youngest kid, a boy who was about seven, had never seen baseball, and I spent most of the game trying to explain it to him. Then, in the ninth inning, we have a breakthrough. He turns to me and says, 'if you put the ball past the batter three times, he goes to visit with his friends.' It was great; I felt like some kind of brilliant teacher and told him that yes, that was how it worked. Just then, the instant I said that, the batter stole first on a passed third strike. Even I didn't know about that rule. I was one frustrated Pan-Africanist, I'll say that." Tenerife laughed softly at the memory.

As Tenerife finished her story, a foul ball fell three rows in front of us, a group of men grabbing at it, missing it, and a small boy coming up with it on his hands and knees, his father proudly sweeping him up into the air to show the crowd the prize. There was something odd about the scene, though, the pace of it. It was slowed down somehow, like a highlights film of some kind, the ball slowly dropping, the child reaching, the father looking up. Perhaps it was the memory of Sarabeth. Perhaps it was the day, the clarion sound of the season turning.

Tenerife turned again to me, her face serious now. "Buddy, you're a searcher, you know that?"

It struck me as an insult. "What do you mean 'the searcher'? It sounds like a very confused guy."

"I mean that,... well, it's like you are looking for your dream. A lot of people know what they want from the time they are born, how it is that they want to be a star. They do what the can to get their dream. Other people have what it takes to be something, but they just can't figure out what their dream is, so they search around for a while. I just think that's what your doing; you're searching to figure out how to get your fifteen minutes. But you don’t even know who you are and who made you."

This was crushingly familiar, the voice that was usually my own pointing out my current position in life. I looked at her blankly, hiding my hurt.

"I didn't say you were a loser, Buddy. I'm just saying you haven't defined your dream yet. Maybe it's better not to, since most people never get their's anyways, in the end."

"I don't think anyone can say that to anyone else, that they don't have a dream," I said, the slight inflection of anger appearing in my voice. "Everybody creates themselves, you know?"

Tenerife rose to the challenge. "That's just wrong. You are who you are because people let you be that way; we can all look back and remember the people who created us. In the end, who you are is what those other people let you be, or encouraged you to be, or warned you not to be. When someone asks what you're like, you can just give them a list of names, and figure that they will be able to sort it out pretty well. When you learn to look back on the people who made you and give them credit, maybe you'll figure out what you want."

I shook my head, but had no answer. A home run flew overhead, its parabolic arc echoed by the rising of the crowd to cheer.

"Hey, Buddy," Tenerife said, tapping me on the shoulder again, "maybe Lisa Diamond can straighten you out."

Lisa. I thrust my face into my hands. "Oh, no! Did I let that slip? Did I say that? Oh, man, that's why I didn't want to tell you who it was..."

Tenerife put her feet up on her stadium seat and looked haughty. "You didn't tell me. I knew two weeks ago. Never assume that news won't travel fast, especially when you're the son of the big boss, Buddy. News travels fast."

I was quiet. I know that Tenerife was thinking I was stunned, but in fact I was rolling over the aura of the moment; the slowness of the ball, the vividness of the memory of Sarabeth Jamison.

Tenerife had again demonstrated her courtroom skills, by pulling the conversation with me out of a gem of implied intimacy. Before us, the crowd rose as a distant figure lead us in the traditional "Take Me Out to the Ballpark" sung before the bottom of the seventh. He was an older man in a nylon jacket, his hand waving into the sunlight while his body remained in the darkness of the press box. He probably is someone's grandfather, someone who can go see him at work and sing an old familiar song.

The seventh inning stretch concluded, I looked up the row towards the back of the stadium; I don't know why. There was a man in a coat and tie coming down the steps towards us. The man looked slightly familiar, familiar in the way that one might recognize his childhood dentist or a grade-school classmate. As he approached, I turned to Tenerife, and started to feel the blood move faster through me, through my veins, my heart, my lungs. "Do you know this guy? He looks familiar."

Tenerife swiveled to follow my line of sight. "David Sand."

I remembered the face from the Thanksgiving dinner as the young man came close to our level, his eyes scanning the crowd. I saw him coming down the stairs, and I remembered who he was, and, again, everything seemed to be going in slow motion. It was perfectly understandable, him being at the game with half of the other attorneys, but I knew with certainty, utter certainty, that he was there for me, that something awful was about to happen. I watched his feet as they came down the steps in slow motion, watched his eyes as he looked at the people in the crowd. I knew that he was looking for me, that his grim look was for me, for my hopes. I watched the man's feet so slowly step down, row by row, towards me; the face of the screaming girl looking up; the voice of Aunt Sam saying over and over that the devil works in trinities. As David Sand approached, he slowed further as I felt the air of fear tightening my breath.

Slowly, each step a distinct minute, David Sand walked two rows past my seat, then turned, scanning, spotting me and Tenerife, his somber look unchanging. He excused his way down the row of fans. Leaning over to me, he said in even, measured tones, "Buddy, your Dad sent me to bring you back to his office. He said he must talk to you immediately."

"What is it? Did he tell you what happened?"

David shook his head. "No, he didn't tell me what was going on, but he seemed quite serious about it. I'll drive you. Let's go."

I was numb. Turning to Tenerife before leaving, I thanked her politely, my voice shaky.

"Buddy," she responded, "don't blame the world."

* * *

The stranger and I walked up the steps to the exit, past the hope-filled and slightly drunken well-dressed crowd, now bathed with the bright sun of mid-afternoon. The only face I saw was my father's.

I had only twice before been in my father's office, once as a young boy and a second time the day that I accepted my job at Taylor, Toth & Moore. Though I worked directly beneath my father, we had an unstated agreement not to contact one another at work until it was time to go home.

The office itself was not the plush abode one might expect; rather, its plain walls were decorated only with photos he had taken as a child of the Michigan shore, and an old and slightly tattered leather couch sat opposite his desk, next to two stern wooden chairs. The requisite wife-and-family photos were missing from his credenza, replaced by old photos of Chicago buildings, grey in the dusk.

It was into this office that I was ushered by a quiet secretary, who explained that Mr. Trigg would return in a moment. I sat alone on the couch, and looked out over the buildings to the East and the Lake, on which drifted a solitary boat. Outside the open door, two secretaries talked about their weekend, and the relative merits of the Volkswagen Cabriolet. I reached into my pocket, and found an old piece of cardboard, perhaps the remains of a baseball card, and a thin sheet of paper with the numbers rubbed off.

After five minutes, he entered the room, ashen, and closed the door behind him. Silently, he walked to the far side of the desk, and leaned back slightly, folding his arms.

"Buddy, something terrible has happened."

When he told me, I saw colors: Blue-green through pink to red and finally brown to black. The couch swallowed me up as my spine released and I felt the muscles in my face just quit. Mark. Somehow, I should have known. I saw my father talking, but my nodding registered something less than listening.

Mark, Mark, Mark. Somehow I was able to imagine it, the body, his blood tumbling out of him. My only hero, dead on a street.

I walked out, into the hall, leaving my father at his desk. He did not rise; I knew that he wouldn't, though I would have wanted him to.

I got on the elevator with two receptionists who looked tired. Somehow, the ordinariness of the moment seemed overwhelming. The wood was surrounding us, as always. The rich wood, the oak and maple and cherrywood, surrounded and marked and set off our culture, in school and in the clubhouse and at home and in the elevator. We were consumers of trees, Mark had said.

I ripped a message from the board in front of my desk when the cubbyhole appeared before me. Marked "urgent", it was attached to an envelope containing a summons in an insignificant landlord-tenant dispute on the South Side. I ripped the envelope from the board, not bothering to pick up the fallen push pin, shoved it into my pocket, and stormed down the corridor.

Driving back to Kenilworth, the clouds came up over the plains, and I felt the anger rising for the first time, replacing the numbness and stupidity. Back in the house, I lay on the couch and held a magazine in my hands briefly before falling into a deep sleep, my senses simply shutting down. My dreams were dark and violent, and immediate. Through the afternoon and nearly to dusk I slept on the couch, my arm draped over onto the floor.

At seven-thirty, I was awakened by the phone.

"Buddy? I wasn't sure if that was you or not. This is Lisa. I didn't want to get your father."

Her voice made me sit up on the chair beside the phone; it was as if I had forgotten about her. "God, Lisa, I'm glad you called. It's you. I'm glad it's you. Am I babbling?"

She sounded worried. "What's wrong?"

"No,... well, no, I just want to see you, talk about things. Nothing's really wrong, per se. I mean, no, something is wrong." For a time, we both listened to the faint hum of the line. "Mark's dead."

I heard only Lisa's breathing. "Buddy, what happened? You're not kidding, are you?"

"No."

"Oh my God, Buddy, that... come over here, Buddy. Come see me. Let me be there for you."

"I'll come. Don't leave."

"I won't," she said, her voice strong. I held the receiver in my hand until the recorded voice came on commanding me to hang up.

I parked in the space across from her apartment door, in front of a neighbor's entryway which was still decorated with a faded plastic wreath and candy cane. The tree in front of Lisa's window was bare of leaves, but was beginning to bud. As I walked to the door, I unthinkingly stopped at the tree, touching its trunk with my left hand. The bark of the tree was reassuringly firm and brittle and cool to the touch, though different from the stone of the building on LaSalle-- by touch, one could tell it was alive. I wondered what Mark's skin would feel like, and cursed myself for wondering.

Lisa answered the door with a look of worried anticipation, wearing sweat pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. She reached out to me, taking my hand and drawing me inside.

"You know, Buddy, that I wasn't raised to be nurturing," Lisa said sadly, "but neither were you. Good thing we found each other, huh?"

I laughed, a little, and pulled her down next to me, so that we lay together on the couch, facing the same way, like spoons in a drawer. I gently brushed the hair away from her left ear and spoke quietly after a few minutes. At first, my voice wouldn't come, and the first words were halting and unsteady. "It's funny, but I guess it isn't hitting me right now. I feel so selfish. My friend, my best friend, dies, and I keep thinking about how messed up my life is. Feeling sorry for myself."

Lisa turned her head slightly so that I could hear her. Her voice was different than that which I had heard before-- the edge of playfulness that I was used to was gone, replaced by a resolute gentleness. "I know it hurts, Buddy, but what do you feel sorry about? Your life is pretty good. You've got a good family, a job you're good at, and a woman who loves you. A lot of people don't even have one of those three."

She was right, but Mark was still dead. "I just feel aimless. Mark sort of had a purpose, if you know what I mean. His life had a direction; he knew what he was good at and he did it. I feel like I'm just drifting around. We're like our parents, but instead of collecting cars and stuff, we collect experiences. I just feel like I haven't gotten on track since college. I came back and didn't feel important any more. It's like all of a sudden someone has pulled up your anchors and set you off to drift, and there's nowhere to go and no way to get there. I have this dream where I'm standing in the middle of a room where the floor is slippery, and trying to stand up by grabbing a steel pole in the center of the room. The pole is slippery, too, though, and I can't raise myself. It's like Mark found a way to stand up in that room."

Lisa lay silently, waiting for me to finish, turning slightly and moving her hand up to my chest and pulling me closer to her as I continued.

"It's like I don't even know when I started being the way that I am. You ask Tenerife about something, and she tells you a great story about the Mississippi Delta. I don't have those stories to tell. Either I can't remember, or they're too painful to tell."

Lisa put her fingers into my hair. She looked into my eyes, and read my emotions. I knew the look I had; I could see it reflected in her eyes—a softness I rarely revealed willingly. I could not afford to.

We were silent, she looking at my eyes and me seeing everything in hers. Slowly, she reached up to my forehead with her left hand, placing her palm on my forehead and drawing my head back to her chest. It was a slow, deliberate motion, and overwhelming.

Her touch transformed me. I felt something go out of me and into her, and I could tell from her eyes that Lisa felt in her hand and her arm and her chest a loneliness and a emptiness that was crushing. It was as if the pain flowed into her through her fingertips, anger and hurt that were not hers.

She had won my pain.

I found her the next morning on her couch. For a while, I just watched her sleep.

Without opening her eyes, she spoke slowly. "Something..." I watched her as she slipped back into sleep. Her eyes did not open, and her breathing became steady and strong. I kissed her eyelid, her forehead, finally her neck. She turned to face me, her eyes still closed, and reached out with her hand, pulled me close, and kissed me on the mouth. I was thrown off by the intensity of the kiss, and the sudden feeling of her body pressing against me. Passion was a rare and unexpected thing in my world, and it took me by surprise.

At eight her alarm rang, and she turned it off. At nine-thirty she awoke again. Lisa sat bolt upright, looked at the clock, then slumped back down.

"Did you miss a meeting or something, Lisa?"

"No, I just didn't realize I'd slept in. I'll be OK. What are you going to do?"

I opened my eyes wide toward the sunlight streaming in the window towards us. "Mark's service is probably going to be tomorrow."

Lisa took my hand again. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"Sure... that would be good for me if you came along. You knew him."

"I did know him," Lisa said somberly.

"You worried him, you know. He was used to being the only person there for me."

"There could have been room for both of us." She rolled off of the couch and stood next to the bed. I nodded.

She kissed me before she left, and for a few minutes I lay on the couch and looked at this piece of her world before heading out into the chilly morning. In the car, my hands fumbled with the keys, missing the ignition each time that I tried. Alone, I felt a strange warmth follow me, and the edge of the hurt from the evening before was gone, though the knowledge of my loss was undiminished.

At home, my father was up and still at home, sitting in the breakfast room drinking coffee. I chose not to attempt stealth, given that he had apparently delayed his trip into the city to find out what had happened to me, and walked into the breakfast room, facing him in the doorway.

"Morning, Buddy, how about some coffee?"

Stone-faced, I stood my ground and shook my head, tugging absentmindedly at the thatch of white. "Aren't you going to ask me where I was, Pop?"

"You're thirty years old, Buddy. I assume you know what you're doing with yourself."

I felt anger; anger that he did not care enough to be more curious, to want to know what I had become or was becoming. I turned and headed up the stairs, stopped midway by his voice.

"The funeral is at ten o'clock tomorrow morning at Stevenson's Funeral Home in Wilmette. I'll be there, and hope you will be."

Without turning, I nodded and continued up the stairs. In the shower, I tried to remember Mark, but was unable to recall his image. It just wouldn't appear before me. I knew the details: the color of his hair and eyes, the creases that came with his smile-- but the image itself would not come. The emptiness and anger came back wrapped in the frustration I felt, trying to call up his face. That day I lay on the couch, sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking.

The next morning I picked Lisa up at 9:30. She wore a dark navy blue suit, which seemed so much more appropriate than my own brown suit. Getting into the car, she put her hand on mine, just the right thing.

In fifteen minutes we were in Wilmette, joining the line of cars turning into the tree-lined driveway of the large mansion which had been converted into the funeral home. Before we stepped out of the car, I realized that my father was likely inside. I had considered discussing the situation with Lisa, but decided to simply see what would happen.

As we entered the parlor, he spotted us immediately. Heading towards us, his look hardened, but his manner remained cordial. "Good to see you, Buddy. Hello, Lisa. I wasn't aware that you were a friend of Mark's."

Lisa parried skillfully. "Actually, I saw quite a bit of him," she answered truthfully, "though we only met recently."

My father nodded thoughtfully, putting it all together, before motioning us towards the chapel where the service was to be held. The crowd was sparse, composed primarily of the friends of Mark's parents. Mark had few close friends, and no co-workers. It was saddening to realize that I was the only person in the audience, including Mark's relatives, who had been close to him for an extended period of time. The closed casket seemed oddly symbolic.

The Minister who spoke obviously did not know Mark, and had not received a very good briefing on the boy, the man, or the family. He described Mark as an "outstanding college student", who had "been a devoted son". I cringed as the words were said, and Lisa took my hand. There was something overwhelmingly inappropriate about the setting, the sermon, and the mood of the ceremony. None of it fit Mark's personality, nor his style. Filing out afterwards, the Minister shook my hand and said, "we're all very sad about our loss." I almost told him the truth; the Minister offered only a sad smile that seemed well practiced.

The disconnect between the service and Mark left me feeling sick. It was as if God was not there for him, even after death. Not in the church, not in the sermon, at least.

Outside of the Funeral Home, my father thrust his hands in his pockets. "I guess I'll be seeing you two at work today?"

"Yes, I've got a deposition at one, but I'm glad I could make it for this," Lisa said, looking to me for further direction.

"I've got to make a service on the South Side, Pop."

My father left us at the edge of the parking lot, his face showing only a trace of emotion. It was a look tinged with his own sadness, which I guessed came from the realization that I was not doing what he wanted.

Once we were in the car, Lisa turned to me abruptly. "Is he pissed? Does he care, you know, about us?"

"Didn't act like it, did he?"

"That doesn't mean he wasn't upset, does it, Buddy."

I nodded wearily. "My father, he just doesn't want to judge me, I guess, and he doesn't let his face give him away. It's not like he'll tell me about it later, either. He just won't say. I wish I could say that he approved, or something, but we'll just never know."

"It could be worse," Lisa said, "my father will judge. He won't like you, Buddy. You're not the nice Jewish boy he wants to see me with, and he won't understand what someone your age is doing without a career."

"Yeah, well sometimes I wonder about that myself."

"It's his passion, Buddy. Everybody has to have a career. I don't know. We'll worry about that when it becomes a problem, honey."

I could not recall having been called "honey" before. We were quiet as I drove her back to her house, a comfortable and comforting silence. Stopping back at my own house, I decided against changing clothes for my South Side service. Such landlord-tenant services were loathed by the process servers, as the targets often successfully hid from them, or took threatening actions to defend their home. A process server at a different firm had recently been shot in the leg by a rifle-toting Polish grandmother on one such recent assignment; as a result, many of the process servers who had not already done so had procured concealed weapons permits and pistols.

I knew the neighborhood I was traveling to; it was the destitute area just south of the University of Chicago. The contrast between the University and the adjacent community was striking and depressing. Behind the Law School building, a chain-link fence fully ten feet high protected the students from exposure to the societal problems which lay a bare hundred yards away.

After killing the afternoon at the office, I headed out for the South Side in the early evening. I slowly cruised down 70th street, looking for addresses on the unlighted porches. The houses were for the most part unmarked, making my job more hazardous. The target house, however, had the number painted on a small stone by the curb, and I pulled my car over across the street. The house directly in front of me, across from my target, was ablaze in lights; I could see in the living room a man playing on the floor with his young son as an even younger girl tried to jump on top of the both of them. I stood watching them for five minutes. Seeing the farther and the children together made me wistful. "I could do that," I thought, "I could be good at that."

The yellow light pouring from every window of the house I was watching stood in stark contrast to the target house across the street. No lights were on in the crumbling brick house, but the harsh flashing blue light of a television blinked out of the side window facing the wall next door.

Approaching the house, I carefully walked up the wooden plank that took the place of the steps. Below the plank, the crumbled concrete rocks that had composed the steps were plainly visible. With a sinking feeling, I remembered that I had been sent to the house in the service of the landlord who maintained such a pit.

The doorbell was clearly unserviceable, hanging from the hole by a single wire. I knocked, hard, on the plywood door which had been jerry-rigged in place with a coat hanger. There was no answer. Pushing slightly on the door, it gave, and I stepped into the house. There was a sweet smell to the place, with a faint hint of onions.

Standing in the house, I felt like the interloper that I was. "Excuse me!" I yelled, not so loudly, "Anybody home?" There was no answer save the sound of the television babbling "Wheel of Fortune" on the far side of the dark room. I turned a light switch, and then another, with no response-- the only working light appeared to be the television.

Feeling my way through the dark room, I turned the corner and blinked my eyes as I faced the television, which made the room bright with its harsh light. My eyes adjusted, and I made out the figure, unmoving, of an older woman sitting on a couch, surrounded by three children, each under the age of five. They did not turn around to face me. Suddenly, there was a sharp noise; the old woman clapped in response to the action on the television.

A feeling of nausea rose in my belly. "Excuse me, Ma'am." No one moved. I repeated myself, feeling as if I was standing in an empty and abandoned church, utterly alone. The children sat like stones in a row.

For a few more minutes, I stood behind the couch, watching the show with them. A man was close to solving the puzzle, and the audience was beginning to sound hysterical, chanting. Finally, exasperated, I walked around the couch and crouched in front of the woman, blocking the path of the light to her.

Unmoving, she said, "You're in the way." Her voice was low, and mean.

"Ma'am, do you live here?"

"You're in the way," the old woman repeated.

The children stared straight ahead, ignoring the entire drama. Zombies. I felt invisible. "Ma'am, I'm going to assume that you live here."

"You're in the way."

I raised my voice. "Ma'am, it's important that I know whether you live here or not." Inside, I felt a panic born of helplessness begin to rise up.

The woman was silent, unmoving. I began to yell, rising to my full height in the middle of the room.

"Listen to me! Do you want to lose your house? Do you want to lose your stupid television?"

Still she did not move or speak, sitting and staring straight through me. Her face was one of boredom, the same face that she had worn before I had blocked her view. I saw the shadow on the wall behind her, my silhouette in the blue light. My anger grew to a fury, and I turned swiftly, walked to the television, and turned it off.

"Give me the envelope," the old woman said, still unmoving. "Look at how we have to live. I don't know how you sleep at night, working for the man who does this to children."

I had not an ounce of sympathy left in me.

"Pay your rent, lady," I said as I dropped the envelope into her lap. Inside, every part of me was churning, but my face remained hard. I slammed the door, and heard the wobbling sound of bad wood hitting a frame that did not fit.

I unlocked the door of the car, opened it and sat down. It was then that I saw him, that I was able to summon his face to my mind: His face on pavement, the blood from his neck coming over his chin, the boy with the gun, a child who wanted a car. I smashed the glass of the side window with my forearm, and on the drive north tasted the blood flowing from the wound as I returned to my familiars.