Part 19 (1/2)

”Me?”

”I was barely twenty years old when I read your book,” I said. ”And I believed every word of it. You wrote the story of my life before I'd had a chance to live it. You said I was directionless, but how could you have known that? I was still so young. But I thought you were so smart, I thought you knew the answers. No one had ever examined me as closely as you did, no one had ever taken as keen an interest. I figured you'd seen into my core and could make out, better than anyone else, who I was. It wasn't very smart on my part. I know I'm as much to blame as you-or more-but I became that character.”

”I also wrote that you were smart,” Thorpe said, ”and beautiful. I wrote that you were pa.s.sionate.”

”I don't remember any of that.”

”It's there.”

”You referred to Lila as 'the good daughter.'”

”Yes, but I didn't call you the bad daughter.”

”You didn't have to.”

Thorpe glanced at a clock on the wall, then turned away from me and looked out the window. I followed his gaze. Moments later, someone moved in front of the window of my old bedroom. The shade went down, the light went off.

Thorpe got up and flipped the switch on the wall, flooding his office with light.

”Sorry,” he said, looking back toward me.

”What?”

”She lowers the shade and turns off the light at precisely this time every night. Twelve forty-five. I could set my clock by her. Immediately thereafter I switch on my light. It's this game I play. I like to think she notices my light going on-as if we've ch.o.r.eographed it, a silent form of communication. At five minutes past seven every morning, she opens the shade. Except Sunday. Sunday she pulls up the shade at six-thirty, emerges from the front door at seven-fifteen, and walks down the hill to St. Paul's. Coming and going during the week, she always looks very stylish-sleek black dresses, black boots, elegant scarves. But on Sunday, on her way to Ma.s.s, she wears this ill-fitting yellow coat. Every week without exception, no matter the weather.”

”Maybe the church is cold,” I said.

”It is.”

”You followed her there?”

”It's a church. All souls welcome, right? I was just curious. She lives alone, and I had this idea that she would be alone at Ma.s.s, too. But she isn't. She meets a fellow there, a guy with a limp, and they sit together in the back row.”

”What else have you uncovered about her? Date of birth? Favorite color? Her first heartbreak?”

”That's the thing,” he said. ”I don't have to. She's the subject of my novel. I get to make all that stuff up.”

”Let's say she reads the book one day,” I said.

”That's quite a leap of faith, isn't it? I don't even know if I can publish it. Maybe no one wants a novel from a writer of true crime books, especially a love story.”

”It's a love story?”

”Yes. I'm tired of blood. I wanted to write about something beautiful. Something I've experienced. All these books about murder-I'm an outsider, not a partic.i.p.ant.”

”What about Second Time's a Charm? That was a love story.”

”That book was as much a farce as my marriage. No, this one is about true love. Not s.e.xual love, something deeper. The kind of love that exists even when it isn't returned. The kind of love that can keep on going for a lifetime, with no reciprocation. Tragic love, if you will.”

”Some would call that obsession, not love.”

His left eye twitched. It was just the tiniest movement, but I knew I had gotten to him. For once, my words were the ones that stung. I was surprised to discover that I felt no satisfaction. I would have liked to take it back. Maybe that's what makes books so dangerous; the record is permanent, indelible.

”The woman who lives in your old house,” Thorpe said. ”I've seen her playing the piano, hosting dinner parties, going to church, but I've never once seen her read. If I am able to publish this novel, it may come and go without fanfare. But even if it magically jumps all the hurdles and becomes a hit, I'd say the chances of her reading it are very slim.”

”For the sake of argument, what if she does? Will she recognize herself?”

Thorpe turned to me, hands in his pockets. He sat on his little stool again. ”There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I've been looking for the perfect opportunity to stick it in conversation, but it hasn't really come up.”

I couldn't imagine what sort of shoe he'd drop now. It occurred to me that I was ready for all of this to be over. When I walked out his door, I was certain I'd never come back. From now on, new chapters, new plot, my story.

”There's this guy out in L.A.,” Thorpe said, ”Wade Williams. He was just a college kid when he first read the book, but now he's this hotshot Hollywood producer. He wants to do a film adaptation of Lila's story.”

I knew what was coming. In literature, characters have a habit of undergoing major transformations by the final chapter. But in reality, most people don't change. You can throw anything at them, and they will remain, in every way that really matters, the same. I turned to go.

”Wait,” Thorpe said, putting a hand on my arm. ”It's been a dream of mine, ever since I started writing, to see one of my books make it to the big screen.”

I was already at the door to the office, my back to him. There was a weird smell in the hallway-those vanilla candles again.

”I was all set to make the deal,” Thorpe said, ”but then you came along. And I told him no.”

I stopped, just stood there for a moment. Then I turned to him. I needed to see his face, to know if he was telling the truth.

”For what it's worth,” he said, ”I just want you to know the movie isn't going to happen. And I'm not going to be talking about the book anymore. It's what everyone wants to talk about when I do events-always that one, never the others. For the longest time, my ego has been living off that book. But I want you to know I'm finished with that.”

I was leaning against the door frame. There was a crack on the wall across from me, stretching in a crooked diagonal from the ceiling, halfway down the wall, ending somewhere behind the desk. Every building in the city had them. The house I grew up in had them. Every time an earthquake hit, my mother would do a walk-through, looking for new telltale lines in the walls and floors. As a kid I'd been certain that one day, we'd get a crack so big the house couldn't keep standing; it would just fall apart.

”Why?” I asked Thorpe.

”When I wrote that book, I didn't mean to hurt you. I had tunnel vision. All I could see was my opportunity, my way out of teaching and into this thing that I wanted so much I could taste it. I wanted so desperately to be a writer, I forgot about everything else. So I guess this is my way of saying I'm sorry. Granted, it may be too late. But I mean it, Ellie. I'm sorry. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

”Thank you.”

He was looking at me, as if there was more he wanted to say. I was grateful to him for not saying it.

He walked me downstairs. Above the mantel was the Munkacsi photograph he'd told me about before-two men on a dark street, locked in battle, their arms wrapped around one another. The photograph was violent, yet somehow beautiful, full of life.

In the entryway, something was different-the silence. In the dim streetlight that shone through the front window I could see that the fountain was empty, it had been scrubbed clean. Thorpe opened the door for me. Just as I stepped outside, he took my hand in his, pulled me toward him. I didn't resist. I let him hug me, and for a second or two I hugged him back.

As I was driving home, I thought again about what Thorpe had said all those years ago in cla.s.s. Life isn't just about the major characters and the big events. It's about everyone, everything, in between.

Thirty years from now, would I remember Jesus at the farm, Maria at the cafe in Nicaragua, my boss Mike? At thirty-eight, I could recollect the names of only three or four of the teachers I'd had in my life, and it wasn't necessarily the best ones that stuck in my memory. I remembered Mrs. Smith from kindergarten only because she chewed with her mouth open, mean Mrs. Johnson from third grade only because her dresses always rode up too high on the backs of her puffy legs, my P.E. teacher from seventh grade only because she had once shamed me in front of my cla.s.smates for failing to catch a fly ball. I remembered the men I had slept with, but only by name; for the most part, details escaped me. I knew in the end that Thorpe would never leave my memory, nor would McConnell, or Frank Boudreaux.

I wished I could go back in time and pose this question to Lila. Her short history was made up primarily of my parents, me, and Peter McConnell. Before that night when she ran into Billy Boudreaux at the Muni station, would she have bothered to mention him in her list of relevant people? It seemed unlikely.

Heading down Clipper and across Castro, I found myself stuck on Thorpe. All through the conversation, I felt as if there was something more he had wanted to say. I put him off, thinking I already knew what it was-something about me, about us. But there, alone in the car, it occurred to me that perhaps it was something else entirely.