About the Author by John Colapinto Page A

Cloisters, I ducked into the woods, then made my way into the densest part of the forest. The West Side Highway, down a steep drop-off, whooshed with ceaseless traffic. The sun found a chink in the clouds, and the leaf shadows rose up on the forest floor like stains seeping into a paper towel. I crouched in the weeds and removed the pages from my knapsack. Summoning the skills I had learned as a child at summer camp, I used a stick to dig a shallow, bowl-shaped declivity in the ground, in which I placed Stewart’s crumpled title page. I built a tepee of twigs over the balled paper, then struck a match. Soon I had a handy little bonfire and was feeding in three or four pages at a time. I warmed my chilled hands over the inferno. Thirty minutes later, Stewart’s version was little more than a gray wasp’s nest through which a few orange sparks wriggled and winked. I scooped soil over the top, stepped on the mounded earth, flattening it, then sprinkled on some old pine needles and leaves.
    It was only later, when I got back to the apartment and saw a notation I had made on my desk calendar, that I realized I had performed the sacrificial act on the precise day and at the very hour of Stewart’s cremation in Chicago.
     
12
     
    “Blackie Yaeger, please.”
    “Who should I say is calling?” the woman’s brisk voice demanded.
    “Cal Cunningham.”
    “And is Mr. Yaeger expecting your call?”
    “He is.”
    Muzak flowed through the earpiece, a strings and Pan flute version of Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” I was on hold. It was now July 26. Hower’s book signing had been almost a month ago. Would Yaeger remember me? Probably not. Which meant I would have to explain it all to his assistant: “You see, Mr. Yaeger gave me his card and said that I should call. . . .” I didn’t want to go through that rigmarole, especially if it meant being told to “leave my name and number” so that Mr. Yaeger could “get back to me.” I’d never hear from him. With the phone still pressed to my ear, I leaned forward on the sofa and poured another neat vodka. The Muzak switched to a strings and Pan flute version of the Beatles “Help!”
    There was a click on the line, the music stopped, and for a moment I was sure that I had been hung up on. Then a voice rasped:
    “Cunningham. Yaeger. How are you?”
    I swallowed the firewater and gasped that I was fine.
    “Been looking forward to your call,” he continued, on a cheerful note. “I checked around town. None of my editor friends seems to have heard of you.”
    I did not faint. But my vision did tunnel considerably. I groped for something to say. I came up with:
    “I—you—what do you—?”
    “You told Hower that your book was out there circulating. What’s the deal, Cunningham?”
    I wanted to say something. But there didn’t seem to be anything to say.
    “So,” Yaeger said. “Is there a manuscript or isn’t there?”
    “There is.”
    “No kidding?” He laughed—a remarkable sound, like sheet metal being torn by a machine. “Gotta hand it to you, Cunningham. I don’t give my card to just anybody. I figure anyone who can lie like that, I want to read what he writes. I’ll get Sue to send up a messenger for the book. What’s the address?”
    I recited the street and apartment numbers. He repeated these back to me, then said, “Okay, talk to you.” And he hung up. Twenty minutes later, a helmeted bike messenger appeared at my door and spirited away the manuscript bearing my name.
    My desk calendar from that remarkable year indicates that it was less than a week later when Yaeger called me back. This suggests that time really is the relative phenomenon that Einstein said it was, because that span of numbed time seemed an eternity. After just one day, I was so anxious that I found myself cursing Yaeger’s insensitivity in taking so long to get back to me. By the second day, a depression had settled over me, triggered by my sudden