time. But I have to leave—as, once you’ve found this, I’ll have done. You’ll be sad, and will want to understand. We always have to understand, don’t we, the two of us? (That’s another thing I must get away from.) At some point Don Quixote, Alonso Quixano the Good, must die, and Cide Hamete Benengeli hang up his pen. Together and apart, they both had a good run. But it’s time.
So it was that morning in its yellow hat came calling.
Six or a little after, Deborah emerged in housecoat and slippers and found me sitting on the porch. The Penguin Classics edition of Cervantes’ masterpiece was open to page 240. A bottle of Scotch lay sideways on the warped floor.
“Lew?” she said.
And the dam of my eyes broke, and tears flooded the land.
Chapter Ten
AS OFTEN TRANSPIRES with organizations of a thoroughgoing liberal bent, it was difficult to find anyone at the community center who’d admit to being in charge. Simple caution, or some weird excess of democratic spirit? Winnowing my way from desk to desk, eventually I fetched up before that of a lady named Valerie LeBlanc, face so white it made the pale pink sweater she wore look like a burst of violent color, and stood there thinking both about her name and the fact that she’d claim responsibility. Cast of faces around us running, as they did, from coffee to jet.
“Yes, ma’am, if that’s okay with you,” I said in answer to her nonquestion. And Alouette asked you to come by and pick up some work she could do at home. “Didn’t want to go rooting around her desk without saying something first.” If mankind cannot bear too much reality, neither does it need too much truth told it. Use in moderation. Apply to a small, inconspicuous area first to test its effect. “That is, assuming I could even find it in here.”
“So you’re Lewis?” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve seen you here before.”
“Well, from the look of things, you could have a couple of extended families living in here full-time and never know it.”
Long ago the place had begun life as a wine and liquor warehouse. Then for years it lay dormant until, during a brief period of progressive government (this oversight soon enough corrected), cascades of funds for “community improvement” became available. Delta Bottled Goods was reborn as Riverside Community Center and ever since, for some fourteen or fifteen years, it had been hanging out over the precipice with ropes afray, held aloft on half a broken wing, stupendous individual effort, all manner and forms of prayer. Now its cavernous spaces and bare, stained cement floor were strewn with desks and tables, some of them cobbled together from odd combinations of doors, squat filing cabinets or sawhorses, cinder blocks, planks, plastic milk crates, and studded with makeshift partitions formed of taller file cabinets, plywood and pegboard slabs lashed or nailed to the backs of desks, hastily constructed, slew-footed bulletin boards. The whole place still had much of the factory air about it and always would. Here, daily, dreams were refurbished, pills and loose threads cut from America’s shabby egalitarian overcoat before it was passed along to new wearers.
Valerie LeBlanc removed her glasses: prolapsed teardrops, shell-gray, ruby rivets at apices. They swung on a gray cord about her neck, bare eyes springing forth with an unsuspected warmth, out of focus, vulnerable, immensely attractive.
“Alouette’s fine, though,” she said. Another nonquestion. Had she checked, or did she simply assume, with the mulish optimism of uncompromising wellwishers, that all in her vicinity must go smoothly?
“She is.”
“And the child. A girl.”
“LaVerne—after her mother.”
She nodded. “LaVerne and I worked together at a women’s shelter downtown years ago, when I was just getting started at this. When we all were. And when there was a downtown. I thought a lot of her.”
“Most people did.”
“You among them, I
So it was that morning in its yellow hat came calling.
Six or a little after, Deborah emerged in housecoat and slippers and found me sitting on the porch. The Penguin Classics edition of Cervantes’ masterpiece was open to page 240. A bottle of Scotch lay sideways on the warped floor.
“Lew?” she said.
And the dam of my eyes broke, and tears flooded the land.
Chapter Ten
AS OFTEN TRANSPIRES with organizations of a thoroughgoing liberal bent, it was difficult to find anyone at the community center who’d admit to being in charge. Simple caution, or some weird excess of democratic spirit? Winnowing my way from desk to desk, eventually I fetched up before that of a lady named Valerie LeBlanc, face so white it made the pale pink sweater she wore look like a burst of violent color, and stood there thinking both about her name and the fact that she’d claim responsibility. Cast of faces around us running, as they did, from coffee to jet.
“Yes, ma’am, if that’s okay with you,” I said in answer to her nonquestion. And Alouette asked you to come by and pick up some work she could do at home. “Didn’t want to go rooting around her desk without saying something first.” If mankind cannot bear too much reality, neither does it need too much truth told it. Use in moderation. Apply to a small, inconspicuous area first to test its effect. “That is, assuming I could even find it in here.”
“So you’re Lewis?” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve seen you here before.”
“Well, from the look of things, you could have a couple of extended families living in here full-time and never know it.”
Long ago the place had begun life as a wine and liquor warehouse. Then for years it lay dormant until, during a brief period of progressive government (this oversight soon enough corrected), cascades of funds for “community improvement” became available. Delta Bottled Goods was reborn as Riverside Community Center and ever since, for some fourteen or fifteen years, it had been hanging out over the precipice with ropes afray, held aloft on half a broken wing, stupendous individual effort, all manner and forms of prayer. Now its cavernous spaces and bare, stained cement floor were strewn with desks and tables, some of them cobbled together from odd combinations of doors, squat filing cabinets or sawhorses, cinder blocks, planks, plastic milk crates, and studded with makeshift partitions formed of taller file cabinets, plywood and pegboard slabs lashed or nailed to the backs of desks, hastily constructed, slew-footed bulletin boards. The whole place still had much of the factory air about it and always would. Here, daily, dreams were refurbished, pills and loose threads cut from America’s shabby egalitarian overcoat before it was passed along to new wearers.
Valerie LeBlanc removed her glasses: prolapsed teardrops, shell-gray, ruby rivets at apices. They swung on a gray cord about her neck, bare eyes springing forth with an unsuspected warmth, out of focus, vulnerable, immensely attractive.
“Alouette’s fine, though,” she said. Another nonquestion. Had she checked, or did she simply assume, with the mulish optimism of uncompromising wellwishers, that all in her vicinity must go smoothly?
“She is.”
“And the child. A girl.”
“LaVerne—after her mother.”
She nodded. “LaVerne and I worked together at a women’s shelter downtown years ago, when I was just getting started at this. When we all were. And when there was a downtown. I thought a lot of her.”
“Most people did.”
“You among them, I
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