The Gold Coast

60

When Dennis arrives home from Washington, very late that night, exhausted and depressed, he finds an empty house. And no note. At first he’s angry, then worried; and he can’t think what to do about it. It’s completely unlike Lucy, he can’t think of a possible explanation where she could be at three in the morning. Has she left him, like Dan Houston’s wife? A moment of panic spikes into him at the thought; then he shakes his head, clearing it of such nonsense. Lucy wouldn’t do it.

Has something happened to her? An hour passes and the fear grows in him, then almost two hours pass, and it’s just occurred to him that he could call the reverend, rather than the police, when she pulls into the driveway. He hurries out to greet her, relieved and angry.

“Where have you been!”

She tells him.

“Ah,” he says stiffly, and puts his arms around her. Holds her.

He’s too tired for this, he thinks. Too tired.

They stand there. He’s awfully tired. He remembers a game he played with his brother when they were boys, during the marathon driving tours his parents took them on. At night in the motel rooms they took a deck of cards and divided it, and made card houses on the floor, in opposite corners of the room. Card fortresses would be a better name for them. Then they took a plastic spoon from McDonald’s, and used it as a projectile—bent it back like a catapult arm with their thumbs and fingers, and let fly. The spoon took the most hilarious knuckleball flights across the room, and mostly missed. They laughed.…

And when the spoon hit the card houses, it was so interesting; it didn’t matter whose was hit, it was just fun to see what happened. They noted that the card houses acted in one of two ways when struck by a direct hit. Thwap! They either collapsed instantly, the cards scattering, or else they resisted, settled down a little, and somehow in the hunkering down lost little or none of their structural integrity, their ability to hold up. Perhaps curiosity about that made Dennis an engineer.

Random images, in the exhausted mind. Where did that come from, he thinks. Ah. We’re the card house now. There’s never a situation where one card is threatened, the others left in peace; they’re all threatened together and at once. All in a permanent crisis. How long has it been going on? Spoons flying from every direction. And the house of cards either holds or flies apart.

He’s too tired for this, too depressed; there’s no comfort in him to give. Lucy begins to sob in earnest. He tries to remember the Keilbacher girl; he only saw her a few times, flitting in and out. Blond hair. A lively kid. Nice. Easier to imagine Martin and Emma. Ach. Bad luck. Terrible luck. Worse by far than having Judge Andrew Tobiason turn down a protest despite the evidence; worse than anything possible in all that world of corruption and graft. Ach, it’s bad everywhere. Spoons from every direction. He’ll have to check out Jim’s car, make sure it’s all right. He doesn’t know what to say. Lucy always wants something said, words, words, but he doesn’t have any. Are there any words for this? No. Some strange stubbornness, of an interlocking placement, holds certain card houses up, under a fluky barrage of blows.… He hugs her harder, holds them up.