@@@@@When I came back from the kitchen, he was
@@@@@When
I came back from the kitchen, he was looking at a
pen-and-ink I'd done - three palm trees
silhouetted against an expanse of water, a bit of
screened-in porch jutting into the left foreground
"This is pretty good," he said"You do this?"
"Nah, the elvesThey come in the nightCobble my
shoes, draw the occasional picture
He laughed too hard and set the picture back down
on the desk"Don't look much like Minnesota,
dere," he said, doing a Swedish accent
"I copied it out of a book," I saidI had
actually used a photograph from a Realtor's
brochureIt had been taken from the so-called
"Florida room" of Salmon Point, the place I had
just leased for a yearI had never been in
Florida, not even on vacation, but that picture
35
had called to something deep in me, and for the
first time since the accident, I felt actual
anticipationIt was thin, but it was there"What
can I do for you, Tom? If it's about the business-
"
"Actually, Pam asked me to come out"I didn't much want to, but I didn't
feel I could say noOld times' sake, you know Tom went back to the days when The
Freemantle Company had been nothing but three
pickup trucks, a Caterpillar D9, and a lot of big
dreamsI'm not going to bite
you
"She's got herself a lawyerShe's going ahead
with this divorce business
"I never thought she wouldn't
I still didn't remember choking her, but I
remembered the look in her eyes when she told me I
hadAnd there was this: once Pam started down a
road, she rarely turned around
"She wants to know if you're going to be using
Bozie
I had to smile at thatWilliam Bozeman III was a
dapper, manicured, bow-tie-wearing sixty-five,
36
wheeldog of the Minneapolis law-firm my company
used, and if he knew Tom and I had been calling
him Bozie for the last twenty years, he would
probably have suffered an embolis