Chapter 22
Here's my thinking now, in case you're interested. You've stuck with it this far, so you might as well finish. I quit teaching partly because I was tired of it and partly because I wanted to change some things in my future, which had become a boring prospect and much shorter than it once was, given that I was 60 years old. You have seen the following things change in the course of this story:
•I lost my wife of 25 years to an ornithologist.
•The apartment I once shared with my wife is now neat and clean. But I don't care.
•I have learned to knit, poorly.
•I have made a couple of new friends, one of whom has relentlessly, though perhaps unsuccessfully, attacked my masculinity, not least by sleeping with my wife of 25 years, and the other of whom presented me with a bill of $4,000 for two marginally enjoyable acts of sexual intercourse. A third friend may be the very pleasant spouse of the evil gnome who slept with my wife, and a fourth may be the night nurse who lives in the apartment below me.
•I have learned, under the tutelage of the friend who slept with my wife, that I have a talent for shooting a handgun, but no talent for shooting a shotgun.
•I have shot a menacing thug during a meeting of the knitting group. He died, my knowledge of human anatomy being apparently inferior to my skills with a handgun.
•I have belatedly and unhappily realized that several of the above changes in my life were brought about deliberately or at least collaterally by some of my new friends and their associates in pursuance of their own selfish interests.
As I sit propped up in Julia's bed compiling my notes of these happenings, it would be easy to feel melancholy about the whole sequence. Looking over the changes described above, I'd have to say that most of them are not the kinds of things that represent significant forward movement in a person's life. There are only two or maybe three that I can even identify as having some kind of permanence. One is that I am now officially a killer. It's in the police database and it's part of my reputation, for a few people anyway. What bothers me the most about that is that it doesn't bother me very much. In any case, I don't think it's anything I'm going to be building on for the future.
Another probably permanent change is the absence of Leilah. I don't think she's reached the point of never wanting to see me again, but I don't think she's coming back here to live, either, especially now that she knows all her clothes are gone. I've had thoughts of taking up birding myself, in hopes of running into her somewhere in the mountains or the marshes; but overall I think it's probably best to close off that chamber and move on into the next.
On the other hand, there have been a few modestly positive developments, or at least I'm taking an optimistic attitude toward them. One, again, is that I've officially become a killer. I was able to pull the trigger when I thought it was necessary, and then deal with the consequences, which so far haven't been much, for me anyway. I'm only mildly sorry that that particular person had to die in the interest of advancing my personal development. However, I believe he would have killed or severely injured me if it would have improved his financial situation. Fair is fair. But I don't see any more triggers in my future.
The other thing that gives me a glow of satisfaction is that I left Victor Carogna's car in the train station and threw his keys in the woods. I don't even know if he ever got the car back, and I don’t care. This would be a trivial event in anyone else's life, but not in the life of someone who’s always had a little trouble occupying his own parking space. It might represent the beginning of my learning not to take people like Victor Carogna at face value.
Both of those things are fairly theoretical. More concrete is the fact that I've actually made some progress lately with The Scarf. The edges still aren't quite parallel. The stitches don't all have exactly the same size and tension, and it's only about three-quarters the length it really should be, but it's all there. It holds together, it's long and thin like a scarf, and at some point I may even decide it's finished, and move on to the next project. By dint of mere persistence and repetition, my fingers have apparently learned something, even though my brain doesn't seem to know what it is.
More ambiguously, I currently find myself in the bed of an attractive woman, with a warm body snuggled comfortably against my side. Admittedly, the body is that of a hateful little dog, while the woman herself is half a world away, eating shepherd's pie and drinking foamy ale. Nevertheless, I consider it a hopeful sign that fast-talking Julia has entrusted me with her treasured companion and the rest of her apartment, which is encumbered with a mess that would make Leilah proud. I don't care about that, either. In fact, I'm finding it rather comforting to nestle into the encircling hills and ridges of Julia's landfill. This entire building, meanwhile, has a faint, disturbing tremble, even though it's after working hours for Mr. Clabber's agents. My plan is just to keep my needles moving and await developments.
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About the Author
Charles Hibbard lives in San Francisco with his wife and no pets. You can connect with him by email at [email protected]
Retirement Projects Page 22