Chapter 17
September 26
Is Anybody Out There?
Despite all my efforts, I was quite unable to get to sleep: an endless succession of […] unnecessary thoughts dragged one after another persistently and monotonously through my mind.
Ivan S. Turgenev, “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District”
AT ABOUT THREE I gave up trying to get to sleep. I slipped out of bed, dressed in the dark, tiptoed to the door, and pulled it silently shut behind me, but before it was fully closed Albertine said, “Be sure you’re warm enough.”
“I am,” I said. “I’ve got a sweat suit and a sweater on, and two pairs of socks.”
“Okay. Come back, though. Don’t stay up the whole time.”
“Okay.”
I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment to see if anyone else was up. The hotel seemed quiet. Everyone else seemed to be asleep. I went downstairs and into the kitchen, where I made a turkey sandwich from the leftovers refrigerator. I took it out onto the porch, and I found Lou sitting there.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“Clam salad sandwich?”
“Turkey,” I said.
“Was it anxieties or regrets?”
“Anxieties and regrets.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, by my age the anxieties pretty much disappear.”
“No more anxieties?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh.”
“It’s more a case of the anxieties being almost entirely overshadowed by the regrets.”
“Oh, wonderful,” I said. “I can’t wait.”
We sat there in silence, looking out at the dredge.
“We could sink it,” he said.
“Could we?”
“Sure. I’ve got a friend who was in Korea with me, a very skilled guy, and I could get him out here. Give him a few minutes in the water one night, a night like this, and that thing would be sitting on the bottom in the morning.”
I laughed nervously. Lou answered my nervous laugh with Baldy’s sardonic one.
“You’ve got to keep that rock in front of the cave,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Even if your cave is an island and your rock is a bay.”
“Right.”
“Having that dredge out there is like having somebody take a jackhammer to the rock at the mouth of the cave.”
“I get it, Lou,” I said.
“Want me to give my friend a call?”
“We’ve got rooms available,” I said, which was not quite saying yes, even if it was not quite saying no.
[to be continued]
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