smoking, Maloney.
Why?
It makes you tough.
Those things will kill, I say.
All the good people smoke, says Finger. Puts you in touch with death.
I’m in touch with death, I say. It’s life I can’t get together.
I’m at the Starlight watching Darling pour hot coffee with her perfect pitching arm. She comes over and says there’s a call for me. It’s Tuesday on the line.
I’m in Bhutan seeking the light, she says. How is Eli?
He is fast on his way to becoming a chess master. Next week we go to the big tournament.
I sent him a wisdom prayer.
Do you pray for me?
It was good to talk to you, she says. Goodbye.
St. William is tied to the stake, strangled and burned. He coined the phrase
Give up the ghost
.
Eli, do you feel alive?
Most of the time.
What about now?
I would say yes. And you?
Can’t rightly say.
Another gin?
Why not.
This is what passes for conversation here on the boat.
Eli, you’re in the chess club destroying the journeymen. Lots of old wood in this place and paintings that follow you with their eyes. There are some masters here sizing you up. You win one pretty easily but the next one sneaks up on you. Nono is coming to all your chess matches. The tournaments and exhibitions, even park games. She is a small lady with a wild smile. I see her talking to you as I collect your winnings.
What did she want, I ask.
You jealous?
Don’t like her moving in on our arrangement.
She’s got something, you say. Something unadulterated about her.
Finger is fishing off the boat. He is living with the weather and sun. He’s turned away from his freegan principles.
I’ve forgotten how wonderful money is, he says.
You can be happy without it, Finger.
With cash and a large truck, some diversified assets, a nice little nest egg, I could be happy.
Eli, the couple in my office are the worst parents in the world. They have three children ages one, two, and three. Both are out of work and he wears his boots tucked into his jeans. She wears Playboy bunny pajama pants. She tells me how she dropped two of the babies down some stairs and one is seriously damaged. That’s what she says, Eli. Seriously damaged.
In the Starlight, Darling is sweet to me. She serves a man in a neck brace blueberry ice cream. Her hair is cut short for the summer like a French New Wave movie star.
Your legs are graceful, I say.
Thank you.
You have the best kind of eyes.
Thank you.
I want to take you somewhere.
I want to go somewhere.
But we don’t move.
4
We’re on the train to California for your first pro tournament, Eli. There are all kinds of folks here on the Sunset Limited. Black mothers out of New Orleans, Mexicans and Mennonites from Texas, air force recruits from Nebraska. These people play Go Fish as the nation goes by. Hipsters with tattoo sleeves eat peanut butter sandwiches. Out here, Eli, windmills in the desert do whatever windmills do. I’m filled to the brim today with Jesus and America and Vitamin C.
Should I get beer in the dining car, you ask.
Of course.
You drink sixteen and put them on my tab while I’m asleep. We play chess in the morning and go over your openings. You’re in good shape to beat some ass, Eli. We are in America and you will be the greatest.
St. Margaret is of noble birth. A rookie executioner’s first blow slices her shoulder rather than her neck. Wounded, she runs. Ten additional blows are required to complete the execution. A wolf licks the blood from the road and stalksthe body all the way to the graveyard where he smells the freshly dug earth and runs away.
News from back home. Finger stabbed Dick Dickerson at the pawnshop over the price of a sword. Dick Dickerson saw a woman needed cash.
I’ll give you two hundred for it, says Dick Dickerson to the woman.
That sword is worth at least a thousand, says Finger.
Finger, why don’t you go do some stocking, says Dick Dickerson.
Well, I need the money, says the woman.
I’ll buy it off you for five hundred, says