Bluebottle Read Online Free PDF Page A

for some time. I tripped the call button.
    Moments later a nurse's aide entered. "Yes, Mr. Griffin?"
    I held out the card I'd fishedfrom the nightstand.
    "Cindy, can you have a look at this, let me know if it's Lee Gardner's card, New York?"
    She stepped close to take the card. Her body smelled faintly of garlic and recent sex. It occurred to me that with a peculiar
     sort of intimacy I knew her voice—and absolutely nothing else about her. Was she twenty, forty? Fat, thin? Plain, pretty?
     Did she live alone, have a family, kids? Happy to go home at the end of the day, or were nights and days alike just things
     somehow to be gotten through, endured?
    I think that was when (though still I could discern only light and shadow, movement, mass) I knew I was back. Hello world.
     Miss me?
    "Park Avenue. Yes, sir." She read off die number for me. "Would you like me to get it for you, Mr. Griffin?"
    About to say I could manage, I thought better. "If you don't mind."
    "No sir, I don't mind at all." I sensed her bending beside me for the phone, could see the darkness of her body move against
     window light. She spoke briefly to the hospital operator then dialed, handing the phone to me.
    "Thanks, Cindy. I appreciate it."
    "What they all say."
    Without visual cues, even the most ordinary social interactions could become problematic. What, exacdy, was intended, implied?
     Confusion must have shown in my face.
    "Joshing you, Mr. Griffin. Don't you pay me any mind. I'll check in on you later."
    I'd have continued, but just then someone with a clarinet voice said thank you for calling Icarus Books, could she help me.
    "Lee Gardner please."
    A pause.
    "I'm afraid Mr. Gardner is no longer with Icarus Books, sir. Would you care to speak with another editor?"
    No.
    I see. Well.
    Might there be anodier number at which I could reach him?
    Well. Unofficially, of course, you might try reaching Mr. Gardner at 827-7342. Thank you for calling Icarus Books.
    Alto sax this time, reed gone bad: "Popular Publications."
    "Lee Gardner please."
    "May I say who's calling?"
    I told her.
    "Hang on, Mr. Griffin. Lee's probably at lunch. Most everyone is. But I'll give it a shot." She clicked off the line and back
     on. "Hey. You're in luck." Then her voice sank towards some phonal purgatory, half there, half not: "A Mr. Griffin for you
     on line two, Lee."
    "Yes?"
    I didn't often have a phone those days, phones requiring such middle-class imponderables as references and credit, but when
     I did, I often answered the same way. Or else I'd just pick the thing up and wait.
    "How are you, Mr. Gardner?"
    "Busy, thank you."
    Nothing more forthcoming. Momentsticked like tiny bombs on the wire. I heard his radio move from the Second Brandenburg with
     screaming pocket trumpets to a jazz station, vintage Miles from the sound of it. Pure jazz stations still existed back then.
    "Lew Griffin. We met here in New Orleans. You were looking for one of your writers. Amonas, Amana, something like that."
    A brief pause. "Latin."
    "Guess it does sound that way, now you mention it."
    "You hate Latin much as I did?"
    "Never had a chance to. They stopped teaching it the year I hit high school. Stopped teacliing all languages that year. No
     money for it, they claimed. No money, no teachers, no interest. Has to be some advantage in knowing what words like tenable really mean, though. Not many do."
    "Hell, most don't even have a clue where commas and periods go. Let alone that subjects and verbs should agree."
    We fell silent. His radio spun combinations: news, country, rock, something Perry Comoish. Finally came to rest on what sounded
     like an adaptation of Karel Capek's R.U.R. Back a few years, I listened to programs like that every night. Still remembered one about this doctor treating lepers on
     an isolated island, trying to atone for wrongs he's done. I'd fallen asleep halfway through and, three in the morning, still
     half drunk, woke to its conclusion, when a ship comes to