Singer 02 - Long Time No See Read Online Free PDF

Everyone was broadcasting: I heard about it at teeth-grinding length from my next-door neighbor, Chic Cheryl, in her skintight silver racewalking getup that highlighted each buttock as if it were a separate trophy. Mary Alice Mahoney Schlesinger Goldfarb left three breathless messages on my answering machine, during which I sent up three prayers of thanks for the invention of Caller ID.
    I also heard from two of my colleagues at St. Elizabeth’s, from my doctoral adviser at NYU, and from Bob’s college roommate, Claymore Katz, a criminal lawyer. Needless to say, postmodernist Geoff called; he wanted to know (a) Was it not beyond irony that the paradigmatic suburbanite was found dead in a backyard swimming pool, and (b) Did I want to see a revival of Krapp’s Last Tape? I called his voice mail and retorted (a) I wasn’t sure what lay beyond irony, and (b) No thanks. Nancy phoned from Newsday , but that was to verify I was actually home, not skulking about in Holmesian drag in a pathetic attempt to attract the attention of a certain member of the Nassau County PD. Not one of them could add a single factlet to what I’d initially learned on the radio, although that didn’t stop them (or me) from discussing it.
    Late the following morning I was at my kitchen table grading my classes’ final exams, determined to dismiss all thoughts of murder, mostly because I felt obliged to give my students a fair shake. The majority were either good kids or hardworking get-a-college-education retirees. None were born scholars. (The most elementary of my four essay questions, “Describe the programs Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first administration put forth to help ‘the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,’” evoked answers as exhaustive as Darci Lundgren’s “FDR’s Brain Trust” and Seymour Myron Bleiberman’s “emerg. banking bill + hire men for govt relief projects + helping farmers.”) In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that once I achieved my goal, teaching history on the college level, I discovered a disturbing truth about myself: I didn’t like to teach. What I wanted was to read history, or talk history, preferably with someone who knew more than I did.
    After an hour I gave myself a coffee break, hopped onto the Web, and discovered that the Nassau County medical examiner had already completed the autopsy. He had determined (no doubt employing a procedure so revolting I wouldn’t even begin to contemplate it) that the woman in the Logans’ pool had died from a bullet in the head. The condition of the body indicated that death could have occurred around the time Courtney disappeared on Halloween night. Furthermore, his examination of dental records confirmed what all of us would have been glad to tell him: The body was indeed that of Courtney Logan. Then, thank God, the phone rang.
    “Hey!” My son had such an astounding basso voice that, on hearing it, you half expected him to burst into “Some Enchanted Evening.” Clearly this wasn’t to be. Joey was not a Rodgers and Hammerstein kind of guy. “Mom, did you hear? They found that woman. She was in her own pool, over in Shorehaven Farms!” For a cineaste and ironist who never wore a color inappropriate for a state funeral, he sounded remarkably cheery. “Did you know her?”
    “No,” I said regretfully. “I don’t think I ever even saw her.” I set down my red pen atop a blue book on which I’d written a large C. Then—what the hell—I picked up the pen and added a conspicuous plus sign after the C. “Isn’t there some movie that begins with a body in a pool?” I mused.
    “Sunset Boulevard,” he suggested in an overly gentle manner.
    “It’s just mild senility.” I chuckled but received not even a polite heh-heh in response. “With ... You know who I mean. William what’s-his-name.”
    “Holden.” An offspring’s sigh of tedium is inaudible to all human ears except a parent’s. Boring your child who, at