Ghost Points: A Novel

Copyright © 2004 by Geffrey von Gerlach.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

C H A P T E R O N E

C H A P T E R T W O

C H A P T E R T H R E E

C H A P T E R F O U R

C H A P T E R F I V E

C H A P T E R S I X

C H A P T E R S E V E N

C H A P T E R E I G H T

C H A P T E R N I N E

C H A P T E R T E N

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

To Beatty, Brookie and Brian with thanks

C H A P T E R O N E

The old man steadied himself against the sideboard cabinet and groped his way down its polished surface to his knees. He reached into the open door and pulled a small rectangular case toward him by its leather strap. Sliding forward, it caught a triangle of light as it emerged from its entombment and sat under his cautious stare for a long moment before he lifted it and wiped away the thin layer of dust from its battered skin.

Gingerly, he removed the ancient camera like some long lost artifact from its narrow box and whispered the name, Randolph Mayer foil-stamped on its side, as if calling to himself across an unrecognizable space and time. He had held the prized Hasablad in his hands so often, and yet now, when he looked down into the ground glass, as he had a thousand times, the gnarled fingers that cradled it seemed strange and unfamiliar to him. A pang of longing shot through his chest and, for a fleeting second, he prayed that his heart might stop and save him the trouble of the suicide.

He let the camera slip back into its leather shell and placed it in the cardboard box alongside the nearly empty bottles of Scotch, his cigar humidor and other small objects of comfort that he deemed might be of use to someone.

No sense in throwing away good things, he said aloud, breathing in the lifelessness of the air around him. . . . Not that anyone actually smokes or drinks in this god-forsaken new century. Everyone wants to live forever.

He placed an unopened bottle of Vermouth in the box and considered for a moment any possible advantage in continuing endlessly in the disappointing business of living.

After all, one never wanted to outlive their usefulness or worse yet run out of money, outlive their income return guarantee, as the investment brochures so delicately put it. But he knew that graceless overextension of funds was precisely what had happened to him, and he could not help but wonder if choosing a life as an artist, a photographer, had not been an imprudent youthful decision. A decision which, in the final analysis, had been the greatest mistake of his life.

He remembered an old adage from his youth: Beauty fades, dreams fade, passion fades, only hard currency is the foundation upon which empires are built. He could not recall the source of the Imperialist sounding quotation, and he might have sworn that as a young man he had not heard it at all. He certainly had not lived his life heeding its arrogant wisdom, nor was he likely to agree with such callow sentiments. Until now, when as predicted, all had faded and he realized that his dazzling empire had been nothing more than a trick of light, an illusion caught in time, like the thousands of images he had captured and held for a fleeting instant with his camera.

Now he was old, more ancient than the relic of a camera itself, and no longer had the strength or courage to capture and hold. He was overextended, overdrawn and for one final time irrevocably flat broke. He had, of course, been without funds before, and he had never given it a thought. Something had always come along. His creativity had always afforded an effortless solution, but no more. He had outlived more than his income, he had outlived his own expectations of life. There was, at last, nowhere for him to go but into the humiliation of a charity home, sponsored by the State, or worse yet, by some religion that would certainly expect a grateful embrace in his humble final hour. No, he could not allow himself to be subjected to the indignities of a patronized incontinence, and a twilight sleep of over-medication that barely masks the contemptuous faces of strangers who make their living in personal care.

Nope, that’s not for me, he said aloud to reassure himself. I’m not about to be one of those pathetic souls who pretend to buy cat food for a pet and eat it themselves in a refrigerator carton down in the park.

After all, his decision was nothing more than a matter of timing, he reassured himself, a little side-step into another dimension, a choice like any other. Why not choose it sooner as a viable solution, a clever escape from a nasty situation, rather than later, when all the grace and decency had long drained away, and one had forgotten how to be the person they spent a lifetime perfecting.

He had seen it happen with others he had known. His friend Margaret, internationally known as a woman of style, dictating to the fashion industry of New York what the next season should bring, died penniless in a studio apartment on Third Avenue. She was found laid out on her bed, coifed, fully made-up and dressed in a thirty year old powder blue Dior suit, complete with hat. The building superintendent had discovered her after tenants in her building had complained that there had been no heat for nearly a week.

He could see them on the street and in the shops when he ventured out, elderly crones like himself, whose lives were slowly unraveling, slipping away bit by bit, unnoticed and unaided. Without funds and without hope, they kept up a good front wearing a felt hat or a wool jacket in the sweltering heat, not out of a tinge of absentmindedness, but because these were the last surviving garments that held any trace of stature or respectability and the only ones fit to wear into the blinding sunlight without shame.

How had he come to Phoenix Arizona? He scarcely recalled the motor trip across the dry landscape from California to this lifeless place of desert and unrelenting sunshine. Had it been fifteen or twenty years? It seemed as if anything memorable, beyond the daily mechanical movements of his current life, was always fifteen or twenty years away in his memory . . . . or was it more? His body shivered, instinctively trying to shake off the bleakness of the thought.

A silver cigarette lighter, with his initials engraved on it, unceremoniously found its way into the cardboard box with the other trinkets of his life. He did not care to read the inscription, if there ever was one. He was not in a sentimental mood. This was not a moment of reverie but of action. Preparing for death was, after all, rather like packing for a journey, tidying up and getting oneself in order. He coaxed a stack of old National Geographic magazines from the back of the cabinet and dumped them into the carton intended for the trash. He was not the sort to leave the confusion and mess of disposing of his things to a stranger.

He felt like some ancient Pharaoh, selecting the treasures meant to accompany him into the afterlife. He surveyed the tabletop of the cluttered room with its countless mementos from his photographic assignments. Silver and glass framed the faces of long dead friends and lovers, the line between them having long ago blurred, and he could no longer remember the precise moments when the passion for each of them had silently, almost without notice, drifted into the material comfort of companionship. He scrutinized the cluster of faces, which he had personally captured in what he had always referred to as glamourous studio black and white, and wondered if they were all now gone.

A glance at the clock on top of the sideboard told him it was nearly four o’clock. He would have to get moving if he wanted to make it to the Goodwill store and back before dark.

The old man hoisted his slender body to standing by the strength of his arm and arranged the three small cartons into a neat little stack. With a sense of purpose, that only came to him in fitful spurts these days, he pulled on a cardigan and loaded the shopping cart which he kept secreted away inside his garden gate with the meager remains of his worn-out life. He wondered how it could be that these trinkets were all that remained of an entire lifetime. He sighed and consoled himself that he would have that much less to dispose of in the end.

Leaning heavily on the handle of the cart, Randolph set his mind for a half-mile push. He had walked much farther distances with the aid of this Cadillac of shopping carts, with its wider chassy and no-stick wheels. But this particular journey led him through the park below Thomas Avenue. He knew that his mind must stay in a state of watchful readiness because of the dangers that lurked on every side. There were other, longer routes that he might take around the park. But that would take him blocks out of the way, and why, by any reckoning, should he let the fear of a mere possibility of danger stop him from doing exactly what he wanted to do. He took a dry breath and resolved to push on.

As he approached the park, he was relieved to hear a reassuring silence. There was no noise of shouting children, no loud radios thumping tribal drums that signaled savage teenagers might be nearby. His eyes surveyed a landscape of relative calm. A handful of locals strolled along chatting in Spanish and several old bundles of rags that he recognized as people littered the grass.

The park now belonged to the poor, he thought. No, that was not fair. One likes to keep a sympathetic view of the poor, especially since, by anyone’s account, he would find himself in that category. No, it was not the poor who had defiled the place, but the drunkards and low life, what used to picturesquely be referred to as stumble-bums.

He guided his cart along the path and peered down at an elderly man sleeping, fully dressed in an old brown striped woolen suit, and wondered if it could be anyone he might have known. He thought of Margaret, laid out in her Dior, and felt sympathy for this man, who might, at this moment, be doing his best to go out in style. Perhaps he had been nothing more than a middle class business man, who had taken to drink and fallen from grace, landing pitifully in the grass some fifteen feet from the third base of the baseball diamond.

Everyone he might have recognized, even those to whom he never spoke, had long disappeared from the park. It had been many years since a baby pram with a fair-haired child or a young woman reading a book had graced what used to be called the lawn. It was an aspirational term, the word lawn, that hinted at social standing and country houses with afternoon teas. It was not a word to be used in reference to the dry patches of dirt and scrub grass that lay around him, trod underfoot by the gangbangers and drug dealers plying their trade.

These are the dangerous lot who inhabit my lawn, the old man muttered aloud, interjecting the word as an insistence of order in his universe. These are the young, animal in nature, who would kill you for tennis shoes, or break your ribs with a baseball bat for not having more than two dollars in your wallet when it comes time for them to rob you again.

It was rather like one of those zoos where wild animals run loose. The social workers and rehabilitators often came to the park like tourists, clucking their tongues in commentary, admiring the markings on the striped brown coat of one of the sleeping specimens. They watch eagerly for signs of growth and progress amongst their charges, as any good custodian might. Then long before twilight, they deactivate the alarms on their cars, climb in and drive to dinner plans in the respectable North, leaving our little zoo to settle into its own nocturnal feeding habits.

But in the safety of broad daylight, the old man was not concerned. He patted the five dollars in his pocket, which he kept to stave off bodily injury in case of an attack by the swarthy-skinned marauders of this barren little strip of city park. He lowered his head and put his back into pushing his cart. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw them approaching. He had been hasty in his reconnaissance.

Devil at two o’clock, he muttered to himself as he gripped the handle of the cart and focused his attention on the battered blacktop pathway directly in front of him and shuffled faster. Recognition establishes relationship, an absurd metaphysical truism slipped uninvited through his conscious thought. If he just didn’t make eye contact with them, there could be no recognition, no relationship, no confrontation, he told himself as he surreptitiously watched them approach with the baseball bat.

Although they were dressed for sport, in nylon pants, tee shirts and baseball caps, he knew that these three were not stout lads set to play like those he had known in his youth. They were the predators of this little zoo, out for sport of another kind.

The bat they brandished with hideous, threatening laughter had never felt the calves-skin of a neatly stitched baseball. Instead, it had been used to batter living flesh and had tasted the blood of transients and creeping old people, like himself, who had dared to set foot on dangerous public ground, even in the tenuous safety of broad daylight.

Hey hey there old faggot, the biggest of them spit the words in his direction as they passed the sleeping mass littering third base. "What choo got in the shopping cart?

A wave of shame and annoyance surged up through Randolph’s body. He had been misassessed by these hooligans as an unfortunate homeless person, a victim for their pleasure. Yet, how could he expect this band of inferior primates to discern the subtle difference between him, an educated person of meager funds, wheeling their life’s belongings in a shopping cart, and some truly desperate soul who had never know the dignity of being anything else. The line between the two was so vague that he had to ponder an instant to be certain on which side he rightfully belonged.

I’m talk’n to you, old faggot, the voice sent a shockwave through the air around him. Randolph kept his eyes lowered and tried to keep moving.

The darkest of them, to the right of his tormentor, ominously slapped the shaft of the baseball bat against the palm of his hand, producing a rhythmic, distracting cadence to the threatening words of his comrade. The old man could not help but lift his eyes in the direction of the sound. He had seen peasants clubbed to death years ago when he was in China, but it had been different then, political and extreme, a part of history and the corruptibile nature of man. But this, by contrast, was so pointless and without doctrine that he could barely fathom their intentions. He stared blindly at the bat and marveled that this icon of the nation’s favourite pastime should be turned to the implement of his own destruction.

He had intended to kill himself anyway, his mind reasoned beneath the weight of the predators’ sudden lapse into silence. Why not just let it happen and save himself the trouble? Perhaps these three might even be caught and put to death for the crime, sparing countless others the ignominy of this moment.

No, his brain shrieked at the reasoning. He was old and broke, without the trappings of personal power that this modern world demanded. Yet, in this one thing, he must maintain the right to make the choice. He must come to his end in the careful reasonable way that he had planned and not at the hands of these subhuman vandals, who saw the value of his life as nothing more than the half empty bottles of Scotch in his shopping cart, or the faded tweed jacket that hung on his frail body.

I haven’t got time for this . . . . I’ve got things to do, the old man snapped in a voice far stronger than his attackers anticipated. They laughed aloud and mocked his response.

Whata ya know. Grandpa’s got things to do. Don’t you want to play ball with us? There’s always time for a little game . . . and you can be the ball.

Randolph gathered his energy and attempted to push the cart forward, but it was easily blocked by one of them.

What do you want? Randolph asked in a voice that he hoped would display no fear.

What choo got? his tormentor almost whispered as he poked his hand into the cardboard box in the shopping cart. The dark fingers came up with the gold cigarette lighter, caught between them as if held by chopsticks, and he let out a low whistle as the others hooted in animal delight.

I want to play ball, one of the others whined, as he pushed Randolph hard against the arm, shoving him from his place of protection behind the cart. Randolph lost his balance and nearly toppled to the ground, but the leader put out his hand and tossed the old man back into the arms of the other two then moved in on the contents of the cart.

You’ve got no right to those things, Randolph shouted as the leader slipped a bottle of Scotch into his nylon parka and tenuously lifted the lid of the humidor, like a great ape, gingerly investigating an unfamiliar object.

I’ve got five dollars in my pocket for you. That’s all you have a right to, Randolph insisted, vainly restating the unspoken rules of this jungle. The rest of this is mine to do with as I see fit.

He ground his teeth together in despair as he watched the leader pilfering through the belongings of his life. The others tossed him back and forth between them like a child in the midst of school yard bullying. One of them tore at the pocket of his trousers until he successfully retrieved the five dollar bill which the old man had so eagerly volunteered. Randolph shouted for help. But the others like him, who he knew were all around, retreated silently into the shadows of the trees as the scene on the pathway accelerated toward violence.

Take your hands off those things, Randolph protested. But it was no use. Without warning, he felt the staggering pain of the baseball bat against the side of his leg and crumpled to the ground with only a muffled silencing grunt. He lay there staring up at the whirl of blinding light from the sun and the shadowy shapes of these predators, as they tore into the articles in the boxes like the flesh of some fallen prey. One of them pulled out the leather box of the ancient camera and considered, for an instant, what it might be. Randolph staggered up onto his knees and swiped at the villain with his hand, just catching the camera by its strap.

No, Randolph shouted, with what felt like the last ounce of power he had left in his life and in his body.

The leader simply waved his arm, without emotion or the slightest concern and, within an instant, they had gone, taking the contents of the shopping cart with them. Randolph fell backward on the asphalt, his leg searing with pain, but exultant in the small victory of gripping the camera in his hand. It had been his sole possession on more than one occasion in his life, and it seemed the universe had ordained that it should not leave his hand until his final hour.

Randolph lay there for a long moment, listening for the sound of human life filtering back into the sunlight from the safety of the trees, and was relieved that final hour had not yet come.

He staggered to his feet and hobbled away from the scene, leaning on the empty shopping cart for support, trying not to look into the faces of the other helpless creatures all around him. He wished that he could have vanquished his attackers and freed the others, in the shadows, from the Darwinian tyranny of the park, but he could not.

He was only grateful that the blow to his leg had not seriously harmed him, nor torn his trousers, and apart from a little smudge of dirt on the outside seam, he still accounted himself as presentable.

He did not want to be mistaken again as an easy target for another mugging, especially since he had already surrendered both his money and his belongings and had nothing left to give except his life.

He would have to hurry if he wanted to complete his errands before dark.

The old man had passed the pawn shop at the Southern edge of the park a thousand times in the fifteen or twenty years that he had lived in this god-forsaken place, but it had never occurred to him that it had any association with him. After all, he was not the sort of person who had to pawn their valuables to pay the rent, or someone who would dream of agreeing to the iniquitous exchange of such usury. And yet, all he had left was his camera, and nowhere else to go.

A fat, red-faced man, behind the counter, barely looked up as the old man entered. He made no appraisal of Randolph’s appearance and did not notice the smudge of dirt on his leg. He had long become accustomed to staring blindly into the faces of poverty and saw nothing. He motioned for Randolph to slide the camera through the opening in the mesh-covered window that separated him from the desperation of his clients. He muttered something in Spanish, and when Randolph answered in quiet confusion, he looked up in half surprise before dropping his gaze once again to the magazine and the photograph of the shiny red dirt bike.

Sixty-five dollars, he said in a flat, lifeless tone.

But it was worth hundreds when I bought it, years ago, Randolph protested.

The man behind the counter had heard it all before. He turned the page of the magazine, as if he were alone, and did not respond until the old man had first argued, then fell into receptive silence.

How much do you need? the red face asked without eye contact.

I don’t know exactly . . . it’s for medicine . . . a hundred dollars, I think. Randolph endured the silence that followed, wishing that he had not made mention of medicine. It was a term most certainly used by drug addicts and drunkards in their pleas to this mountain of inhumanity. I’m not a drunk, Randolph heard himself say aloud.

The fat man shrugged his shoulders. You got a pretty nice watch there. I could give you thirty-five for that. Randolph looked down at his arm, to the gold-plated wristwatch which had been given to him by someone long ago. He had been lucky that during the scuffle in the park, he had been able to push it up his arm, under his sleeve, and the hooligans had overlooked it. Nonetheless, he rationalized, it was only one more thing that someone else might have to dispose of after he had slipped away.

He nodded in silence and slid the heavy watch off his arm and through the opening. Without ceremony, the fat man produced a handful of bills and counted them out on the counter between them.

There is only ninety dollars here, Randolph said, as he eyed the money in his hand.

The crystal on the watch is scratched, the fat man answered without emotion. Take it or leave it." He started to push the watch back through the opening and reached out for the stack of money, but Randolph put up his hand and nodded his agreement.

A blue beaded handbag, lying atop a table filled with odds and ends, caught his eye. For a fleeting second, like an image caught on film, he could see it lying on a crisp white starched linen tablecloth not far from the dark red lacquered nails of a young woman as she told him that she would not see him again.

But that had been over fifty years ago. Surely, it was not the same bag, but merely one like it. How could Pamela’s bag have come so far in time and distance from that shattering tropical evening at the other side of the world? Yet, how had he come so far in time and distance? He could only ponder the puzzle of it as he stared at the glistening blue beaded memento of his youth with a half remembered feeling of love aching in his chest. He had somehow made his way across the universe from a time when his firm, unspeckled hands had held his camera and the world was worth saving in one delicious image at a time, like slices of ripe fruit, that one could carefully unwrap and savour later in remembrance of the feast that had been their life.

He turned his blank gaze away from the glittering blue bag and heaved a sigh that tried to release the death grip that the lost world of beaded bags, lacquered nails and the names of the ships in the Cunard line still had on him.

Randolph tried not to think about the camera, left in the hands of the unfeeling pawnbroker, cast adrift with the beaded bag like wreckage from one of Cunard’s best.

But what had the camera done for him, he muttered sourly to himself. He knew the real answer to this question, but dared not touch it. He simply walked away and left it behind, like a mother leaving a small child. Reaching out one last time, she dare not touch that tiny face for fear of the tidal wave of love and anguish that contact would surely bring.

He knew that the camera had given him more than his living. But had it captured the truth on film, or merely frozen a publishable illusion of real life in order for him to make a name for himself? Now that the camera had been abandoned, he had no right to pose those questions.

What did it matter now, whether it had all been true or merely an illusion seen through a ground glass lens. It was all in the past, like everything else that mattered to him, and there was little of the present, and surely nothing of the future to recommend itself to him and give him comfort.

He clutched the bottle of pills tightly in the hand inside his trouser pocket, afraid they might somehow fall out and be lost, rendering the ransom of his precious camera an even more iniquitous sacrifice.

He had gone directly from the pawnshop to the pharmacist in the supermarket with the express intention of refilling the prescription the doctor had given him for sleeping pills. He had saved a few of the last batch of twenty, but since this was the escape route of choice, he dared not risk running short and venture into the suicide ill-equipped. He had always prided himself on his thoroughness and the precision with which he carried out even the smallest task. He was not about to get sloppy now, when it mattered most.

As he had stood at the druggist counter, he had noticed himself being observed by a man of his own age, neatly dressed in one of those bright coloured ensembles, designed for older men by famous old golfers. He was in pale yellow, a patterned shirt, slacks to match and shoes the exact shade of perfect ripe bananas. He looked ridiculous to Randolph, worthy of a Diane Arbus photograph. But, he feel a lump rise to his throat, as the other old man’s gaze fixed on the soiled leg of his trousers and he read a fleeting there but by the grace of God . . . look pass over the man’s face, followed by a rejuvenating sigh of relief.

Randolph had stooped down to try and brush the dirt from his leg, but it was too late. His fragile veneer of dignity had shattered under the weight of a single silent glance of pity. He knew for certain that he was truly and finally one of them, the lost old people who had been cut off from the familiarity of their past, with no future but the few minutes up ahead, hour by hour, day by day, until it was finally over. With one simple look of casual contempt, he had crossed over the line forever. Suddenly, his woolen jacket with the patches on the sleeves weighed him down with the shame of its ancient pedigree and inappropriate fabric. For a fleeting moment, he longed for the banana-coloured polyester that somehow told the world that he had money in the bank and had been a success.

The trip home was difficult without the luxury of his shopping cart to lean on. By the time he reached the dumpster, he was hardly more than shuffling, and coaxing breath from the steamy Arizona air. He would no longer need his Cadillac of shopping carts after today. He had returned it to its rightful place at the market, and he wondered if the man in the yellow trousers, without knowing it, might have singled it out to carry his groceries to his car, thereby creating a bond between them that he would never even realize.

What an old fool you are, Randolph sighed as he entered the courtyard leading to his front door. He fumbled in his pocket to find his key, ever mindful that the bottle of pills was still aboard, and noticed the young man from number thirty-six, two doors down, coming down the pathway. The young man nodded his hello with a polite smile that indicated he had been raised well, probably in some suburb of the Midwest.

As he passed, Randolph could not help but notice his face, alive with a youthful beauty and firm squareness. He had seen this young man, with one of those new names he could never remember, dozens of times. But it had not struck him, until this moment, that he looked like those young men from half a century ago, back from the war. It was a face that combined youthful grace with an unmistakable tempering of steel and sweat, that told you, in spite of their beauty, they had been somewhere and seen it all.

Instinctively, the old man felt a longing to capture that face on film, before the illusion of timelessness, that perfect balance of sweetness and solemnity, was shattered by the intrusion of the soulessness of the Twenty-First Century. But now, he no longer had his camera, the means to accomplish that end, and he wasn’t at all sure that he even knew how to approach a young person with such a request. Light years away in consciousness, his young neighbor might find it insinuating, or worst of all laughable.

No, Randolph had been right to leave his camera behind, like all other working parts of his life, and was relieved of the responsibility of making contact. His chest heaved with an unsteady sigh as he realized that he would never take another picture.

Randolph switched on the side table lamp, but it was no use. The little house, stripped of all its sentimental accoutrements was now nothing more than a dreary little hovel with a living room the size of a small one car garage. He was stunned by the blandness of the place as the approaching twilight brought shades of melancholy purple to the one large window that overlooked his little garden. He wondered, as he surveyed the plainness of the place, what might have possessed him to rent it in the first place. Perhaps, he had once seen potential of some kind in its modest space, viewed it as streamlined or charming, or perhaps, he had just come from the madness of death in California with a need for anonymity and a chapter of his life to forget. Nonetheless, at this moment, it was the perfect solitary place to do what needed doing.

He shot a glance to the console table, where the cluster of friendly faces had always stared back, and found nothing but the uninterrupted polished surface of golden wood, gleaming with a newly applied layer of wax. He had disposed of nearly everything in the last weeks, dishes, clothes, sheets and blankets, nearly all that had made up his daily existence. Only large pieces of furniture and a few last comforts remained to see him through the final time. He had promised himself that he would not break. He would not become sentimental at the last and weaken in his resolve to take charge of his life and exit gracefully. He wanted nothing to remind himself of the past. He only wanted to think of where he might or might not be going, to a place where he’d have the painlessness of no memory, no disappointments, and no regrets.

The house seemed to resonate with the single-mindedness of his resolve. He paced each of the three modest rooms, scanning them for traces of things he might have overlooked. Not that it mattered if he did find some small shred of memorabilia which had somehow escaped his scrutiny. Tonight was the appointed night and he smiled to himself at the thoroughness of his preparation, efficient, punctual and unstoppable, like a great German transcontinental railway, bound for its destination and impeccably on time.

The old man stepped outside and lit a cigarette. He sucked in the strong familiar taste and smiled up at the night sky. He had barely smoked in nearly fifteen years. Yes, it was a filthy habit and all that. It was inconsiderate and unhealthy these days to smoke. But it had not always been so. There had been a time, thirty or forty years before, when nearly every portrait he had taken, every glamourous black and white celebrity headshot, depicted one remarkable face or another framed in a wreath of sensuous trailing smoke or frozen in time behind a thin cloud of lustrous blue. Perhaps, the tobacco companies had simply been more successful in their propaganda in those days, but he knew that it had been more than that. It had been a simple, inexpensive, personal pleasure that had comforted them through the depression and on the darkest of nights behind blackout curtains or dug in the trenches below the shelling. It had been a ritual to smoke, a rite of passage that linked sex and glamour and Hollywood, and all the other things that the tobacco companies might have even considered. But it was a part of life then, exploitation or not, as natural as the crowded companionship it promoted. Great smoking rooms in hotels and railway stations were alive with the possibilities of meeting and profoundly connecting by simply offering a cigarette or a light. There had been smoking cars on trains and smoky balconies in movie houses, filled with a hint of seduction and more than a bat squeak of sexuality, simply because of the alluring aura produced by seeing the world veiled, like a beautiful woman, through a tissue of tantalizing smoke. It had been a language all its own to those who spoke it. And there was not an American, nor a western European who did not understand the posture of the raised cigarette to the lips, that silently requested a light, or the eager open-faced smile of a stranger who, seeing you as a fellow smoker, would not hesitate in crossing Grand Central Station to bum a cigarette.

It had given countless women the opportunity to display delicate hand gestures, as they fanned their fingers and played amidst the whirling vapor that spiraled up from their cigarette, or drew attention to wonderfully rouged lips that parted and issued forth flat beckoning curls of seductive smoke.

Randolph had bought a pack with the money he had left from filling the prescription. He intended to smoke a few to make up for the years he had denied himself this small pleasure. After all, it would not kill him. He laughed aloud and coughed a sharp blast of used grey smoke into the garden air. Of course, he could no longer condone smoking to the young. It was, after all, unhealthy and people did die from it. But in his recollection, in the times on which he pondered, there had been other more pressing causes of death, and the world needed this symbol of adulthood, this gesture of casualness in order to stay strong and do what everyone else in the smoking room knew was right.

Randolph stubbed out the cigarette in a flower pot and gave the small potted shrubbery and flowers one last spray of water. He lay the hose on the ground next to the oleander bush and watched the narrow stream of water form tiny rivulets in the parched dirt. He eyed the small utility shed attached to the house and realized that he had forgotten to go through it in his great purge of the last weeks.

He decided it was better to let sleeping dogs lie and leave the odd assortment of rakes and gardening utensils to whomever came along to look after the plants.

He lit another cigarette and simply stared out into the evening sky. He watched the smoke ascend through the leaves of the orange tree toward a place that he hoped held such openness for him.

He looked down at his wrist to gauge the time, but the familiar face of his watch had escaped him, like the faces that had once lined the console behind him. The clock on the wall over the doorway told him it was seven-thirty-eight. There was still an hour and a half before the time at which he had appointed to take the pills. He lit a scented candle and settled into a chair with another cigarette. He dared not play music. He did not want to feel his heart open and the strains of some sentimental old tune to convince him that there might be something in this foreign world worth remaining alive for. He had done his time and, in the final analysis, had grown tired of what life had to offer, especially how meager the offering had become at the end.

He must maintain his steadfast resolve and not become emotional. He did not want to grieve for himself while he was still alive, even though he knew there would be no one to do it after he was gone. For a moment, his eyes welled up with tears and he wanted to cry out in angry childlike anguish for all the grave disappointments of his life, the small endurable failures that had come on, one by one, as the years slowly passed and clustered to form an unassailable brick wall of inability and worthlessness into which he was flung headlong for the final humiliation and destruction.

There was still a little whiskey left. Why not, he thought. It could do nothing but enhance the desired effect. He wondered what Margaret had used to quell her fears and fortify herself before she pinned on her hat and lay down on the freezing bedsheets. But it was a warm night here in Phoenix, like all the nights of the summer and autumn and spring. He would not be found frozen in his bed.

He sucked in on the comforting smoke of the cigarette, like a soldier crouching in the near blackness of the trenches, and knew with the same certainty that he would not see the morning.

He wished, at that moment, that he had some great talent, like playing the cello with which he might eclipse that hour until this final moment. But he could not play the cello. He had been told often enough that he had extraordinary talent with his camera, but it could not help