"I'm keeping Hadley very well informed," Moira said, as though they were the best of friends. "She doesn't always answer, but I know she reads it." With everything settled, she went around to the back porch to do her phone thing, singing as she went.
I found Top at his desk computer in his study. He had been checking his investments and sending emails to his stockbroker, acting just as ordinary as any other wealthy person, even in his choice of clothing: a polo shirt and corduroy slacks. "There ye be," he said absently, clicking his mouse so that homey news of his extended family popped up. He had been married decades ago and his one child, a daughter, was a professor of economics at a college out West. His ex-wife had died of pneumonia, a fate that rankled him inasmuch as the disease can be easily curable, but they had not caught hers in time. He swiveled his chair around to face me as I sat in the armchair next to a decorative pot of dried bamboo stalks.
"Juliette wants to buy the cabin property," he remarked, meaning his daughter, "and build something 'decent' on it. No sense of adventure, that girl, and no appreciation for the crudely simple things in life. Too sophisticated. How is Moira?"
"Skeptical," I replied. I had helped myself to an apple almond muffin he had neglected to eat, and to a bottle of mango wine cooler from the small fridge.
"Is her friend and his mother coming?"
"Probably. And Neal?"
"I spoke with him. He will meet me here, and I'll take him on my Beemer bike."
"You can't really be serious about this thing, Top."
He spread his hands. "Of course I'm not serious about it. You can't be serious and expect this sort of thing to work. You must just relax and have fun with it. No, I mean it. I've explained this to you before. I don't care if Neal drops dead or walks away with a swagger. Well, no, I don't want to see him swaggering. But he and I see it the same way. Indeed. Neither of us cares a whit about the other, beyond a certain grudging respect. The fact is, we have nothing left of our feelings for one another except an intolerable irritation. Yes, I acknowledge his talent, and he mine. I despise his use of it, though. He lacks a sense of propriety. He has always been impulsive to a fault. He doesn't consider ramifications, has no disciplined philosophy. For awhile he did, years ago, when I had some influence over him. But it goes against his nature to abide by a particular world view. He says he doesn't like being enslaved to routine. Doesn't have any habits, he says. He ticks like a clock that has been taken all apart and keeps its own weird time. Such a person doesn't deserve to live. Not in my book."
After a speech like that I couldn't argue with him. I always found his rhetoric convincing. But I had to say: "It's just a game you and Neal are playing. That bugs Moira. You can't blame her if she thinks it's supposed to be serious."
Top smiled, nodding and patting his armrests. "She's correct up to a point. Think of a baseball game. It's a fun sport for those who play it, and yet both teams are serious about winning. I've heard it said that 'Winning isn't everything, but losing is nothing.' I won't be inconsolable if Neal survives, nor will I be quite content to call it a day if he dies in his chair."
"Moira hopes to see Alicia's ghost," I said, changing to a subject that had struck me when I came into the study and saw Top scanning the stock market. "It's about seeing the past and feeling that it still lives, and can be fixed."
"Ah," he said. He stared at the mural on the ceiling: a circle of tigers chasing one another's tail. "Indeed," he added. He reached for his pipe and tobacco bowl. I got up and left the room. I didn't
want to interfere with whatever scheme was evolving in his sparsely-haired noggin.
Two hours later the rat was cruising along Cheat Road, the smell of the lake blowing in my face and Moira's hands gently slapping my stomach to the rhythm of a song on her tongue.
We followed the easy curves of the shoreline, the forest on our left rolling by in greens and browns and reds, an occasional house peeking out from the paved slashes in the woods and the lake sparkling bluely, broad and serpentine.
We passed the causeway bridge and turned off on a narrow private road that plunged between cliffs of trees and through hazy golden beams of a high morning sun. The Ram pickup passed us, going in the opposite direction. A large brown hand waved at me. I gave Ricardo the biker salute with my clutch hand.
I was watching for a tree stump with a rusty mailbox on it. When we approached it I slowed and made a sharp tilting left turn onto a dirt drive strewn with gravel. After about a hundred yards we came to a wide spot on the right where vehicles were to park; Top didn't like anyone parking near the cabin, it spoiled the look of the place.
Up ahead was a wooden bridge that crossed a stream bed, run-off from the lake. We rode across it, the echo of the motor rumbling under the heavy planks. The drive curved gradually to the right. Now we could see the dark wood of the cabin behind a stand of pines, a slope coming steeply down behind it. And we were there.
I parked the rat at the foot of the slope. Moira swung a leg over the sissy bar and danced backwards until she bumped into a tree, laughing. She looked so beautiful in the mix of shade and light, smiling brighteyed at the cabin.
"Hi!" she called when Stella came out on the cement slab that passed for a porch, carrying the dust bag of a vacuum cleaner.
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