Hit Parade

“Bingham.”

He nodded. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about my stamp collection. I guess I realized I was going to die someday. I mean, everybody does, right?”

“So they tell me.”

“And I knew that, and I thought I was used to the idea, but then I got haunted by the idea of my stamps being left behind. What would happen to them? I don’t have kids to worry about, or relatives, but it suddenly seemed very important to make arrangements for my stamp collection. And once I’d made arrangements, once we’d had that conversation-”

“And what a conversation it was.”

“-I had this sense that it was all taken care of, and now all that was left was for me to go out and meet my fate.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t let me pull the plug on the job.”

“If it was fate, what good would it do? Instead of going to Albuquerque I’d stay home, and when I went down to the corner for the paper an air conditioner would fall out of somebody’s window and kill me. That poor bastard Heggman, I don’t think he ever had a clue. He must have been dead before he could figure out what was happening to him.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“He was at the right address,” he said, “and he looked just like his picture. But I wondered myself. Waiting for my flight, I kept thinking I should have asked him his name. And then of course I kept expecting the plane to crash.”

“Which one? The flight to Los Angeles or the red-eye?”

“Both of them. But the flights were fine. The cab ride in from JFK, the driver was a maniac, cutting everybody off, driving way too fast. But he got away with it.”

She nodded slowly, took a long look at him. “You must be exhausted,” she said.

“Sort of.”

“I’ll run you back to the station, and you go home and get some sleep. And maybe we should both think about packing it in.”

He shook his head.

“No?”

“No,” he said. “Because we don’t have enough money, not really. And even if we did, even if my end came to a million dollars, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I’ll go home,” he said, “and for the next week I’ll barely leave the house. I’ll sleep a lot and watch a lot of TV. And for a month or more I’ll go to movies and work out at the gym and work on my stamps, and it’ll be just the way it would be if I were retired, and I’ll enjoy it. And then sometime in the second month I’ll start feeling as though there’s something I ought to be doing.”

“I think I get the picture.”

“And then one of us will call the other, and it’ll turn out that there’s a job out there if I want it. And I’ll go like this-”

He pressed his wrists together.

“‘What time?’”

“There you go.”

“And you’ll go off to do the job,” she said, “thinking all the while that you’re really too old for this, and that you wish you could retire.”

“That sounds about right.”

She thought about it. “Well, okay, Keller,” she said. “I guess I can stand it as long as you can.”

KELLER AND THE RABBITS

51

Keller, idling at a stoplight, reached over to turn on the radio. A woman’s voice, warm and slightly theatrical, said: “A Rabbit Odyssey, by Cameron Markwood. Read by Gloria Sweet.”

The light turned green. He crossed the intersection, then reached to dial in another station. But nothing happened when he turned the dial, and he realized it wasn’t the radio, it was the CD player, and he was listening to an audiobook. About rabbits, evidently.

That was the thing about rental cars. You got a different make and model every time, and by the time you figured out things like cruise control and the best position for the seat back, it was time to turn the car in. Evidently the last person to rent this one had figured out how to use the CD player, but hadn’t remembered to retrieve his CD.

So Keller got to listen to a story about rabbits. He was going to turn it off, but he had to concentrate on the traffic and on an upcoming left turn, and by the time things settled down and straightened out, he’d managed to get interested in the story.

It was, he decided, a fable, in that the rabbits not only had conversations but also expressed philosophical sentiments that seemed a stretch for something that hopped around and ate carrots. It was an allegory, with the rabbits meant to represent humans. But at the same time they were rabbits, and he found himself caught up in the story, concerned about their survival. When one of them was caught in a snare, he got really worried, and didn’t fully relax until the other rabbits managed to do some artful gnawing and liberate the little guy.

He was supposed to take a right at Rumsey Road, and damn near missed it. But he made his turn, while a rabbit named Williwaw analyzed the failure of the lettuce crop in terms of supply-side economics. That was kind of interesting, he thought, but there were a couple of boys out with guns, and Williwaw had better put a lid on it and get hopping or he was going to wind up in the stew pot…

There was the house, white with dark green trim, a prewar frame house with a basketball hoop mounted on the garage at the end of the long driveway. Keller circled the block, parked where he could watch the place without being too obvious about it. He cut the engine, but moved the key to a position that let you listen to the radio. Or, in this case, the CD player, where Williwaw was in desperate straits.

The side door of the white frame house opened, and two children hurried up the driveway to the garage, shortly followed by their mother, who was wearing gray sweatpants and a University of Southern Michigan sweatshirt. The garage door ascended, and a Japanese SUV backed out of the driveway and headed off down Rumsey Road. Taking them to school, Keller thought. And she didn’t look to be dressed for anything more than dropping them off and coming straight home.

Would the CD player keep his place? Or would the damn thing start over from the begi

She was back in under fifteen minutes, and she was out of the car before she saw Keller. She hadn’t expected this, had evidently had no idea that her husband, conveniently on the other side of the country on a business trip, was so anxious to get rid of her that he’d paid a substantial fee toward that end. Still, she was afraid, and her fear froze her in her tracks, mouth open, eyes wide.

Keller stu

Back in his rental car, Keller had a bad moment when he started it up. But then the CD came on, and it resumed right where it had left off, which saved having to search for his place. He thought the image of the woman’s face might get in the way, that and the sense-memory of lowering her body to the ground and shoving her out of sight underneath her SUV, but before he’d gone three blocks he was caught up in the story, and the woman’s image was already starting to fade from his memory.

Poor little rabbits. He hoped nothing bad would happen to them.