Free The Bookman's Tale by Berry Fleming Page A

surprised. She doesn’t know I’m coming.”
    Ray heard himself exclaim in not much more than a whisper to himself, “Doesn’t know you’re coming? She’ll hear about it through the College.”
    â€œNot likely. But even if she does?—Oh, I won’t just walk in the door. I’ll ask here and there, size up the situation. If I decide I’m not intruding, I’d like to see her. It’s been twenty years, more than twenty. I don’t like to add it up.”
    Ray said, “She won’t be the woman you remember,” as if speaking into a mirror, giving Geltstein (and himself) an excuse for changing his mind, but the Doctor only said, “Even so?” and after a pause, “A later bud on the same stem?” smiling a little to dilute the sentimentality then going on that he once knew a man who said he told a woman he loved her more than when she was beautiful. “She was indignant. He said if she had had a frying pan he would have been a dead duck. Beauty matters more than love—to some of them.…”
    Voice fading out for Ray under the temptation of recalling to the Doctor his cautionary “what you find is not what you were searching for,” but changing his mind at realizing it might apply to himself as well: two men each looking for a woman he had loved.—Or was he looking for the man who had loved her?
    In any case, the Doctor’s planning to see Meg seemed to strengthen Ray’s weakening resolve to seek out Claudia. If the Doctor was willing to chance it, determined to, why not Ray? Twenty years, for the Doctor? Closer to thirty for himself—since the train and the pulsing brakes and the door shutting, the snap of the latch saying, “End,” like a voice. And close to two since “ Walter Motlow, in Afghanistan ” and wondering through a restless night’s half-sleep after seeing it if the news might be excuse enough for writing her, breaking the long silence. And waking to realize he couldn’t write her: “ Claudia Baird of Austin, Texas ” didn’t mean she was living there now; and even if she were he had no mailing address.
    And without deciding anything, whether he would write her even if he could—only remembering the petty swindle Emily said she sometimes resorted to if she needed a far-away address quickly—he dialed “Directory Assistance” in Austin and asked for the phone number of “a Mrs. Walter Motlow.”
    A pleasant un-Southern voice said after a pause as if for thinking (or for touching the keys of a computer), “Five-one-two, four-five-nine, four-zero-one-five.”
    He said, “Is that the Mrs. Motlow at two-three-one University Place?”
    â€œNo sir, the only Mrs. Walter Motlow we have is at seven-four-three Pedernales Drive.”
    â€œThank you, Directory Assistance.”
    â€œOur pleasure, sir, have a nice evening.”
    â€œThe same to all of you, miss.”
    And he wrote her. Six lines of insipid condolence that he rewrote as many times, not reminiscent, not asking her to remember—except in the full-of-time “Always” that he ended with—mailed it with no return address on the envelope for fear it would come back unopened. Week after week until nearly two months had passed, then eight lines: she was busy with selling her house, planning to move into a retirement community, “meaning a place for old folks” (Isabel’s plan, Isabel’s words—and maybe his own plan too, maturing in the dark); “costly but very nice.” Cool, occupied, looking-another-way; except, possibly, the glancing-back “Always, C”?
    Drop it? Did he really want her to meet young-Edward-(“Eddie”)-plus-thirty-years? Plus present-day infirmities (physical and possibly mental)? And yet with Isabel the old years had glowed with a quiet richness over his seeing her again; old years without the intensity of