“Vet came Saturday night and shot him full of stuff, but it was too late. Passed off this morning around seven or eight, I guess.”
“Are you telling me that he’s … dead?”
“Dead is what he is, pardner.”
And I, the total egotist, had only vaguely registered the fact that he seemed a bit wan.
I looked around the vast gray lot, where here and there the wind raised clumps of paper trash and sometimes sent them tumbling, and felt one with it—empty, useless, choked with dust, a wasteland.
My ancient pardner waited, plainly interested to see what this friend of apes would do or say next.
“What did they do with him?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“What did they do with the body?”
“Oh. Called the county, I guess. Took him off to where they cremate the roadkills. You know.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“No sweat.”
“All right if I take this stuff?”
From the look he gave me I could see I’d presented him with a new high-water mark in human lunacy, but all he said was, “Sure, why not? Just get dumped otherwise.”
I left the blankets, of course, but the rest all fit easily under one arm.
3
What was to be done? Stand for a moment with lowered gaze outside the county furnace where they cremate the roadkills? Someone else would have handled it differently, probably better, revealing a greater heart, a finer sensibility. Myself, I drove home.
Drove home, turned in the van, picked up my car, and went back to the apartment. It was empty in a new way, with a new degree of emptiness.
There was a telephone there on an end table, connecting me to a whole world of life and activity, but who could I call?
Oddly enough, I thought of someone, looked up a number, and dialed it. After three rings, a low, firm voice answered:
“Mrs. Sokolow’s residence.”
“Is this Mr. Partridge?”
“Yes, this is Mr. Partridge.”
I said, “This is the guy who visited you a couple weeks ago, trying to locate Rachel Sokolow.”
Partridge waited.
I said, “Ishmael is dead.”
After a pause: “I’m very sorry to hear it.”
“We could have saved him.”
Partridge thought about that for a while. “Are you sure he would have let us?”
I wasn’t sure, and said so.