Page 65 of Going Home in the Dark

“My mother was a poet. She liked alliteration.”

“A poet. Would I have heard of her?”

“She was a bad poet,” said Jim Jamie James. “She was never published. But she was a sweet, dear soul.”

“My mother abandoned me,” Spencer said, surprised to have made such a personal revelation to a stranger. There was something about Jim Jamie James that made Spencer want to open his heart to the guy and perhaps become lifelong friends. “She went off to New Orleans to relive a past life.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“I was devastated.”

“Did you get counseling?”

“No. I wish I had.”

“My father was a sweet, dear soul. We can always count on our dads to get us through anything.”

In the second bed, the man with the Rubik’s Cube began to curse it in the most explicit terms.

“Myfather was gone,” Spencer said.

An expression of profound sympathy drew Jim James’s face into a longer geometry. “I’m so sorry. How old were you when he died?”

“Oh, he’s still alive. He abandoned me, too.”

“How extraordinary. Why would he do such a thing?”

“He opened a church for sexual degenerates and took a hooker for his common-law wife.”

“Well, that’s unusual. How did you feel about that?”

“I got through it, thanks to my amigos.”

“Friends are treasures,” Jim James said. “Has your father explained himself to you? Is he regretful?”

“We don’t really talk that much. He’s in prison for sticking up armored cars. What about you? What’re you in hospital for?”

“My toe.”

“What’s the matter with your toe?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. I’m a positive person. I don’t like to dwell on the horrors of the world.”

A nurse appeared with a dinner tray, put it on a wheeled table, and maneuvered it in front of Jim James.

To Spencer, Jim said, “Don’t go just because my dinner is here. Keep me company. Chat a little while.”

In the far bed, the guy with the Rubik’s Cube was red-faced, sweating rivers, and still cursing.

With a smile, indicating his roommate with a hitchhiker’s gesture of the thumb, Jim James said, “Harry is a nice man, a good God-fearing man, but intense. At the moment, he’s not the best company.”

“I’ve got some work to do,” Spencer said. “But I’ll come back to visit tomorrow if you think you’ll still be here.”

“Oh, I’ll be here. I’ll be here a long time. I’ll be here a heck of a lot longer than tomorrow, with this toe.”

The nurse brought a second dinner tray from the cart in the hall and carried it toward the wheeled table that was associated with Harry’s bed.

Jim James said, “Pudding for dessert again. I despise pudding.”

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