The Book of Air and Shadows

Farragut Branch library. Amalie can no longer smell (or sense in some more mystic way) the taint of adultery on me, and it is, I think, bringing her around. I believe that my curse began lifting at the very moment, in the cold water of Lake Henry, that Crosetti drew my attention to the fact that I was trying to save a mythical woman rather than my children. And the sight of my daughter risking her own life to save her brother, whom I thought she despised. This event put into my mind that I might be wrong about every single emotional relationship in my purview, and that I should, instead of trying to be clever, simply pump out as much love from my tiny store as I could, whether or not it is reciprocated. This I have tried to do.
    I am also happy to say that I attended my daughter’s performance in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(a smash, by the way, she stole the show) without nausea, and while I will perhaps never be a theater aficionado, that particular neurotic tic seems to be over. I spend a good deal of time with Niko, mainly sitting quietly with him, but a few months ago he asked if I would teach him to swim, and also to lift weights. He will still not look directly at me, but sometimes, when I touch him, he does not shrink away.
    Paul is back in his mission, properly humbled and terribly affected by the death of Mickey Haas, although I have told him repeatedly that this was my fault and not his. All I had to do was call the police and tell them the whole story, and they would have investigated, and Pascoe’s lies would have surfaced immediately and everything would have worked out fine, the letters and play authenticated, etc. That Pascoe! A Yank priest shows up and asks if he knows anything about a forged unknown play by Shakespeare and
of course
he says, Oh, yes, Father, done it myself, didn’t I, and for fifty grand I’ll tell you the whole thing. And Paul fell for it; I suppose there is such a thing as being too clever, too suspicious.
    Miri has left her business, which I have to say here for the record was a high-class call girl ring. Shvanov was deeply involved in it, of course, and his arrest has done her a world of good. She is much with Paul now, doing good works. She still looks fabulous and wears a jeweled crucifix at all times and with all her outfits.
    Dad was able to slip away in his characteristic fashion, and I find that, after seeing him again, he is not the cancer on my spirit that he once was. Do I believe the version of my past he conveyed to me in that limo? Perhaps. It hardly matters at this point. I suppose I have forgiven him.
    I miss Mickey Haas. Even a dreamed-up best pal is better than no best pal at all. All three of the wives showed up at the funeral and all of us were as phony and civilized as could be. In the end he was true to his profession and to his artistic judgment, literally going through fire to save his Precious. How many members of the Modern Language Association could say the same?
    Crosetti seems to be doing well. I ran into him and Carolyn Rolly with the two children a week or so ago on Canal just east of Lafayette. It was a Saturday, and I had just finished a dim sum lunch with a couple of guys I went to law school with who were visiting town, and I was on the street looking for Omar and the Lincoln when they hove into view. We chatted briefly and a little awkwardly. Carolyn has washed the camouflaging dark out of her hair, for the blond she showed me as Miranda is her natural color and her eyes are bright blue, not the grape green she had assumed via tinted contacts in homage to Amalie’s. There is not the slightest residual attraction. They live together in darkest arty Brooklyn, in a very nice loft bought by the sale of the Bracegirdle mss., and he has sold his script about the Bracegirdle affair, helped, I imagine, by the immense publicity surrounding the case. He thinks John Cusack will actually play him in the movie, although William Hurt is unfortunately not available for me.
    I told him what I was doing at work and will now tell this record, which was and is working on the immense IP case occasioned by
Mary Queen of Scotland
by William S. The actual ms. is part of the evidence in
People v. Shvanov
(murder and kidnap) and has been temporarily sequestered in a municipal vault, but as soon as I’d received it from Crosetti I had taken the liberty of securing the thing digitally, transmuting the pages into pure intellectual property, a string of words. I am