The Last Gentleman

only once visited the second floor and not once been above it. Around again and up a final closeted flight of narrow wooden steps and into the attic. It was a vast unfinished place with walks of lumber laid over the joists. He prowled through the waists and caverns of the attic ribbed in the old heart pine of the 1920’s. The lumber was still warm and fragrant from the afternoon sun. He shone the flashlight into every nook and cranny.
    When he heard the sound behind him, he slid the switch of the flashlight and stepped four feet to the side (out of the line of fire?) and waited.
    â€œBill?”
    A wall switch snapped on, lighting a row of bulbs in the peak of the roof. The girl, hugging her wrap with both arms, moved close to him and peered into his face. Her lips, scrubbed clean of lipstick, were slightly puffed and showed the violet color of blood.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI saw you outside.”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œWhat are you looking for?”
    â€œI heard something.”
    â€œYou heard something up here from the garage?”
    â€œI didn’t know where it came from. I thought it might be from the attic.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œIs there a room up here?”
    â€œA room?”
    â€œA room closed off from the rest of the attic?”
    â€œNo. This is all.”
    He said nothing.
    â€œYou don’t know where you are, do you?”
    â€œWhere I am?”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œI know.” He did know now but he didn’t mind her thinking he didn’t. She was better, more herself, when he was afflicted.
    â€œYou were sleepwalking, I think.”
    â€œIt’s possible.”
    â€œCome on. I’ll take you back.”
    â€œYou don’t have to.”
    â€œI know I don’t.”
    He made her stay in the pantry. She was sweet and loving and not at all antic. It is strange, he thought as he stood in his own and Jamie’s room a few minutes later: we are well when we are afflicted and afflicted when we are well. I can lie with her only if she tends my wounds.
    â€œWas there a shot?” he asked her as he left.
    She had shaken her head but smiled, signifying she liked him better for being mistaken.
    The square of moonlight had moved onto Jamie’s face. Arms folded, the engineer leaned against his bed and gazed down at the youth. The eye sockets were pools of darkness. Despite the strong black line of the brow, the nose and mouth were smudged and not wholly formed. He reminded the engineer of the graduates of Horace Mann, their faces quick and puddingish and acned, whose gift was the smart boy’s knack of catching on, of hearkening: yes, I see. If Jamie could live, it was easy to imagine him for the next forty years engrossed and therefore dispensed and so at the end of the forty years still quick and puddingish and childlike. They were the lucky ones. Yet in one sense it didn’t make much difference, even to Jamie, whether he lived or died—if one left out of it what he might “do” in the forty years, that is, add to “science.” The difference between me and him, he reflected, is that I could not permit myself to be so diverted (but diverted from what?). How can one take seriously the Theory of Large Numbers, living in this queer not-new not-old place haunted by the goddess Juno and the spirit of the great Bobby Jones? But it was more than that. Something is going to happen, he suddenly perceived that he knew all along. He shivered. It is for me to wait. Waiting is the thing. Wait and watch.
    Jamie’s eyes seemed to open in their deep sockets. But they gazed back at him, not with their usual beamish expression, casting about for recondite areas of agreement in the space between them, but mockingly: ah, you deceive yourself, Jamie seemed to say. But when the engineer, smiling and puzzled, leaned closer, he saw that the eyes had not opened.
    A bar of yellow light fell across the room. A figure was outlined in the doorway of the kitchenette. It beckoned to him.
    It was Rita.
    As soon as he was inside the tiny room, she closed the door and whispered: “Is Jamie asleep?”
    â€œYes.”
    Sutter stood gazing into the sink. The sink was dusty and still had a paper sticker in the basin.
    â€œWe want you to settle a little point,” said Rita.
    Sutter nodded. The engineer sniffed. The kitchenette had the close expired air of impasse. Now as if they were