Write me a Letter

tired the next day, Uncle Theo—baby, big, tired, and still jet-lagged, don’t forget, and about to become even more so.
    Air Cal was delighted to sell me two tickets to San Francisco . I bought one-way tickets as Uncle Theo wasn’t supposed to be coming back with me. We had a half-hour to wait until boarding, which I spent slouched in a chair thinking of nothing much in particular, and Uncle Theo spent feeding quarters into one of those one-person TVs you find in a lot of airports these days; maybe if I was from Estonia and couldn’t understand English, I might be able to take afternoon TV, too. When our flight was finally announced, he didn’t react; I made gestures to him indicating it was time to go.
    He dozed through most of the flight north to San Francisco ; I would have too if I could have found some position to squirm into where my head made contact with the headrest. I wonder why airlines don’t have a demountable version of those gadgets you attach to the top of car seats to avoid whiplash? I wonder why they don’t have a lot of things. One of the stewardesses had words with a tobacco addict behind us who tried to sneak a quick hit; the smoking ban was OK by me. I’d puffed away as a smart-ass kid, like all smart-ass kids, but after spending three weeks cold turkey in a private hospital in Fresno having some holes plugged one time, I luckily never got the yen again.
    You know those notice boards they have in airport terminals that say ”Messages for Passengers,” and that never have a message for you? I checked the one we passed in the corridor after disembarking at San Francisco and lo and behold, tucked into the Ds was one for V. Daniel, from Curly. It contained no good news. It contained bad news, which, although not unexpected, still wasn’t the same as good news.
    ”Could be. Love, S.” is what it said. I crumpled it up and put it away in a pocket. Uncle Theo looked at me inquiringly.
    I looked up the word for mother in the vocabulary at the back of my phrase book and pointed it out to him. He looked slightly baffled, so I added, ”Telephone. Telephone mother.”
    ” Da,” he said, nodding.
    Curly had been at LAX from three o’clock onward that afternoon, watching my meeting with Uncle Theo. She had not been pleased when I’d informed her she’d have to take the airport bus out, but I didn’t want to drive her out in case anyone was watching and I sure wasn’t about to cover taxis for her there and back because you are talking eighty bucks easy, amigos. I couldn’t use Willing Boy as a backup as (1) he was either in Montreal with Miss McGurk or Quebec City with Mama and (2) he’d already been spotted. Benny was otherwise occupied, so that left Sara, girl sleuth. What she was looking for, of course, was anyone who showed untoward interest in me or Uncle Theo, such as, to name but one, Solomon, whom I’d described to her as best I could. And it seemed she’d spotted someone, all right—”could be.” I’d spotted her without getting out my magnifying glass, she was decked out in her old Born Again Mother Hubbard outfit and was handing out petunias or whatever they were. She even handed me one, the twerp, and tried to sell me a fish-shaped Christian symbol on a cheap chain.
    Goodie goodie, I thought. That’s all I needed, Lethal Lou circling around just out of sight. Bring back the moose, I thought. Where were those halcyon days of yore when all I had to worry about was Fats, the Mob, the fuzz, snow blindness, and too much Cinderella cake?
    After Uncle Theo came back from the washroom, Avis came up with yet another bright red Ford. Why so many of their vehicles are bight crimson, I do not know. Maybe the color is supposed to appeal to us sporty types, us daredevils of the macadam.
    I settled my companion into the seat beside me, helped him to buckle up, and off we went. San Francisco ’s airport is located south of the city and the famed Golden Gate Bridge , which Uncle Theo had excitedly pointed out to me from the plane as we circled out over the Pacific before making our approach in to land. The town of Lafayette lies east-northeast and you get to it, as we did, after bypassing most of the city, by joining tens of thousands of commuters heading homeward over the never-ending San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge debouches onto a freeway that takes you north of Oakland through the Coastal Mountains to towns like Orinda, Lafayette , and Walnut Creek . If you headed