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the wall and saw an electrical socket. Excellent. I put the lamp on top of the bureau and plugged it in.
I knew someone might live here awhile before the Oswalds moved in, but I didn’t think anyone would
be apt to take the Leaning Lamp of Pisa when they decamped. If they did, I had a backup unit in my
garage.
I drilled a hole through the wall to the outside with my smallest bit, pushed the bureau back into
place, and tried the lamp. It worked fine. I packed up and left the house, being careful to lock the door
behind me. Then I drove back to Jodie.
Sadie called and asked me if I would like to come over and have some supper. Just coldcuts, she
said, but there was poundcake for dessert, if I cared for some. I went over. The dessert was as
wonderful as ever, but things weren’t the same. Because she was right. There was a broom in the bed.
Like the jimla Rosette had seen in the back of my car, it was invisible . . . but it was there. Invisible or
not, it cast a shadow.
3
Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way,
knowing the wrong choice will mean the end . . . and knowing there’s so much worth saving. That’s
the way it was with Sadie and me during that unrelenting gray winter of 1962. We still went out to
dinner once or twice a week, and we still went to the Candlewood Bungalows on the occasional
Saturday night. Sadie enjoyed sex, and that was one of the things that kept us together.
On three occasions we shapped hops together. Donald Bellingham was always the DJ, and sooner or
later we’d be asked to reprise our first Lindy Hop. The kids always clapped and whistled when we did.
Not out of politeness, either. They were authentically wowed, and some of them started to learn the
moves themselves.
Were we pleased? Sure, because imitation really is the most sincere form of flattery. But we were
never as good as that first time, never so intuitively smooth. Sadie’s grace wavered. Once she missed
her grip on a flyaway and would have gone sprawling if there hadn’t been a couple of husky football
players with quick reflexes standing nearby. She laughed it off, but I could see the embarrassment on
her face. And the reproach. As if it had been my fault. Which in a way, it was.
There was bound to be a blow-up. It would have come sooner than it did, if not for the Jodie
Jamboree. That was our greening, a chance to linger a little and think things over before we were forced
into a decision neither of us wanted to make.
4
Ellen Dockerty came to me in February and asked me two things: first, would I please reconsider and
sign a contract for the ’62–’63 school year, and second, would I please direct the junior-senior play
again, since last year’s had been such a smash hit. I refused both requests, not without a tug of pain.
“If it’s your book, you’d have all summer to work on it,” she coaxed.
“It wouldn’t be long enough,” I said, although at that point I didn’t give Shit One about The
Murder Place.
“Sadie Dunhill says she doesn’t believe you care a fig for that novel.”
It was an insight she hadn’t shared with me. It shook me, but I tried not to show it. “El, Sadie
doesn’t know everything.”