No Relation (31 page)

“Hem, we never knew for certain that this would work. It’s always been a crapshoot. We were all just hoping it would.”

“And I’m truly grateful. I had such a wonderful time in Paris. Spending a day or so with Hat and getting to know him a bit more was kind of fun. He’s a good guy. But Paris was, um, special. It was just so nice, so comfortable. It felt so natural, like we’ve known each other for years, not weeks.”

“For me, too,” she replied.

Silence reigned for a few seconds.

“Anyway, I assume you passed your pastry course at the top of your class?”

“I did fine. It was quite gruelling, particularly with so little sleep, thank you very much. But I picked up a few great tips and my croissants are better now than they’ve ever been. So I’m happy, for a lot of reasons.”

“Despite being in Ketchum, Idaho, site of one of the world’s most famous suicides, and being eager to get home, I’m happy, too, even if I’ll never write again.”

“Hem, you’ll be writing again soon. I know it. I can feel it.”

I often order a cheese omelette when I’m staying in hotels. I’ve never been a big fan of room service, but I figure it’s tough to mess up a cheese omelette. It’s a safe bet. After my Idaho stay, I’ve revised my room service standard operating procedure by adding what I call the Ketchum Corollary. It’s tough to mess up a cheese omelette,
but not impossible
. I’ve since switched to the club sandwich as my room service standby.

Sarah texted me around 10:00 p.m. All it said was: “When do you land tomorrow?”

I texted back the flight time but heard nothing more from her.

The next morning, I drove out to the Hemingway home. The rain had only just stopped coming down but the low dark cloud cover hung heavy and close and claustrophobic. When she died in 1986, Mary Hemingway had bequeathed their home to the Nature Conservancy in Idaho. The endowment she left was not sufficient to pay for the upkeep, so the house is not open to the public, even though it remains the top tourist destination in Ketchum. I have no idea what other attractions might round out the top five, but the Hemingway home has always been number one.

It was not much to look at. Homes built from concrete blocks with a faux wood exterior are certainly durable, but seldom do they grace the cover of
Architectural Digest
. It looked in
reasonably good condition, but was clearly empty. It had initially served as the offices of the Nature Conservancy before the organization outgrew the premises. Since then, the home has been maintained, but never occupied.

I got out of the car. The place was deserted. I just stood there for a time taking in the front entrance. The vestibule, where he spent his final minutes alive, was just beyond the door. I had no desire to move closer. The Hemingway who had lived and died there was a pale reflection of his earlier self – depleted, deluded, and suddenly older than his years. It all seemed so sad. Although it was a warm morning in July, a chill passed through me. I walked around to the back of the house. While the views of the surrounding landscape were quite scenic, the house was no more attractive from the other side. In the sun, in shadows, summer or winter, concrete is concrete. I sat down on the ground in the lee of the home and tried to take stock. There had been no exorcism. I’d lived in Hemingway’s world for the past ten days in four different countries yet my writer’s block seemed no closer to being cured. I began to question my initial diagnosis.

Sitting behind the house, I hadn’t heard the state trooper’s car approach. I must have been very deep in thought, as I don’t recall hearing the trooper’s door slam either.

“You are not supposed to be here, sir,” she said. “This is private property.”

I jumped when I heard her voice, which caused her to put one hand on her holster.

I put my hands up in anticipation.

“Um, sorry, Officer, you just startled me,” I stammered. “I didn’t know this was not allowed. I was about to leave anyway.”

I pulled myself to my feet and faced her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Well, um, I just wanted to visit his home. I’m on a kind of Hemingway pilgrimage, and this was my last stop. Fitting, I guess, as this was, um, his last stop.”

“Have you touched anything or taken anything from the grounds?” she asked.

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“We have a lot of trouble with Hemingway fanatics trying to chip off chunks of concrete from the house or peeling off weather stripping as souvenirs. You’d be surprised what they do.”

“Well, I can assure you, I’ve just been sitting and thinking. I have no interest in taking any part of this place with me. It all seems so depressing, what happened here. In fact, I’m eager to leave.”

“Well, now that I’ve found you here, I’m sorry to say that there are procedures to follow, information to gather, and a report to file. Had you stayed in the car out in the driveway, I could probably have cut you some slack. But your fate was sealed when you opened your door, stepped out, and walked onto the property. It’s what we call around here
trespassing
.”

“Trespassing? You’re kidding. Really?” I said, my voice rising to a higher register. “You know I meant no harm. I’ve touched
nothing. Couldn’t we just both forget that this ever happened and I’ll be on my way?”

“Sir, I take my job very seriously. You did not really just advocate dereliction of duty, did you? Is that what I just heard?” she asked with an edge, and taking one step closer.

Uh oh. I backpedalled, literally and figuratively.

“Absolutely not. I’m all in favour of paperwork. When can we start?”

We both walked back around to the front of the house where her cruiser was parked just behind my rental car. She reached into her front seat and pulled out a steel clipboard and then leaned against the police car’s front fender. I stood next to my car and knew exactly what was coming next.

“Okay, sir, let’s begin with your name, and I’m going to need to see some identification.”

And we were off.

I made it back to the hotel just in time to check out. After she’d accepted who I was and why I was in Ketchum, the officer turned out to be very nice about the whole thing.

My flight landed at LaGuardia at 9:10 that night. The Arrivals area was not too busy for a summer Sunday night. But Departures would surely have been swamped with tourists heading home after a Manhattan weekend. I grabbed my bag and headed out of the sliding glass doors.

They were both standing there together gabbing away like best friends at a sleepover. Sarah and Marie. My plan had been just to grab a cab and head home. I was not expecting a welcoming party. Marie saw me first, beamed, and thrust her hands in the air in a gesture that seemed to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Earnest Hemmingway is in the house!” though I’m not skilled at simultaneous translation.

She threw her arms around me and squeezed tight, rubbing my back as if comforting a whimpering child. I gave Sarah a surprised and somewhat awkward look, but she just gave a conspiratorial wink.

“It’s okay, Hem, Marie filled me in on your Paris hookup,” Sarah said. “I’m not surprised.”

Sarah had a rental car and drove us downtown. Knowing that Sarah wanted to talk family dysfunctions, Marie thought it better if we dropped her off at her place. She had early baking to do anyway. When she got out of the car, she kissed me in a way that told me what happened in Paris might also happen in Manhattan. I was feeling better already.

I dumped my bag in the bedroom while Sarah fetched a couple of beers from the fridge.

“I need your couch tonight but I’ll be gone when you get up,” Sarah shouted from the kitchen. “I’m on the first flight back to O’Hare tomorrow morning.”

I joined her on the couch in the living room and took a long pull on my beer.

“Ready?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Okay. I do want to hear all about your trip, particularly how you and the cake queen came to be an item. By the way, I really like her. But first we gotta talk about Dad.”

“The floor is yours and I’m all aquiver in anticipation.” I sighed.

“Things have gone from bad to worse. Something is going down, and I can’t figure out what it is. Dad and Henderson are spending almost every waking hour together behind closed doors. A few other suits come and go throughout the day. Dad won’t return my calls. Then Henderson will disappear for a day. It happened a couple of weeks ago. About ten days before we were going to introduce a new four-pack, the first of its kind in the marketplace, I see Henderson coming out of the Starbucks and getting into an airport limo. When I got into the office, I asked his admin assistant where Henderson was. She told me he’d called in sick that day. Then, the day before our four-pack was to be launched, MaxWorldCorp brings out a five-pack, just like that. So we look like we’re following, not leading the market. We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. We looked stupid. It’s all very strange.”

“That could be just a coincidence,” I said. “I mean packaging multiple pairs of underwear is hardly a groundbreaking idea.”

“But hang on, I’m not finished,” she cut back in. “A couple of days ago, I found this waiting for me on my desk.”

She passed over a plain brown envelope. I opened it and pulled out three photographs. They were taken from above at a very
large meeting. In two of the shots, lots of people were milling about. In the other, the meeting was clearly in session.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s the annual general meeting of MaxWorldCorp.”

“Yeah, so?”

She leaned over and pointed to a figure sitting and listening during the meeting.

“
Carlos!
What’s he doing at our prime competitor’s
AGM
?” I asked.

“Good question,” Sarah replied.

Then she pointed to the two other photos.

I could now see Carlos standing there in conversation with three men. He seemed to be smiling in one of the shots. In fact, everyone seemed to be happy-happy.

“Thanks to Google Images, I’ve confirmed that those are two senior MaxWorldCorp execs he’s talking to. Not sure about the third suit.”