“I wasn’t sure I was going to. That’s quite an intimidating set-up you’ve got there.”
He laughed. “Most people don’t know about my health issues, don’t realize Stonewall Crothers has started to get a few cracks in him. And I figure, why advertise it? If someone’s meant to find me, they’ll find me. Till they do, I’m just going to get on with my life.”
He was silent until we reached the edge of the lawn. Ahead of us a rough path descended through trees and bushes. A warm breeze, smelling of salt and pine-needles and some kind of flower I couldn’t identify, blew up from the shore.
“You have to look out where you’re going here,” said Crothers, leading the way. He moved slowly, picking his steps carefully, holding his arms out for balance. “We could’ve put in a handrail. But you do that, and you’re kind of missing the point.” He looked back up at me, monitoring my reaction. “There’s got to be some places where it’s just you and it, right?”
I nodded. After a minute or so the slope levelled out and we emerged on to a shoulder of rock. Halfway down, shaded by overhanging branches, was a shallow depression with a granite hearthstone in the middle, scattered with the remains of a recent fire. Three or four upended logs served as makeshift stools.
“Welcome to the fire-pit,” said Crothers. “Sit down.”
I perched on one of the logs. He settled himself next to me and leaned his elbows on his thighs, looking at the view.
“Seems like I been coming here a lot lately,” he said. “You know those Indian stories—American Indian, I’m talking about—about our ancestors? How, in the beginning, we all came out of a hole in the earth? Well, this feels like where I came out. And where I’m going to go back.” He turned and grinned at me. “Where you’re sitting, right now, that’s the place they’re going to bury my ashes. Am I embarrassing you?”
“No, of course not.”
“You look like you just swallowed a pool ball.”
I smiled. I glanced down at my shoes. They glared back at me reproachfully.
“Makes a lot of people feel kinda yaaah.” He looked at the Pacific again. “So, you want to know why Evan’s the way he is.” He paused, wound a bit of grass round his finger, snapped it off. “I’ll tell you. One word. Two. He’s scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“All the usual stuff, I guess.” He chewed the grass stem for a few seconds. “What are you scared of?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Death, I suppose. Pain.”
He nodded. “How about someone seeing right inside of you? Past the guy with the preppy clothes and the neat way with words who knows all about Romanesque churches in Lower Normandy?” He smiled at me. “Yeah, I looked you up.”
“I don’t just write about churches in Lower Normandy.”
“No, no, I know that. But let’s say, someone who sees past all the stuff you’ve done, right the way down to the little kid inside who’s secretly terrified he may not be that great after all. And who’d rather disappear up his own ass than show his real feelings. ’Cause that way, nobody can laugh at him.” He saw my expression. “Too rude?”
“No, no, no.”
“See, that’s what keeps Evan awake nights. The idea someone could do that to him.”
“What is he frightened they’ll find?”
“Hoo, boy.” He shook his head. “I’m not a shrink—though if you saw all the money I spent on them over the years, you’d think I’d have figured out how they do it. So I don’t know. But I’m guessing it has to be something to do with the way he was raised. It always is, isn’t it?”
“That appears to be the consensus.”
He leaned over and tugged my tailored sleeve. “Where’d this come from?”
“I don’t know. Poor potty training, I expect.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right.” The laughter went on. It seemed to surprise him as much as he did me. It was a few seconds before he’d brought it under control.
“Though when I say the way he was raised,” he said, “maybe that’s kind of misleading. The way he raised himself, that could be a better way of putting it. You know about Coyote Fork?”
“Coyote what?”
“Fork.”
I shook my head.
“It’s like this commune. Where he grew up.”
“A religious commune?”
“A hippie commune.” He waved his hand northwards. “Way up there in the mountains. Or at least, it was. It was abandoned, I don’t know, must be twelve, fifteen years ago now. But you really want to understand Evan Bone, that’s where you got to look. Only problem is . . .” He shook his head. “That guy in Romania, you know, the dictator, what was his name?”
“Ceausescu?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Ceausescu. Had this huge palace, looked like a movie set for Aladdin or something. And when the revolution came and they got inside, they found miles and miles of tunnels under it. That’s the way Evan is. Always was, even way back when I met him. You try to find your way through the maze, you just get lost. Nothing’s connected, see. There’s the time he found his mom screwing another guy. Actually, lots of times, and lots of other guys. There were the kids that bullied him, he never said why, but it was so bad, one time they broke his arm. There was the morning his mom got home, only half dressed, looking like a slut, that’s the word he used. And he asked her where she’d been, and she said, I spent the night with Simon or Paul or whoever it was, and Evan was so freaked he dropped the bucket of water he was carrying. And his dad got mad and filled the bucket up again and held Evan’s head under till he thought he was going to drown.”
“God.”
“Yep, God about covers it. But you say to him, man, that’s terrible, is that why you don’t trust women, and he says: ‘It’s just what happened. It’s data. Don’t try to turn it into a story. Stories are lies.’”
“Ah. TOLSTOY.”
“Tolstoy?”
“Have you heard about TOLSTOY?”
“Russian guy? Wrote War and Peace? I never read it.”
“Evan Bone’s latest project?”
He shook his head. I told him what I could remember from Jeff Lamarr’s presentation.
“Yeah,” he said. “That figures. The only way you can stop people knowing what’s going on inside your skull is to know what’s going on in theirs. So you design an algorithm to tell you. And then sell it to them by saying it’s just to help you give them more of what they want.”
“Which it is, of course. Because that allows you to sell more advertising.”
“Sure. But that’s not the main point. Money’s only useful if it buys you more power. More protection. That has to be what it’s about for Evan.”
He paused, frowning, then got up and walked over to the hearthstone. He bent down and retrieved a charred fragment of canvas daubed with discolored red. He studied it for a moment, then pulled a lighter from his pocket and set fire to it. As the flames took hold, he dropped it on the stone and watched it turn to ash.
“Didn’t notice that before,” he said. “I don’t like to leave things. They’re here, and then they’re gone. That’s the way it should be.”
“Was that one of your paintings?”
He didn’t reply but returned