Chapter 87 of He

At Oceana Apartments, a breeze arises, blowing in from the Pacific. The balcony doors are open, and the salt sweat scent of the sea is on his skin, and on his lips, and in the air that he breathes. His senses are more acute since he stopped smoking. Chesterfield, his brand of choice, provided the finance for The Stolen Jools, and he and Babe generated some income by advertising Old Gold cigarettes, although he could never smoke Old Gold himself. Either way, the tobacco companies made their money back from him a thousand times over, and now his is an old man smelling the world anew

Lois, his daughter, calls him on the telephone. He enjoys hearing from her, and loves spending time with his grandchildren. He could, perhaps, have tried fro more children of his own, but he chose not to. His daughter is to be his sole such blessing

Ida says that she always knows when Lois is on the other end of the telephone. He does not even have to speak her name. Ida can hear it in his voice, and see it in the expression on his face

Before I die, Ida sometimes says, I wish I could witness that expression on your face just once when I call. If your tone is anything to go by, your face won’t look like it does when you hear from Lois

He always hushes her. If he is an a bad mood, he tells her that she sounds like Anita Garvin

Or Vera, although he only thinks this and never utters it aloud

He will die soon. He knows this on some animal level. He does not mind dying. He is not afraid. He will miss his daughter, and he will miss Ida, but he is now discarding days like small bills until all are spent, disposing of the hours by writing letters and waiting for strangers to call. He is excited by new deliveries of stationary with the Oceana letterhead. In another life, he might have been content to run a stationary store, with ascending grades of material from the cheapest to the finest, and even the poorest stored carefully to preserve it from damp stains. He retains a small stock of expensive cotton paper, which he uses sparingly. He admires the randomness of the watermark it bears, so that no two sheets are alike

He has always been ambivalent about unpredictability, about disorder. He tried to impose order upon his life, and failed. He resisted the imposition of order upon his art, and succeeded. In both spheres of his existence, he ultimately embraced chaos

[Cacophonic interlude]

These are the subjects about which he thinks, when he is alone at the Oceana Apartments

He is not sad about the imminence of mortality. He feels that the purposeful part of his existence ended many years ago, and the best part of it concluded with Babe’s death. He has never been a particularly religious man. He and Babe had this in common. Reincarnation appeals to him, but only if he can retain some memory of the mistakes that he has made in this life and therefore only if he can retain some memory of Babe

He does not trust in reincarnation alone to reunite him with Babe. He does not trust in reincarnation alone to reunite him with Babe. He does not trust in reincarnation alone to reunite him with Babe. He does not trust in reincarnation alone to reunite him with Babe. Fate, perhaps, but not reincarnation, because it was fate that brought them together, these lives entwined like lovers’ limbs