“But not us, George! Not us! Idn’t that right?”

Mike was gone. The stage was gone. Now it was only the two of them, and by the time Lennie was asking George to tell him about the little ranch, and the rabbits, and living off the fat of the land, half the audience was weeping audibly. Vince was crying so hard he could hardly deliver his final lines, telling poor stupid Lennie to look over there, the ranch they were going to live on was over there. If he looked hard enough, he could see it.

The stage lensed slowly to full dark, Cindy McComas for once running the lights perfectly.

Birdie Jamieson, the school janitor, fired a blank cartridge. Some woman in the audience gave a little scream. That sort of reaction is usually followed by nervous laughter, but tonight there was only the sound of people weeping in their seats. Otherwise, silence. It went on for ten seconds. Or maybe it was only five. Whatever it was, to me it seemed forever. Then the applause broke. It was the best thunder I ever heard in my life. The house lights went up. The entire audience was on its feet. The front two rows were reserved for faculty, and I happened to glance at Coach Borman.

Damned if he wasn’t crying, too.

Two rows back, where all the school jocks were sitting together, Jim LaDue leaped to his feet. “You rock, Coslaw!” he shouted. This elicited cheers and laughter.

The cast came out to take their bows: first the football-player townspeople, then Curley and Curley’s Wife, then Candy and Slim and the rest of the farmhands. The applause started to die a little and then Vince came out, flushed and happy, his own cheeks still wet. Mike Coslaw came last, shuffling as if embarrassed, then looking out in comical amazement as Mimi shouted “Bravo!” Others echoed it, and soon the auditorium resounded with it: Bravo, Bravo, Bravo. Mike bowed, sweeping his hat so low it brushed the stage. When he stood again, he was smiling. But it was more than a smile; his face was transformed with the happiness that’s reserved for those who are finally allowed to reach all the way up.

Then he shouted, “Mr. Amberson! Come up here, Mr. Amberson!” The cast took up the chant of “Director! Director!”

“Don’t kill the applause,” Mimi growled from beside me. “Get up there, you goof ball!” So I did, and the applause swelled again. Mike grabbed me, hugged me, lifted me off my feet, then set me down and gave me a hearty smack on the cheek. Everyone laughed, including me.

We all grabbed hands, lifted them to the audience, and bowed. As I listened to the applause, a thought occurred to me, one that darkened my heart. In Minsk, there were newlyweds. Lee and Marina had been man and wife for exactly nineteen days.

5

Three weeks later, just before school let out for the summer, I went to Dallas to take some photographs of the three apartments where Lee and Marina would live together. I used a small Minox, holding it in the palm of my hand and allowing the lens to peep out between two spread fingers. I felt ridiculous—more like the trench-coated caricatures in Mad magazine’s Spy vs Spy feature than James Bond—but I had learned to be careful about such things.

When I returned to my house, Mimi Corcoran’s sky-blue Nash Rambler was parked at the curb and Mimi was just sliding in behind the wheel. When she saw me, she got out again. A brief grimace tightened her face—pain or effort—but when she came up the drive, she was wearing her usual dry smile. As if I amused her, but in a good way. In her hands she was carrying a bulky manila envelope, which contained the hundred and fifty pages of The Murder Place. I’d finally given in to her pesterings . . . but that had been only the day before.

“Either you liked it one hell of a lot, or you never got past page ten,” I said, taking the envelope. “Which was it?”

Her smile now looked enigmatic as well as amused. “Like most librarians, I’m a fast reader.

Can we go inside and talk about it? It isn’t even the middle of June, and it’s already so hot.” Yes, and she was sweating, something I’d never seen before. Also, she looked as if she’d lost weight. Not a good thing for a lady who had no pounds to give away.

Sitting in my living room with big glasses of iced coffee—me in the easy chair, she on the couch—Mimi gave her opinion. “I enjoyed the stuff about the killer dressed up as a clown. Call me twisted, but I found that deliciously creepy.”

“If you’re twisted, I am, too.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find a publisher for it. On the whole, I liked it very much.” I felt a little hurt. The Murder Place might have begun as camouflage, but it had become more important to me as I got deeper into it. It was like a secret memoir. One of the nerves. “That

‘on the whole’ stuff reminds me of Alexander Pope—you know, damning with faint praise?”

“I didn’t quite mean it that way.” More qualification. “It’s just that . . . goddammit, George, this isn’t what you were meant to do. You were meant to teach. And if you publish a book like this, no school department in the United States will hire you.” She paused. “Except maybe in Massachusetts.”

I didn’t reply. I was speechless.

“What you did with Mike Coslaw—what you did for Mike Coslaw—was the most amazing and wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Mimi, it wasn’t me. He’s just naturally tal—”

“I know he’s naturally talented, that was obvious from the moment he walked onstage and opened his mouth, but I’ll tell you something, my friend. Something forty years in high schools and sixty years of living has taught me and taught me well. Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult. That’s a talent you have, and in much greater supply than the one that drove this.” She tapped the sheaf of pages on the coffee table in front of her.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say thank you, and compliment me on my acute judgment.”

“Thanks. And your insight is only exceeded by your good looks.” That brought the smile back, dryer than ever. “Don’t exceed your brief, George.”

“Yes, Miz Mimi.”

The smile disappeared. She leaned forward. The blue eyes behind her glasses were too big, swimming in her face. The skin under her tan was yellowish, and her formerly taut cheeks were hollow. When had this happened? Had Deke noticed? But that was ridic, as the kids said. Deke wouldn’t notice that his socks were mismatched until he took them off at night. Probably not even then.

She said, “Phil Bateman is no longer just threatening to retire, he’s done pulled the pin and tossed the grenade, as our delightful Coach Borman would say. Which means there’s a vacancy on the English faculty. Come and teach full-time at DCHS, George. The kids like you, and after the junior-senior play, the community thinks you’re the second coming of Alfred Hitchcock. Deke is just waiting to see your application—he told me so just last night. Please. Publish this under a pseudonym, if you have to, but come and teach. That’s what you were meant to do.” I wanted badly to say yes, because she was right. My job wasn’t writing books, and it certainly wasn’t killing people, no matter how much they deserved killing. And there was Jodie. I’d come to it as a stranger who had been displaced from his home era as well as his hometown, and the first words spoken to me here—by Al Stevens, at the diner—had been friendly words. If you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you’ll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be. Jodie was the anti-Dallas, and now one of its leading citizens was asking me to be a resident instead of a visitor. But the watershed moment was approaching. Only it wasn’t here yet. Maybe . . .