Nancy said, “I thought you were watching her.” I run around the bank and see that my little girl has somehow managed to cross into the office area unnoticed and is now stepping into the open bank vault, unseen by its guard.

“Linney, come back!” I call out. She could have plucked a few thousand dollars from the vault and no one would have paid any attention. I lecture her on the danger of going into bank vaults. At night they get shut and they don’t open until morning, and all the air runs out. Air is important. I need air to play my instrument.

“How long can you hold a note, Daddowee?” she asks.

I tell her I once tried to blow a note for two minutes but almost passed out. “If you don’t get air after three minutes, you get dizzy, what they call unconscious, and after that, you’d get very sick. So be very careful when you’re near things like bank vaults.”

She promises she will be, and she and Nancy and I leave Mr. Felton and the bank, and I don’t find it odd that directly outside the bank is our living room with a decorated Christmas tree. Linney is unwrapping presents. The phone rings and my arm is sore from where it was stabbed.

Chapter 20

20

The Vanishing Woman

This time around, it wasn’t as emotionally painful to wake from my recurring lovely dream, because in this instance the lovely part hadn’t lasted very long. The phone had seen to that. By the time I answered its third ring, you would have been hard-pressed to detect anything wrong with me at all.

“Hello?”

“Ray.” She didn’t have to say the next part. I only needed one syllable to know the voice. “It’s—um—well, it’s Nancy, how are you.”

Her voice had not changed. I would have hoped the years might have altered its familiar warmth. I wished she hadn’t called.

“Where are you, Nance? The connection is very clear.”

“Actually, I live on this coast now, Ray. I wrote to you and told you that last year.”

“I never got the letter. The hotels I stay at don’t always forward mail.” And of course sometimes I never leave a forwarding address. “Where are you living?”

“San Francisco. I saw that Jack’s band was playing at the Claremont and thought I’d see if you were there.”