I wrapped the mask in newspaper and made the airport with half an hour to spare. John dropped me off and left without a backward glance. While I waited for the plane, I got the tarot deck out of my carry-on bag. The Empress came up in the first spread. Future influences. I put the deck away.

The plane was late, and then I fell asleep on the trip back. A stewardess had to roust me out of my seat in St. Paul. I caught a taxi, growled at the cabdriver, and rode in silence along the riverside road back home. The apartment echoed with emptiness; Chaminade had erased every sign of her short occupation. I made myself busy with unpacking and transferred the notes from the portable computer to my work machine. John’s mask went on a shelf in the living room, next to a museum-quality drawing by Egon Schiele. Looking at the mask made me think about buying a kiln, but I wouldn’t be any good at it.

Feeling alone, tired, and a little sad, I peeled off my clothes and climbed into bed. After a couple of minutes I got up again, went out to the telephone, and called the Wee Blue Inn, a very bad bar in Duluth. Weenie answered. Weenie is the owner. He’s also LuEllen’s phone drop.

“This is the guy from St. Paul,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” Weenie didn’t go in for the intellectual discourse.

“I need to talk to your girlfriend.”

“Ain’t seen her,” he said. He said that no matter who called. LuEllen might be sitting across the bar from him.

“If you do, tell her to call me,” I said.

“Business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

“She got your number?”

“Yeah. She’s got my number.”

The next two days were beautiful. Blue skies, light, puffy clouds. I spent them on the Mississippi, in the hill country south of Red Wing, working on landscapes and thinking about Longstreet. In the evenings, back in St. Paul, I trained at the Shotokan dojo, then walked up to the center of town to an Irish bar off the main drag. A newspaper friend, who once drank too much, still hangs out in the bars, drinking Perrier lime water at two dollars a bottle. He claims bars are his métier.

“Or maybe they’re my forte. Either métier or forte, I get them mixed up when I’ve had too many lime waters,” he said, looking longingly at my bottle of Miller. “You think I ought to change to lemon waters?”

“Don’t do anything hasty. You’ll wind up in the gutter,” I said, dabbing at my fat lip. The pure thing about Shotokan is that when you fuck up, you find out right away.

“Just a lemon water. I could handle it.”