(But he was curious, and he lusted, the writer argued. Was it his fault that he had abandoned his soul?)
Even as he is consumed by flames he says, “I am everywhere.”
At the exact moment I was completing that last sentence, voices from the TV forced me to acknowledge them.
I turned in my chair to face the screen, because coming from the TV, thirty-three minutes into the movie, were the words “Paging Mr. Ellis. Paging Mr. Ellis. Paging Mr. Ellis.”
An impossibly young Harrison Ford in a bellboy’s outfit wanders through the bar of a hotel. He is looking for a guest. He has a message.
James Coburn is sitting at a table in the bar checking out waitresses when he glances over and says, “Boy?”
Harrison Ford walks over to James Coburn’s table.
“Bob Ellis?” James Coburn asks. “Robert Ellis? Room 72?”
I spun around to the computer and clicked Save.
“No sir,” Harrison Ford replies. “Charles Ellis. Room 607.”
“Are you sure?” Coburn asks.
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh.”
And then Harrison Ford wanders deeper into the bar, calling out, “Paging Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis. Paging Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis?” until his voice disappears from the soundtrack.
When I looked at the clock above the TV, it was 2:40 a.m.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9
29. the attack
Robert Miller had begun the cleansing on Thursday, November sixth, starting with the exterminator he always used in such cases, tenting the house at six o’clock that evening. On the following night of November seventh Miller’s team set up their equipment in 307 Elsinore Lane and left, returning on Saturday night—exactly twenty-four hours later—and once it was understood that the space had been cleaned removed their equipment from the house. This was all relayed to me by Robert Miller in a phone call after my plane landed at the Midland Airport at 2:15 on Sunday afternoon as I was driving the Range Rover back into town. Miller felt confident that the house was “safe.” He mentioned “specific changes” that had occurred after his team returned on Saturday. He assured me that I would be pleased with these transformations. The damage that had occurred during the ISR was not “corrected” (the door that flew from its hinges; the hole punctured in the wall) but he insisted I would be gratified by the “physical differences” in the rest of the house. After this conversation, my need to see the house was overpowering. Instead of heading to the Four Seasons I drove to 307 Elsinore Lane.
The first thing I noticed—and I gasped at this as I pulled up to the house—was that the lily white paint had returned, replacing the pink stucco that had infected its exterior. I remember parking the Range Rover in the driveway and walking toward the house in awe, my hand clutching the keys, and the sheer relief washing through me caused my body to feel different. The regret that had been defining me lifted off, and I became someone else. I walked to the side of the house—now the same blank white that had been there in July—and I touched the wall and felt nothing except a sense of peace that, for once, I hadn’t imposed upon myself. It was genuine.
Inside the house, I felt no fear; there was no trepidation anymore. I could sense the change; something had been freed. There was a new scent, a lack of pressure, a difference that was intangible but still able somehow to announce itself forcefully. I was surprised when Victor came loping out of the kitchen to greet me in the foyer. No longer in the basement kennel at the hotel, he was wagging his tail and seemed genuinely excited by my presence. There was none of the usual glowering reluctance emanating from him whenever I entered his line of vision. But I couldn’t concentrate on the dog for long, since the living room had changed miraculously. The green shag had returned to a flat beige sheet, and the curtains from 1976 that were hanging from a window (only days ago) had disappeared, and the furniture was arranged as it had been when I moved in. I closed my eyes and thought: thank you. There was a future (though not in this particular home—I was already planning on moving elsewhere) and I could think about the future because after becoming so used to things not working out I now, for one moment, believed things could change. And the transformation of the house validated this.
Victor’s licking of my hand caused me to reach for the cell phone in my pocket.
I dialed Marta.
(The following exchange was pieced together following a conversation I had with Marta Kauffman on Tuesday, November eighteenth.)
“Marta?”
“Hey—what’s up?” she said. “Are you back?”
