thinking of God’s promises to Abraham about his progeny, and no matter what else I did or didn’t believe, Abraham was the father of the tribe to which I still belonged through no fault or virtue of my own.
I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore.
So that’s how we go on acting dramas in our theater of the mind even when we don’t believe anymore in the audience or the director or the play.
I’d laughed thinking about that, as I’d meditated in the Serra Chapel, laughed out loud like a crazy man as I knelt there, murmuring in the sweet and delicious gloom and shaking my head.
What had maddened me on that last visit was that it was just past ten years to the day that I’d been working for The Right Man.
The Right Man had remembered the anniversary, talking about anniversaries for the first time ever and presenting me with a huge monetary gift that had already been wired to the bank account in Switzerland through which I most often received my money.
He’d said to me over the phone the evening before, “If I knew anything about you, Lucky, I’d give you something more than cold cash. All I know is you like to play the lute, and when you were a kid you played it all the time. They told me that, about your playing. If you hadn’t loved the lute so much, maybe we never would have met. Realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen you? And I always hope you’re going to drop in, and bring your precious lute with you. When you do that, I’ll get you to play for me, Lucky. Hell, Lucky, I don’t even know where you really live.”
Now that was something he brought up all the time, that he didn’t know where I lived, because I think he feared, in his heart of hearts, that I didn’t trust him, that my work had slowly eroded the love for him which I felt.
But I did trust him. And I did love him. I didn’t love anyone in the world but him. I just didn’t want anyone to know where I lived.
No place I lived was home, and I changed where I lived often. Nothing traveled with me from home to home, except my lute, and all my books. And of course my few clothes.
In this age of cell phones and the Internet, it was so easy to be untraceable. And so easy to be reached by an intimate voice in a perfect teletronic silence.
“Look, you can reach me anytime, day or night,” I’d reminded him. “Doesn’t matter where I live. Doesn’t matter to me, so why should it matter to you? And someday, maybe I’ll send you a recording of me playing the lute. You’ll be surprised. I’m still good at it.”
He’d chuckled. Okay with him, as long as I always answered the phone.
“Have I ever let you down?” I’d asked.
“No, and I’ll never let you down either,” he’d replied. “Just wish I could see you more often. Hell, you could be in Paris right now, or Amsterdam.”
“I’m not,” I’d answered. “You know that. The checkpoints are too hot. I’m in the States as I’ve been since Nine-Eleven. I’m closer than you think, and I’ll come see you one of these days, just not right now, and maybe I’ll take you to dinner. We’ll sit in a restaurant like human beings. But these days, I’m not up to the meeting. I like being alone.”
There had been no assignment on that anniversary, so I was able to stay in the Mission Inn, and I’d driven over to San Juan Capistrano the following morning.
No need at all to tell him I had an apartment in Beverly Hills right now, in a quiet and leafy place, and maybe next year it would be Palm Springs out in the desert. No need to tell him that I didn’t bother with disguises in this apartment, either, or in the surrounding neighborhood from which the Mission Inn was only an hour away.
In the past, I’d never gone out without some sort of disguise, and I noted this change in myself with a cold equanimity. I wondered sometimes if they would let me have my books if I ever went to jail.
The Mission Inn in Riverside, California, was my only constant. I’d fly across the country to make the drive to Riverside. The Inn was