Sacred

That night he attended an “intensive seminar” for acute sufferers of grief. Jay told Everett Hamlyn in a tape-recorded conversation during the early hours of February 27 that Grief Release categorized its clients as suffering from six levels of grief: Level One (Malaise); Level Two (Desolate); Level Three (Serious, with Hostility or Emotional Estrangements); Level Four (Severe); Level Five (Acute); and Level Six (Watershed).

Jay explained that “watershed” meant a client had reached the point at which he would either implode or find his state of grace and acceptance.

To ascertain whether a Level Five was in danger of reaching Level Six, Grief Release encouraged Level Fives to enroll in a Release Retreat. As luck would have it, Jay said, the next Release Retreat left Boston for Nantucket the next day, February 28.

After a phone call to Trevor Stone, Hamlyn and Kohl authorized an expenditure for two thousand dollars and Jay left for the Release Retreat.

“She’s been here,” Jay told Everett Hamlyn during their phone call. “Desiree. She’s been in the Grief Release headquarters on Comm. Ave.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s a bulletin board in the function room. All sorts of Polaroids on it—you know, Thanksgiving party, aren’t-we-all-perfectly-fucking-sane-now party, shit like that. She’s in one of them, at the back of a group of people. I’ve got her, Everett. I can feel it.”

“Be careful, Jay,” Everett Hamlyn said.

And Jay was. On the first day of March, he returned from Nantucket unharmed. He called Trevor Stone and told him he’d just arrived back in Boston and would be dropping by the house in Marblehead in an hour with an update.

“You’ve found her?” Trevor said.

“She’s alive.”

“You’re sure.”

“I told you, Mr. Stone,” Jay said with some of his old cockiness, “no one disappears from Jay Becker. No one.”

“Where are you? I’ll send a car.”

Jay laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I’m twenty miles away. I’ll be there in no time.”

And somewhere in those twenty miles, Jay, too, disappeared.

5

“Fin de siècle,” Ginny Regan said.

“Fin de siècle,” I said. “Yes.”

“It bothers you?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Ginny Regan was the receptionist at the business offices of Grief Release, Inc., and she seemed a little confused. I didn’t blame her. I don’t think she knew the difference between fin de siècle and a Popsicle, and if I hadn’t consulted a thesaurus before coming over here, I wouldn’t have, either. As it was, I was still making this shit up on the fly and I was starting to confuse myself. Chico Marx, I kept thinking, Chico Marx. Where would Chico take a conversation like this?

“Well,” Ginny said, “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure?” I thumped her desktop with the palm of my hand. “How can you not be sure? I mean, you talk about fin de siècle and you’re talking about some pretty serious shit. The end of the millennium, utter chaos, nuclear Armageddon, roaches the size of Range Rovers.”

Ginny looked at me nervously as a man in a drab brown suit shrugged his way into a topcoat in the office behind her and approached the small gate that, along with Ginny’s desk, separated the lobby from the main office.

“Yes,” Ginny said. “Of course. It’s very serious. But I was—”

“The writing’s on the wall, Ginny. This society’s coming apart at the seams. Look at the evidence—Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center bombings, David Hasselhoff. It’s all there.”

“’Night, Ginny,” the man in the topcoat said as he pushed the gate open by Ginny’s desk.

“Uh, ’night, Fred,” Ginny said.

Fred glanced at me.

I smiled. “’Night, Fred.”

“Uh, yes,” Fred said. “Well then.” And he left.

I glanced at the clock on the wall over Ginny’s shoulder: 5:22 P.M. All the office staffers, as far as I could see, had gone home by now. All except for Ginny, anyway. Poor Ginny.

I scratched the back of my neck several times, my “all-clear” signal for Angie, and locked Ginny in my benign, beatific, benevolent, lunatic stare.

“It’s hard to get up in the morning anymore,” I said. “Very hard.”

“You’re depressed!” Ginny said gratefully, as if she finally understood that which had been just beyond her grasp.

“Grief-stricken, Ginny. Grief-stricken.”

When I said her name, she flinched, then smiled. “Grief-stricken about, uh, fin-de-sickles?”

“Fin de siècle,” I corrected her. “Yes. Very much so. I mean, I don’t agree with his methods, mind you, but maybe Ted Kaczynski was right.”

“Ted,” she said.

“Kaczynski,” I said.

“Kaczynski.”

“The Unabomber,” I said.

“The Unabomber,” she said slowly.

I smiled at her.

“Oh!” she said suddenly. “The Unabomber!” Her eyes cleared and she seemed excited and freed of a great weight suddenly. “I get it.”

“You do?” I leaned forward.

Her eyes clouded over in confusion again. “No, I don’t.”

“Oh.” I sat back.

In the rear corner of the office, over Ginny’s right shoulder, a window rose. The cold, I thought suddenly. She’ll feel the cold air on her back.

I leaned into her desk. “Modern critical response to the best of popular culture confuses me, Ginny.”

She flinched, then smiled. It seemed to be her way. “It does.”

“Utterly,” I said. “And that confusion leads to anger and that anger leads to depression and that depression”—my voice rose and thundered as Angie slid over the windowsill and Ginny’s eyes widened to the size of Frisbees as she watched me, her left hand slipping into her desk drawer—“leads to grief! Real grief, don’t kid yourself, about the decay of art and critical acumen and the end of the millennium and accompanying sense of fin de siècle.”

Angie’s gloved hand closed the window behind her.

“Mr….” Ginny said.

“Doohan,” I said. “Deforest Doohan.”

“Mr. Doohan,” she said. “Yes. I’m not sure if grief is the correct word for your troubles.”