37 -38 deadtime

. "are you happy , merideth ?" i tried to ask the question in a way that might bring the conversation  back from the coasts , back down below the stratosphere  . the events of the previous few weeks , culminating in adrienne's death , had left me in desperate need of gravity . i didn't have any energy to spare for celebrity guessing games with my ex .
"eric's younger than me . us . " she laughed ." he helps me feel young , yes , i am happy ."
she stressed the verb form of to be in a way that thought was overdetermined - rather than convincin me , the odd emphasis with  which she colored the world  ened up injecting some doubt into my appraisal of her actual contentedness . i cautioned myself that all the historical complications of my time  together with merdeth might have been altering my perceptions . she and i had baggage .
.
diane told me that you're going to raise jonas ," she said . " i don't know lauren , of course , but  i certainly understand why adrienne chose you you ."
" thank you ," i said ." lauren is a a terrific mom ."
she  lifted her wrist and glanced  at her watch . the timepiece was on her left wrist  , a reality thayt allowed her to display her engagement  ring every time she felt the impulse to check the time . it felt unkind that i doubted that the watch placement was a coincidence .
" i'm sorry  , " she said ,." but i have to get  back to DIA   , security these days  , you know  ? stay  in touch , okay ?" she looked at me with a sincere  face that i'd once fallen for every time ." you will ?"
i wouldn't   stay in touch . neither wouls she . we'd been divorced  a long time . we hadn't stayed  in touch .
" sure ." i said ." take care of that baby . thanks  for coming today  . it would mean a lot to adrienne ."
i watched  her rush down the lane . pregnant and   on three-inch heels , her balance never wavered .
in six or seven months , lauren and i would get a birth announcement .
we would send something nice , merideth would consider the gift quaint . the circle would close around boulder again , at least  for a while . my ex-wife would be oputside the perimeter .

36 deadtime

. " who's the lucky father ? and ...future husband ?'
"his name is eric . eric leffler ?" she paused , waiting for me to nod or , even better , raise an eyebrow .
merideth  had expected  me to recognize her fiance's name .  she hesitated when it was apparent that eric leffler was unfamiliar to me .
based on history , i thought she would try to find some way to offer more clues . she did ." he made his name during  the '04 election . he was one of the ypungest consultants in the party , but he called the outcome of the house races better in '06 . we know how that turned out ."
i  shrugged . i knew how the election turned out , and how little had changed because of it . i didn't know much more ." i don't folllow that kind of thing . sorry ."
"his early work was  on the myth of democratization . now everybody  wants  to know what he's thinkong about the midddle  east  ."
i shrugged again . i still didn't  think i knew who he was , but i was weighing the wisdom of pretending that i did .
"he's on leave from columbia . he's a fellow at the freedom trust endowment ? a cousultant ? he's a regular on cable . that 's how we met ."
i tried not to suject myself to the kinds of shows on which my ex's fiance was  lkely to appear . for me , watching partisans  argue  had become a form of torture that should have been banned under  the at  geneva conventions . when the water-boarding sessions proved futile at guantanamo . i assumed the most hardened prisoners were sujected to nonstop cable news .
the man had an impression CV  . although i knew where  columbia  was  i didn't think i'd heard of the freedom trust endowment  given the context , i assumed it was a think tank of some kind .given  the siZe of the diamond the man was able to afford to adore my ex-wife's finger , the man either made a pretty good living or came from money .

35 deadtime

. i am , alan ," she said ." i'm ready to be a mom . i really want this baby . i've grown a lot .
she looked at my eyes for an indication of how dubious i might be of her self -assesment . i tried to make sure that there were was nothing there for her to see . i wanted to believe her ." well , i hope yoou luck has changed and that this pregnancy  goes perfectly ," i'm ....truly happy for both of you . all of you ."
she held up both hands , fingers crossed on each , doubling her plea for good fortune ."i'm at ten  weeks now .i've never mae it to ten weeks before . this one feels right . it's different . i don't know why , but biological . it feels ... more real , like it's truly part of me . i think this oe will be my bay .i can't believe i'm going to be a mom ."
she seemed genuinely pleased ad excited at the prospect of become a mother . although i wanted  to trust in the transformation , i also knew that where merideth was concerned my reading comprehension skills were not legendary . at least not legendarily good .
she dropped her hands so that her fingers were laced and cradled  low across her abdomen . her flat belly -  merideyh was no stranger  to vanity , and she had never been someone unwilling to pay the price in crunches and pilates  sessions that were necessary to keep her abson  an uninterrupted vertical plane - belied  no contour indicative of pregnancy .
as the weeks . and her pregnancy , progressed , i thought merideth would disply the constitutional evedence of procreation reluctantly  . when her belly did begin to blge in a way she could no longer fashionalbly disguise  , she would make certain that her maternal silhousette was presented to the world to its best advantage , the designer maternity salespeiople at bergdorf  and berneys and in the boutiques on madison avenue would salivate when they spotted her rounging belly preceding her in their doors .

34 deadtime

. although i suspected that merideth would linger until the very end of the event , she left the reception along with  the second wave  of departing guests . as she said good bye to me on our small front porch she asked me if i had " just a moment ." before i had a chance to say i did , she took my casted hand and led me away from the house about ten yards until we were standing on the valley side of the garage , lokking southwest toward the fatirons and eldorado springs .
a breeze carried the buzz of traffic from the nearby turnpike . i gazed at merideth . she was trying to squelch  smile ." yes ?" i said .
her eyes lit up in a way hat i had seen less and less as ur marriage had disintegrated  ." tday is about adrienne ," she said ." i know that . before i leave , though , i want you to know that i'm pregnant , " she said ." and engaged ."
the " and engaged  "  tag came out in a more hurried fashion thn i think she had intended . my eyes caught the glint of a diamond n her finger . the shock was  sized of an extra - strength tylenol . the ring and setting were either white  gold or platinum . i was guessing platinum .
" congratulations , " i said ." twice . it's nice to hear  some good news , merideth . that 's wonderful ."
"i've had three miscarriages already , so nothing's certain where my uterus is concerned ."
although no DNA  laboratory  had ever confirmed my role , it was likely  that  i'd had something to do with the conception phase of the first of merideth's three miscarriages . the responsible , and irresponsible , coupling had ccurred many years before , during the separation that preceded our divorce .
tht particular lapse in judgment aside , i'd never questioned the appropriateness of the outcome . of that particular pregnancy .of the lng story of my relationship with merideth .of our marriage . certainly not of our divorce .
" you excited about thebaby ?" i asked . merideth's enthusiasm about being a mother wasn't a given . any maternal instincts  had always been buried under a thick blanket of insulation woven from her professional ambition and what i perceived , fairly or not , as  an inability to place anyone- like an infant -reliably ahead of herself in any important queue .

3 2 deadtime

. her ex
merideth's arrival in my home for adrienne's reception had ambushed me .
i hadn't thought to invite her . or to send her a niote about the funeral . i hadn't called about adrienne's death .
my oversight lacked consideration . and it certainly lacked compassion . if my plate hadn't been so full of other things at the time i might have turned double-barrel shell of recrimination upon myself . but  my plate was beyond full . i'd screwed up in so many crucial ways over the previous year that i shrugged off the sleight to merideth . i had a plethora of worse sins on which to spend my store of mea culpas .
with marty in the picture , the immediate future looked no less complicated than the recent past .
merideth and i talked for a while before we moved on to other conversations .
i spotted lauren diagonally across the crowled room . she was eyeing merideth , who was in the midst of an animated  discussion  with diane estevez . diane was my partner in clinical practice , and a dear friend whose tenure in my life exceeded that of both of my wives . lauren , my current wife , had seen photographs of merideth my ex-wife . lauren knew at whom she was staring .

31 deadtime

. the upper west side therapist that i'd started seeing a few months back - he was a young guy , only a couple of years of his residency at johns hopkins - would be pleased that the governess had intervened at that moment . creating the bitch had been his prescription to help me internalize the monitoring of my self-centering tendencies .
her roles ? she was my psychological dominatrix . she was the coach who knew thew moves that helped me tame my too-buff sense of entitlement . she was the town crier for the somnolent burg of my superego .
she was helping me get ready to be a wife , and a mother .

30 deadtime

..   for a moment , i thought alan was going to embrace me after he got over his shock . but he held back .
i lowered my voice ." i'm sorry too , " i said ." i know you loved her ."
when alan failed to step in for an embrace i held out my left hand toward him , palm -down , as if offering to grasp his hand in a restaurant gesture of compassion . the move was calculated . and no ,  it wasn't that i was worried that i wasn't at the top of his hug list that day . most days , the man would hug anyone . i didn't want to move in because i wanted to give him a chance to spot my new engagement  ring . i preferred not to have to tell him .
that was insight .
insight is a lovely thing . like the diamond adorning the fourth ingr of my left hand , it is often useless . but lovely nonetheless .
i thought alan would take my hand , but he didn't . his right hand and wrist were encased  in a sky blue cast . he reached out for me instead . i shouldn't have been surprised - he usually did . reach first , that is we embraced , an act at once habitual and unsettling . slipping into his grasp was around me , and his fingers- at least those on his uncasted hand - pressed acrossed my shoulder blades , i could feel his body shudder a little .
that brought back memies too .
he saaid ," it's such a tragedly . what happened in israel . i miss her so much .
he hadn't noticed the ring ." i know ," i said ." you have a cast on your arm ."
" i broke my hand . it's nothing ."
i wanted to tell him about the baby . and about te wedding .
my narcissism governess - she was a psychological fiction i'd created to assist with my ego-observation challenges -awoke from her slumber just in time to spare me from myself .
"later would beter ," the bitch whispered in that gravelly aggravating , know-it-all voice of hers .

29 DEADTIME

. I COULD SEE IN ALAN'S EYES THE MOMENT HE TURNED AROUND THAT HE HADN'T SUSPECTED I'D BE IN TOWN . BUT I COULDN'T SEE MUCH ELSE THERE . one of my persistent vulnerabilities in our relationship was my inability to read alan's gaze . one of his persistent advantagees in our relationship wa having a gaze that was difficult for me to read .
" merideth , " he said , then -after he'd expelled all that air from his lungs - "i'm so sorry ."
that i'm here ? that our friend is dead ? that you didn't call to tell me what happened ?
my narcissism no longer ambushed me . my troubles seeing beyond my immediate reach had been the source of some  significant friction for alan and me .
i should , of corse , have seen the marital storm clouds forming . during the early  flare of our mutual passion alan had chosen the first two letters of my name -it's " merideth ,"  not the conventional M-E-E-R-D-I-T-H A - AS HIS ENDEARMENT FOR ME .
i would come home from work . he'd say , " hi , me ."
i'd  say , ' hey , you ."
i had naively considered the banter to be clever romantic patois . i didn't realized until long after our separation that the sobriquet served as scarlet letters of my self-involvement , ones that i'd helped hang around my own neck .
in the last few years i ad begun to come to terms with who i am , learning to treat my self-centered predisposition like an aggravating trait in a friend i otherwise adored . i no longer berated myself for my propensity toward self-involvement .
in other circumstances -other than me intruding on him during our friend's funeral - imAGINED ALAN WOULD BE GENUINELY PLEASED THAT MY PERIPHERAL VISION HAD IMPROVED . HE COULD BE MAGNANIMOUS , BUT TO A FAULT . ANOTHER COMPLICATED ISSUE  for us when  we were married .

28 deadtime

his ex
. alan didn't turn to face me rigt away .
he was talking with a woman i thought was familiar from the old days , but i couldn't place her  . i did thinkshe was a mental health type . she was tall nd slender - to be candid , she was the kind of wan and skinny that makes sane people wonder about metabolic disorders- with frizzy hair that must have been a nightmare t manage .
her clothes loked , well . borrowed . none of the pieces she'd chosen were exctly somber , but she'd made enough of an effort at chosing murning attire that the resulting combination didn't stray too far beyond the boundaries of grief's zip code . she should have known better than to have worn so much mscara to a funeral , though .
talk about the trracks of her tears .
"alan , " i said . i whished be would have sensed that i was there .
he allowed the woman to finish a most-pedestrian thought about how much she would mis adrienn's laugh - i'd always appreciated  alan's patience with  people almost as much  as i'd been frustrated by it - before he placed a hand on her wrist and said ," cassandra ? would you excuse me for a moment ?"
cassandra ? did not ring a bell . i rarely forgot names and faces . why couldn't identitify this woman ? i watched alan's shoulder broaden and his back expand he filled his lungs with air .e was  steeling himself for a fresh gale of grief .

27 deadtime

. " she has to go back up today . this morning , like , now . this trip was just a ... you know . come down . one ....night ...here . and then ....back up . you know ."
jules said ." and you two were ...getting along okay ?"
"no , great . just great ."
jack started making some adjustments to carmel's pack . he lifted the weight higher on the provocative curve of her hips - the allure  of that arc was one to which jack was completely immune - and pulled at the shouder strap to encourage the heft to stay where he wanted it to stay . he asked the man ." she works up at the rim ? your friwnd ?"
the shirtless man nodded . " north rim . the cafeteria at the visitor's center ? she's a cook . you may have seen her . up there , i mean .'eric wanted to get started up the trail . he was the oldest member of the group - a twenty-seven year lod with a law degree who had just finished doing a fellowship at stanford 's hoover institute . if it turned out that a leader  needed to emerge for any reason on the march up the rim , he would be the one the others would look to . he took a long gaze at his watch , as if he were having difficulty making sense of the numbers , then gazed up toward the cayond walls .
a buttery aura had just begun to whisper dawn in the eastern sky , painting the ragged edge of the rim like a spill of diluted watercolor .
he said ." we're heading up the north kaibab in a few minutes . when we get to the rim , we'll let somebody know that your friend may be late for her shift . okay ? it looks like you two are going to get a late start , and it's going to be slow going today . make sure you take extra water because of the heat . and take care of that blister first ." he tapped the crystal of his watch ." come on , everybody ,  what do you say we go and deplete some glycogen ?"
all the other kikers , with one exception , rsponded to eric's call to get moving . the exception was jules , his girlfriend .
she caught kanyn's eyes for a split second . though she saw something there .

.

Jamaicans on Tuesday braced for sheets of rain, violent winds and a powerful storm surge as strengthening Tropical Storm Sandy churned south of the Caribbean country's southern coast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Sandy is expected to become a hurricane as it nears Jamaica on Wednesday. The late season storm is expected to travel from south to north over the island.

• Tropical Storm Sandy to head towards Jamaica

Early Tuesday, the storm's outer bands were already drenching parts of the Caribbean country with intermittent showers. Skies were largely overcast over Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The storm also poses complications for military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was being tried in the case of the deadly 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen. A hurricane would force people to evacuate the U.S. base.

Jamaica's government issued a hurricane warning on Tuesday morning. It has urged people in flood-prone areas to be on alert and advised fishermen on outlying cays to return to the mainland.

Cuba issued a hurricane watch for the several provinces, including Guantanamo in the extreme east, where authorities at the U.S. military base were trying to condense an agenda for military commission hearings under way there because of Sandy's approach.

Hurricane conditions were possible in eastern Cuba by Wednesday night, according to U.S. forecasters.

Sandy was expected to dump at least 10 inches of rainfall in Jamaica, especially over central and eastern parts of the island, according to the country's meteorological service. Flash flooding and landslides are likely, Jamaican forecasters said.

Residents in some low-lying areas of Kingston, Jamaica's capital in the island's south, were bracing for the worst.

"Everybody's worried about it here, I can tell you. This storm is no small thing," said Philip Salmon, a laborer who lives alone in a concrete shack in a shantytown perched along a gully, where impoverished people live illegally due to a lack of affordable housing.

On Tuesday, Salmon and some of his neighbors in the Sandy Park settlement just below the U.S. Embassy were trying to secure more sheet metal to place on their roofs, as well as rocks to hold it down.

Sandy's maximum sustained winds early Tuesday were near 50 mph. It was moving north-northeast at about 5 mph and its center was located about 300 miles south-southwest of Jamaica late Tuesday morning.

Sandy on Monday became the 18th named storm of this year's busy Atlantic season, which officially ends Nov. 30.

Meanwhile, a tropical depression in the Atlantic was expected to become a tropical storm later Tuesday. It does not pose any threat to land.

The depression's maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph. The depression is centered about 915 miles northeast of the Leeward Islands and is moving north-northeast near 15 mph.

..maica vào thứ Ba chuẩn bị tinh thần cho tờ của mưa, nắng bạo lực và một cơn bão tăng mạnh mẽ như tăng cường cơn bão nhiệt đới Sandy khuấy phía nam của bờ biển phía nam nước Caribbean.

Trung tâm bão quốc gia Mỹ ở Miami cho biết Sandy dự kiến ​​sẽ trở thành một cơn bão như nó gần Jamaica hôm thứ Tư. Cơn bão cuối mùa được dự kiến ​​sẽ đi du lịch từ nam đến bắc trên đảo.
Bão Sandy để đầu hướng tới JamaicaSớm Thứ ba, ban nhạc bên ngoài của cơn bão đã được các bộ phận ướt của nước Ca-ri-bê với vòi tắm liên tục. Bầu trời là phần lớn u ám hơn Hispaniola, hòn đảo Caribbean được chia sẻ bởi Haiti và Cộng hòa Dominica.
Cơn bão cũng gây ra các biến chứng cho các tòa án quân sự ở Vịnh Guantanamo ở Cuba, nơi bị đơn Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri đã được cố gắng trong trường hợp của vụ đánh bom năm 2000 tàu USS Cole ở Yemen chết người. Một cơn bão sẽ buộc mọi người di tản khỏi căn cứ Mỹ.
Của chính phủ Jamaica đã ban hành một cảnh báo bão vào sáng thứ Ba. Nó đã thúc giục người dân trong vùng ngập lũ được cảnh báo và khuyên ngư dân trên bãi xa xôi hẻo lánh để trở về đất liền.
Cuba đã ban hành một chiếc đồng hồ bão cho các tỉnh, bao gồm Guantanamo ở phía đông khắc nghiệt, nơi nhà chức trách tại căn cứ quân sự của Mỹ đã cố gắng ngưng tụ một chương trình nghị sự cho các buổi điều trần ủy ban quân sự theo cách đó bởi vì cách tiếp cận của Sandy.
Bão điều kiện có thể ở miền đông Cuba tối thứ Tư, theo các nhà dự báo Mỹ.
Sandy đã được dự kiến ​​sẽ đổ ít nhất 10 inches lượng mưa ở Jamaica, đặc biệt là trên các bộ phận trung tâm và phía đông của đảo, theo dịch vụ khí tượng của đất nước. Flash lũ lụt và sạt lở đất có khả năng, dự báo thời tiết Jamaica.
Cư dân ở một số khu vực trũng thấp của Kingston, thủ đô của Jamaica ở phía nam của hòn đảo, giằng cho điều tồi tệ nhất.
"Mọi người đều là lo lắng về nó ở đây, tôi có thể nói cho bạn cơn bão này không có điều nhỏ," cho biết Philip Salmon, một người lao động người sống một mình trong một căn lều bê tông trong một khu nhà ổ chuột ngồi dọc theo một rãnh, nơi những người nghèo khổ sống bất hợp pháp do thiếu nhà ở giá rẻ.
Hôm thứ ba, cá hồi và một số hàng xóm của mình trong việc giải quyết công viên Sandy ngay bên dưới Đại sứ quán Hoa Kỳ đã cố gắng để bảo đảm tấm kim loại đặt trên mái nhà của họ, cũng là loại đá để giữ nó xuống.
Sức gió tối đa Sandy sớm thứ ba gần 50 mph. Nó đã được di chuyển về phía bắc-đông bắc khoảng 5 mph và trung tâm của nó nằm khoảng 300 dặm về phía nam-tây nam của Jamaica cuối ngày hôm qua buổi sáng.
Sandy vào hôm thứ Hai đã trở thành tên 18 cơn bão của mùa giải năm nay Atlantic bận rộn, chính thức kết thúc tháng mười một 30.
Trong khi đó, một áp thấp nhiệt đới ở Đại Tây Dương đã được dự kiến ​​sẽ trở thành một cơn bão nhiệt đới sau đó thứ ba. Nó không gây ra bất kỳ mối đe dọa đối với đất đai.
Sức gió tối đa của trầm cảm là gần 35 mph. Trầm cảm là trung tâm khoảng 915 dặm về phía đông bắc của quần đảo Leeward và đang di chuyển về phía bắc-đông bắc gần 15 mph.

26 deadtime

. her girlfriendshad often warned her that she was guilty of mistaking men's intrest fo men 's interest . her friends 's well-intended caution had never done the young woman any good . she'd been shocked by bad intentions more often than the cute blonde in teenage horror movies .
 carmel tugged  on the strap hanging at her left hip and turned ninety degreeas ." i can never , ever , ever , get it right . is this thing straight , jack ?'
" heloo , " replied kanyn , her female friend from school , kanyn  was a little woman who wore her own heavy  backpack as comfortably as she would wear a T-SHIRT  to bed . " jack doesn't know from straight ."
some of the group laughed . some didn't jack laughed .
" where exactly did .... where did you go that morning ? to watch the sun rise , i mean ? the shirtless man asked carmel ." i can go look there . for jaana ."
carmel said ." down past  the beach ." she pointed in the direction of the trail that led from the cabins past the campground , toward the river ." not the part you see near  the path , but down stream a little . not too far , past that first set of rocks . that rise ? there 's a trail . i know it just look dark right now , but you'll see it . you know which one i'm talking about ?"
the guy nodded . he said , " no , not really ."
" you won't miss it - i mean , you can't get lost . it's a canyon , right ? head downstream , stay by the river , and don't climb . i just sat on a flat rock ."
jules chimed in with some questions for theshirtless man ." your friend's  thing are still in your camp . right  ? she isn't someone who would try to climb out  during  the night ? or go in the river for anything ? by herself  , i mean .... she wouldn't ....?'
do something that stupid ?
 the shirtless man said ." her stuff's here . everything 's there , her bag . our water . she's the one who warned me about the river . she told me not to get fooled , that the river water is really  cold .

24 dead time

. jules pressed lisa ." you didn't see this girl ? jaana ?"
lisa hesitated for a moment ," o "
' you're sure ?" jules asked .
"no. jules . nothing ."
jules made eye contact with the other four in the group .' you guys ?"
head shakes , shoulder shrugs .
theshirtless man said ." okay ."
jules's boyfriend , eric , paused from a long pull on a water bottle .
he made an effort not to sound dismissive as he said ." i'm sure she 's arund someplace . she has to be , i mean , where the hell would she go ?"
on a hot black night on the banks of the mighty colorado rivr , at thebottom of thedeepes gash on the continental surface of the planet , few people went wandering .
without a raft  or a kayak or a riverboard and a lot of safety equipment , where the hell would someone go ? the only places to meander on foot are  either up one of the trails that herringbone up one side of the canyon or the other , or down one of the convoluted footpaths that hug thee river or curve off into its estuaries or dead-end in the infinite variety  of water -carved slot canyons . in the dark , olone , without  the aid of a good flashlight , every one of those hikes is reserved for the reckless , depressed , or self-destructive . or drunk .
" she wasn't ...upset  , was she ? eric added when no one responded to his earlier remark.
the shirtless man shook his head while he comported his face into a puzzle expression , as  though he didn't really understand the question . he said ." no . she was pretty ....happy ." he smiled at some thought ," we had a good tme last night .i did ."
a woman who had been standing slightly away from the group , taking it all in , spoke up for  the first time . line the seven  of them up - the six friends and the shirtless  stranger - and ninety- nine  out of a hundred people  wouldselect her as the youngest in the bunch .

<!-- This Script is from www.htmlfreecodes.com, Coded by: Krishna Eydat-->
<embed
 style="width:400px; height:326px;"
 id="VideoPlayback"
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
 src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=4923697466556084028&hl=en">
</embed>
<br />
<font face="Tahoma"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.htmlfreecodes.com/"><span style="font-size: 8pt; text-decoration: none">HTML Free Code</span></a></font>

HTML Free Code

<!-- This Script is from www.htmlfreecodes.com, Coded by: Krishna Eydat-->
<embed
 style="width:400px; height:326px;"
 id="VideoPlayback"
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
 src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=4923697466556084028&hl=en">
</embed>
<br />
<font face="Tahoma"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.htmlfreecodes.com/"><span style="font-size: 8pt; text-decoration: none">HTML Free Code</span></a></font>

HTML Free Code

">
HTML Free Code

23 deadtime

.. the shirtless man's demeanor about the woman's absence was so low-key and his concer about her whereabouts so off-key that the large group was losing interest in his dilemma . most had returned their attention to rechecking their equipment and supplies  to finish preparations for their imminent ascent of canyon wall .
" she your girlfriend ?" jules asked .
"we're ...friends . we hang out . we see each other sometimes . i live in vegas . she brought me down here ."
the group digested the news .
"coming on  this ... hike , trip ....was her idea ," the shirtless man said again . it was as though he was determined to hang any bad-judgment tag on jaana's back . " i'm not much of an outdoors man . kind of sore this morning . you guys have blisters ?"  he bent his left leg , raising his foot . an angry red orb the size of a quarter was sprouting on his heel .
" i can give you something for that . what time did jaana get up to pee ?" jules asked  ." do you remember ?"" i was asleep . i dont know ."
" about ...what time ? was it en o'clock ? one o'clock ? four o'clock ?"
he sgrugged ." i don't know ."
"early ? late ?"
" not too late ."
" lisa ?" jules  said to one of the other women ." were you able to sleep  last night ? you see anything ?"
lisa was one  of  the group of singles , the high school friend of jack's . the heat had been troubling lisa more than anyone else in the group . she hadn't beeen able to sleep for more than an hour or two at a stretch since she reached the canyon floor , she said ." not much . i was up for a while . like always ." she looked away before  she said ," other people were up too ." she quickly scanned the group ." but i didn't see her ."
the shirtless  man fixated on the news that others were up ." anybody see her after dark ?"

22 deadtime

.    four . the canyon.
jack oulled his digital camera fronm his pack and powered it up .
\jules , the women with the confident voice  who'd remembered that the missing woman had curly brown hair and lovely eyes , noticed the stranger eyeing the camera , she said , " that's jack . it's  what he does  , ignore him , he'll stot soon .
jack said , " not much light . my last battery 's almost dead ."
jules was a twenty-five-year 0old litigator who had just signed on with a big firm in west . L.A  she untiied a red kerchief from around her neck and wallked over to  the shirtless  man the way a mother with a washcloth approaches a young clid with detritus of breakfast stuck to his chin . withoout asking if he mined being groomed by a stranger , she   then  used her fingers to push his hair  back so that it didn't completely shadow his eyes .
she said , " that's better  . tell us your friend's name ."
the shirtless man crinkled his nose and rubbed at his nostril .  he was baffled as to why  that had made anything better , he had to force himself to refocus in order to ponder her question .
 his apparent distraction and his hesitation in replying were not encouraging signs . finally he said , " jaana , " " as though he was  please  to have remembered the woman 's naame ." two a's . or three , i guess ."

21 dead time

. i stopped at the door from the deck to the house and opened my mouth with fresh determination to defend my dead fgriend . i managed , just barely , to control the outburst i was rehearsing in my head .i had taken only two steps inside  when an old friend of mine , a social worker , said hello . her name was casandra poteet , she  was married to one of mine favorite mental health  colleageues  in boulder . i hadn't been aware  that they knew adrienne .
cassandra  revealed that a couple of her kids had been urology patients of adrienne's " i asked , wondering about my professional friend .
she seemed at a losss for words , but finally said ," no , he.... wallace couldn't come ." she lowered her voice ." he had some issues with adrienne about mason's ...care . it's award ." mason  was one  of their children .
 cassandra had said all that she wanted to say  about the topic . we began to talk about adrienne . less than a minut into the conversation i heard a voice from behind me say , " hey , it's me ."
my mind translated the melody as familiar , even if the words didn't register as anything  special , intrigued by the refracted memory fragment , i said ." would you please excuse me ?" to cassandra .
i turned to discover that i was looking into the eyes of my first wife , merideth .
me .
her .
whoa .

20 dead time

. i despised that he considered choosing lauren and me as guardians to be one of adrienne's unwise choices . i despised  that he referred to jonas as " the boy ." i despised that he used " et cetera et cetera " in conversation .
i despised that he called me ." al. " that one was petty , but there it was .
" because of whom she slept with ?" i said . i was going to say " loved " instead of " slept with " but feared the nuance would sail over his head like an errant frisbee .
he exhaled ." exactly ."
he still thought i was agreeing  with him about something .
" marty , could we talk about this letter , after things wind down here ?" i said ." we have many guest . people who want to talk , need to talk , about adrienne . this "- i turned toward the room full of her friends and loved ones -" is about your sister ."
i made my living as a psychotherapist . had marty walked into my office as a prospective patient , within  two minutes i would have recognized him as an annuity .
there was that much work to do . that many rocks to turn . that much resistance to which to apply the forces of psychotherapeu tic hydraulics .
my professional radar had also pegged marty 's pathology as being of the personality - disorder variety . unlike people with  garden variety  neurose who come in to see people like me bacause they are fice of people like me not because they are  miserable , but because the people around them are miserable .
i could well understand how people around marty might be  miserable .
thank god it's not my job , i said to myself .

19 dead time

. in her will , adrienne askes lauren and me to raise jonas . we intend to do that to the best of our abilities .
he lowered his gaze . when he looked back up he was facing away from me , contemplating the seemingly infinite swath of the front range ." you know she was .... bisexual ? he swallowed the last word - the loaded word - as though it was a revelation not to be shared in polite company .
i raised my eyebrows involuntarily , not as a comment on adrienne's sexuality - her sexual adventures , and occasional misadventures , were a far from secret part of the texture of the fabric of who she was - but rather as a reaction to her brother's condescending judgment about  her . at that moment marty and i were  standing  in a location with a fine view of boulder , and i was  inclined to give him credit for being sufficiently cosmopolitan that he would have at least an inklling that the rooms behind us were infiltrated by men and women whose sexual identiyies were not describable  by limiting his choices  to words that began with prefix " hetero ."
marty caught my raised eyebrows but misinterpreted the gesture to be  a sign of encouragement . he leaned forward a few inches and added ." more l than s if you know what i mean ." he lifted a fist in front of his mouth and coughed .
"excuse me ?" i said , hoping i'd heard him wrong . and hoping that he really  wasn't someone who used snorts and throat noises as punctuation .
the l was likely " lesbian ." the s  is " straight "? i thought , that must be  it .
i wondered if i should tell marty that adrienne did not consider herself bisexual .
he said , ' that 's what i'mtalking about . with adrienne ? at times , she could have a sweetheart - my kids adored her visits - but  there're things that , well , you don't really want to know  about her .. my  sister had her ....call them blind spots , she didn't make the wisest  choicess . and she wasn't alwaya a good ...judge of what's best  for the boy ."

18 deadtime

. "marty is fine ."
" thank you ,  you know , marty , i don't think we do ," i said ." see eye to eye ."
"about ?" he said .
 he was either hinestly perplexed , which made him dim , or he was being disingenuous , which made him dangerous in one or two of a kaleidoscope of ways that i would have to sort through at a time when i was less disytracted .
"jonas ," i replied ," my son ."
my words were deliberately chosen . marty smiled his reaction to them in aa way that made me want to smack him . after a provocative pause he shook his head . then he nodded his head .
confusion ? i wondered . or more accurately . i hope .
he closed his eyes tightly and grimaced with his teeth exposed . it wasn't an attractive expression . with his eyes that way and and his lips peeled back he looked like a rodent suffering from near-terminal constipation . when he reopened his eyes , things didn't improve much . he glanced my way again , but with  frest look on his face . i interpreted it to be a melodramatic attempt  to try to convey the sentiment that i should take whatever step i was contemplating taking next with a truckload of caution .
i did a reality chech . i had to convince my self that this conversation was really occurring during adrioenne 's memorial . my contemplative pause had the unintended consequence of softening . marty 's tough - guy comportment , which made me begin to fear that he'd concluded his hushed warning had done the trick .
to be certain that i hadn't missed  his meaning , he said , " i don't think you want to do this , al ." go  there " is what  i think the kids say these days . i really don't . blood is thicker than water ."
i counted ten . it didn't seem to help , so i did it again . my anger wasn't abating . i said  , " i don't know what this  , you're talking about , marty . what my wife and i plan to do is to strive to honor your sister's wishes regarding her son , whom she loved in a way that was magical for us to watch . you and i have seen the same documents .

17 deadtime

. he wasd prepared to " muddle " through the "legalities " of transfrring  jonas 's guardianship to him and his wife "right away , to minimize confusion , et cetera et cetera , for the boy ."
he added that the estate would take care of the necessary legal expenses - i needn't worry about that .
i didn't know what to say . i fought the urge to tell him that of all the things i was worried about , paying lawyers hadn't made my top fifty .
my flabbergasted silence troubled martin enough that he felt compelled to inject an additional explanation ," you know my sister , " he said .
he hadn't said it kindly . martin must have been assuming that he was conversing with an ally . could he be misreading me that badly ? i wondered , grief does funny things .
io wasn't comforable with the eye roll that he used to accompany the stament about knowing his sister , nor the little nopstril -snort that effectively completed it , i couldn't be certain what he meant with his coment about knowing adrienne , but i suspected that when i did understand , i would conclude that it was demeaning to my stepson's mother's memory . i feared that it was , in four vague words , jonas's  ncle's way nt only of trying to undo the wishes of my dear friend only minutes after her body was buried , but also his way of attempting to enroll me as a conspirator in whatever suspect endeavor he was contemplating next .
i took a quick step back so that his hand would fall from my shoulder , it worked . the hand rumbled to his side with a fat thwop . as though  his arm had fallen asleep while it was up there .
"i did know your sister , " i said ." very well ."
"good then , " he said ." we see eye to eye ."
like his sister , martin was wide in the hips , and less than tall . he  and i  didn't see eye to eye  literally . figuratively ? the odds were long , and  getting longer by the minute .
" you know , martin - do you prefer martin ?"

16 deadtime

. over the years , jonas's only contacts with his maternal uncle and his family had taken place during visits east with his mother . adrienne considered  the infrenquent trips to new jork to be obligatory vacations , which in her unique shorthand she labeled " oblications ."
lauren and i kept an eye on the boulderhouse while she was out of town . when the rips involved an oblication , the interludes were inevitably short and adrienne always seemed relieved to return to her sppainish hills home .
martin flew was6t with his wife , a pleasant woman with lovely gray eyes and an unnervingly lound voice . to attend adrienne's funeral services in boulder , and to come to my home  to the reception that  followed .
i was trying to decide if that trip counted as a  family visit . if  adrienne had benen around i knew she  would have said , " hell , no ."
she would have considered her brother's pilgrimage the ultimate oblication .
moments after meeting martin , i had recognized that  he was an impatient man , a compact car runniing on fuel with too much octan. some part of his body was  always moving , a foot tapping , his face grimacing . fingertips rubbing  together , something , at fist , my diagnostic curiosity was  piqued , and i wondered if he had a mild form of tourette's
i soon decided he wass merely annoyingly fidgety .
less than twenty minutes into the reception after the funeral - the house was just beginning to fill with adrienne 's friends and loved ones - he insisted i join him on the west-facing deck outside the living room . he placed an unwelcome hand on my shoulder and said , " al ." the tone he employed was a faux-sincere that made me suspicious .
he explained that although he knew it was a " difficult time for everyone " and that he was sorry for all the inconvenience that lauren and i had experienced - he , not i , should have been the one to go to tel aviv , of corse , he still didn't know why he hadn't been called but that was water under the bridge .

15 deadtimeson

.  that he ci=onsidered the  oidea of his nephew becoming the child of " strangers " to be incomprehnsible .
lauren and i were the "strangers" that brother martin was dismissing . the reality was that jonas had lived yards across a dusty lane from us since the day he was born . other than his parents , and maybe one or two luminescent pearls in a long string of forgettable nannies , he was closer to no one than he was to us .
although we were anything but strangers to jonas , we were strangers to martin , and that , apparently , was what was most  important to him as he manueuvered in the shadows cast by his sister's  death . i forced myself to try to find some empathy for martin 's position . it wasn't hard to do .
martin , however , made it hard to hang on to .

adrienne had been estranged from her family , who had questioned every choice she'd made since she's decided to attend medical school . when she had shown an inclination for biology in college , they had been hoping she  would become a radiologist or a pharmarceutical researcher , certainly not a clinician . when she made it clear that she had a passion for patient care , they switched tracks and made it equally clear that they thought she should become a dermatollogist ,  they haad been appalled by her decision to become a urologist .
adrienne 's take was , " bottom line ? they don't like that i have a job that involves pricks . my mother  won't tell her friends what  i do . she thinks i'm one step removed from beng hand job judy ."
although i'd been tempted at the time , i had never asked adrienne about the eponymous " hand-job-judy ." i really wished i had . that provocative omission was a poignant addition to the long list of conversations i would never have with her .
the familyal disappointment didn't stop with carrer . adrienne's familly didn't like that adriene had fallen in love with , and then eloped with , a woodworker . a carpenter . they hated that she's settleed with him in the west in general , in colorado specifically , and in boulder in particular .

14 dead time

.. her ex . alan
jonas had been my son for mere days .
jpna's father , peter , had been murdered years before , when jonas wass a toddler . his mother , adrienne , my dear buddy and neihbor , was so recently deceased that the depth of the loss i felt at her absence still crept nightly into my restless dreams .
jonas had been by his mother's side in israel when a terrorist's bomb exploded . he had witnessed her death and that of their israeli cousin . once they had finished healing , two shrapnel scars -one long straight one that ran almost the entire length of the bone on jonas's left shin and another one shaped like the letter L  on his left forearm - would be p[ermanent reminders of what had happened to him that day .
especially , what he 'd lost .
in her will adrienne had named my wife , lauren , and me as jonas's guardians . adrienne 's decision didn't digest easily for either her llong dead husband's family in wyoming , or for her own distant family in new jork , where adrienne 's only sibling lived with his wife and two sons . her brother made it clear during a phone call on day three - days one and two , for me , were spent in shock as as i flew to tel aviv to retrieve my traumatized stepson and his mother's remains from israel-

12 dead time

. i picked up aa car at DIA  and drove straight from the airprot to the gathering in spainish hills . so many people were already at the reception that cars -okay , it was boulder , mostly suvS -lined the familiar dirt lane halfway back to south boulder road . i had to park a few hundred yards away .
the hike to the dead  end of the lane wasn't pleasant inheels boulder or not , though , i wasn't about to attend a memorial service in anything else .
i spotted alan and his black lacquer haired wife on opposire sides of their new great room secionds after i'd walked in the door . the renovations they'd done made the space feel familiar yet foreign . i thought they could have benefited from a more imaginative architect and a better designer .
or maybe  any designer . they actually had a pool table - with burgundly felt - in the center of the dining room .
i wearved through the crowd - the place was packed - toward the western -facing windows without turni8ng my head even a few degrees , i didn't want to be sidetracked by anyone i knew before i made it to alan . he was standing near the sliding door that led from the living room to the long deck on the montain side of the house .
my ex was facing away from me , leaning forward sligtly . he was involved in a a conversation with a woman whom i thiought i recognized but i couldn't place .
i paused behind him and waited for a few seconds .  alan had always had a thing for   women's scents ; i thought he might pick up mine . i gadn't canged perfumes since before we were married .
he didn't notice . i waited until a break in his conversation before i said , in a quiet voice , "hey , it's me ."
me .