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'I guess not,' Bogus said. They lay quietly listening to the ocean, waiting for a whale to bump the house. Then the dock creaked and Bogus whispered, 'There's one!'
'I know,' said Colm in a hoarse voice.
'Whales won't hurt you,' Trumper said, 'if you leave them alone.'
'I know,' Colm said. 'You should never tease a whale, right?'
'Right,' Trumper said, and they both listened to the sea until Colm fell asleep. Then the only alert life in the room was the thin, vermilion fish from New York, kept alive by constant care.
Trumper kissed his sleeping son goodnight. 'I should have brought you a whale,' he whispered.
It wasn't that Colm didn't like the fish; it was just that Trumper wished for something more durable. Colm liked the fish very much, in fact; with Biggie's help, he'd written a thank-you note to Tulpen, a most roundabout way for Trumper to apologize for the theft.
'Dear Tulpen,' Biggie said. Then, letter by letter, she had to tell Colm how to spell. 'd-e-a ...' Biggie said. With fierce concentration, Colm carved the letters with his pencil clutched tight in his fist.
Bogus was shooting pool with Couth.
'Thank you for the little orange fish,' Biggie dictated.
'Thank you very much?' Colm suggested.
'T-H-A- ...' Biggie said. Colm carved.
Bogus blew every shot he took. Couth was relaxed and played his usual lucky game.
'I hope some time you'll come see me in Maine,' Biggie dictated.
'Right,' said Colm.
But Biggie knew better. When Colm was a
sleep, she said to Bogus, 'You left her, didn't you?'
'I think I'll be back with her, sometime,' Bogus said.
'You always do think that,' said Biggie.
'Why did you leave her?' Couth asked.
'I don't know.'
'You never do,' Biggie said.
But she was kind, and they talked easily about Colm. Couth was sympathetic to the idea of Bogus finishing his thesis, but Biggie didn't see it that way. 'You hated it out there,' she said, 'and you weren't ever really interested.'
Bogus couldn't think of an answer. His picture of himself returning to Iowa alone in no way resembled his memory of Iowa with Biggie and Colm. Biggie didn't pursue the point; perhaps she saw that too.
'Well, you ought to do something, I think,' Couth said.
Everyone more or less agreed to that.
Bogus laughed. 'It's important to have an image of yourself,' he said. He'd gotten a little looped on Couth's apple brandy. 'I think you have to start with a superficial image, like Graduate Student or Translator, something with an easy name. Then you hope you can broaden the image a little.'
'I don't know what I started with,' Couth said. 'I just said, "I'm living like I want to," and that was a start. Later I became a Photographer, but I still think of myself more as just a Living Man ...'
'Well, but you're very different from Bogus,' Biggie said. There was a silence in honor of her authority on that subject.
Bogus said, 'Well, it just didn't work thinking of myself as a Film Maker, or even a Sound Tracker. I never really believed it.' And he thought, or a Husband, either; I never really believed that. But a Father ... Well, that was a clearer feeling.
