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So it was back to the French letters, but on New Year’s Eve of 1956, Phil realized he still had three rubbers left in a box of a dozen he’d purchased in North Conway not long after Easter. Sally Ann was willing enough to lift her nightgown and take him into herself, but when he looked at her and saw her looking at the ceiling, he knew she was just waiting for him to spend and get off her. This was not conducive to intimacy.

Only once, in 1957, did Phil tackle her about the drinking. He told her that if she had to go to one of those drying-out spas to quit or at least cut down, he had found a good one in Boca Raton, far enough from New Hampshire that no one would know. He could say she was visiting friends. He could even say they were separating, if that was what she wanted, but she had to stop.

She looked at him, his now overweight wife with the bad complexion and the dull eyes and the clumpy hair. He found her eyes especially fascinating. There were no depths there.

“Why?” she said.

On the evening of November 8th, 1960, Phil came home to an empty house. There was a note on the kitchen counter that said, Dinner in oven. I have gone to GD to watch election results come in. S.

There was no invitation for Phil to join her, and he had never cared much for the Green Door in North Conway, anyway. Once, around the time he and Sal were married, it had been quite a nice bar. Now it was a dive.

According to the police report, Mrs. Parker left the Green Door at approximately 12:40 AM on the morning of November 9th, shortly after Kennedy had been declared the winner. The bartender cut her off at eleven but allowed her to stay and watch the returns.

Coming home on Route 16, driving at a high rate of speed, her little Renault Dauphine veered off the road and struck a bridge abutment. Death was instantaneous. The postmortem reported a blood alcohol level of .39. Upon hearing the news that his daughter was dead, Ted Allburton suffered a heart attack. After five days in intensive care, he died. The back-to-back funerals almost made Phil wish he were back on Eniwetok.

Three weeks after the death of his wife, Phil drove to the Curry Volunteer Fire Station, where there had once been a vacant lot. It was late, and the fire station was dark. Between the red-painted double doors was a manger scene: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, wise men, assorted animals. The manger was—to the best of Phil’s memory—the exact place where a red umbrella had once shaded the Answer Man’s little table.

“Come here and talk to me,” Phil said to the windy darkness. From the pocket of his overcoat he took a roll of bills. “I’ve got eight hundred here, maybe even a thousand, and I’ve got a few questions. Number one is this—was it an accident, or did she kill herself?”

Nothing. Just the empty lot, the empty fire station, a cold east wind, and a bunch of stupid plaster statuary lit by a hidden electric bulb.

“Number two is why. Why me? I know that sounds like self-pity, and I’m sure it is, but I’m honestly curious. That fucking dummocks friend of Jake’s, Harry Washburn, is still alive, he’s a plumber’s apprentice down in Somersworth. Sammy Dillon is alive, too, so why not my boy? If Jake was alive, Sally would be alive, right? So tell me. I guess I don’t even want to know why me after all, I want to know why at all? Come on, fella. Get out here, wind up your clock, and take my money.”

Nothing. Of course.

“You were never there at all, were you? You were just a figment of my fucking imagination, so fuck you and fuck me and fuck the whole fucking world.”

Phil spent the following three years in a daze of dysthymic depression. He did his work, always showed up for court on time, won some cases, lost others, didn’t much care either way. Sometimes he dreamed of the Answer Man, and in some of these dreams he leaped across the table, knocked the ticking stopclock to the ground, and locked his hands around the Answer Man’s neck. But the Answer Man always faded away to nothing, like smoke. Because really, that was what he had to be, wasn’t he? Just smoke.

That period of his life ended with the Burned Woman. Her name was Christine Lacasse, but Phil always thought of her as the Burned Woman.

One day in the early spring of 1964, his secretary came into his office looking pale and distraught. Phil thought there were tears in Marie’s eyes, but wasn’t sure until she wiped one away with the heel of her hand. Phil asked if she was all right.

“Yes, but there’s a woman here to see you, and I wanted to warn you before I sent her in. She’s been burned, and badly. Her face… Phil, her face is terrible.”

“What does she want?”

“She says she wants to sue the New England Freedom Corporation for five million dollars.”

Phil smiled. “That would be a trick, wouldn’t it?”

New England Freedom did business in the six states stretching from Presque Isle to Providence. They had grown into one of the biggest development companies in the northland during postwar years that Phil supposed were now over. They built housing developments, shopping centers, industrial centers, even prisons.

“You better send her in, Marie. Thanks for preparing me.”

Not that anything could truly prepare him for the woman who shuffled in on two canes. From the left side of her face, Phil guessed she might be in her late forties or early fifties. The right side of her face was buried in a landslide of flesh that had melted and then hardened. The hand gripping the cane on that side was a claw. She saw his expression and the left side of her mouth pulled up in a smile that showed the few teeth remaining to her.

“Pretty, ain’t I?” she said. Her voice was as harsh as a crow’s caw. Phil guessed she had inhaled the fire that had burned her and scorched her vocal cords. He supposed she was lucky to be able to speak at all.

Phil had no intention of responding to a question that had to be rhetorical, or downright sarcastic. “Sit down, Miss Lacasse, and tell me what I can do for you.”

“It’s Missus. I’m a widow-woman, don’t you know. As to what you can do for me, you can sue the shit out of NEF.” She pronounced it Neff. “Five million, not a penny more or a penny less. Not that you will, I’d bet a cracker. I’ve been to half a dozen other lawyers, including Feld and Pillsbury in Portland, and not one of em will have anything to do with me or my case. NEF’s too big for em. Can I have a glass of water before you kick me out?”

He buzzed Marie and asked her to bring Mrs. Lacasse a glass of water. Meanwhile, the Burned Woman was fumbling with her good hand in a little pack cinched around her waist. She brought out a bottle of pills, and thrust them across Phil’s desk.

“Open these for me, would ya? I can do it meself, but it hurts like a bugger. I want two. No, three.”

Phil opened the brown bottle, shook out three pills, handed them across to her, and re-capped the bottle. Marie came in with the water and Lacasse swallowed the pills. “It’s the morph, don’tcha know. For pain. Talking hurts. Well, everything hurts, but it’s the talking that’s the worst. Eating ain’t no fun, either. Doctor says these pills’ll kill me in a year or three. I said they won’t kill me until I get my case in court. I’m fixed on that, Lawyer Parker.