I had no model on my table, no object in view... 676
I had no model
on my table, no object in view out my windowIt was all in my headAnd as I
worked, I realized this was what all the pictures
had been struggling towardNot the girl in the
rowboat, necessarily; she was probably just an
added attraction, a toehold in realityIt was the
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ship I had been after all alongThe ship and the
sunsetWhen I thought back, I realized the irony
of that: Hello, the pencil-sketch I'd made on the
day I came, had been the closest
iii
I tumbled into bed around three-thirty and slept
until nineI woke feeling refreshed, cleaned out,
brand-newThe weather was fine: cloudless and
warmer than it had been in a weekThe Baumgartens
were getting ready to return north, but I had a
spirited game of Frisbee with their boys on the
beach before they leftMy appetite was high, my
pain-level lowIt was nice to feel like tiffany jewellery one of
the guys again, even for an hour
Elizabeth's weather had also clearedI read her a
number of poems while she arranged her chinas
Wireman was there, caught up for once and in good
spiritsThe world felt fine that dayIt occurred
to me only later that George "Candy" Brown might
well have been abducting twelve-year-old Tina
Garibaldi at the same time I was reading Richard
Wilbur's poem about laundry, "Love Calls Us to the
393
Things of the World," to ElizabethI chose it
because I happened to see an item in that day's
paper saying it had become something of a
Valentine's Day favoriteThe Garibaldi kidnapping
happened to be recordedIt occurred at exactly
3:16 PM, according to the time-stamp on the tape,
and that would have been just about the time I
paused to sip from my glass of Wireman's green tea
and unfold the Wilbur poem, which I had cambon chanel printed
off the Internet
There were closed-circuit cameras installed to
watch the loading-dock areas behind the Crossroads
MallTo guard against pilferage, I supposeWhat
they caught in this case was the pilferage of a
child's lifeShe comes into view crossing right
to left, a slim kid dressed in jeans with a pack
on her backShe was probably planning to duck
into the mall before going the rest of the way
homeOn the tape, which the TV stations replayed
obsessively, you see him emerge from a rampway and
take her by the wristShe turns her face up to
his and appears to ask him a questionBrown nods
in reply and leads her awayAt first she's not
struggling, but then - just before they disappear
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behind a Dumpster - she attempts to pull freeBut
he's still holding her firmly by the wrist when
they disappear from the camera's viewHe chanel cc necklace killed
her less than six hours later, according to the
county medical examiner, but judging by the
terrible evidence of her body, those hours must
have seemed very long to that little girl, who
never harmed anyoneThey must have seemed endless
Outside the open window, The morning air is all
awash with angels, Richard Wilbur writes in "Love
Calls Us to the Things of the World
Those were only sheets
iv
The Baumgartens departedThe Godfreys' dogs
barked them goodbyeA Merry Maids crew went into
the house where the Baumgartens had been staying
and gave it a good cleaningThe Godfreys' dogs
barked them hello (and goodbye)Tina Garibaldi's
body was found in a ditch behind the Wilk Park
Little League field, naked from the waist down and
discarded like a bag of garbageHer mother was
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shown on Channel 6 screaming and harrowing at her
cheeksThe Kintners chloe paddington bags replaced the BaumgartensThe
folks from Toledo vacated #39 and three pleasant
old ladies from Michigan moved inThe old ladies
laughed a lot and actually said Yoo-hoo when they
saw me or Wireman comingI have no idea if they
put the newly installed Wi-Fi at #39 to use or not,
but the first time I played Scrabble with them,
they fed me my lunchThe Godfreys' dogs barked
tirelessly when the old ladies went on their
afternoon walksA man who worked at the Sarasota
E-Z JetWash called the police and said the guy on
the Tina Garibaldi tape looked very much like one
of his fellow car-washers, a guy named George
Brown, known to everyone as CandyCandy Brown had
left work around 2:30 on Valentine's Day afternoon,
this man said, and hadn't returned until the next
morningClaimed he hadn't felt wellThe E-Z
JetWash was only a block from the Crossroads balenciaga bag black Ma
