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hungry, and no longer wanted to call Ilse. All I wanted to do was draw what I was looking at. I knew I couldn’t get all of it, but I didn’t care—that was the beauty part. I didn’t give Shit One.
    My new employee (for a moment I blanked on his name again, then I thought Weather Channel, then I thought Jack : case fuckin closed) had put my knapsack of art supplies in the second bedroom. I flailed my way out to the Florida room with it, carrying it awkwardly and trying to use my crutch at the same time. A mildly curious breeze lifted my hair. The idea that such a breeze and snow in St. Paul might exist at the same time, in the same world, seemed absurd to me—science fiction.
    I set the sack down on the long, rough wooden table, thought about snapping on a light, and decided against it. I would draw until I couldn’t see to draw, and then call it a night. I sat in my awkward fashion, unzipped the bag, pulled out my pad. ARTISAN, it said on the front. Given the level of my current skills, that was a joke. I grubbed deeper and brought out my box of colored pencils.
    I drew and colored quickly, hardly looking at what I was doing. I shaded up from an arbitrary horizon-line, stroking my Venus Yellow from side to side with wild abandon, sometimes going over the ship (it would be the first tanker in the world to come down with yellow jaundice, I reckoned) and not caring. When I had the sunset band to what seemed like the right depth—it was dying fast now—I grabbed the orange and shaded more, and heavier. Then I went back to the ship, not thinking, just putting a series of angular black lines on my paper. That was what I saw.
    When I was done, it was almost full dark.
    To the left, the three palms clattered.
    Below and beyond me—but not so far beyond now, the tide was coming back in—the Gulf of Mexico sighed, as if it had had a long day and there was more work to do yet.
    Overhead there were now thousands of stars, and more appearing even as I looked.
    This was here all the time, I thought, and recalled something Melinda used to say when she heard a song she really liked on the radio: It had me from hello. Below my rudimentary tanker, I scratched the word HELLO in small letters. So far as I can remember (and I’m better at that now), it was the first time in my life I named a picture. And as names go, it’s a good one, isn’t it? In spite of all the damage that followed, I still think that’s the perfect name for a picture drawn by a man who was trying his best not to be sad anymore—who was trying to remember how it felt to be happy.
    It was done. I put my pencil down, and that was when Big Pink spoke to me for the first time. Itsvoice was softer than the sigh of the Gulf’s breathing, but I heard it quite well just the same.
    I’ve been waiting for you, it said.
    vi
    That was my year for talking to myself, and answering myself back. Sometimes other voices answered back as well, but that night it was just me, myself, and I.
    â€œHouston, this is Freemantle, do you copy, Houston?” Leaning into the fridge. Thinking, Christ, if this is basic staples, I’d hate to see what it would look like if the kid really decided to load up — I could wait out World War III.
    â€œAh, roger, Freemantle, we copy.”
    â€œAh, we have bologna, Houston, that’s a go on the bologna, do you copy?”
    â€œRoger, Freemantle, we read you loud and clear. What’s your mayo situation?”
    We were a go for mayo, too. I made two bologna sandwiches on white—where I grew up, children are raised to believe mayonnaise, bologna, and white bread are the food of the gods—and ate them at the kitchen table. In the pantry I found a stack of Table Talk Pies, both apple and blueberry. I began to think of changing my will in favor of Jack Cantori.
    Almost sloshing with food, I went back to the living room, snapped on all the lights, and looked at Hello . It