TOUCH AND GO

UNBRIDLED BOOKS

Chapter One

Summer's liberties had helped the kids loosen up with us, the way a common change of routines draws people closer, but by August the heat of Burbank didn't feel much like freedom. In a couple of weeks, Isa, Patrick, and the boys were driving cross-country on a family vacation of sorts, to visit Isa's dying father in Florida. I wasn't planning to join them. At the time, I didn't think of us as family so much as people who needed each other. I can admit this now: I was still in love with Isa.

Most people walk on autopilot. For me, steps understand; I navigate based on the supervision of surfaces. From the bus stop, our driveway was five paces past an odd slant in the sidewalk, which had been lifted by a tree that no longer existed. We didn't have a front path leading from the street, just a wide expanse of concrete where the trucker who'd lived there before us used to nose right up to the house. With all that driveway, the hardest thing for me to find was our front door in the stucco wall. There was no stoop, just a threshold.

On a sweltering day in the second week of August 2005, Ray guided me up the driveway, my hand gripping his thin shoulder, both of us hopping. Sweating. Laughing. Catching our breaths. As he reached for the doorknob, I stiffened at the sound of Isa's voice inside. "Isa" is pronounced with a long i like "Isaac," even though it's short for Isabelle. I'd always liked the way her voice warbled when she was upset, but that day, I bristled. I'd just lost the only real job I'd ever had, a part-time gig at the community paper, and I didn't want to face anyone—least of all Isa, who could always see through me.

The editor who had laid me off had been at the newspaper one week. When I'd walked into his office, his keyboard clattered in spurts by the far wall, so I knew he was facing away from me, typing at his computer desk. I cleared my throat; his keys stopped. The rollers of his chair whisked a moment and halted as he came to his desk, which lay between us. Two hard wooden chairs faced the desk and had their backs to me—assuming he hadn't rearranged the office. It was our first one-on-one.

He offered a half statement, half question, as if he weren't sure how to handle me: "There's two chairs in front of you?"

I should have set him at ease, saying something light and funny about sight, but I was self-conscious myself.

Mostly I'd been assigned profiles of local personalities that I wrote based on phone interviews. For people who were quirky or had an eccentric setup, I'd hire a cab to visit them, bringing along my digital recorder and laptop. I'd ask about their place, pictures on the wall, anything unusual, so I could fake a visual setting. The previous editor had insisted on that: readers need visuals.

But the people I interviewed were interested in nonvisuals. "You can't see at all?" they'd say. "But you get around so well." They liked listening to my screen reader on my laptop, the electronic voice that droned out my typed sentences at various speeds. And they asked how I knew where my cursor was on the screen. I tried showing them by having them close their eyes and listen to the computer read through options on a website as I dragged my finger across the touchpad. But it took too long to explain, so I learned to deflect the first rounds of questions. "Space is an abstraction," I told them, "based on the relationship between local objects." I got that from Einstein. I can't pretend to understand the science, but I like the idea of the space between us being illusory. I don't know how any of us find our place in this world except in relation to others.

After finding the two wooden chairs facing the desk, I folded Charlie—my cane—and laid him in my lap. He collapses like a tent pole, with an elastic cord inside, and opens solid, yet flexible. I faced to the right, trying to hide the scar that scampers from my forehead, behind my dark glasses, and onto my cheek. How many times had Dad told me: "Look at a man square. People get jittery when your head drifts." I took off my Western hat—a Bandit whose stiff Cattleman crown protected my head from branches and overhangs—and laid it on top of Charlie. Running my fingers through my hair, I braced myself and faced the editor full-on.

He wanted to know how I got from interview notes to finished copy, so I started telling him about getting quotes on my recorder and taking notes on my laptop, which I would listen to with my screen reader.

"What a memory!" he interrupted, followed by a long pause. "To listen to your notes and then type the article from scratch."

The truth is I listen to my notes more than once—particularly quotes. But I didn't want to dampen his praise.

"What about the visual details you put in? You know, what the guy looks like. The books on the shelf." He ran his words together and stopped—the same way he'd typed, I realized. "How do you come up with those?" he blurted.

I didn't want to blame his predecessor; wouldn't that seem a copout? I shrugged and said calmly, "I ask questions. People tell me things. I report them."

"How do you know they're telling the truth?"

"Same as anyone," I suggested. "I cross-check facts. And I touch things to verify."

"The view out a window?"

"These are profiles," I said. "Not attack pieces." My voice sounded sluggish, so I sped up, trying to match his confidence. "Why would people lie about things like that? I cross-check when there's a reason to."

Behind me in the newsroom, keyboards blazed. The full-time reporters. Hard news. What a poser I was.

"You're young," he exclaimed. "You're a good writer. I can use someone like you."

As if I didn't have a job already.

He described the benefits of freelance. The promise of doing a variety of assignments. The ability to pitch stories to multiple editors. "I like your early articles, those profiles of bums and addicts. That prostitute." He paused. "The later ones have been soft. Don't you think?"

My head drifted as I thought about that; those stories did have an edge. I'd written them after graduating from Channel House, a recovery home. I'd hung out in Hollywood, interviewing any drifter or street performer who'd talk to me. "I used a tape recorder," I offered. "That's how I did those stories." I realized I was gripping the armrests. I faced the editor and tried to relax.

"There you go," he said. Papers shuffled on his desk. "I want to see stories like that. You'll get an extra week's pay. After that week, give me a call and we'll talk about articles."

"You don't want anything next week?"

"Consider it severance pay. The least we can do."

I knew I should press him: Why not two weeks' pay? Why was I being laid off if he liked my writing? But I didn't want to jeopardize the relationship. I let my face drift. "Freelance again," I said.

"Welcome aboard." His chair rolled back, and his hands thumped the desk; he was making sure I heard. When I stood and...