The pen itself pointed to where that was.
“It’s antigravitational, is why,” he said.
“What does that mean? It defies gravity?”
“It doesn’t, the ink does. You can write upside down. You can write on the moon.”
He gave her a last good look at the pen and resumed his writing.
Angela drank from her bottle. The rain fell steadily on the parked cars. Women in sneakers made a run for it, water spinning from the cart wheels.
“Do you mind if I ask what you’re writing with such a pen?”
The old man hesitated. He didn’t look up.
“I’m writing notes. For my grandson.”
“Where does he live?”
“He doesn’t. He’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry . . .”
“He died serving this country.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well,” said the old man.
Angela was silent. Then she said again that she was sorry, and the old man scratched at the tip of his nose. He stirred a finger in the white hair of his ear. “I figure I’ll go on writing him like before. He’s got a wife and a little boy and I figure that’s why I’m still here, so I can tell him how they’re doing. I know how crazy that sounds.”
Angela shook her head. “No,” she said.
He wrote for a while and then he put down the pen and took his writing hand in the other and rubbed at the knuckles. He looked over his shoulder at the rain as though it had been hounding him all his life. He said: “An old aunt of mine told me one time, Simon, if you knew what growin’ old was you wouldn’t be in no rush to get there. I didn’t know what to make of that at the time.”
She waited. “And now?”
“How’s that?”
“What about now?”
“Now?” He looked at her, somehow keenly for all his eye trouble. “Now I wonder why a man lives so long he doesn’t even know the world he’s in anymore.”
“Granddad?”
A woman came up behind him, a little boy in tow. Same woman, same little boy. The woman didn’t seem to believe what she was seeing.
Angela smiled at the old man. “Thank you for letting me sit with you.”
The old man touched the tweed cap and got slowly to his feet. The little boy handed him his cane. “The pleasure was mine, young lady.”