Read Keeper for Free Online Page B

and coated to my waist in mud. Nana took one look at me and went ballistic.”

 
    P AUL FAUSTINO SNEAKED a glance at his watch, and El Gato saw him do it.
    “Are you worrying about your deadline, Paul?”
    “I’ve pretty much given up on that. This piece was meant for tomorrow’s edition, but even if we’d finished, I don’t think I could get this on the street tomorrow.”
    “Does that mean trouble for you?” Gato said.
    “From my charming editor? Oh, she’ll give me the Death Glare, but I’ll survive it. Right now, I’m more likely to die of starvation. How about I get some coffee and sandwiches sent up? Or send out for pizza?”
    “Sandwiches would be fine.”
    Faustino went over to the wall phone and jabbed four numbers. “Hi. Paul. Hello. Yeah, I’m good. Coffee, yes. Yeah, in a thermos, that’d be nice. And can you manage a big plate of sandwiches? Anything except cheese. Great.” He listened. “Yep, that’s who I’m talking to. He’s really here, yes. Yes, I’m sure he’ll autograph a photo for you.” He laughed. “Of course it’s for your son, not you.”
    Later, the tape running again, Faustino sipped black coffee and once more pondered the mental health of his friend. It was a subject to be approached on tiptoe, if at all.
    “Gato,” he said, “I have to say, this isn’t the kind of interview I’d imagined having with you.”
    “I’m sorry,” Gato said.
    “No, no. This is great stuff. Really. But, well . . . it’s a bit, er,
weird.
”
    The goalkeeper said nothing.
    “What strikes me,” Faustino said, “is that when you talk about these . . . these
experiences
of yours, you seem, well, very calm. You must have been a very well-balanced child. If something like that had happened to me, I would be in a mental hospital now.”
    “Well, I don’t know about being well balanced. I was terrified. And that dark, wet afternoon, dashing home through the storm, I thought that yes, perhaps I was going mad.”
    Faustino blinked, hearing the word “mad” spoken aloud, but stayed silent.
    “And it was only later, much later, that I understood what the Keeper was doing.”
    “Which was?”
    The goalkeeper leaned forward and fingered the air in front of him as if he were feeling for the right words.
    “He was teaching me things, skills, of course. But he was doing something else as well. He was showing me what weakness and fear were. But in a safe place. That clearing in the jungle was like a place taken out of the real world, separate from it. Do you know what I mean? It was a place where I was allowed to feel frightened, hopeless, awkward, ashamed, but it was a place where no harm could come to me. I was protected there. I could get things wrong but have other chances to get them right. So that, later, out there in a bigger and more dangerous world, I would be able to manage those things. He, the Keeper, was getting me ready for the life he knew I would have.”
    Faustino considered this. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you are describing what a father should do for his son.”
    “I do not want to criticize my father,” Gato said sharply.
    “No, of course not,” said Faustino. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you speak about the Keeper as if he took that role. As if he were doing certain things for you that your father couldn’t do.”
    “Of course my father couldn’t do those things for me. My father was a logger. He left in the morning dark and came home in the evening dark. His role, to use your word, was to keep his family going. And that’s what he did, successfully. There are plenty of men who fail at that.”
    The goalkeeper was again agitated, and Faustino backed off.
    He smiled. “That’s true enough,” he said. “I meant no disrespect to your father, my friend.”
    El Gato leaned back in his chair. “That’s okay, Paul,” he said after a pause. “Let’s go on.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Time is stretchy stuff,” El