“She won’t.”
“Then why did you say—”
“Please be quiet, Muriel.”
“But—”
“There’ll be no celebration, no champagne. I was just dreaming for a minute, see? People dream, even people like me, who should know better.”
“There’s no harm in a little dreaming now and then,” Muriel said softly, stroking the back of his neck. “Say, you need a haircut, Stan. Could we spare the money for a haircut?”
“No.”
“Well, wait right there while I go get my sewing scissors. Out on the ranch I always cut my kids’ hair, there being nobody else to do it.” She stood up, smoothing her dress down over her hips. “There was never any complaints either, once I got a little practiced.”
“No, Muriel. Please—”
“It’ll only take a minute. You want to look presentable, don’t you, if you’re going to that fancy house of hers? Remember that letter she wrote telling you her change of address? She described the whole house. It sounded just like a palace. You wouldn’t want to go to a place like that needing a haircut, would you?”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re always saying you don’t care when you do.” Muriel went out to the kitchen and returned with the sewing scissors. She said as she began trimming his hair, “You might meet up with your ex, think of that.”
“Why should I?”
“There’s nothing worse than meeting up with your ex when you’re not looking your best. Hold your chin down a little.”
“I don’t intend to see my former wife.”
“You might see her by accident on the street.”
“Then I’d look the other way and cross the street.”
She had been waiting and wanting to hear this. She exhaled suddenly and noisily, as if she’d been holding her breath until she was reassured. “You’d really look the other way?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about her, Stan. Is she pretty?”
“I’d prefer not to discuss it.”
“You never ever talk about her — move your head a bit to the right — the way other men talk about their exes. What harm would it do if you told me a little about her, like is she pretty?”
“What good would it do?”
“Then at least I’d know. Chin down.”
Chin down, he stared at his belt buckle. “And would you like to know she’s pretty?”
“Well, no. I mean, it would be nicer if she wasn’t.”
“She’s not,” Fielding said. “Does that satisfy you?”
“No.”
“All right, she’s ugly as sin. Fat, pimply, cross-eyed, bow-legged, pigeon-toed...”
“Now you’re kidding me, Stan.”
“I’d be kidding you even more,” he said soberly, “if I told you she looked pretty to me.”
“She must have once, or you wouldn’t have married her.”
“I was seventeen. All the girls looked good in those days.” It wasn’t true. He couldn’t even remember any of the other girls, only Ada, delicate and pink and fluffy like a cloud at sunset. He had intended, in his youth and strength, to spend the rest of his life looking after her; instead, she had spent hers doing it for him. He didn’t know, even now, at what point or for what reason their roles had been reversed.
“Some of them still look good to you.” Muriel put down the sewing scissors. “You know what I bet? I bet that waitress of yours is nothing but a chippy.”
“She’s a married woman with six children.”
“A husband and six kids don’t make you an angel.”
“Stop worrying, will you, Muriel? I’m not going up to San Félice to get involved with a waitress or my ex-wife. I’m going up solely to see Daisy.”
“You had a chance to see her last Monday,” Muriel said anxiously. “Why don’t you just phone her long distance or write her a letter? Then you could go and see her some other time, when you’re sure she’s at home.”
“I want to see her now, today.”
“Why so all of a sudden?”
“I have reasons.”
“Does it have something to do with Daisy’s old letters you were reading?”
“Not a thing.” He hadn’t told her about the new letter, the one that had been sent special delivery to the warehouse where he worked and which was now hidden in his wallet, folded and refolded to the size of a postage stamp. This last letter wasn’t like the others he kept in the suitcase. It contained no money, no news, no polite inquiries about his health or statements about her own: Dear Father: I would be very much obliged if you’d let me know at once whether the name Carlos Theodore Camilla means anything to you. Please call collect, Robles 24663. Love, Daisy. Fielding would have liked to pretend that the brief, brusque, almost unfriendly note had never reached him, but he realized he couldn’t. He’d signed for it at the warehouse, and there would be a record of the signature at the post office. How had she got hold of the name and address of the warehouse? From Pinata, obviously, although Fielding couldn’t remember telling Pinata about his job — he’d been feeling bad that day, fuzzy around the edges, not sure where one thing ended and another began. Or maybe Pinata had found out in some other way; he was a detective as well as a bail bondsman. A detective...
God Almighty, he thought suddenly. Maybe she’s hired him. But why? And what did it have to do with Camilla?
“You look awful flushed, Stan, like maybe you’ve got a fever coming on.”
“Stop making a pest of yourself, will you? I have to get ready.”
While he washed and shaved in the bathroom they shared with the old lady across the hall, Muriel laid out fresh underwear for him and a clean shirt and the new blue-striped tie Pinata had lent him earlier in the week. He had told Muriel he bought the tie after seeing it in a store window, and she had believed him because it seemed too slight a thing to lie about. She hadn’t known him long enough yet to realize that this secrecy about very trivial matters was as much a part of his nature as his devastating frankness about some of the important and serious ones. There had been no real need, for instance, for him to have recounted the details of the episode involving Nita and her husband and the jail and Pinata. Yet he had told her all about it, leaving out only the small detail of the tie he’d borrowed from Pinata.
When he returned from the bathroom and saw that this tie was the one she’d picked out for him to wear, he put it back in the bureau drawer.
“I like that one,” Muriel protested. “It goes with your eyes.”
“It’s a little too gaudy. When you’re hitchhiking, it pays to look as conservative as possible, like a gentleman whose Cadillac has just had a flat tire and he can’t find a telephone.”
“Like that, eh?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to use for a Cadillac?”
“My imagination, love. When I’m standing out there on the freeway, I’m going to imagine that Cadillac so hard that other people will see it.”
“Why don’t you start right now so’s I can see it, too?”
“I have started.” He went over to the window and pulled back the grimy pink net curtain. “There. What do you see?”
“Cars. About a million cars.”
“One of them’s my Cadillac.” Letting the curtain drop into place, he drew himself up to his full height and adjusted an imaginary monocle to his eye. “I beg your pardon, madam, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to direct me to the nearest petrol parlor?”
She began to laugh, a girlish, giggly sound. “Oh Stan, honestly. You’re a scream. You ought to be an actor.”
“I hesitate to contradict you, madam, but I am an actor. Permit me to introduce myself. My name — ah, but I quite forgot I am traveling incognito. I must not identify myself for fear of the terrifying adulation of my millions of fanatic admirers.”