“Do anything such as what?”
“Give me moral support, or sympathy, or let me talk it out with him. I think the fact that he didn’t come when I needed him has been bothering him all these years. Then when he finally settled nearby, in Los Angeles, he decided to satisfy his conscience. Or his curiosity. I don’t know which. It’s hard to explain my father’s actions, especially when he’s been drinking.”
It’s even harder to explain your husband’s, Pinata thought. He stopped pacing and leaned against the front of the desk, his hands in his pockets. “What do you make of your husband’s insistence that he is ‘protecting’ you, Mrs. Harker?”
“He appears to be sincere.”
“I don’t doubt it. But why does he think you need protection?”
“To avoid a catastrophe, he said.”
“That’s a pretty strong word. I wonder if he meant it literally.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“Did he indicate who, or what, would be the cause of this catastrophe?”
“Me,” Daisy said. “I’m bringing it down on my own head.”
“How?”
“By persisting in this investigation.”
“Suppose you don’t persist?”
“If I go home like a good little girl and don’t ask too many questions or overhear too much, presumably I will avoid catastrophe and live happily ever after. Well, I’m not a good little girl anymore, and I no longer trust my husband or my mother to decide what’s best for me.”
She had spoken very rapidly, as if she were afraid she might change her mind before the words were all out. He realized the pressure she was under to go home and resume her ordinary life, and while he admired her courage, he doubted the validity of the reasons behind it. Go back, Daisy baby, to Rainbow’s End and the pot of gold and the handsome prince. The real world is a rough place for thirty-year-old little girls in search of catastrophe.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said with a frown. “It’s written all over your face.”
He could feel the blood rising up his neck into his ears and cheeks. “So you read faces, Mrs. Harker?”
“When they’re as obvious as yours.”
“Don’t be too sure. I might be a man of many masks.”
“Well, they’re made of cellophane.”
“We’re wasting time,” he said brusquely. “We’d better go over to Mrs. Rosario’s house and clear up a few—”
“Why do you get so terribly embarrassed when I bring up anything in the least personal?”
He stared at her in silence for a moment. Then he said, with cold deliberation, “Lay off, Daisy baby.”
He had meant to shock her, but she seemed merely curious. “Why did you call me that?”
“It was just another way of saying, don’t go looking for two catastrophes.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“No? Well” — he picked up his raincoat from the back of the swivel chair — “are you coming along?”
“Not until you explain to me what you meant.”
“Try reading my face again.”
“I can’t. You just look mad.”
“Why, you’re a regular face-reading genius, Mrs. Harker. I am mad.”
“What about?”
“Let’s just say I’m a sorehead.”
“That’s not an adequate answer.”
“O.K., put it this way: I have dreams, too. But I don’t dream about dead people, just live ones. And sometimes they do some pretty lively things, and sometimes you’re one of them. To be any more explicit I would have to go beyond the bounds of propriety, and neither of us wants that, do we?”
She turned away, her jaws clenched.
“Do we?” he repeated.
“No.”
“Well, that’s that. To hell with dreams.” He went to the door and opened it, looking back at her impatiently when she made no move to get up. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you.”
“I’m — not frightened.” But she hunched in her raincoat as if she had shrunk during the storm, the real one on the other side of the window or the more turbulent one inside herself. “I’m not frightened,” she said again. “I just don’t know what’s ahead for me.”
“Nobody does.”
“I used to. Now I can’t see where I’m going.”
“Then you’d better turn back.” There was finality in his voice. It was as if they had met, had come together, and had parted, all in the space of a minute, and he knew the minute was gone and would not return. “I’ll take you home now, Daisy.”
“No.”
“Yes. The role of good little girl is better suited to you than this. Just don’t listen too hard and don’t see too much. You’ll be all right.”
She was crying, holding the sleeve of his raincoat against her face. He looked away and focused his eyes on an unidentifiable stain on the south wall. The stain had been there when he moved in; it would be there when he moved out. Three coats of paint had failed to obscure it, and it had become for Pinata a symbol of persistence.
“You’ll be all right,” he repeated. “Going home again might be easier than you think. This past week has been like — well, like a little trip from reality, for both of us. Now the trip’s over. It’s time to get off the boat, or the plane, or whatever we were on.”
“No.”
He turned his eyes from the wall to look at her, but her face was still hidden behind his coat sleeve. “Daisy, for God’s sake, don’t you realize it’s impossible? You don’t belong in this part of town, on this street, in this office.”
“Neither do you.”
“The difference is, I’m here. And I’m stuck here. Do you understand what that means?”
“No.”
“I have nothing to offer you but a name that isn’t my own, an income that ranges from meager to mediocre, and a house with a leaky roof. That’s not much.”
“If it happens to be what I want, then it’s enough, isn’t it?”
She spoke with a stubborn dignity that he found both touching and exasperating.
“Daisy, for God’s sake, listen to me. Do you realize that I don’t even know who my parents were or what race I belong to?”
“I don’t care.”
“Your mother will.”
“My mother has always cared about a lot of the wrong things.”
“Maybe they’re not wrong.”
“Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me, Steve?”
She had never before called him Steve, and the sound of it coming from her made him feel for the first time that the name was finally and truly his own, not something borrowed from a parish priest and tacked on by a Mother Superior. Even if he never saw Daisy again, he would always be grateful to her for this moment of strong, sure identity.
Daisy was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. The lids were faintly pink, but unswollen, and he wondered whether a really powerful emotion could have caused such dainty and restrained weeping. Perhaps it had been no more than the weeping of a child denied a toy or an ice cream cone.
He said carefully, “We’d better not discuss this anymore tonight, Daisy. I’ll take you back to your car.”
“I want to come with you.”
“You’re making this tough for me. I can’t force you to go home, and I can’t leave you alone in this part of town even with the door locked.”
“Why do you keep referring to this part of town as if it were a corner of hell?”
“It is.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said again.
“To Mrs. Rosario’s house?”
“If that’s where you’re going, yes.”