She watched for some answering signal of complicity, but the blue-flower eyes were unreadable, the eyes of a born spectator, remote and uninvolved.
Once more Estelle jumped up and went inside, and when she came back she held a ten dollar bill in her hand. “See? Like I said, a reward. May I have the purse now, please?”
The exchange was made. Estelle settled back and then, realizing she had been sweating like an invalid with a high fever, she swabbed delicately at her forehead and eyelids with a handkerchief.
Victory was brief; the instant Estelle opened the purse to put the handkerchief away she saw that the album of pictures was not there. The money was there, astonishingly, as were the cosmetics, a receipted gas bill, pen and memo pad, a roll of candy, credit cards — but not the pictures.
She tried to smile at the girl. “There was a little white leather album, you must have seen it. Pictures of my little boy who died. Now, honey, you may not understand, but those pictures were very precious to me. More than the money or anything else. I must have them back.”
Holding her glass in both hands, like a child, the girl drained the last drop, then sucked on a sliver of ice.
“Did you see the pictures, dear?”
She nodded, her expression still not so much solemn as remote.
“Do you have them with you?”
The girl calmly sucked on the ice. Estelle began to sweat; her face grew red. “Goodness me, I’m beginning to think you’re a naughty little blackmailer, honey.” Her voice developed an edge, sharp but not cutting. “Okay, then. If you insist on victimizing a poor mother who’s lost her little boy, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it. The way of the world, alas.” This plaintive lament was lost on the girl. Estelle took out five dollars. “Here. Take this, and give me the pictures.”
The girl didn’t move, not even an eyelid. Estelle quivered with rage. Tears stung her eyes. “You take it. You take this money and give me back my pictures. Give them back — or I’ll go right in the house and call the police.”
To her dismay, the girl instead drew the ten dollar bill from her pocket and held it toward Estelle. Estelle gasped. “I don’t want that! I gave you that. Because I thought you were a good, decent, honest girl. That was a reward. But it’s the pictures! It’s Barry I want back. They’re all I’ve got left. Please, please give them back.”
The girl upended the glass but the last piece of ice stuck to the bottom and wouldn’t slide down into her open mouth. That horrid feeling of giddiness was taking possession of Estelle again and she knew she ought to go in and take a heart pill, only she didn’t dare let the girl out of her sight.
“Tell me the truth. Do you have the pictures?”
This time the girl shook her head, but too quickly. Was she lying? There was no way to tell.
“Then who has them? Tell me—” but that was absurd; the girl couldn’t tell her anything. A sudden inspiration; she opened the purse and took out the little gold pen and memo pad. “Here. Write it down. Who has my pictures?”
The girl picked up the pen and wrote something. Estelle grabbed the pad.
Dominus.
“Dominus? Someone named Dominus has my pictures?”
A quick nod, and this time Estelle was positive she detected a trace of slyness. Oh, it was all too maddening. Her head began to ache and the lemonade which had tasted so refreshing going down seemed in danger of coming up again. She was afraid she was going to be sick in front of the girl, and with a murmured apology, rushed inside to the bathroom.
When she returned to the porch the swing was still gently rocking back and forth, but it was empty. The girl was gone.
Estelle had to lie down after that; with tight-shut eyes she reflected upon the encounter and the depths of human iniquity; extortion, kidnapping, murder — the world was full of it. War, cancer, and broken shoelaces; death and despair, and all you’re given is a choice of miseries. Paralyzed by hopelessness, she felt needles of terror doing curious things to her heart. Once she gave a convulsive jerk, sensing that someone had entered the house.
Someone had, but it was only Guy. “Where the hell’s supper?”
“What?”
“Supper. Din-din. The evening meal, dopey.”
Was it that late? Had she dozed? “Guy, listen. The funniest thing happened. Look. I got my purse back.”
He examined it carefully, as if it couldn’t possibly be the same one. She told him the circumstances of its return and all about the missing pictures, a detail that seemed to please him, if anything. A beast would have shown more sympathy toward its own mate.
“You got the important things back, so quit moaning. And put some grub on the table, will you? I’ve got to go out tonight.” He was an insurance salesman and made frequent evening calls.
“Please, Guy. Not tonight.”
“No choice.”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“What are you scared of? The big bad wolf?”
She didn’t know what she feared. The funny way her heart was acting; the storm that wouldn’t break; some phantom of the unforeseen lurking in the bottom of the night? Fear is as undefinable as love and must be taken on faith.
“Dominus,” she murmured, for she could not get that peculiar name out of her mind. “Have you ever heard of a name like that?”
“If you’d ever studied anything besides cake-mixing you’d know it was Latin, stupid. Means master. Lord or master. Like I’m your dominus, see? So hightail it into the kitchen and get busy.”
The idea of spending the evening alone was so intolerable she called Maggie Dakin, one of her neighbors, to come and sit with her.
“Sort of queer, seems to me, honey,” sly Maggie hinted. “All this night work. Thought the newer fellows had to do that.”
“I really don’t know.” Estelle had never thought about it. Since Barry’s death her emotional resources had been expended entirely upon his memory. It would not have been too great an exaggeration to say that Guy had been sacrificed, in a manner of speaking, in order to give Barry’s ghost what substance it had.
Dissatisfied with so vague a response to her feeler, Maggie probed no further into the subject of Guy’s domestic truancy, and finding Estelle’s manner too withdrawn for even the most casual exchange of gossip, she soon made up a story about having a pie in the oven and quickly escaped.
Which is how the setting sun looked to Estelle, rather like a juicy pie, swollen and bubbly, which had been left in the oven too long and was in danger of running over. The streets were empty, as if everyone were hiding less from the heat than from some impending calamity. The storm, when it broke, would come as suddenly as the bursting of a concealed bomb. Left alone now at the mercy of her own unbalanced affections, Estelle longed for that explosion.
The laundromat was a dreary, dilapidated hole in the wall, last surviving enterprise in a defunct shopping center in a decaying section of town. Estelle went there only because it was the nearest one to home. Tufted with whiskers of green grass, the parking lot was littered with great chunks of broken asphalt. Inside the laundromat, half the machines were broken, the lavatory dirty, the walls a pattern of cracked plaster, and the sour air as repugnant to Estelle as the ragged scandal tabloids littering a cigarette-burned table beside a tom orange couch. Nor were the patrons, transients and hippies mostly, any less depressing.
She was pleased to find only one other person there, but when she saw who it was she nearly dropped her bundle of laundry. It was the mute girl!
This time Estelle could think of nothing to say, no suitable word of reproach or recognition. The girl seemed not to expect one and yet she didn’t appear at all surprised to see Estelle. She might almost have been expecting her this night.