Jack followed an aisle toward the rear of this big roomful of people busy with lunch, nodding to waiters he knew as he came to a table against the far wall.
Helene sat with a cup of coffee, dishes cleared, her head bent over an open book, frizz-permed red hair jutting out to both sides.
“What’re you reading?”
Her brown eyes came up reflecting light and there was the nose that fascinated him, the tender, delicate nostrils. Helene closed the book with one finger in it and glanced at the cover before looking up again, now with a different expression, almost sly, a girl with a secret.
“Self-Love and Sexuality.”
“Is it any good?”
“Not bad. It says if you don’t like yourself you won’t have fun in bed. Or you have to like yourself first, before you can love anybody else.”
“If you don’t like yourself… Why wouldn’t you? I mean since you’re all you have.”
“I don’t know, Jack. There must be some people who don’t.”
“You think people that are assholes realize it? No, they think they’re fine. But even if it’s possible not to like yourself, you go to bed with somebody-what’re you doing in there, analyzing yourself?”
“I’m glad you straightened me out on that,” Helene said. “What’re you up to?”
“I’m not working at the funeral home anymore.” Helene waited and he said, “I’ll find something.”
Her eyes held on him, still waiting. In the open top of her blouse he could see freckles he used to trace with a finger, making up constellations, getting down to her twin suns and from there to the center of her universe. Something between two people who liked themselves and maybe had loved each other and were remembering it now-both of them, if he could believe her eyes.
“That’s a pretty girl you’re with.”
“I didn’t think you saw us.”
“When I came in.”
“She used to be a nun.”
“Really? What is she now?”
“She’s looking.”
“I guess everybody is. I spend half my life being interviewed. I end up typing memos for some weenie, I’m not even sure what he does. Offices are full of people doing things that, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t make any difference. Or the company’s making some dumb thing nobody needs and they act like they’re serving humanity, the higher-ups.” She said, “I’ve been thinking about you, Jack, since we ran into each other. Well, even before that… I miss you.”
It was something the way she could get different looks in those brown eyes, from sparkly to sad to a kind of soulful light, one right after another, her eyes working him over, softening him up.
“But you still blame me, don’t you?”
“I never did. It was that showboat lawyer you worked for.”
“That’s what you say. No matter what else, Jack, you’re polite.” She kept the soulful light burning low as she said, “Would you call me sometime?”
He smiled. It was all right to let himself be softened up as long as-there, telling him by her smile-she realized he knew what she was doing. Helene was fun. He said, yes, he’d call her.
And walked back to the table.
Lucy looked up. Boylan was still talking, telling her there was more to revolution than storming the palace, putting your boots up on the king’s table, drinking his wine. He paused, glancing at Jack as he sat down. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Then turned to Lucy again, saying, “That’s the glory part. Then comes the work of changing attitudes steeped in tatty, worn-out traditions. With your permission, Sister, consider a people raised to believe it’s all right with just cause to blow a woman’s legs off, but a mortal sin to spread them.”
Lucy said, “You haven’t stormed the palace yet.”
Boylan sat back and, for the first time, seemed tired. “It will come.”
“You’ll keep trying.”
“It’s become a ritualized game, Sister. I play it or what?… Sweep rubbish and empty bins.” For several moments he stared at the table in silence, finally looked up and said, “Jack, I’ll visit the lavat’ry if you’ll point the direction.”
“By the front entrance.”
He watched Boylan push up with an effort and walk off. Then turned to Lucy, her quiet expression. She was staring at him and it surprised him.
“Well, what do you think?”
“You had a gun last night. Boylan said, ‘You don’t have a pistol in your hand this time.’ ”
“Yeah, I had to find out who he was.”
“You carried a gun with you?”
“No, it was the colonel’s. I put it back.” Jack paused. “But when we do it, we’re not just gonna ask the guy for his money and he hands it to us. You understand, we’ll have to have guns. There’s no other way to do it.”
She seemed to think about it before saying, very quietly, “No, there isn’t, is there?”
Franklin de Dios, standing inside the entrance of the restaurant, watched Boylan push through the door to the Men’s room.
He had followed Boylan here from the hotel, watched him sit down at a table, and watched the man and woman he remembered from the funeral coach at the gasoline station in St. Gabriel come in and sit with him at the table. The man in the dark suit he remembered well, talking to him in the funeral place, the man offering him beer. He had wondered if this was the same man that night, one of the police, who put them in the trunk of the car and left them until two more police in uniforms let them out, listened with patience to Crispin and then told him to have a nice evening. But how could this one be a police the same night? No-except he had a feeling he was one of those first two police, who were like the police of Miami, Florida. Or, as Crispin now believed, those first two weren’t police at all. Then the one could be the man from the funeral place. He had said to Crispin he didn’t understand any of this, who was who. Crispin had said to him, “You don’t have to think or know everything. Do what you’re told.”
Okay. But he would continue to think.
Franklin de Dios unbuttoned his jacket as he walked toward the Men’s room in Ralph & Kacoo’s.
Lucy was hunched over the table. She said, “When you robbed hotel rooms, did you carry a gun?”
Jack was about to get up, his hands on the edge of the table. “Never, ever. Somebody happened to wake up, you don’t think I was gonna shoot ’em.”
She was nodding, thoughtful. “But this is different. We’ll need guns.”
“It’s a much higher-class criminal offense, armed robbery. If you want to look at it that way. And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom.”
He saw her startled expression as he got up.
She said, “We’re not planning a robbery, Jack.” Sounding honestly surprised.
“What do you call it?”
“We’re not bandits.”
“Tell me what we are. When I come back.”
Franklin de Dios walked up behind Jerry Boylan standing at the urinal. He extended the Beretta to place the muzzle in the center of the gray herringbone tweed, pushed it in to feel the man’s spine, the man’s head turning to look over his shoulder, the man saying, “What?…” and shot him. As the man’s body jerked and then became loose and began to sag against the urinal, Franklin de Dios raised the pistol to the base of the man’s skull, placed the muzzle in that hollow spot, and shot him again and stepped away now, turning away, with no desire to look at the wall smeared red or the man falling dead to the floor.
Franklin de Dios worked the Beretta into the waist of his pants close to his left hip, buttoned his jacket and pulled it down straight. He could hear a ringing in his ears but no sounds from beyond the door, in the restaurant. In the war they searched the ones they killed, if there was time; find a few cordobas if they were lucky. This one could have money or not, it was hard to tell from his appearance; but there wasn’t time to see. Crispin had said to kill him because “He wants to steal money that’s for your people, the contras.” Franklin de Dios had said, “They’re not my people.” And Crispin had said, “Do it or we’ll send you back.” There was no way to leave the war.