Becky thought it was logical that Walter Rockland would come back after his truck, and that Bruce should leave the shed unlocked and leave the keys in it, and replace the rotor. Maybe somebody would steal it, or Rocko would retrieve it. And if neither happened, she would help him get rid of it some dark night, follow in her car while he parked it somewhere else in the city; and bring him back. In the small hours of the night, at a little after two o’clock on Tuesday morning, he heard the truck start, heard the backing and filling in the narrow alleyway, heard it speed away, the drone fading into the normal night sounds. And he did not care whether Rocko had taken it or a thief had taken it. He thought he was out of it.
“So weeks later,” he said bitterly, “you show up at my door, telling your lies about insurance. I had to let you in, because I had to be certain Rocko hadn’t sent you on some kind of blackmail project. But you didn’t say the right things because you had no way of knowing.”
“Like I have no way of knowing that all this is true.”
“It is true. And the Bowie girl is dead. Eva telephoned me to say good-by. She said she did not know when she would be back.”
“Where did she go?”
“She never says. I have no idea. I know she was very upset. It was unlike her to… identify the body. I think she had to be certain in her own mind that it was the blond girl, and she was too impatient to wait for them to identify her in some other way. I think it was quite a strong and unusual infatuation for poor Eva.”
“Infatuation?”
“You aren’t as aware as I thought, McGee. It seemed to me that Becky made it obvious last night that Eva and I are opposite sides of a very old coin. But the approach is not the same. She is very rich and quite impersonal about her… requirements. When she arrives here she will usually have a personal maid with her, never the same one. Girls of a certain type. Bovine, Nordic, bursting with health, quite young, tailored drab uniforms, terribly submissive and polite and humble. Northern Europeans. I suppose it is a great deal more efficient and less wearing than forming emotional attachments, and of course she can afford it without pain. I must say I did get a certain dirty satisfaction out of hearing how distressed she was, and realizing she is just as human and vulnerable as the rest of us. My hands are getting awfully numb. And poor David is in misery. And I have told you the whole thing.”
I looked over at Meyer. He had several small purple knuckle-lumps on his forehead. “Do you buy it?” I asked him.
“I buy it.”
“How terribly kind!” Bruce said acidly.
“Meyer, I would not like to untie him and have him start making out like we are pine boards and cinder blocks and going into that yelling and grunting bit. So why don’t you just take that same walk again, and take a cab from the square to the hotel, and if I’m not there by the time you think I should be…”
So I gave him five minutes and then untied Bruce. He flexed his hands and went at once to David, turned and asked me where my car was and would I please bring it to the front.
They sat in the back. I heard Bruce coaching him in what to say at the hospital. Bruce told me the turns to take. They talked in low tones. I heard Bruce say at one point, “But really! Somebody is going to have to wait on you hand and foot, and shouldn’t I have that right? Besides, Davey, it was all settled, wasn’t it? And your things are at my place, aren’t they? Be practical, darling!”
They got out. Bruce said he could manage from there on, thank you. He gave me an absent nod, and walked David slowly toward the ambulance entrance.
I managed to get lost and ended up back in town rather than out on the Mitla Road. I got lost because my mind was too busy trying to make order out of too many fragments. I went up the hotel hill and around past the lobby entrance and down the cobblestone drive to the cottage carport.
Meyer hadn’t left any lights on. I stumbled on the steps to the front porch of the cottage, and I heard the legs of the metal porch chair scrape on the cement as he moved. I groped for the other chair and sat down, feeling a few twinges from the tumble along the tile, and wondering if they would turn into morning aches.
“Hoo, boy,” I said. “Dandy little village they’ve got here. These sweet kindly folk tear me up, they really do. I’m even beginning to wonder about Enelio Fuentes. He’ll probably turn out to be a retired female wrestler going around in drag.”
“Never fear,” said Lady Becky from the neighboring chair. “Enelio is muy hombre. I can so certify.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“That’s what I like, dearest. A warm welcome.”
“Where is Meyer?”
“He’s really a dear man. Did you know that? Oh, I packed him off. I expect he’s settling down for the night in one of the other cottages. Things are thinning out, you know. We had a nice little visit, and he went puddling off carrying his little kit. He’s marvelously tactful and understanding.”
“And treacherous.”
“I was driving around and about looking for you, darling, and saw him walking toward the zocalo, so I gave him a lift back here. Thought you might spot my car and turn into a ninny and drive away again. So I parked it discreetly. Travis dear, such a lot of nuisance and nonsense for you to hammer poor Bruce about. All you had to do was come to me. I should have told you all the rest of it.”
“If I lived long enough to hear it all.”
“But darling, you’ll want to hear it from me too, to see if it all matches up, won’t you? So doesn’t it come out to the same thing? You do struggle so. One would think I was quite sickeningly ugly or a horrid bore.”
“If you would kindly be ugly or boring, I would be very grateful.”
“But I shall be both soon enough! Any day now one ghastly wrinkle will appear, and all of a sudden I shall be… Doriana Gray? Or like that carriage one of your sentimental poets wrote about. Quite suddenly I shall dwindle into a scruffy little old lady in tennis shoes, peering through bifocals, fussing with her hearing aid, who, in a quavery little old voice, will bore everyone with her memories of lovemaking. I am here because I forgave you.”
“Thank you very much, Lady Rebecca. But you see, I wrote you down in one of the pages of my life, and now the pages have been turned, and we cannot go back and reread them because… because…”
“Because the book is very long and life is very short. Nice try, ducks. But I did the writing, and all I wrote was a preface. I told you. I was being a horrible show offy person. I shan’t be like that at all. Promise. Besides, you would be cheating me dreadfully. I granted myself a few little moments of climax, dear, but then I nipped the poor struggling things in the bud because, should I let one get truly started, it goes on and on and on, quite unendurably. It is so terribly lasting and intense and exhausting that I have to ration myself carefully. Even so, I go dragging about for days, looking quite puffy and done in. It would be wicked at this stage to deprive me.”
I stood up slowly and made a wide circuit of her chair to reach the door. “It may be wicked, Becky. It may be unforgivable. It might even be a shocking lack of courtesy. But I am going to deprive the hell out of both of us, and I am going to get a long night’s sleep, alone. Sorry about your pride and all that. Someday I may think back and kick myself. Sorry. Go drive that bubblegum car home. Good night, Lady Rebecca. Bug off, please.”
I opened the screen door and reached in and found the switches for the room lights and porch lights and clicked everything on. She stood up and turned to face me, eyes sparkling green through the sheepdog ruff, mouth broadened in a delighted bawdy grin.
“You know, I thought you might be stuffy and standoffish and difficult. So one does what one can to make it a fait accompli, what?”