Grimaldi remembered asking Ruda if that was why she had left Kellerman, and she had told him... He frowned, trying to recall what reason she had given, then suddenly it came to him, he remembered exactly what Ruda had said:
"I was pissed off at him so much of the time, and the thought that he had left my boxes, the ones with all my letters, my customers' telephone numbers, that really got me mad." She had grown silent, and Grimaldi had asked about the boxes. Had Ruda got them back? She had shrugged, was dismissive.
"Yeah, the little shit had that much decency. Oh, Luis, I was so angry, I beat the hell out of him and I really went crazy when I found out he'd gone through them. He knew he wouldn't find any money there, but what got me so mad was that he couldn't even leave my boxes alone. It was the last straw that finally made me leave him. He didn't give me any respect. You see, they're mine. They're all I got."
Grimaldi could have no knowledge of the importance of the boxes to Ruda. He could not know that Kellerman had watched her check each item: the little pebble, a piece of string, a heavy gold wedding ring, and all the tiny folded squares of newspaper, some of them brown with age, their edges frayed from being opened and refolded so many times. Ruda had never told her husband of the fight that had followed.
Ruda was always placing ads in newspapers. In every city, every town, she would run the same, just two lines: "Red, Blue, Green, Ruda, Arbeit Macht Frei" and then the box number where she could be contacted. Kellerman had given up trying to persuade her it was a waste of time; finally he had got so angry he had torn up the neatly cut square of newspaper, ripped it into shreds and screamed: "She will never contact you. She is dead, dead, DEAD!"
Ruda had looked at him, then calmly opened the kitchen drawer and taken out a carving knife. She flew at him from across the room, and he had saved himself only by crawling under a table. She kicked at him, and stabbed the knife into the wooden tabletop; her frenzied attack continued until she had slumped exhausted onto the floor beside him. She had let him remove the knife from her hands, and like two children hiding, they huddled together under the table.
Kellerman never brought up the subject again, or acknowledged how much it hurt him to see those words: Arbeit Macht Frei. These words were printed above each hut in the concentration camp. He knew, more than anyone else, the importance of the black box, but he had not realized it meant more to her than he did.
The morning after the fight, Ruda had given him some money she had earned as tips the previous night. He had promised he would not gamble, he would look for a job, but he hadn't even attempted to find one. He used Ruda's money to buy a gun.
Kellerman and two pals had planned a robbery together. They would go to a circus where he had once worked. Kellerman knew when and where the takings were counted.
The robbery, seemingly so simple, got out of hand and the cashier, a man who had himself lent money to Kellerman at one stage, was shot and died on his way to the hospital. Kellerman had planned to run away with Ruda, but he had barely arrived back at the rooming house with the money when the police came for him.
Ruda had been arrested along with him and held in jail, suspected of being his accomplice.
Perhaps one of the few decent things Kellerman had ever done in his grubby, miserable life was to deny adamantly that Ruda had played any part in the robbery. She was released. She went to see him only once, and had listened to him as he begged her to find a good lawyer. Then she had looked at him and asked how she was to pay for it. He had pleaded with her: "You've got to help me, Ruda, please. Help me get out of this!"
She hadn't even waited for the visiting time to be over; instead she had said, with a half smile: "No, Tommy. I'm through helping you. You see, Tommy, you should never have opened my box. It's mine."
Ruda never tried to contact Kellerman again. She read in the papers he had been sentenced to eight years. By this time she was already heading back to Florida, and arrived at Grimaldi's winter quarters on the same day he had been asked to leave. Grimaldi was broke: The people who had befriended him could extend their charity no longer.
Ruda acted as if he were expecting her, putting down her suitcase beside the table, picking up his notice to leave, and walking over to the manager's office. She paid over two thousand dollars in cash and asked if she could use Grimaldi's shack for fortune-telling. They all knew about Kellerman's arrest — the fact that he had stolen from his own people — but Ruda stood her ground, saying she had walked out and filed for divorce as soon as she knew what he had done.
Grimaldi had run up huge debts, and just to have the rent paid made Ruda's appearance acceptable. She promised that from that moment on she would take care of him, as though she had wished to substitute one loser for another. Luis asked himself why. Why had she come to him?
Ruda had returned to the run-down trailer and ordered Luis to get out while she cleaned the place up with buckets of water and disinfectants, washing and scrubbing as he sat on the steps drinking beer. She borrowed a van and carried the filthy sheets and laundry to a laundromat; she ironed and tidied, bought groceries and cans of paint. She was up at the crack of dawn, painting the outside of the old trailer, forcing old "Two Seats" to lend a hand. Grimaldi never lifted a finger.
Ruda slept on the old bunk bed in the main living area; Grimaldi had the so-called bedroom.
One morning, Grimaldi leaned against the open door, watching her work. She was sweating with the effort, it was a blistering hot day. He caught her arm as she was about to push past him.
"Where's Kellerman now?"
"In jail. We're through, finished. He's history." She released her arm, and went inside. It was dark, there were flies everywhere. She poured water from a bucket into the sink — they didn't have running water.
"We got a quickie divorce, only cost a few dollars. If I'd known how cheap it was to get rid of him I'd have done it years ago."
Grimaldi slumped into a chair. "So you married him?"
She turned, hands on hips. "Yeah, I married him. I had no way of getting out of Berlin — he was my way. That answer your question?"
He looked up at her helplessly. "I don't know what you want from me. Why are you doing all this?"
"You got somebody else?"
He laughed. "Does it look like it? I'm just trying to get a handle on what you want."
Her eyes were a strange color — amber — they reminded him of his cats, and even in his drink-addled mind he felt she was dangerous. She had moved close to him; it was not sexual, it was a strange closeness. She put out her hand and covered his heart.
"Marry me."
He had laughed, but her hand clutched his chest. "I'm serious; marry me. I'll get you back on your feet, I'll get you going again. All you need is money, I can make money, I can get enough so you can start again, but I want some kind of deal, and if I am your wife, that's a good enough contract."