“Landmark decision, Prince,” Laglichio remarked to Bob, the dashiki’d warrior who had tried to bust his truck. “What do you say, George? The system works.”
So Mills was once again employed full time, though he found that, having been away from it so long, he was no longer in shape. His back troubled him, his breath was short.
“You wouldn’t think,” he told Louise, “such shabby stakes and sticks could weigh so much.”
“Get out of it, George,” Louise said. “Why don’t you talk to some of your new contacts? You could ask Mr. Claunch if he’s got anything for you. Even Cornell could probably put you in the way of something. And Sam, Mr. Glazer, is settled as dean now at the university. He probably has lots of influence. I’m sure he could get you a position with maintenance or housekeeping.”
“Buildings and grounds. He already offered.”
“Buildings and grounds,” Louise said. “He offered?”
“He said I could work indoors in winter and keep warm, and outdoors in summer and get my fresh air.”
“He knows all you did. It’s nice when people appreciate.”
“I’d push the clocks forward an hour in spring and turn them back again in fall,” Mills said. “There were strings, Louise. I told him no deal.”
All this during the first phase after George Mills returned from Mexico.
When he’d been their whatdoyoucallit, Father Confessor. They were spilling their beans, dumping their crap in his lap. Gossiping, tattling on themselves, one another.
As if he gave good advice. As if he even believed in it.
He gave no advice, put his faith in the insolubility of problems. You never laid a glove on the serious stuff. Disease played for keeps, and though he was no expert on world affairs, he knew that if things as inanimate and impersonal and off to the side of real life as nations could get into difficulties they couldn’t slip, people had no chance at all. Things gone off like butter would never be sweet again. His back would fail him, the shortness of breath he now felt hustling furniture for Laglichio would show up again while he was sitting on the toilet one day, while he was watching TV, when he slept.
In the months following Judith Glazer’s death Messenger continued to keep in touch. Sometimes he phoned, more often he just popped in. He was still driving Judith’s Meals-on-Wheels route. (Rust along the wounds of his notched car like a sort of jam.) “The Judith Glazer Memorial Meals-on-Wheels Luncheon Rounds,” he called it. He brought the Millses news of Mrs. Carey and Mr. Reece and the others on his itinerary and sometimes — you could smell the pot on his breath, his clothes, pungent, sweet as campfire, burning leaves — came to them with covered styrofoam trays of leftovers.
“What am I going to do about my kid, George?” Messenger would ask between mouthfuls of cooling chili-mac. “What do you say, Lulu?”
The Claunches, too, were into him, or their lawyers were. Judith’s sanity was in question. She’d made no eleventh-hour revisions of what they regarded as her cogent, ordinary enough wishes, but her wild, middle-of-the-night calls to her friends, even to some of the Meals-on-Wheels contingent, had prompted some of them to believe that she’d intended to make provision for them. She’d hinted at, and evidently actually promised, small gifts, semiprecious jewelry, shoes, dresses, coats — relics.
No codicils had been formulated, no substantiating notes found. The claimants, though even the lawyers acknowledged that “claimants” was too strong a term — no one had actually made or even threatened a legal claim against the estate — had all rather shyly indicated their limited expectations in condolence letters — to Sam, to Harry Claunch, to Judith’s father on his now public private phone numbers. One or two had appealed directly to Mrs. Glazer’s daughters. The Claunch lawyers were inclined to honor what they called these “nuisance claims” on the dead woman’s estate. (Louise herself, though they’d never met, only spoken to each other once on the phone, had been the recipient of one such gift — a tiny pillbox, purchased during their first days in Mexico, in which Mrs. Glazer had kept her Laetrile. Like the others to whom such tokens had been granted, she’d had to sign a notarized quitclaim.)
But something was up.
One night the senior partner — he was the man who’d indicated an interest in Mills’s car the day of the funeral — in the law firm that was handling things for the Claunches, called George at home.
“Still got that car, old man?”
“What car?”
“That snazzy Special of course.”
“Oh yeah,” Mills said, “sure.”
“You’ll come round. You will.”
“Make me an offer.”
The lawyer chuckled. “You make me one.”
“Four thousand dollars,” George said, not knowing what it might be worth but certain he’d asked too little.
The lawyer laughed into the phone. “Oh that’s a good one,” he said heartily. “It really is. Never mind. I’m a patient man, you’ll come round. Actually I guess I deserved that,” the lawyer said, “trying to mix business with pleasure.”
“Business?”
“Well, it’s just that we’d like you to drop by the firm. At your own convenience of course. We’d like to take an affidavit from you.”
“What for?” Mills asked nervously.
“No real reason,” the lawyer said, “we’d just like to have it on file in case anything comes up. We’d like your statement that Judith was in unexceptionable health when you were caring for her in Mexico.”
“She was sick as a dog.”
“No no.” The lawyer laughed. “I mean her mental health.”
“I can’t give any affidavit,” George said. “I can’t come down at my convenience. My boss would dock me.”
Then Sam Glazer called.
“I understand they’re trying to pressure you,” he said. “Listen, you hung in there. I’m grateful for that.” Mills didn’t know what he was talking about. “No kidding, George — may I call you George? — I really am. I’d just like your assurance that you’ll continue to resist them when they start turning the screws on you.”
“No one’s going to turn the screws on me.”
“That’s the way,” Sam said, “that’s the way to handle it.”
When he called again he sounded as distraught as Messenger.
“She must have been crazy, George. She must have been out of her head. I blame myself. I’m at fault. Partially. Partially I am. Poor Judith. Poor, poor Judith. God knows what she must have suffered. All that pain and anger, all that mental anguish.”
“No, no,” George said, trying to reassure him. “Her spirits were good.”
“How can you say that?” Glazer demanded furiously. “Is that what you said? Is that what you told them? Her spirits were good?”
“Hey,” George said.
“What about the pesos? What about all those pesos she gave away? What about the time she tried to get herself murdered? What about that funeral service? Her psychiatrist’s ruined. You know that, don’t you? Being made to say that stuff in public. Judith washed him up with her crazy arrogance. You call that cheerful, you call that good spirits?”
“Listen, Mr. Glazer …”
“Listen? Listen? No I won’t listen. You listen! What about heredity? What about our daughter Mary? You call her sane? She’s crazy as hell. All she thinks about is sex. She doodles genitalia in her geometry book. She doodles fellatio. The men have embouchures like symphony musicians. She draws gleaming wet pussy in her Latin text. The labia are tattooed with boys’ names. She does tits, stiff, ugly little hairs coming up out of the nipples. She says she’s engaged to be married. Some squirt at school she says she’s been sleeping with since fifth grade. She tells me this! She says ‘He can’t come yet, Daddy. I got my orgasm even before my periods started, but Stevie still can’t come. I tell him to be patient,’ she says, ‘that he’ll probably be in puberty by the time we’re married and it’ll all work out.’