"What's this?" Nina said, extracting a paper napkin from between the bills Gretchen had thrown on the table.
"Just garbage. I'll throw it away." Gretchen reached for it.
"Wait. Something's written on it."
Nina held up the napkin with Garcia's imprint, and Gretchen stared at the handwritten word.
"Pushed!"
"Pushed?" she said.
"Is this yours?" Nina asked.
"It's a cocktail napkin." Gretchen glanced at the next table. "They're everywhere." She moved her empty margarita glass and picked up the napkin that had been under it.
"This one's mine. I must have swept that one in by accident."
"It may have been in there since last time we dined at Garcia's," Nina said, looking at Gretchen's purse. "I don't know how Nimrod fits with all the stuff you carry around."
"I'm working on it," Gretchen said, taking the napkin from Nina. "Pushed?" she said again.
Nimrod bounced around her heels, squealing with pleasure, and Gretchen couldn't help smiling down at the puppy. Had anyone ever been this excited to see her before? Wobbles never greeted her with such enthusiasm, and she had rescued him from certain death. She'd also nursed him back to health. A little gratitude from him was in order. She picked up Nimrod, and he wiggled in the crook of her arm, struggling to climb higher and lick her face. She hated leaving him home, but he needed to learn that he couldn't go everywhere with her.
Besides, she reminded herself; he wasn't entirely alone. He had Wobbles.
"No sloppy doggie kisses," she warned him. "You should be washing yourself like Wobbles does instead of trying to clean me." She saw the tomcat eyeing her from the kitchen and stooped to rub his head before heading for the workshop. She deposited Nimrod on his little comfy bed. He promptly jumped off and bolted for the back door, which led to the pool. She heard him slip through the pet door she'd installed for him, so he could come and go whenever he wanted to.
Gretchen loved the view from the workshop window. Majestic Camelback Mountain rose before her as an earthy reminder of the vastness of the Arizona landscape. Reaching for her binoculars, she watched a few hikers climbing the mountain's steep trails. She wished she had time to join them.
What she needed to do was focus on tomorrow and finish packing up for the doll show. She had to arrive several hours early to allow for setting up the table. Three boxes of dolls were already loaded in her trunk, but she still had to sort through a few more and decide what else to take along. She gathered Chiggy's Kewpies and returned them to their original box. The restorer in her had no choice but to evaluate each one. Chipped paint, damaged clay, cracks. The one that her pets had broken wasn't the only Kewpie with unsightly cracks. Gretchen, frowning over the awful replication attempts, once again wondered why Duanne Wilson would bid on such a sorry bunch of fake dolls. Gretchen sighed heavily. He'd gotten the better end of the deal. The Ginnys were worth a lot more, and she'd miss adding them to the group of Ginnys her mother had already collected for the big show. She still thought she'd been the victim of a scam, in spite of Nina's naive comments. Her repair tools were scattered on the table, and she began to gather them up and organize them in the new toolbox her mother had designed especially for Gretchen's first doll show.
S hooks, pliers, stringing hooks, dowel rods, clamps. Gretchen ticked off the required restringing tools as she added them to the box, each tool accessorized with the pink nail polish. She added a box of standard number eleven X-Acto knife blades and looked around on the table for the hobby knife.
"Where did I put it?" she asked no one in particular. She noticed that since taking in Nimrod, she talked aloud more. It couldn't be a good sign.
Nimrod, returning from outside, perked up at her voice. He cocked his head, and his tiny tail wiggled back and forth wildly.
Gretchen couldn't find the knife.
She needed the utility knife for all kinds of repairs. How would she set doll eyes without it? She needed a pointed blade to remove excess wax or plastic. The knife was a critical tool for her. It couldn't be missing. Where had she put it?
She remembered using it to wipe glue from the Blunderboo Kewpie, so it had to be here. After a thorough search of the worktable and the surrounding area, Gretchen gave up. The knife was gone.
6
"She's answered so many questions already," her husband says. "Can't this wait?"
"I'm afraid it can't."
"I keep reliving the feeling of my tires hitting that poor man's body," she says, her voice dry and flat as the Arizona desert. She doesn't hear her husband's frustration with all the red tape and what he calls badgering. "Gawd, I haven't slept since."
The pills prescribed by her physician ease the emotional pain of killing another human being, but they don't help her sleep. Nothing helps her sleep.
She desperately needs to shut down and wake up later to find out that the accident has all been a bad dream. But that isn't going to happen.
Her husband slides a protective arm around her waist.
"It's all right," she says.
But it isn't.
She has replayed the accident how many times?
Dozens? Millions? Everywhere she looks, she sees it again. The man's stunned face, the surprise registering in his eyes.
"There isn't much to tell," she says by rote. "It happened so fast. I was looking for a parking spot. Probably not going over twenty miles an hour. I noticed a man sitting on the curb, and I think I was looking at him. He seemed to be dressed in layers of clothing, none too clean, I thought at the time, and I wondered what he was doing in that neighborhood. If I hadn't been distracted, hadn't been watching him…"
"You don't have to do this," her husband says gently. She sees him glare at her inquisitor.
She tries to smile at her husband, reassure him, but the corners of her mouth won't turn up. The pills, she is sure. They have numbed her emotions, but not enough to ease the pain deep inside.
"He came from the same side of the street, a little in front of the man on the curb, and he literally flew at me. I saw his startled face, and then he must have realized what was happening, because I saw his expression of horror." She leans against her husband. "That's it. I slammed my foot on the brake, but he was already under… under the tire. People started screaming, 'Back up. Back up.' And I did."
She covers her face and struggles for composure. Her husband hands her a tissue and protests again.
"Really," he says. "This is too much."
"Getting out and seeing him like that was the hardest part," she continues. "All those people gathered around trying to help him. And he twitched and then lay motionless, and I knew. I knew he was dead."
"Did you see a box?" The man looks up from his notepad where he has been taking notes, and she notices how intense his eyes are. Watchful, studying, calculating. Perhaps hoping for some inconsistency in her side of the story, a plausible reason to arrest her for manslaughter. Her arrest is a possibility, even though her husband doesn't believe it will happen.
"A box?" She shakes her head, wishing to be helpful.
"No, he wasn't carrying anything that I recall." She frowns and concentrates. "I think… uh… no, sorry… no box that I remember."
"This is the last time," her husband says, anger in his voice. "I mean it. She's repeated the story for the last time."
7
Curves for Women literally hopped with activity. When Nina and Gretchen arrived, almost all the stations were in use. Gretchen spotted April and the rest of the doll collectors who made up their exercise group on the far side of the room, exercising away. Nina and Gretchen found space and jumped into the routine.