“And you thought that whole part of your life was over.”
“And it is,” he said, “but what I also thought was that nothing from the past could find me, and that’s not exactly true. Because there’s always the possibility of an accident. Some sharp-eyed son of a bitch from New York or L.A. or Vegas or Chicago—”
“Or Des Moines?”
“Or anywhere. And he happens to come here on vacation, because it’s a popular spot.”
“Not so many tourists since the hurricane,” she said, “but they’re starting to come back.”
“And all it takes is one, who happens to be in the same restaurant, or on the street when we come out of the restaurant, or any damn thing. Look, it’s not very likely. We don’t exactly live the high life here, we keep a low profile by nature. Most of the time we’re home alone, and when we see somebody it’s Edgar and Patsy or Donny and Claudia. We always have a good time, but nobody’s putting our pictures in the Times-Picayune.”
“They might,” she said, “when you and Donny emerge as the hottest outfit in post-Katrina reconstruction.”
“Don’t hold your breath. Neither of us is that ambitious. You know what appeals to Donny about flipping houses? As much as the opportunity for profit? The chance to quit bidding on jobs. He hates that part, everything you have to take into consideration to come up with a price that’s low enough to get you the job but high enough so you come out ahead doing it. Of course he has to do all the same calculations when he’s the owner himself, but he says it doesn’t give him the same kind of headache.”
That changed the subject, and it stayed changed, but in bed that night, after a long shared silence, she asked if there was any way to get himself all the way off the hook.
He said, “You mean as far as Al is concerned, since the police are only a problem if I get arrested and somebody runs my prints. With Al, well, time’s a healer. The more time passes, the less he’s going to care whether I’m alive or dead. As far as taking action to get him off my back…”
“Yes?”
“Well, the only way I can see is to find some way to learn who he is and where to get hold of him. And then go there, wherever it is, and, uh, deal with him.”
“Kill him, you mean. You can say the word, it’s not going to bother me.”
“That’s what it would take. You couldn’t sign a mutual nonaggression pact with him, settle the deal with a handshake.”
“Anyway,” she said, “he ought to be dead. What’s so amusing?”
“Who knew you’d turn out to be such a tough guy?”
“Hard as nails. Is there any way to find him? You must have thought about it.”
“Long and hard. And no, I don’t think there is, and if there is I sure can’t figure it out. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
30
Donny got an offer on the house right away. It was less than he was asking but still well above his costs, and he decided not to hold out for more. “The sooner we’re out of one deal, the sooner we can get into the next,” he told Keller, and after the deal closed Keller’s one-third share of the net was just over eleven thousand dollars. He hadn’t been keeping track of his hours, but knew his profit amounted to a good deal more than twelve dollars an hour.
He came home with the news, and you’d have thought Julia already heard. The table was set with the good china, and there were flowers in a vase. “I guess someone told you,” he said, but no one had, and she congratulated him and kissed him and said the flowers and all were because she had news of her own. They’d offered her a full-time teaching position for the coming year.
“A permanent position,” she said, “and I wanted to tell them that nothing’s permanent in an uncertain world, but I decided to keep my mouth shut.”
“Probably wise.”
“That means more money, of course, but it also means benefits. And it means not having to make the acquaintance of a new batch of brats every month or so. Instead I’ll get one batch of brats and be stuck with them for the whole year.”
“That’s great.”
“On the downside, it also means working five days a week for forty weeks a year, not just when some teacher gets sick or decides to move to I don’t know where.”
“Wichita?”
“It ties a person down, but would it keep us from doing anything we really wanted to do? What’s great is having the summers off, and if you ever want to get away from New Orleans, summer’s the time when you want to do it. I think I should tell them yes.”
“You mean you haven’t already?”
“Well, I wanted to discuss it with you. You think I should go for it?”
He did, and said so, and she served a dish she’d adapted from a New Orleans cookbook, a rich and savory stew of meat and okra served over rice, with a green salad, and lemon pie for dessert. The pie was from a little bakery on Magazine Street, and while he was tucking into a second piece she told him she’d bought him a present.
“I thought the pie was the present,” he said.
“It’s good, isn’t it? No, but this was also from Magazine Street, just two doors up from the bakery. I wonder if you ever noticed it.”
“Noticed what?”
“The shop. I don’t know, maybe I made a mistake. Maybe you won’t like it, maybe it’ll just be a case of throwing salt in old wounds.”
“You know,” he said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Do I get a present or don’t I?”
“It’s not exactly a present. I mean, I didn’t wrap it. It’s not the kind of present you would wrap.”
“That’s good, because it’ll save the time it would take to unwrap it, and we can use that time having this conversation.”
“Am I being nuts? ‘Yes, Julia, you’re being nuts.’ Don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?”
She came back with a flat paper bag, so in a sense the present was wrapped after all, if informally. “I just hope I didn’t do the wrong thing,” she said, handing it to him, and he reached into the bag and drew out a copy of Linn’s Stamp News.
“There’s this shop, it’s not much more than a hole in the wall. Stamps and coins and political campaign buttons. And other hobby items, but mostly those three. Do you know the shop I’m talking about?”
He didn’t.
“And I walked in, and I didn’t want to buy you stamps, because I thought that probably wouldn’t have been a good idea—”
“You were right about that.”
“But I saw this paper, and didn’t you mention it once? I think you did.”
“I may have.”
“You used to read it, didn’t you?”
“I was a subscriber.”
“And I thought should I get it for him or not? Because I know your stamps are gone, and how much they meant to you, and this might only make you feel the loss more. But then I thought maybe you’d enjoy reading the articles, and who knows, you might even want to, I don’t know, start another collection, although that might be impossible after having lost everything. Then I thought, oh, for God’s sake, Julia, give the little man two dollars and fifty cents and go home. So I did.”
“So you did.”
“Now if it was a really terrible idea,” she said, “just put it back in the bag it came in and hand it to me, and I’ll guarantee you never have to look at it again, and we can both pretend this never happened.”
“You’re wonderful,” he said. “Have I ever told you that?”
“You have, but we’ve always been upstairs. This is the first time you’ve told me on the ground floor.”
“Well, you are.”