Francine was about to continue her protests but realized this would only prolong the girl’s happiness. She returned to her car, annoyed but not so shaken that she failed to offer the moribund palm on the pump island her customary sympathy.
There was no dearth of gas stations. She broke the hundred and filled up the gluttonous little car. Then, after driving for miles and making several incorrect turns, she arrived at the dubious park. When she and Freddie had first moved to Arizona they had taken a rafting trip and everyone had gotten sick. The guide had not lost enthusiasm for his troubled industry, however. “Nobody likes to get sick from a little sewage!” he’d said. “But you’re on the river! Some folks only dream of doing this!” This was another river, though, or had been.
A half dozen dogs rushed up to her. One had a faded pink ribbon attached somehow to the crown of its head, but none of them had collars. She tried to befriend them with what Freddie referred to as her birthday-party voice, though they seemed a wary lot and disinterested in false forms of etiquette. She wondered which one of them had the hallucinations and what he thought was going on around him right then. She waded through the pack and approached a group of people sitting on a cluster of concrete picnic tables.
“Has a man with a sheltie been here today?”
“The sheltie,” a woman said. “Congratulations!”
“I’m sorry?” Francine said.
“No need to be. It was a dignified departure, wasn’t it, Bev?”
“As dignified as they come,” Bev said. “We all almost missed it.”
“I find it so much more convincing to see how things just happen rather than to observe how we, as human individuals, make them happen,” a man said.
“Yeah, but we still almost missed it,” Bev said, “even you.” She winked at Francine. “He thinks too much,” she confided.
“A swift closure,” another man said. “One of the best we’ve seen.”
Francine began to cry.
“What’s this, what’s this,” someone said fretfully.
Francine returned to the car and drove aimlessly, crying, around the sprawling city. “Poor old dear,” she cried. “Poor old dear.” But I might have misunderstood those people completely, she thought. What had they said, anyway? She stopped crying. When it was almost dark she pulled up to a restaurant where she and Freddie had dined when they did such things. She went into the restroom and washed her face and hands. Then she opened her purse and studied it for a long moment before removing a hairbrush. She pulled the brush through her hair for a while and then replaced it. Slowly she closed the handbag, which as usual made a decisive click.
In the dining room, the maître d’ greeted her. “Ahh,” he said noncommittally. She was seated at a good table. When the waiter appeared she said, “I’m starving. Bring me anything, but I have no money. Tomorrow I can come back with the money.” She was a different person. She felt like a different person saying this.
The waiter went away. Nothing happened. She watched the waiters and the maître d’ observing her. On the wall beside her was a large framed photograph of a saguaro that had fallen on a Lincoln Brougham in the parking lot and smashed it good. Save for such references, one hardly knew one was in the desert anymore.
People came into the restaurant and were seated. They made their selections, were served and then left, all in an orderly fashion. A glass of water had been placed before Francine when she first sat down and she had drunk that and the glass had not been refilled.
She left before they flipped the chairs and brought out the vacuum cleaner. When she arrived home the garage door was still open and Freddie’s Mercedes was not there. There would probably be a reminder in their mailbox the following morning that subdivision rules prohibited garage interiors to be unnecessarily exposed. No one likes to look at someone else’s storage, they would be reminded. Francine very much did not want to go into the house and face once more, and alone, the humming refrigerator and the moth floating in the sheltie’s water dish. Given Freddie’s continued absence, she would probably have to call the police. But she did not want to call the police after her experience with the fire department. She considered both of these official agencies and their concept of correctness of little use to her. She eased the car into gear — it sounded as though something was wrong with the transmission again — and drove off once more into the dully glowing web of the city, lowering the roof and then raising it again, unable to decide if she was warm or cold. Finally she left the roof down, though no stars were visible. The lights of the city seemed to be extinguishing them by the week.
Stopped at a light at a large intersection, she saw the Barbeques Galore store. The vast parking area covered several acres and was dotted with dilapidated campers, for the store was not closed for the evening but had gone out of business, providing welcome habitat for the aimless throngs coursing through the land.
She turned and, threading her way among the vehicles, heard the murmur of voices and saw the silhouettes of figures moving behind flimsily curtained windows. Some trucks had metal maps of the country affixed to the rear, the shapes of the states colored in where the people had been. Dangling from the windshield mirrors were amulets of all kinds, crosses, beads, chains. On the dashboards were cups, maps, coins and crumpled papers, even a tortoise nibbling on a piece of lettuce. And there, swooping in a graceful arc on the darkened margin of the place, Galore, the ineradicable locus of what had been his happiness, was Dennis on his waxed and violet Fat Boy. He hadn’t seen her yet, of that she was sure. But if she went to him, what could be the harm? For he was no more than a child in his yearnings, and his Darla was just an exuberant young girl who could never dream she didn’t have a life before her.
CLARO
DANNY LOOKED TRIM in shorts and a white T-shirt. He had been ill the previous year — the heart — but the operation was a success and he was now absolved of illness. It was remarkable, the skill of surgeons. Her sickness — her malady, she called it lightly — was of another sort, quite minor really. She had a form of arthritis, a syndrome called Polymyalgia rheumatica, and it was not known whether it was a disease of the joints, the muscles or the arteries. Statistically, she was rather young to be suffering from it. Though it wasn’t particularly painful, she could barely move her limbs. Some of their friends had immigrated to Mérida for a good part of the year, and they too were now trying it out. The place was warm, cheap and genial, and the gardens could be lovely.
For breakfast there was sliced papaya, sweet rolls and good strong coffee. Their young man, their houseman Eduardo, was breakfasting comfortably with them, eating cereal, his favorite, Cap’n Crunch.
“Thank you,” she said as Eduardo cleared away the plates.
She wanted to put more effort into the days, into the living of them. She was aware of the effort Danny was making. The days seemed very much the same here but this was just the seeming of them. Each delivered its own small surprise. Yesterday, sitting in the garden with only her aching body for company, she saw not just one but three motmots on the sloping tiled roof. They perched close together, their long, partially featherless tails flicking back and forth. The one in the center was being groomed by the other two. His feathers were ruffled and he looked dazed. Their heads were a lovely turquoise color. They preened and pecked at the one, drawing its feathers between their beaks. A frond from a royal palm slipped free and fell and two of the birds scattered at the sound, leaving the one upon whom their attention had been conferred alone, swaying, its beak open. Eduardo had hurried out and cut up the frond quickly with his knife. He hoisted the sections on his shoulder and trotted to the courtyard next door, the annex they had acquired to hold their construction and yard debris.