Taxi nodded absently in my direction. “How are you feeling today, Max?” he asked.
“Not bad. Not bad. Taxi, I said I want you to meet Harold.”
Once again, Taxi nodded his head in a vague sort of way, not really acknowledging my presence. Of course, at that moment I was wondering how much longer it would be before my presence became my past. I could barely catch my breath, and my tongue was hanging somewhere around my knees.
“Had enough?” asked Max, brimming with energy.
“… uh … uh … uh … uh …”
“I guess you have. Come on, let’s head for the cooler and take a break.”
At the community water cooler, my breathing returned to normal and Taxi noticed me at last.
“Oh, hello,” he said as if seeing me for the first time, “who are you?”
“I’m Harold,” I replied.
“Harold, Harold,” he said, a puzzled look on his face. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“I just introduced you,” Max said.
“Oh.”
I looked at Taxi. Max was right. He really was on the slow side.
“Are you okay, Max? You’re really feeling all right?” Taxi asked.
“Sure, sure,” Max snapped, a little irritably. “Why do you keep asking?”
“Well, after that fight last night … I mean …”
“Oh, that,” Max answered.
Taxi and I looked at Max as his face grew red beneath his hair. When he returned our gaze, he looked a little embarrassed and not just a little angry.
“Acchh, women!” he uttered. “What a nuisance they are sometimes. That Louise can be so unreasonable.”
I glanced over at Louise’s bungalow and saw that she was watching us. I felt a little sorry for her.
Max went on. “Just because Georgette and I have said hello a few times, she thinks we’re going to run off together.” He looked about him and then in a low voice added, “As if we could get out of here even if we wanted to.”
Taxi nodded his head in sympathy. He looked up at Max with wide eyes and sighed deeply. “It must be pretty hard sometimes,” he said.
“Yup,” Max grunted. “Women. Sometimes I think I’d be better off without them.”
There was a moment of silence. All at once, Taxi’s face lit up. “Oh, Max,” he said excitedly, “you just reminded me of this television show I saw last week. The man said just what you did.”
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“ ‘Women. Sometimes I think I’d be better off without them,’ ” Taxi repeated.
“And then what did he say?” Max asked.
“Nothing. He murdered his wife.”
I looked at Taxi. He looked at Max. Max stared straight ahead in the direction of Louise’s bungalow.
“That’s terrible,” he said softly.
Taxi just shrugged his shoulders and began drinking again. He looked up after a moment, water dripping from his lips, and said, “I don’t think so.”
I looked at him in surprise. “How can you say such an awful thing?” I asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t!” Taxi said.
“But you just did.”
“Did what?”
“Say such a thing.”
“Did I?”
I was getting confused. “Yes, of course you did. You just said it wasn’t such a terrible thing for a man to murder his wife.”
“Oh,” Taxi said, thinking it over. “Well, I guess I must have meant it then.” I could see that holding a conversation with Taxi was definitely going to be a challenge.
“She wasn’t a very nice person,” Taxi added, as if that made everything okay.
“Still, that’s no reason—” I started to say when Max cut me off.
“How’d he do it?” he asked suddenly, turning his gaze from Louise’s bungalow to Taxi.
“Poison,” Taxi answered simply. And then: “In her soup.”
“Hmmm,” was Max’s only reply.
I observed him for a moment. He must have noticed me, for he laughed suddenly and said, “Well, that’s one way of handling women, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” I replied, not at all sure I liked being part of this conversation.
“Yes,” Max went on thoughtfully. “Murder is one way. Murder in its infinite varieties. Poison, stabbing, drowning, strangling—”
“Split pea,” Taxi interjected.
Max and I looked at him. “He put poison in her split pea soup,” he explained.
“Oh,” I said.
“Ah,” said Max.
“Yoo-hoo,” called a new voice.
We all turned and saw a tiny white French poodle standing a few feet away.
“Georgette,” Max whispered.
“Good afternoon, Max,” Georgette cooed as she approached the water cooler. She smelled of honeysuckle and magnolias. She also smelled of trouble. “How’re you doin’ after that terrible fight? I just felt so awful-awful bad about it, I couldn’t sleep a wink all night worryin’ about you.” And here she yawned, showing us, I gathered, how much she had suffered on Max’s account.
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Taxi whispered to me.
Max started pawing the ground self-consciously. “Aw, shucks,” he said at last. “I’m fine today. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” Georgette replied.
“What is?” Max asked, grinning openly now.
“Thankin’ me for carin’ about you,” Georgette answered.
“Aw, shucks,” Max said again. It struck me that when Georgette came around, Max’s vocabulary suffered.
It was then I noticed that Louise had joined us.
“Hah!” she exclaimed. “ ‘Aw, shucks,’ says Monsieur Max. I come over here to tell you that I am—how you say—sorry that we have had our little fight. And what do I hear? ‘Aw, shucks!’ Well, mon ami, is this what you will say when I am no longer around? Eh? ‘Aw, shucks’? Because if you are keeping this up much longer with Hester Prynne here—”
“Georgette,” Georgette said softly.
“Georgette, Hester, what am I caring? If you think you can have your Louise and your Mademoiselle Aw-Shucks, too, you are sadly misshapen!” I think she meant to say “mistaken” but she was so overwrought at this point, it was understandable that the word came out wrong. I wanted to console her, but she left us with a grand flourish before anyone, including Max, could speak. Just as she was about to reach her bungalow, Lyle suddenly pounced on her back.
“Bombs away!” he cried.
Louise screamed. “What are you doing?! You are a very crazy cat, you nutty Lyle, you! Get off me this instant!”
Lyle didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Louise’s screams. In fact, it appeared that he was talking to someone else entirely.
“Ace-One to Four-Seven. Come in, Four-Seven. Have bombed the target area. Meeting resistance. Roger. Over and out.”
Max ran over to Louise to help. “Lyle!” he commanded. “Stop this at once!”
“Don’t you be helping me!” Louise cried. “I will take care of myself, merci-you-very-much.” Max backed off, tucking himself as far into his sweater as possible.
Louise turned her head around so that she was staring directly into Lyle’s eyes.
Lyle mumbled under his breath as if talking into a headset. “Enemy contact. Enemy contact. Standby. Mayday! Mayday!”
“Now you listen to me,” Louise said in a low, threatening tone. Lyle’s eyes went wild, and he stopped talking immediately. “We know all about you here. Do not think we are playing the fools. You have been driving us all—what is it?—ah, yes, pineapples …”
“I think she means bananas,” Georgette whispered across the way to no one in particular.
“… but I, for one, have had enough. Do you understand me, Monsieur Lyle? Enough pineapples you have driven me! You will not make me into a fruit salad, n’est-ce pas? Now, get off my back and do not ever again use me for a landing stripe!”
Lyle hissed at her and jumped off her back. He dashed to the other side of the compound and then he turned suddenly and faced her.