‘I just want him to stop beating up on her. Well, to tell you the truth, I want him to stop seeing her altogether.’
Lizzie coughed and crushed out her cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, but it sounds to me like you’re on a hiding to nothing. You’re a nice guy, an incredibly nice guy, but from what you’ve told me, this girl gets off on power and money and men who treat her bad. I used to be like that, when I was younger. My first husband used to smack me around but I always came crawling back. It was lack of confidence, partly, but it was also this ridiculous belief that if a guy hurts you, that means he still cares about you. It had a lot to do with sex, too. Having my hair pulled, that used to give me orgasms. Nowadays, if a guy pulls my hair, the only thing that comes off is my wig.’
‘So what do you think I ought to do?’
Lizzie reached across the table with her claw-like hand, encrusted with rings. ‘Talking from experience, Frank, I’d enjoy it while it lasts.’
Their food arrived, aromatic and very hot, and because Injera gave their customers no forks, they tore off large pieces of bread to eat it with.
‘What do you think?’ asked Lizzie with her mouth full. ‘Indescribable, isn’t it? I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.’
They talked about Pigs for a while. Frank didn’t feel that it was worth their while to write any more, not while the show was suspended, but Lizzie said, ‘It’s a living thing . . . Dusty and Henry are living, breathing people.’ She said they ought to develop a romantic relationship between Dusty and Libby, and that Henry should start taking slide guitar lessons from an old blues picker called Muddy Puddle, who was born the month after Muddy Waters when it wasn’t raining so hard.
‘I had a friend who received spirit messages from Louis Armstrong,’ said Lizzie. ‘He used to give her recipes for chicken gumbo.’
‘Do you believe in any of that?’ asked Frank, cautiously. ‘Talking to the spirits, that kind of thing?’
‘Certainly I do. My mother died when I was only six, and my father remarried. I didn’t like my stepmother at all, even though – when I look back at it – she tried very hard to be kind to me. So every night before I went to sleep I used to have long conversations with my dead mother, telling her what I was doing at school, and how much I wanted her to come back.’
One of the smiling waiters came up to their table and said, ‘You finish, sir?’
Frank looked down at his alitcha fit-fit. He felt that he had eaten quite a lot of it, but it looked as if there were twice as much in his bowl as when he had started. ‘Yes, I have, thanks. Very good. Very filling.’ The waiter cleared the table, still smiling. Frank was sorely tempted to ask him what was so goddamned funny.
Lizzie lit another cigarette. ‘One day I went to school and I started my period in the middle of a math lesson. My skirt was stained and you can imagine how embarrassed I was. That night I lay in bed and cried and told my mother all about it. I turned over and went to sleep for a while but then I felt somebody touching my shoulder. I opened my eyes and there was my mother, standing over me. I could smell her perfume. I could feel her warmth. She seemed as real to me then . . . well, as you do now.
‘She said, “Don’t cry, Lizzie. You’re a woman now, like me.” And then she said, “Look under my dressing table . . . nobody knows that it’s there.” Then she simply vanished. At first I was sure that I had been dreaming. But the next morning I went into my stepmother’s dressing room and looked under the dressing table, and there it was.’
She reached down inside her frilly blouse and produced a pendant. It was a silver mermaid, set with turquoises. ‘It was hers,’ said Lizzie. ‘It had been missing ever since she died, and my father had looked everywhere for it. Only my mother could have known where it was, so to me that was proof that she really had come to see me that night, and that I hadn’t been dreaming, after all.’
‘Have you ever seen her again?’
‘Once, at my father’s funeral. I might have been mistaken, because she was standing in the shadow of some trees, but I had a very strong feeling that it was her. I’ve heard her voice, though, several times, especially when I’ve been stressed or unhappy, which usually happens whenever I get married.’ She paused, puffed smoke. ‘In other words, every couple of years.’
Frank gave Lizzie a ride back to her cottage off Clearwater Canyon. As he opened the car door for her, she said, ‘Remember what I said, Frank. Live for the moment. Enjoy it while you can. Look at me, whenever I met a man I thought, this is the one, this is for ever. But there’s no such thing as forever, Frank, and tomorrow never brings what you expect it to bring, so it’s not worth making plans.’
‘Remind me to call you next time I’m feeling really depressed.’
Lizzie gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then another. ‘You’ll be OK,’ she told him. ‘I’ll do the cards for you tonight, just to make sure.’
‘If it’s bad news, I don’t want to know.’
He climbed back into his car and waved goodbye to her. It was then that his cellphone rang, and it was John Berenger, and he was so angry that he could scarcely speak.
‘Do you know how close I came to being canned? I have a family to support, Frank, in case you’d forgotten! I just want to tell you this: don’t ever call me again, ever, even if you have the greatest idea since The Simpsons.’
‘John, I’m sorry. I needed to talk to Lasser and I couldn’t think of any other way.’
‘Why didn’t you just send him a poison-pen letter, for Christ’s sake, like everybody else?’
Twenty-One
Frank had just taken a shower when he heard a knock at the door. He wrapped a towel around himself and went to open it. It was Astrid, wearing a bright-pink sleeveless dress and bright-pink lipstick to match, and her hair was all frisky with gel.
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she said. She took off her wraparound sunglasses. Her bruises had faded to yellow and lilac, and her eyes were far less swollen, although she still had a slightly foxy look about her.
‘Of course. Come on in.’
She came into the living room and sat down in the last triangle of sunlight. He stood watching her and said nothing at all. ‘Well?’ she asked him. ‘What’s happened? Cat got your tongue?’
‘No, everything’s fine. How about a drink?’
She frowned at him. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it? You don’t like my hair like this.’
‘Your hair’s fine.’
‘What, then? You don’t like my lipstick?’
‘Your lipstick’s fine, too.’
‘Then what?’
Frank took a breath. ‘I talked to Charles Lasser. I told him to stop beating up on you.’
Astrid slowly covered her mouth with her hand. She didn’t speak but her eyes said, oh, my God.
Frank said, ‘I know you told me to keep out of your life. I know you told me to mind my own business. But so long as you and I are lovers . . . come on, Astrid, you are my business. I care for you. I love you. I can’t just stand by and let that bastard hit you and burn you and treat you like shit.’ There was a very long silence. Eventually, Frank said, ‘I can’t, Astrid, and that’s all there is to it. Even if you tell me that you and I are finished.’
‘You really told Charles Lasser to stop hitting me?’
Frank nodded.
Astrid stood up, and came over to him, and draped her arms around his shoulders. ‘I can’t believe it. What did he say?’