“So you didn’t start out here.”
“No, the first place I was relocated ... Remember them telling you they’re gonna, quote, provide suitable documents to enable the person to establish a new identity?”
Carmen nodded. “I remember, but we didn’t change our names.”
“I had to,” Molina said. “And you know how long it took to get suitable documents? Four months for a driver’s license. Almost a year for a social security card. I still don’t have a birth certificate. Try and get credit when you don’t have a history. Try and get any kind of a job on your own. The kid marshal takes me out to Procter and Gamble, they put me on the Pampers line. I’m fifty-nine years old with this white smock on making diapers. You know how long I lasted? I tell all this to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. They’re sympathetic, up to a point. The chairman says, ‘Well, our survey shows that seventy-three percent of the people in the program want to stay in it.’ I said to him, of course, they want to stay in. You leave it, you’re dead. I could’ve done ten at Allenwood instead of this shit and I’d be out by now, good behavior.”
“You didn’t like the first place they sent you,” Carmen said, “so you left? Can you do that?”
“The only thing that was good about it, I met my present wife, Roseanne. If we get along half the time it’s better than nothing. But that’s when they were bringing me back to Scranton to testify and the marshal—this’s the other one that wasn’t too bright—puts me on a direct flight.” Molina paused. “You understand what I’m saying? You land at Avoca, the airport there, anybody watching for you knows where you came from. That’s not bad enough, we’re leaving the courtroom after the trial, people all around, the guy, the marshal, tells another marshal where we’re going. I mean he says it right out loud, anybody could’ve heard it. There people still in the courtroom, friends of the guy I just got done testifying against. I said to the marshal, ‘You crazy? I’m not going back there.’ They had to drag me on the plane. But then I bitched enough after that . . .” Molina paused, his head raised. “You hear a car door slam?”
“It could be Wayne,” Carmen said. She watched Molina stub out his cigarette and get up.
Walking over to the window he said, “I’ve been doing this for nine years. I hear something, I jump.”
“Is it a light-tan pickup?”
The man didn’t answer and Carmen started to get up.
By the time he said, “I hate to tell you this, it’s that fucking Nazi . . .”
Carmen was out of the sofa. “We won’t let him in. I’ll put the chain on.”
“Don’t,” Molina said. “I did that one time, he busted the door.”
Carmen’s mother’s home had a sun porch across the front with a wide-open view of Lake Huron, gray as the sky, nothing to see. Richie stood there, giving the woman a look at his ironworkers-build-America jacket before turning to the living room again: dark in here, full of old furniture and pictures of birds all over the dark-paneled walls, color prints of birds and some that looked like a little kid had drawn them with crayons. Richie figured there were about thirty bird pictures in here, all different sizes and all framed. It was warm in here, too. He could hear a radiator hissing steam.
Richie said, “You like birds, huh? I notice you have feeders out’n the yard.”
“I’ve always loved birds,” Lenore said. “My mother named me from a poem about a bird. I guess I just love nature.” She gave a girlish shrug, but then looked at him hard through her glasses and said, “Don’t you?”
Like she was testing him. Richie felt he’d better say yes if they were going to get along. He said, “You bet. I even have a friend named Bird,” and gave the woman a smile, though loving nature made no sense to him. What was there to love about it? Nature was just there, outside, wherever there wasn’t something else.
Lenore gestured toward the crayon drawings and said, “Matthew did those when he was little. I’ve kept them.”
Like he was supposed to know who Matthew was. “They’re nice,” Richie said.
“He’s in the United States Navy, aboard an aircraft carrier.”
Richie nodded along, wondering about a kid who liked to draw birds and ended up joining the navy, the kid sounding like a fucking re-tard. So it caught him by surprise when the woman said:
“What job are you working on?”
“Oh, well, we been on different ones.”
He’d better be careful, stay alert.
This woman’s eyes reminded him of Donna’s the way they seemed magnified by her glasses, her eyes hard and dark in silver frames. She was all red and grayish, red lips and rouge on her cheeks and grayish-blond hair to the shoulders of her flowery blouse. Another one trying to look girlish, but in a different way than Donna worked it. This one was a lot older and heavier, more like a foster mom he’d had named Jackie, who worked hard with six of her own kids in the house and was always sweating. Had little beads of perspiration on her upper lip like this one. Jackie could look you in the eye and tell if you were lying.
“I was wondering if you might be working on that Cobo Hall expansion.”
This woman seemed to know the business.
“As a matter of fact we were,” Richie said, hoping she wasn’t setting him up, trying to trip him. She didn’t appear suspicious. He’d still better cut the chitchat before he got in trouble. It was funny how he had the feeling of being back in a foster home.
“Anyway, what I started to tell you, I don’t see what difference it makes who mails the check, you or us. But the boss says we have to do it. I guess since it’s up to the company. You understand it’s not the boss doesn’t trust you. I told him you were a nice lady to offer in the first place.”
“And I told you,” Lenore said, “I don’t have their address. She never gave it to me. The only thing I have’s their phone number.”
Richie felt an urge to slap this old woman across the face and tell her to, goddammit, wake up. Why didn’t she say so on the phone and save them a trip? He had to wait till he could act natural and sound surprised before saying to her, “You didn’t mention that, did you, you have their number?”
“Not on the phone I didn’t,” Lenore said. “I wasn’t absolutely positive whom I was speaking to. I’ve had some problems with the wrong kind of people calling me, if you know what I mean.”
“I understand,” Richie said, forgiving the woman now that it seemed so easy. “You can’t be too careful.”
“Anything the least bit suspicious I report to the Annoyance Call Bureau. That’s what they’re for.”
“I don’t blame you,” Richie said, not knowing what she was talking about, but wanting to get this deal moving. “Well, I don’t see any problem now. You know we’re like family. Ironworkers build America and they look out for each other. Let’s call and get that address so we can send Wayne his check.”
“Ironworkers drink more than anybody in America, too,” Lenore said. “You give him that check, you know where he’ll cash it, don’t you? The nearest bar.”
“You’re saying Wayne drinks?”
“You know an ironworker doesn’t?”
“I barely touch it myself,” Richie said, thinking, Wait a minute. Jesus, is that all ...And said it, “Is that all you’re worried about, he’ll spend it on liquor?”
“The way I look at it,” Lenore said, “if he doesn’t have extra money to spend, he won’t be tempted beyond what little willpower he might have. I don’t see why I should make my little girl’s life any harder than it is, with all she has to put up with.”
Man, here was a woman who could ruin your life knowing what was best for you.
Richie felt himself on the verge of causing her pain. Ask her to tell him the number. If she wouldn’t, bend her old-woman arm behind her back till she did. Or grab a handful of that skin hanging from her throat and give it a twist. He wouldn’t hit her. He had never hit a woman with his fist. Well, maybe once or twice. He’d punched Laurie that time, trying to find out if Kevin had been fucking her; but that was different, they were married. He was thinking of what he might do here, like start tearing her clothes off . . .