She switched on her coffee machine then graded a few more exams — last night, after giving up on Hugh, she had come home and whipped through several of the tests. With steady attention now, she could get them ready by her ten o’clock class.
She dressed quickly, sipping her coffee. Before leaving the house, she tried Hugh again.
On her way to school she stopped by the Continental Arms. She hadn’t seen or heard from Danny all weekend. Carla had been a trouper. “You’ve got plenty on your plate, with the wedding,” she’d told Libbie on Friday. “You need to spend time with Hugh. I’ll handle the rest of the funeral arrangements and look after Danny. You’ve done enough, okay?”
But had she driven Hugh away? She stared into her rearview, searching for the box with her dress; in the recent flurry, she still hadn’t moved it.
Danny’s car wasn’t there. A handsome couple emerged from Anna Lia’s apartment. They locked the door, laughing and talking. They kissed.
Libbie circled the lot and was about to leave when she heard a man shout her name. She wrenched her parking brake, lowered her window, and stuck her head out. “Danny?” Instead, Nicholas Smitts shambled up to her van. How did he know her name? Anna Lia must have mentioned it to him. He wore ripped camouflage pants and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. He ran his hand through his hair. “Listen, I’m glad I saw you. I wanted to tell you … your friend Clark, he’s about to fuck up.”
Libbie didn’t answer.
He leaned against her door. “He’s acting like he wants to come after me or something. You probably know all this. I’m just saying, if he tries anything, he’s going to end up hurt. Tell him that. I won’t mess him up, if I can help it, but I can’t vouch for my brother and his pals. I just want all this to go away. You listening?”
Feigning indifference, Libbie switched on her radio. Roberto’s morning show. “Here, to ease you on your way back to work, from the magical city of Barcelona, Maria del Mar Bonet.”
“Christ,” Smitts said. “If you’re going to ignore me, ignore me. But turn that asshole off.”
“Did you do it?” Libbie asked.
“What, get her hot for bombs? Yeah. I guess I did.” He scratched an ear. “That’s my shit, you know, what I’m into — as a hobby. Couples share their shit. But did I buy the hardware and do all the rest? No. I respect this stuff. I’m not reckless with it. You understand me? She was fucking nuts. She needed too much. It made her crazy.”
“You weren’t there?”
“Jesus, how many times I gotta tell you people? No. No.”
“I heard you. Outside. Outside Danny’s door in the middle of the night. I heard your limp. You broke a flower pot — ”
“I’ll pay for the goddam pot.”
“What were you doing?”
“I wanted to talk to y’all. I knew you blamed me.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?”
“Hell, I couldn’t sleep. I figured you couldn’t, either. I was trying to see past the curtains, if there was any lights on inside.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Believe it or don’t, lady. I really don’t give a fuck.”
The morning had grayed. Clouds curdled, low.
“Listen, I feel shitty enough about what happened — though the cops don’t have a beef with me. Remember that. And I’m going to feel even worse if Clark gets his head cracked. Keep him off my back, all right? For his sake.” He thrust a hand into the van. Libbie flinched. “For the flower pot,” he said, dropping a ten in her lap. Then he turned and hobbled away.
In her office, Libbie finished the tests. Thunder shook her window; the lights flickered. Several times in the past, Anna Lia had sat here to talk about her progress as a student. Libbie felt her now, filling the empty chair on the other side of the desk. The lights blinked again.
Carla knocked on her door. Libbie could always tell when Edgar was in town. Carla looked weary, pinched. Not that he ever harmed her physically. She would have said so. Wouldn’t she?
“Did you see the funeral announcement?”
“Missed it.”
Carla handed her a page of the Chronicle. Anna Lia’s bold smile. All that stunning hair. Libbie remembered when the photo was taken one night at a party, after hours of dancing.
Carla had arranged for a memorial service in the Religion Center, here on campus, tomorrow afternoon.
“I don’t know where Danny is,” Carla said. “He hasn’t called me.
“I don’t know where Hugh is, either.”
“Are you all right?”
“A little panicky,” Libbie admitted. “You? How’s Edgar?”
“We had a fight last night. About Betty. The way he yells at her.” She rubbed her face. “I think we’re through.”
“Through through?”
Carla nodded.
“Oh sweetie, I’m sorry.”
“What are you going to do about Hugh?”
Libbie shrugged. “Right now I’m going to teach a class. If I remember how.”
“Talk later?”
Libbie patted her arm. “Let’s.”
Her students were noisy, excited to have her back. The classroom was hot. Thunder smacked the building. Libbie set the test-folder on the seminar table. About half the class had failed. “As you all know, second language acquisition is a difficult task,” she began stiffly. It would take her a few minutes to feel comfortable again in front of a group. “Nothing is more complex than human communication — especially across cultural divides — and you mustn’t be discouraged by the time it takes or the patience it requires. Even a misstep can be a valuable learning tool. For those of you who didn’t pass this time, there’ll be another chance, and I’ll work with you as much as I can. Please don’t be discouraged.” From the corner of her eye she saw Anna Lia. She was sitting at the far end of the table. The illusion lasted only a second — it was a Colombian girl named Luz, her light hair as curly as Anna Lia’s. Libbie shivered. “Please don’t be discouraged,” she repeated.
“Friends, the devil owns several hundred acres in southeast Texas. Yessir, he’s the biggest jefe in these-here parts, and if he offers you any property — a pretty riverside home, a vegetable garden, a forbidden fruit orchard — take my word for it, don’t be tempted to buy. No sir. The mortgage is more than you can afford. And believe me, friends, he knows how to ruin a garden.”
Danny switched off the radio and pulled over at a filling station just north of Paley. He bought ten dollars of Regular, a burrito, and a can of Coors, then pushed into the woods. Last night, at the Trail’s End Motel, a woman in the next room had sung, for hours, “Little Red Riding Hood.” Danny hadn’t slept.
The sky looked bad. Boiling clouds. Wind jiggled the pines. He passed a sign that read RATTLESNAKES, FREE, TWO MILES. The Green Frog Café, long abandoned, a sign in its shattered window, WE NEVER CLOSE.
In a grassy clearing he stopped the car, opened his door to stretch his legs, and sat behind the wheel, finishing his burrito. It was cold now. Cottonwood fuzz blew across the field. He tossed the food wrapper into some weeds, wiped his fingers on his pants, then reached into his car pocket. “Icy as a witch’s left tit,” he remembered his father saying as he gripped the hunting rifle all those years ago. Now, the Seecamp chilled Danny’s fingers.
He walked to the clearing’s center, stickery stalks scratching the cuffs of his jeans. Green bugs ticked across his face. They were the size of the aspirin grains his mother stirred into warm water whenever he ran a fever as a child.
He closed his eyes, pulled the trigger. Like a firecracker. His arm jerked with the “ree-coil.” A bitter, powdery smell, like Anna Lia’s apartment the morning the cops let him in.