“You staying at Guido’s?”
“No. Tell you what. I’ll call you. Now, go be helpful.”
“Bye, Mom. Say hi to Mike for me.”
Smart-ass kids can complicate your life.
On my way out to the garage, I stopped in the kitchen to pick up the rest of Lyle’s carefully boxed muffins. I had plans for them.
The CD system in Mike’s Blazer was truly state-of-the-art. I put k.d. lang’s “Big Boned Woman” on repeat, and had the tricky chorus nearly down pat by the time I got through the snarl of freeway traffic around Dodger Stadium. By L.A. standards it wasn’t a big snarl, so I made it to Lincoln Heights in fair time.
On a Sunday morning, one would expect to find most nuns on their knees counting rosary beads. I found Agnes Peter on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.
“We don’t cook on Sundays,” she said, stretching the kinks out of her legs. “It’s the only day the floor can dry before it gets all tracked up again. Did you wipe your feet?”
She led me out to the small backyard, where she dumped her mop bucket under a desiccated fruit tree.
“I figured you would be back as soon as you heard about our girl,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. “What have you learned?”
“Quite a lot, actually. I just don’t know how it all hangs together yet. Her name was Hillary. Hillary Ramsdale. I thought you’d want to know that.”
“Hillary. The name suited her.” She shielded her eyes against the bright sun behind me. “What’s the rest? I know you didn’t drive all the way over on Sunday morning just to tell me her name.”
“I want to check in on Sly,” I said. “I thought you might like to ride along.”
She gave me a wise glance. “And?”
“I’ll be going home soon. He needs a friend in town, Pete. Someone who will be a constant for him.”
“Where is his family?”
I shook my head. “From what he told his caseworker, even if we could find his family, Sly is better off without them.” Pete leaned her mop against the back wall. “Okay. I’ll go. The little bugger kind of grew on me. Like a wart on my butt.”
“You have a big heart, Pete.”
“And absolutely no sense. Lead on, before I change my mind.”
We stopped at a market for some juice to go with the muffins. I also grabbed a bunch of bananas, a pack of bubble gum, a small playground ball, a balsa glider kit, some baseball cards, and a couple of comic books. The kid was, after all, nine years old.
We found Sly sitting alone on a bench in a corner of the MacLaren Hall playground, hugging his bundle of belongings to his chest. He seemed drawn into himself, oblivious to the children running around him. He brightened when he saw us. Or when he saw the big brown grocery bag.
“How’s it hanging, Sly?” I asked. “You remember Sister Agnes Peter.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just came to see how you’re doing.”
Pete was close beside me. “This looks like a nice place, Sly. How’s the food?”
“Food?” Sly made a face. “You mean shit, don’t you?”
Shit or not, he had been able to choke down some of it. His face had filled out considerably since the first time I had seen him. His stomach looked rounder, too.
I sat down on the bench beside him and watched a group of younger kids playing foursquare. “It’s warm today.”
He turned to me. “That faggot cop get the guy in the ‘vette?”
“Not yet,” I said. He hadn’t said “fuck” once since we had been there. Something was happening.
“What’s in that bag?” he asked.
“A few things you might need,” I said.
He reached for the bag, looked through its contents, rolled the top closed, then set it between his feet.
“Anything else I can get you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m pretty well set.”
Pete touched his shoulder. “I’ve never been here before. Feel like giving me a tour?”
He looked away. But he gathered his things and stood up. “Maggie,” Pete said, “I can get a ride home.”
That was the second time she had dismissed me. And the second time I obeyed her. I stood up beside the small boy. “I’ll see you, Sly,” I said.
He glanced at me and shrugged his thin shoulders. “Later.”
Sly and Pete began walking across the lawn. I watched them for a moment, silently blessing her for the generosity of her spirit. Just as I was turning away to leave, Sly broke away from Pete and came tearing back toward me.
“Hey, camera lady,” he panted.
“What is it?” I said, stooping to his eye level.
He held out to me his ragged bundle of stuff.
“Look after this, will you?” he asked. “Some of these assholes in here keep trying to take it off me. Just give it back when I get outta here, okay?”
“I promise. I’ll take good care of it.”
He aimed a grubby finger at my face. “Don’t open it.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.” I clutched the bundle against my chest. It felt softer than I had expected, and weighed almost nothing. There wasn’t much substance to the sum of Sly’s stuff.
“See ya,” he said, and ran back to Pete.
I carried the bundle back to Mike’s Blazer. I started to toss it into the rear deck. When the import of what I had been entrusted with hit me, I carried it up front and buckled it into the passenger seat beside me. Sly took the keeping of his stuff with deadly seriousness. I thought it was incumbent upon me to do the same.
CHAPTER 8
“You look different, Maggie.” The intensity of Guido’s gaze made me squirm like a prospective in-law. “What have you done to yourself?”
“Not a thing.” I handed him the videotape as I walked past him out of the bright, eucalyptus-scented day and into the dark cool of his living room. Guido still wore his tennis whites.
“There is something different.” He followed me in and shut the door. “Your hair? You cut your hair.”
“Nope. I got a good night’s sleep. Maybe that’s it.” I continued through the house with him to the studio and darkroom he had built onto the back.
“If it’s okay with you,” I said, “I’ll go ahead and run a dub.” “Go ahead. I’ll get the camera set up.”
Making a copy of the tape took no time at all. When it had run, I rewound the original, took the dub out of the recorder, and was sticking a label on it when I noticed that Guido hadn’t made much progress with his tripod and 35mm camera. He kept watching me until I felt intensely uncomfortable.
“Knock it off, Guido,” I warned.
“You lost some weight,” he said.
“Since you saw me Thursday? Not likely.” To speed things along, I took the camera from him and loaded it with black-and-white Plus-X pan film. As I screwed it onto the tripod, I said, “Maybe the difference is with you. Did you clean your glasses? Smoke something funny or put something up your nose?”
He crossed his arms over his chest like an aged professor, and studied me through narrowed eyes. “No. It’s you. But I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Will you stop?” I pushed his shoulder hard enough so that he had to uncross his arms to keep from falling over. “Can we just get this finished? I want to drive down to Long Beach today and I have to be back in the Valley for dinner at six. So could we cut the shit, my friend, and get to work? And nothing about me is any different.”
“Whatever you say.”
He dutifully bent to the task at hand. As I had told Mike, Guido is a master. If there is a manipulation that can be made with raw film or videotape, Guido can do it. He is fun to work with, and I would have enjoyed this little project thoroughly, except that he kept watching me.
A few hours later, we had a work table covered with eight-by-ten glossies, all different angles of Pisces’ face.
Stills made from videotape always have streaks and fuzzy edges. Considering that we had been filming at night using available light, Guido had wrought several small miracles of quality and clarity. We selected the four prints that showed the girl’s most typical expressions. These I put into a stiff mailing envelope and stowed in my bag.