Rodge was not with him when Chitral came up to her.
It had been years since she’d seen him but it might have been only a few months ago. That’s how little he’d changed. If anything, he looked not youthful but as if age had refined his best features. His skin, once ruddy, was tan, and his white wavy hair had lost some of its coiffed character and now looked faintly roiled, roughed up. Even his black, bushy eyebrows didn’t seem faded or thinned out but culled, less a suggestive Latin caricature. Though still a large man, he seemed sparer, healthier. Dorothy had forgotten how white his teeth were when he smiled. He still had the Cesar Romero good looks but they seemed, against the adjusted colors of his fresh adaptations, somehow more trustworthy.
Of course, Mrs. Bliss thought, I already sold him the car and don’t have to bargain with him now.
“Dorothy,” he addressed her when he spoke, not “Señora” or “My dear Mrs. Bliss.” This seemed appropriate, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss. My testimony helped put him away for a hundred years. That ought to set up at least something of a bond between us.
“I apologize for making you wait,” he said, “but as you may well imagine”—his arm took in the prison yard and its buildings, the cadre of armed guards and their wards, even the small plane just now touching down to the accompaniment of applause and a cheerful, unfeigned approval for Bob Gorham’s perfect three-point landing—“we don’t set our own schedules or march to our own drummer here.”
“That’s all right,” Dorothy said, “I didn’t wait long. Sometimes I have to wait more than forty minutes for a bus. Those schedules aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”
“At least you have a nice day to be outside,” Alcibiades Chitral said.
“Yeah,” said Mrs. Bliss, “by us, too.”
Chitral nodded solemnly. Dorothy solemnly smiled.
“Well,” said Alcibiades.
“Well,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.
Why, he’s as embarrassed as I am, she thought, and felt this small nausea of disappointment. He’d sent a car to pick her up and bring her all this way. He’d written her the most fluent letter she’d ever received. He’d spoken of the genius of the law and said things she barely understood. He wanted to see her, he wrote, and suggested that a visit between them was not out of the question but merely inadvisable. He’d mentioned mysterious roses. So Hector Camerando or no Hector Camerando — after all, Dorothy thought, Chitral was the one in jail for a hundred years and had nothing to fear from a free Camerando, unless the dog track and jai alai were even stronger medicines than actual drugs — she’d supposed he had things to tell her. Long ago, through Manny, if he even ever passed it on, she’d made a promise that, if he ever wanted her to, she’d visit him, so why wouldn’t she assume there were certain things he wanted to get off his chest? Because as God was her witness she’d been having plenty of second thoughts about why she had wanted to come in the first place.
“Hey,” said the guard who’d taken charge of Mrs. Bliss, “look at me horning in on your visit. I’ll just get out of your way.”
“Thanks for looking after her, Bill.”
“No problem, Alcibiades,” he said, and fell in with a group of prisoners just then passing by. In their white shirts, tan slacks, and loafers, they reminded Dorothy of college glee clubs she’d seen on the television. A couple of convicts had clapped their arms around Bob Gorham’s shoulders. He was still wearing his aviator’s cap.
“Hell of a landing there, Bob,” Chitral called out.
“Thanks, pardner,” Bob Gorham said, “glad you could come.”
“You have a couple of letters waiting for you,” Alcibiades said. “I left them on your bunk.”
The prisoners passed on, leaving Chitral and Mrs. Bliss by themselves. It was a little awkward. Then Chitral asked Mrs. Bliss if she’d eaten.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I’m not very hungry.”
“Because there’s a cafeteria.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” Chitral asked. “They do a swell bread and water.”
Mrs. Bliss stared at him. “Look,” she said, “they subpoenaed me. I was subpoenaed.”
“Of course,” Chitral said. “Of course you were, Dorothy.”
“So long as you understand that.”
“Oh, I do.”
“Well,” said Dorothy.
“Well,” said Chitral.
Mrs. Bliss, conceding still more than what she had already conceded, let him in on something. “I have,” she said, lowering her voice even though no one was about, “to go to the washroom.”
“You didn’t go?”
“No.”
“Not since you got here?”
“No.”
“Not since you stopped for coffee?”
“We didn’t stop for coffee.”
“You never pulled into a gas station?”
“No,” she said.
“Not since you left the Towers this morning?”
“I already told you,” Mrs. Ted Bliss said, “I was subpoenaed by the government.”
“Oh,” said Alcibiades Chitral, “you think you were subpoenaed!”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bliss. “There’s a cafeteria? They must have a rest room. I’ll find it myself.”
“No, wait,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have, but she stopped dead in her tracks. They moved about the yard dressed like announcers at a golf tournament, they learned to pilot airplanes on maybe two dollars’ worth of gas, and the guards seemed more like park rangers than policemen, but this was still a federal penitentiary where they could lock men up for a hundred years. There was no telling what such men might do to you when they knew they had nothing to lose. And if she could find the ladies’ on her own that didn’t mean she didn’t need someone to stand just outside the door like a lookout even if she was an old woman because, after all, everybody knew, didn’t they, that rape and perversion had more to do with violence and control than ever they had to do with sex, and if she had to depend on Alcibiades Chitral, a man, she now realized, who evidently still begrudged her the testimony that helped send him into the swamp for another ninety-some-odd years, he was still, or at least had once been, a neighbor, and who else could you turn to in a time of need if not to a neighbor? He would be her Manny from the building in the Everglades, and she stopped dead in her tracks while she waited for him to catch up.
Mrs. Bliss was satisfied that whoever cleaned the place didn’t do a bad job, and if the pervasive smell of Pinesol bounced off the tile like the odors in a high school — the room smelled exactly like the lavatory in Maxine’s old high school back in Chicago — at least the toilet seats were clean, and there was plenty of toilet paper, even extra rolls if it should happen to run out, and Mrs. Bliss had the place to herself. She locked herself into a stall and quite comfortably peed. She even managed to move her bowels, and felt a certain pride in the civilized ways the government used her tax dollars. When she was done she washed up at one of the sinks and stepped outside.
Chitral was talking to an extremely well-groomed prisoner dressed in clean, just-pressed pants, a fresh white shirt, and loafers that practically sparkled. He introduced Mrs. Bliss.
“You’re Mrs. Ted Bliss? Really? I’m pleased to meet you. Al speaks of you often.”
The prisoner moved off.
“You’re sure you don’t want to grab something in the cafeteria? It’s right here,” Chitral said. “It’s a good place to talk.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Bliss, “if I’m not keeping you.”
“No, of course not,” he said, “I’m one of the prison mailmen. I’ve already done my rounds. There’s nothing on my plate until lockup, and that’s not for another seven hours.”