Foley was half listening, looking around but seeing Karen, Karen's picture in the paper, Karen in real life coming out of the trunk saying, "You win, Jack," his favorite picture of her in his mind.
It was snowing now, pretty hard.
"We're coming to it," Buddy said, "there's the fire station."
Now he was frowning, sitting up straight behind the wheel, windshield wipers going, Buddy squinting, trying to see through the snow coming down. He said, "Where's the plant? It use to come all the way out to the street, with a bridge across to the offices, the administration building; it's gone. There's something way over there. Jefferson North. You see the sign? Yeah, way over there, some stacks. It must be the new one. I mean this was a big fucking plant, took up blocks around here, six thousand hourly, and it's gone. You want to see where I lived?"
"That's okay," Foley said.
"We may as well turn around," Buddy said, guided the Olds into a gas station and came out again to go back toward downtown.
"It keeps coming down they'll get the salt trucks out.
The job I had in the old plant, I hooked up transmissions to the engines."
Foley had torn the picture out of the paper, Karen with her shotgun in the black outfit that looked familiar. He had it in the inside pocket of his suitcoat. He was imagining what would happen if he phoned her.
She says hello and he says…
"The engine comes down the line, let's say it's for an automatic. Okay, I take this brace in my left hand-it's hanging from a track-work the hoist button with my right hand, get it in position so the pins in the brace line up with the holes they have to fit into in the transmission, jockey it around."
He'd say his name. Hi, this is Jack Foley, how you doing?
Like that, keep it simple. She'd ask where he was or how he knew she was here. No, she'd say she was surprised, or she'd say something he wouldn't expect. Either way he'd listen to her tone of voice.
"Then you hit the button on the hoist again and swing the transmission over to the line, rock it, get it in position with the engine. You let go of the hoist then and pick up your air gun and run four bolts into the top of the housing-tsung tsung tsung, fire 'em in."
Or go over to the Westin and call her room. She's not there, watch for her to come in the lobby. She had to come back sometime from whatever she was doing here. Unless she was through and she'd already left.
"But let's say you have the transmission on the hoist and the engine has moved past and it's already out of reach. You had to pick the transmission up in your two hands-honest to God, you pick up this fucker weighing close to two hundred pounds-hump it over to the engine and run it on to the shaft."
Foley saw her crossing the lobby, coming toward him. She looks up. She sees him and stops and they stare at each other and it would be up to her if there was such a thing in this kind of situation as taking time to talk, taking a time-out, and he thought of making the sign for it, one hand flat on top of the raised fingers of the other hand, whether it made sense or not, letting it happen.
"While I was working there the one-millionth car rolled off the line, a Chrysler Newport, buy one for forty-one hundred. It sounds like a deal, but that was a lot of dough then."
Foley listened to the wipers whacking back and forth.
"Man, it's coming down," Buddy said.
"You can barely see the RenCen, just the lower part."
"There stores in there, shops?"
"Yeah, different ones."
"I think I'll go over and look around, maybe get a pair of shoes for this weather, some high-tops."
"It's easy to get lost in there. You have to watch or you're walking around in circles without knowing it."
"The hotel's right in the middle, huh?"
"Yeah, the tallest one there. The cocktail lounge I told you about's on top. Revolves around. You can eat up there. Or there're fast-food joints all around inside. You hungry?"
"I may just get a drink."
"I got to call Regina," Buddy said.
"She's not praying for the Poor Souls since you don't hear that much about Purgatory anymore. She's still saying rosary novenas I don't fuck up.
Twenty-seven days petition, what you're saying the beads for, and twenty-seven days thanksgiving, whether you got what you're praying for or not. I call, it means I haven't been arrested. I called her one time on the twenty-seventh day, she goes, "See?" Regina's way of thinking, if I haven't been busted I must not've done any banks. In other words her prayers have been answered and I'm not going to hell.
So, as long as she knows I'm out it gives her something to do. Hey, but who knows? Maybe what she's doing is saving my ass, or I should say my soul. Even though I'm not sure if there's a hell anymore or not. You think there is?"
"Just the one out in Palm Beach County that I know of," Foley said.
"I doubt anybody's saying novenas for me, but I'm sure as hell not going back there."
"You can't be that sure," Buddy said.
"Yeah, well, that's the one thing I've made up my mind about."
"They put a gun on you you'll go back."
"They put a gun on you," Foley said, "you still have a choice, don't you?"
EIGHTEEN
Three in the afternoon, a snowstorm blowing outside, the restaurant on top the hotel was nearly empty, only one waitress, it looked like, on duty. Karen was ready to bet anything the waitress would seat her at a table near the three men in business suits having lunch, and she did: the young executive-looking guys talking away, laughing at something one of them said until Karen walked past, and then silence. Karen glanced over as she sat down next to the outside window wall of glass; for a moment she thought of asking for another table, not so close. But they were finishing with coffee and cognac, or something like it, and she was only going to have one drink.
"Jack Daniel's, please, water on the side." She turned to see her reflection in the glass against an overcast sky, snow swirling, blowing in gusts, seven hundred feet above the city, down there somewhere. She heard one of them say, "Why not," and then to the waitress, "Celeste, do us again, please, and put the young lady's drink on our bill."
Karen remembered her dad reading a book, years ago, called Celeste, the Gold Coast Virgin. She turned to see them raising snifter glasses to her, smiling, pleasant-looking guys thirty-five to forty in dark business suits, two white shirts, the third one blue, as deep blue as his suit. She said, "Thanks anyway," and shook her head.
The waitress drifted back to Karen's table.
"They want to buy you a drink."
"I got that. Tell them I'd rather pay for my own."
"They're okay," the waitress said, getting girl-to-girl on her,
"they're celebrating a business deal."
"I'm not," Karen said.
"But listen, make it a double while you're at it, Celeste. Water on the side."
She watched the three guys looking up at the waitress delivering the message. Now they were looking this way.
Karen gave them a shrug and turned to watch the snow, thinking it was like the snow in a globe you shake and it swirls around, except that here you're in the globe looking out. Ten minutes passed before her drink arrived. She splashed it with water from a small carafe, took a good sip and the one with the shirt as dark as his suit and a pale, rust-colored tie was standing at her table.
He said, "Excuse me."
She liked his tie.
"My associates and I made a bet on what you do for a living." He smiled.
Not his friends or his buddies, his associates.
"And I won. Hi, I'm Philip."
Not Phil, Philip. Karen said, "If it's okay with you, Philip, I'd like to just have a quiet drink and leave. Okay?"