“Suppose it is a setup?” he asked then. “Hey, Arturo, suppose it is. So what?”
He lobbed the Stretch Armstrong as the boy straightened back up out of the box — straightened up looking at Kit differently. The toy caught the kid in the chest.
“Suppose we say you’re right?” Kit asked. “The doctor and your Mom are watching, and myself I owe your Mom a favor.”
Grinning, Arturo grabbed up the Stretch Armstrong and put his back into a grunting return throw.
“Suppose you’re right?” Kit went on, snatching the toy in midair. “So what, my man? So what? They’re there, and we’re here. We can still have fun.”
With that they were into a game of catch with the cartoon strongman. Corinna’s boy still put everything he had into each throw, his red curls flaring and shivering (Kit imagined the doctor’s note: signs of aggression), but he was laughing along with what Kit was saying. He was yelping, agreeing in his kid’s way: yes they could still have fun, still play and tussle and talk, even if the big mirror on the wall made it look like a sham.
“Yeah, I am right!” Arturo shouted, his tongue poking through his grin.
“Yeah, and so what?” Kit made another toss.
“So what, right! Right, Mister!”
“I’m not a mister!” Kit shouted. Quickly he pulled his suit-jacket up over his head, hooking it against his hairline as he tucked his chin into his shirt collar. He adjusted the set of his sleeves and locked his elbows against his sides, so his arms poked up shrunken and misshapen.
“I’mm the Monn-sterr!” he said.
Hadn’t Kit known he’d be harder to handle than the Rucky-rats? The nine-year-old proved no easy prey, impossible to corner, and with the red plastic bat in his hands Arturo gave as good as he got. The chairs went over. One of the jigsaw puzzles spilled off the shelf. Yet as Kit galumphed around after the boy, as he enjoyed the blood rush of his first exercise in days, he knew what he was doing. After moment or two he thought of Monsod, of Junior’s sleepy glare across the stinking seepage. But even that didn’t faze him. Kit knew what he was doing, and what he wasn’t. When Arturo at last landed a blow on Kit’s bruised temple — when that singing pulsing pain in the shape of his stitches shot through him — all Kit had to do was fall on his butt, let the suit-coat slip off his head, and say, “Ouch.” Only that, and Arturo dropped his bat and looked terrified.
“I’m afraid that’s it, Arturo,” Kit said, wincing. “The Monster’s got to quit for today.”
“Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m so-so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” When Kit closed his eyes, the pattern of his stitches flickered red before him.
“Mister, really, I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay, Arturo. We were just playing.”
The boy came a step closer. “What happened to you anyway?”
*
No, this wasn’t Monsod. Kit managed a chuckle, he made an explanation. He even let Arturo touch the sutures. Soon he and the child were finishing up their half-hour over the spilled jigsaw puzzle. The picture in the puzzle was a natural for them, a fists-up portrait of the Incredible Hulk. Kit saw no reason they couldn’t put it together on the floor, so long as Arturo first helped pick up the chairs and get the toys back in the box. Then as they sorted through the bright puzzle pieces, for the second time in three jam-packed days Kit caught the whiff of kid-sweat. The odor struck him, just now, as somehow herbal.
Their conversation — loosened up, quieted down — came round to Kit’s relationship with the boy’s mom. Corinna had told Arturo that Kit was a good boss, yeah really a good boss, but he liked another woman in the office better. “My Mom says she’s pretty, this other woman.”
“Pretty?” Kit made sure the boy saw his smile. “Arturo, the last thing that woman would like to be called is pretty.”
“Yeah, right. I heard she’s a punk rocker. But my Mom said that — that you kind of like that.”
“Oh I see. Men like me, they like women like her.”
“Right. Punk rockers, you know. Strange women.”
“Well I’m here with your Mom today, aren’t I? Think about it. I’m not gallivanting around with any strange women today.”
The boy fell silent awhile. He was working on the Hulk’s face, an American Indian face really, with strong cheekbones and a cliff-like lower lip.
“My Mom’s not pretty,” Arturo said then.
Kit denied it. He sat up from the puzzle, the subject deserved a pause, but the son repeated himself. “She might be pretty in the Dom Rep where she’s from. But in America she’s not pretty.”
“Aw, Arturo. Anybody can see what an effort she makes. Your Mom’s a woman who really cares about appearances.”
“Yeah right. Appearances.” Frowning, the boy put in the superhero’s black eye. “But when you look at my Mom you never see a movie star.”
“Well, your Mom’s not trying to be a movie star.”
“Someone really pretty, right?” Arturo turned his small, sober face towards Kit. “When you see them you think of a movie star. Maybe sometimes you think of somebody on TV, but that’s the same thing.”
Kit felt so close to the boy, so wrenched open by these last jam-packed days, he might already have put together what the kid was thinking. It had to do with the Mom unattached as far back as her son could remember, plus the pop-sexy decade the kid had grown up with. “Arturo,” Kit tried, “nobody ever marries someone because they look like a movie star.”
He’d been half-afraid the boy would start sneering again. But Arturo looked pensive, trying to understand.
“And kids,” Kit went on, “as for kids, well. I never met a kid yet who looked like a movie star.”
Now there was a sneer Kit could live with. A sneer that was nine-tenths smile. Kit grinned back, he even patted the boy’s shoulder, and after a moment he offered another good thought or two. “Your mother’s just fine, Arturo. There’ll be somebody for her, for both of you.” Kit strained to sound real, to make what he was saying come across as better than empty promises, and in so doing he recalled, for what felt like the first time in hours, precisely what had brought him here. The deal with Corinna. The unspoken test.
“Now myself—” he chuckled, straining to come across—“I’m taken, you know. I have a wife.”
The doctor knocked twice, careful to get an invitation before he put his face in. And Halsey kept his tone neutral. Only once did his voice possibly betray something, a hint of a joke when he said, Looks like you two had a nice quiet time in here. Kit wouldn’t blame Arturo if he sneered at that. But in fact Kit wasn’t paying much attention to the man. Rather it had come home to him again how unlike Monsod this was. No banging, no bellowing every time somebody opened a door. Here, instead, it felt like the last minutes before his wedding. Then too he’d sat alone in a small room with a boy, an unmarried friend from his hunting days, until a soft-spoken older gentleman came in and said that it was time.
Here too there were women in tears. Corinna sidled in behind the doctor, pinching the corners of her purse, and in the moment before Arturo went skipping into her arms, Kit could see that the mother had been crying. He could see that and a lot more, a look as complicated as the one she’d shown him back in Halsey’s office, before he’d gone off with her son. Pleading, angry, at a loss — and still willing to try.
Chapter 8
MUSEO OF THE SAINTS
A Guide for Tourists.