“I drink now sometime, socially.”
“You don’t have e-mail.”
“No, so we wrote letters to correspond, before he came to Cali, where I lived. They have parties for the men who come and we get — you know, we dress up for it.”
“Look each other over.”
“Yes, is how I met Mr. Zimmer in person.”
“Is that what you called him?”
“I didn’t call him anything.”
“Mrs. Zimmer,” the redheaded woman said. “How would you like to be Mrs. Mahmood?”
“I wouldn’t think that was your name.”
She was looking at the printout again. “You’re virtuous, sensitive, hardworking, optimistic. Looking for a man who’s a kind, loving person with a good job. Was that Mr. Zimmer?”
“He was OK except when he drank too much. I had to be careful what I said or it would ’cause him to hit me. He was strong, too, for a guy his age. He was fifty-eight.”
“When you married?”
“When he died.”
“I believe Viviana said he was killed?” The woman sounding like she was trying to recall whatever it was Viviana had told her. “An accident on the job?”
Lourdes believed the woman already knew about it, but said, “He was disappeared for a few days until they find his mix truck out by Hialeah, a pile of concrete by it but no reason for the truck to be here since there’s no job he was pouring. So the police have the concrete broken open and find Mr. Zimmer.”
“Murdered,” the redheaded woman said.
“They believe so, yes, his hands tied behind him.”
“The police talk to you?”
“Of course. He was my husband.”
“I mean did they think you had anything to do with it.”
She knew. Lourdes was sure of it.
“There was a suspicion that friends of mine here from Colombia could be the ones did it. Someone who was their enemy told this to the police.”
“It have anything to do with drugs?”
The woman seeing all Colombians as drug dealers.
“My husband drove a cement truck.”
“But why would anyone want to kill him?”
“Who knows?” Lourdes said. “This person who finked, he told the police I got the Colombian guys to do it because my husband was always beating me. One time he hit me so hard,” Lourdes said, touching the strap of her blue sundress that was faded almost white from washing, “it separated my shoulder, the bones in here, so I couldn’t work.”
“Did you tell the Colombian guys he was beating you?”
“Everyone knew. Sometime Mr. Zimmer was brutal to me in public, when he was drinking.”
“So maybe the Colombian guys did do it.” The woman sounding like she wanted to believe it.
“I don’t know,” Lourdes said, and waited to see if this was the end of it. Her gaze moved out to the sunlight, to the water in the swimming pool lying still, and beyond to red bougainvillea growing against white walls. Gardeners were weeding and trimming, three of them Lourdes thought at first were Latino. No, the color of their skin was different. She said, “Those men...”
“Pakistanis,” Mrs. Mahmood said.
“They don’t seem to work too hard,” Lourdes said. “I always have a garden at home, grow things to eat. Here, when I was married, I worked for Miss Olympia. She call her service Cleaning with Biblical Integrity. I wasn’t sure what it means, but she would say things to us from the Holy Bible. We cleaned offices in buildings in Miami. What I do here Viviana said would be different, personal to you. See to your things, keep your clothes nice?”
Straighten her dresser drawers. Clean her jewelry. Mrs. Mahmood said she kicked her shoes off in the closet, so Lourdes would see they were paired and hung in the shoe racks. Check to see what needed to be dry-cleaned. Lourdes waited as the woman stopped to think of other tasks. See to her makeup drawers in the bathroom. Lourdes would live here, have Sundays off, a half day during the week. Technically she would be an employee of Dr. Mahmood’s.
Oh? Lourdes wasn’t sure what that meant. Before she could ask, Mrs. Mahmood wanted to know if she was a naturalized citizen. Lourdes told her she was a permanent resident, but now had to get the papers to become a citizen.
“I say who I work for I put Dr. Wasim Mahmood?”
The redheaded wife said, “It’s easier that way. You know, to handle what’s taken out. But I’ll see that you clear at least three-fifty a week.”
Lourdes said that was very generous. “But will I be doing things also for Dr. Mahmood?”
The redheaded woman smoking her cigarette said, “What did Viviana tell you about him?”
“She say only that he didn’t speak to her much.”
“Viviana’s a size twelve. Woz likes them young and as lean as snakes. How much do you weigh?”
“Less than one hundred twenty-five pounds.”
“But not much — you may be safe. You cook?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I mean for yourself. We go out or order in from restaurants. I won’t go near that fucking stove and Woz knows it.”
Lourdes said, “Wos?”
“Wasim. He thinks it’s because I don’t know how to cook, which I don’t, really, but that’s not the reason. The two regular maids are Filipina and speak English. In fact, they have less of an accent than you. They won’t give you any trouble, they look at the ground when they talk to anyone. And they leave at four, thank God. Woz always swims nude — don’t ask me why, it might be a Muslim thing — so if they see him in the pool they hide in the laundry room. Or if I put on some southern hip-hop and they happen to walk in while I’m bouncing to Dirty South doing my aerobics, they run for the laundry room.” She said without a pause, “What did Viviana say about me?”
“Oh, how nice you are, what a pleasure to work here.”
“Come on — I know she told you I was a stripper.”
“She say you were a dancer before, yes.”
“I started out in a dump on Federal Highway, got discovered and jumped to Miami Gold on Biscayne, valet parking. I was one of the very first, outside of black chicks, to do southern hip-hop, and I mean Dirty South raw and uncut, while the other girls are doing Limp Bizkit, even some old Bob Seeger and Bad Company — and that’s OK, whatever works for you. But in the meantime I’m making more doing laptops and private gigs than any girl at the Gold and I’m twenty-seven at the time, older than any of them. Woz would come in with his buddies, all suits and ties, trying hard not to look Third World. The first time he waved a fifty at me I gave him some close-up tribal strip-hop. I said, ‘Doctor, you can see better if you put your eyeballs back in your head.’ He loved that kind of talk. About the fourth visit I gave him what’s known as the million-dollar hand job and became Mrs. Mahmood.”
She told this sitting back, relaxed, smoking her Virginia Slim cigarette, Lourdes nodding, wondering at times what she was talking about, Lourdes saying “I see” in a pleasant voice when the woman paused.
Now she was saying, “His first wife stayed in Pakistan while he was here in med school. Right after he finished his residency and opened his practice, she died.” The woman said, “Let’s see... You won’t have to wear a uniform unless Woz wants you to serve drinks. Once in a while he has some of his ragtop buddies over for cocktails. Now you see these guys in their Nehru outfits and hear them chattering away in Urdu. I walk in, ‘Ah, Mrs. Mahmood,’ in that semi-British singsongy way they speak, ‘what a lovely sight you are to my eyes this evening.’ Wondering if I’m the same chick he used to watch strip.”