“My, what an imagination you have, Walter. You even know how I step on a cigarette.”
“The same way you did in Billy’s. The same exotic cigarette. The same crushed butt. What made you think you could mislead me?”
Chita Crystal said nothing.
“You know what made me sure it was you? You know how I knew it was you, how I knew from the minute I found Harry’s body? Do you?” Still she was silent. “Answer me, goddamnit!”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Harry was shot so close there were powder burns on his shirt and an indentation larger than the bullet itself. An indentation the size of the barrel. You hugged him. You brought him close to you, up tight. And you reached up, pushed a little single-shot pistol, no bigger than a cigarette lighter, against his heart and pulled the trigger.” Walter had to catch his breath now. He took another, longer, bigger swallow of his drink. Conchita Crystal, she did that which was most natural to her, that which she had been doing since she was fifteen.
“I know you want this,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse, leaving it tucked into her jeans, riding on her hips, low beneath her waist. With the slick ease of a poisonous snake, her hands slid the open blouse around behind her, showing him her breasts, the silky smooth curve of her belly, and as the open blouse fell from her shoulders, as she pulled each arm through the sleeves, she was bare from the waist up. “It’s all yours, Walter. Touch it. Go on, touch it. It’s all yours-today, tomorrow, forever. You and me.” She could see what she was doing to him. How many men have reacted the same way? How many over thirty years? Who could resist? Facil. She kept her eyes on his, smiled the smile that always got her what she wanted, and with a twist of her fingers, unsnapped the top of her jeans and began slowly pulling its zipper open. She no longer had to say it-not in English-not in Spanish. Walter Sherman had what she wanted and she had what he wanted. “Walter,” she said, walking up to him, right up to him, taking one hand and putting it on his neck, running it across his shoulders, up into his long hair, pulling him closer with the other arm, that hand touching his hips and moving over them, around behind, into the small of his back. “Walter.” She squeezed against him and he held her tight, his own hand moving down her back as she pushed hard against him. She knew when things were going her way. She felt it. To Walter, she felt so warm, smelled so wonderful. She never stopped looking him in the eye, and then she drew his lips to hers and kissed him. Her tongue fired into his mouth. Her eyes shut. His didn’t. But he held her close, as close as he could.
“Did Devereaux ever tell you,” he whispered, “about Leonard Martin? Did he ever mention the name?”
“No,” she answered.
“He should have.”
Walter shot Conchita Crystal in the heart. The tiny pistol he pushed against her smooth warm brown breast had only a single shot. The force of the small caliber shell was not enough to even produce an exit wound. If she knew what happened at all, it could only have been for a fraction of a second. He let go and she slumped to the floor, dead.
THE ENDING
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone.
Thursday is a good day to die.
For Jews, and others with similar beliefs about the nature of death and the behavior required of survivors, you can have a funeral before the weekend. If your faith dictates otherwise, requiring one or more time-consuming ceremonial activities, or if you have no religion at all to guide you, and in its place find it desirable to have the deceased shown off, available for public viewing, Thursday can still be good. The departed, resplendent in mortuary makeup and laid out in the comfort of a silky, satin-finished, cushioned box, can be viewed Friday and Saturday, then buried on Sunday. Some people want nothing more than the simple, respectful display of a closed coffin. For them, Thursday is also a good day to die. A Saturday funeral can disrupt a weekend, and most feel a Sunday funeral is better. Neither, however, causes a single day of missed work. But best of all is dead on Thursday, buried on Friday. One day off and nobody’s weekend plans get ruined.
There are the few times when, even if dead on Thursday, a Monday funeral is scheduled. When there are so many mourners and friends, when some come from far away, they will have all day Saturday and Sunday to pay their respects. They can show up for the funeral on Monday and maybe, if it’s early enough, not miss a full day of work. Dying on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is the worst. That can, and often does, inconvenience many.
“It’s a thoughtful man who dies on a Thursday.” This was the wisdom Ike imparted to Walter and Billy, a few years ago, after attending just such an inconvenient, midweek funeral for an older cousin on his wife’s side. He had arrived at Billy’s promptly at lunchtime that day, straight from the cemetery, still dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, and immediately ordered his usual. “Thursday is a good day to die,” he said.
And now, on this day, as Walter straightened his own tie and readied himself for a moment he wished had never come, he recalled Ike’s pithy pronouncement that day. True to his own advice, Ike died on a Thursday.
He was home alone when his aged heart stopped beating. It was late in the afternoon, an August day so hot Ike had to leave his table in Billy’s, next to the sidewalk, across from the square. “I’ll be back later,” he said. “Maybe. Got to cool down some.” Grandson Roosevelt had come to get the old man. He knew it was too hot for anyone to be sitting all day in the sun. Billy told Ike, so often in recent years it was like complaining about the man’s smoking, to move inside. He practically begged him. “Sit over here,” Billy said, pointing to a table in the shade near a fan. “Or sit next to Walter, if you still have the strength to climb up on a barstool without breaking your balls. Just get out of the sun, Ike.”
“No,” the old man said. “This, right here, is my table. Been so a long time. I ain’t moving. Besides, you just gonna yell at me when the smoke gets all over you. You know that.” To punctuate his decision, Ike reached into his shirt pocket and took out a crooked ugly butt, stuck it in his mouth and struck a big, wooden match. It looked like his whole head was about to catch fire.
“When are you going to quit that shit?” Billy asked.
“Never,” replied Ike, coughing. After a second, full-throated, hacking cough, he said, “Walter-you hear me?”
“I do,” answered Walter, folding his copy of the day’s New York Times and putting it down on the bar in front of his drink. “I hear you.”
“Well, I want you boys to remember something.” Ike leaned in, toward them, both of his wrinkled, black hands resting on the tabletop. When he felt he had gathered their undivided attention, he said, “When I die…”
“Ah, come on, Ike!” growled Billy, dismissing him with a wave of his bar towel.
“No, no,” the old man went on. “You listen to me. This here’s important. I want one of you to remember this. Don’t let them bury me without a smoke or two and a couple of matches. I’m expecting to make it to Heaven-sure as sweet Jesus will have me-and I ain’t positive they got any there.” Then he showed his friends that great, yellow-toothed smile that dominated his countenance for nearly ninety years.