“I am,” Aragon said. “And indications are that you’ll need one.”
“The stingray bit, huh? Okay. I found them on the beach where some guy had been practicing spearfishing and I thought I could resuscitate them by throwing them in the pool. It was my good deed for the week—”
“Bad choice of good deed, Frederic. They didn’t resuscitate.”
“It wasn’t my fault. My intentions were pure as snow.”
“Have you ever seen snow?”
“No.”
“Sometimes it’s pretty dirty.”
“Well, it starts out clean.” Frederic gazed wistfully at the blank television screen as though hoping the monsters would reappear and come charging out to be on his side. “A good lawyer is supposed to trust his client.”
“A good client is supposed to tell his lawyer the truth.”
“Wheezing Jesus, it was only a joke. I wanted to see the expression on Henderson’s face when he walked in the front door and saw creepy crawly things on the bottom of the pool. How was I to know he was going to overreact? Nobody has a sense of humor around this place. When I get old enough I plan to split like Grady, maybe with a chick the way he did, maybe not. Probably not. The only chicks I know are my sister Caroline’s friends and they’re all fat and hate me.”
“I talked to Grady yesterday.”
Frederic’s face, under the sun scars and freckles and flea-bite scabs, turned a mottled pink. “Grady? Honest, no kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Where is he?”
“He was in Mexico when I saw him.”
“Isn’t he coming home?”
“I don’t think so. Not for a while anyway.”
“He’s on the lam, I bet. I bet the Federales are after him, or the Mexican Mafia. I bet—”
“You’d lose,” Aragon said. “Nobody’s after him. He’s running because that’s the way he is. He gets into things and then wants out.”
“What kind of things?”
“Relationships.”
The boy took a deep breath and held it, preparing himself for a blow. “Relationships like him and me?”
“No, not like him and you. More complicated ones. You — well, he’s still your friend.”
“How do you know?”
“He asked after you.”
“What were his exact words?”
Aragon made some tactful changes in Grady’s exact words. “He said, ‘How’s my weird little pal Frederic?’”
Frederic let out his breath and the color of his face gradually returned to normal. “Yeah, that sounds like Grady, all right. Did he send me any message?”
“Just to stay out of trouble.”
“Man, has he got a lot of nerve. Man oh man, look who’s talking about trouble. Hey, you know what I’m going to tell Bingo Firenze? I’m going to tell him my best friend is tooling around Mexico with the Federales after him. Bingo will curl up and blow away.”
“May I add good riddance.”
“Oh, Bingo’s not so bad,” said the premature convert to the metric system, “for a kid.”
It was arranged, via the pay phone in the corridor, that one of Frederic’s brothers would come and take him home. Then Frederic settled down to wait under a palm tree, lying on top of his sleeping bag with the television set balanced on his stomach. The monsters returned and took over the world and everybody lived happily ever after.
Aragon went back to his car. Ellen was in the driver’s seat talking to Miranda Shaw. When Ellen saw him approaching she got out and came to meet him. She looked cool but the ring of club keys in her hand was clanking a little too vigorously.
“Mrs. Shaw is going to stay with me temporarily until other arrangements can be made.” There was a distinct accent on the words temporarily and other. “Wait till I lock up, and you can follow me to my apartment.”
“Thanks, Miss Brewster.”
“This is not going to be a long visit. I hope I’ve made that clear.”
“Absolutely. As soon as the office opens in the morning I’ll try to get her some emergency funds from my boss. Then you can whisk her to a motel or something.”
“You can whisk her to a motel or something. I’m going to be working and I don’t get whisking breaks... I presume she has luggage.”
“A couple of suitcases.” He didn’t mention that together they were heavy enough to contain Grady’s dismembered torso.
While Miranda showered, Ellen prepared a light meal of omelet and green salad. Afterward the two women sat at the kitchen table drinking tea. The room which Ellen had always thought of as neat and compact now seemed cluttered and much too small and intimate to be shared with a stranger.
If Miranda felt any similar tension, she didn’t show it. She did most of the talking, mixing past and present in her soft high-pitched voice. She spoke of her gratitude to Ellen for her kindness, and to Aragon for his — “Such a nice young man but rather odd because one can’t tell for sure what he’s thinking” — and of the clinic in Pasoloma, with its tethered goats, pregnant and reproachful. She told of the happy times in her childhood when she was allowed to have supper in the kitchen with the cook — “Cook and I drinking tea just like this and Cook would read our fortunes in the tea leaves, the larger leaves indicating a trip, the specks that meant money and the little twigs that were tall dark strangers who always turned out to be the postman or the plumber or Cook’s boyfriend, who was short and fat.”
She talked of her first meeting with Grady. “You introduced us, Ellen. Do you remember? It was in the office. I told him there was a child screaming and asked him if he could do anything about it. And he said probably not. That day is so vivid in my mind I could repeat every word, describe every gesture and expression. Grady looked at me very seriously but in a sort of questioning way. You know?”
“Yes.” Ellen knew. Grady looked at every woman the same way and it was always the same question and he didn’t wait around very long for an answer.
“I keep thinking of him coming back to the clinic — perhaps now, this very minute — and finding me gone and being terribly sorry. Perhaps I should have stayed and waited for him. After all, he was just as upset as I was by the news Mr. Aragon brought us. Once the first shock of it is over he’ll see that nothing has changed between us, we can still get married and be happy together.”
“I didn’t realize you were intending to be married.”
“Of course. Of course we were, Ellen. Otherwise I would never have — I mean, I’m not a slut. Grady’s the only man I’ve ever been intimate with except Neville, and that was different. Neville mostly liked to look at me and watch me brush my hair and things like that. He almost never touched me. Grady was different.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“Oh, I wish Cook were here to read the tea leaves. All of a sudden I feel so hopeful, yes, and determined, too, as if I can make everything work out for Grady and me to be together again. I’ll start by being realistic. Money is important to him. All right, I’ll get some. A lot, I’ll get a lot of money and buy him back.”
“You’re tired. Don’t think about it now.”
“But I must begin planning right away, right here.” She surveyed the room as though she were memorizing every detail of it: the bird prints on the wall, the porcelain kettle on the stove, the bread box and matching canister set on the counter, the bouquet of yellow plastic flowers and the ceramic owl cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. She said solemnly, “I will never forget this room and sitting here like this with you, planning a whole new future for myself. Will you ever forget it, Ellen?”
“No,” Ellen said. “Probably not.”