Foy walked over to the pool gate and leaned against the fence.
“Well, say hello or something,” Wanda said, looking up at him. When Foy didn’t answer, she added, “I noticed you today. You’re the singer.”
He said, “My name is Foy Laneer, and I wondered if we are related.”
Wanda squinted and thought. They compared notes for several minutes until it was decided they weren’t kin. Wanda looked angelic standing in the turquoise light of the pool. Foy looked at her body in the swimming suit, the image rippling in the water, and he couldn’t believe that he had seen her do the things she had done. Now she possessed the same whole-someness he’d seen in perky young gymnasts, the ones interviewed on “Wide World of Sports.”
Foy heard footsteps and turned. A gray-haired man who looked like he was made from slabs of sunburned beef slowly walked to the pool gate.
“Wanda, finish your laps,” the man said. “I’ve got to vacuum the pool.”
“All right,” Wanda said and then looked at Foy. “That’s my brother-in-law, Kit. This is his Red Rooster.”
Foy watched the man walk away and thought he should clear out. Kit would probably come back with guard dogs who were fed on raw meat and gunpowder.
“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Wanda,” Foy said. “I really liked the music you played today.”
Wanda smiled and began singing the song, and Foy joined in. While they sang, separated by a fence and ten feet of cement, Foy ran a brief home movie in his head of Wanda sitting in his lap, the two of them riding a little train through the Disneyland landscape of dinosaurs.
When they finished the song, Wanda climbed out of the pool and stood there dripping on the cement. Foy looked around for something that she could dry herself with. At that moment, he couldn’t bear the sight of her standing there so wet.
“How come it doesn’t hurt you to stick yourself with needles?” Foy asked.
Wanda shrugged. “It’s like a gift. When I was nine years old, my daddy came back from Tucson and in the back of his pickup was this piece of cactus he lopped off in the desert. I planted it in a clay pot and put it on my windowsill.”
A wasp flew by her head and she brushed it away. “One night, I had this bad dream. There was a big eye staring at me from the middle of the cactus.”
She walked toward Foy and he opened the gate for her. She looked him in the eye and the water kept dripping off her. Foy tried to smile and looked around because he thought he heard dogs coming.
“In the morning,” she continued, “a flower had bloomed on the cactus. I grabbed the pot and ran to show my daddy. I tripped and fell face first onto the cactus. It didn’t hurt. That’s when I knew I was gifted.”
Then Wanda stuck her fingers under the material around her hips. “Do you like my bathing suit? This is my one special treat. Every year I get the most expensive bathing suit in the catalog. You wouldn’t think a little piece of cloth would cost three weeks’ salary, would you?”
Foy shook his head as Wanda danced past him, whipping drops of water from her hair across his face. She ran up the steps to her room and left the door open. Several seconds later, he saw her two hands extend out of the doorway and squeeze out the bathing suit in the walkway. He looked at the wet footprints on the stairs and followed them up toward the now empty doorway.
On Tuesday morning, Mrs. Rhine showed up at his office door, the four-pawed monster standing beside her.
“Where have you been?” she yelled. “I’ve been calling you for days and days.”
Foy shrugged. “I had business. I followed your husband on Thursday. All he did was watch the girlie show and drive away.”
Mrs. Rhine and the dog plowed into Foy’s office. Foy left the door standing open and walked to the middle of the room.
“You take me out there,” Mrs. Rhine screamed. “I’ll fix her! She’s hexed my husband. She won’t sin anymore. No, no, no!”
He pointed at Mrs. Rhine and said, “There’s nothing going on between the dancer and your husband.”
Mrs. Rhine walked up to him and shook his shoulders, her belly bumping his. It felt like a hard mattress. “Don’t you tell me that,” she said. “I know what kind of man my husband is. You take me out there.”
“Stop it,” Foy said, grabbing wrists. Today her hands were covered with green Magic Marker ink. He looked over his shoulder to see if the dog was going to attack. The dog was staring transfixed at a mounted steelhead hanging on the wall.
Mrs. Rhine pulled away from Foy, with tears streaming down her face. “You don’t understand. He made me do those things and my family found out and my church found out and now he’s all I have left.”
Foy felt bad for her, but in a detached way — as if she was a character on some TV show. Mrs. Rhine ran out the door.
“Hey, take the dog,” Foy yelled. He grabbed the Great Dane’s collar. The heavy dog was passive as it was dragged out the door and down the hallway to the front of the building. Foy saw Mrs. Rhine starting up her station wagon. The dog suddenly jerked its head and Foy lost his balance, falling to his knees. The Great Dane stared down at him and Foy felt the wet grass beneath his knees, the dog’s face growing closer and closer until Foy passed into the dog’s skull and through it. He was a dog, then a man again, and the next thing he saw was the Great Dane running away behind the Piggly Wiggly across the street.
Foy heard Mrs. Rhine drive away. He walked back to his office, locked it, and went to his car. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings,” Foy muttered as he drove to the dogfood company.
As he turned the corner, Rocky Jay passed him going in the opposite direction. Mrs. Rhine’s station wagon followed several cars behind, a dozen dogs sticking their heads out of the windows. Foy made a sharp U-turn and followed.
Mrs. Rhine did an excellent job of tailing Rocky Jay. She stayed three car lengths behind, and if Rocky Jay knew his wife was following him, he wasn’t letting on.
There was road construction on the way to Tornado County, and Foy lost track of them. When he finally pulled into the parking lot, Rocky Jay’s Impala was already parked and empty. Foy parked across from the Impala, beside Mrs. Rhine’s station wagon. The windows were rolled up all the way, and the panting dogs inside were in danger of suffocating.
Foy wondered if it was too late to stop Mrs. Rhine. Rocky Jay could fend for himself, but he didn’t want Wanda to get hurt. Suddenly, a radar went off inside him and he ducked under the dashboard. He waited a few seconds and looked up. Two guys had walked past his car. One was a kid in a Harley Davidson T-shirt and dirty jeans that hung too low on his hips. The other was middle-aged and stocky. He was wearing a baseball jacket, and even at fifty feet Foy could tell the guy carried a gun under his arm.
The two stood by the trunk of Rocky Jay’s car and scanned the parking lot. The stocky man gave a signal. A white van drove up. The kid opened the back door of the van. The stocky man opened Rocky Jay’s trunk and yanked out two suitcases that were on top of the spare tire. He threw the suitcases into the back of the van. The kid pulled a canvas bag out of the van and threw it into Rocky Jay’s car, slamming the trunk closed. The two men disappeared among the parked cars. The van sped away. The whole thing took twenty seconds.
Foy rested his head on the wheel. No one was going to give him the Sherlock Holmes of the Year award. He now realized Rocky Jay was doing weekly errands for the big boys. He’d drive his car out to the parking lot to make the switch. Maybe watching Wanda dance was part of the deal. Maybe someone in the audience was supposed to make sure Rocky Jay wasn’t near his car to pull a double cross or something.