Part 9 (2/2)

”Yeah, it's over,” I confirmed.

I did the dishes while he searched the TV guide, looking, I knew, for exhibition basketball games. For the past year and a half he'd been paying for cable service, which was kind of a waste given my crummy black and white set, but there was no way he was going to miss a single Knicks game. I watched him fiddle with the channels, his sleeves rolled up.

Mom liked Walter, she always had. I guess he looked like a real provider, and she figured, correctly, that I was going to require a fair amount of being provided for. I glanced over at him from time to time while I cleaned up in the kitchen. I didn't know how to begin to tell him about all the things that had happened to me in the past few weeks. Especially about Henry. So I put it all away for the night.

I set a bowl of popcorn in front of him, the kind with fake red pepper sprinkled on it, his favorite. He looked up briefly and laid an appreciative hand on my b.u.t.t for a minute before turning back to the game.

”I'm whipped, Walter,” I said. ”Going to bed.”

”I work all day but you're whipped. n.o.body like you, Nan.”

I sat up in bed thinking about the dark green sheets on Henry's bed, about the frantic swiftness of Wild Bill's gait, about the feel of that gun on my skin, and about a terrified young Dominican enunciating the goofy words of a country and western song.

What had I really done to Diego's words?

Had I ma.s.saged them into the phrase Rhode Island Red? Or translated them? Or debauched them? I had put the phrase together. Diego had not.

But I was a translator. I knew that words lie.

After all, take Verlaine.

Je suis un berceau Qu'une main balance Au creux d'un caveau ...

Some have said this means: I am a cradle being rocked by a hand in the center of a crypt ...

But someone else maintains it means: Deep in the hollow earth my childhood is ravaged by a fist ...

Ask Verlaine which is closer to the truth.

But Verlaine is long dead.

Diego, however, wasn't. Maybe if he were presented with those very words, they'd mean something to him.

They had meant something to Charlie Conlin and to Inge. I was fairly certain the two of them had died because of those words.

I heard a m.u.f.fled cheer from the next room. Somebody must have made a basket or something.

It was only a little after noon, but the day was over for the bulk of the workers in the flower district. Their s.h.i.+ft began at three or four in the morning. I looked up and down the cramped streets with their double rows of potted plants squeezing the pedestrians into single file, and I wondered where the workers ate their lunch at, say, 6.30 A.M. What would you have for lunch at six-thirty in the morning? There had been this guy, Dale, a fellow grad school student, who liked prowling the streets at all hours of the morning. He used to take me into these funky coffee shops-places where the transs.e.xuals were the respectable folks and the rest of the patrons went down the social ladder from there-where he would down gallons of s.h.i.+tty coffee and natter at me in that sincere Marxist way of his about the hidden injuries of race and cla.s.s. I sometimes thought he got off on people a.s.suming I was a hooker.

What made me think of that? I was wasting time. I was stalling, postponing my entrance into the wholesale market where Diego worked. But I picked up my feet and walked toward the place.

I evoked a couple of half-hearted lewd remarks from the guys lounging outside the front door. Ignoring them, I looked up at the window of the apartment where Inge had died.

An old man was slowly squeegee-ing a sheet metal table on which a million flowers had been trimmed. Wet leaves and petals clung to his trouser legs like applique.

”Is Diego here?” I asked him.

He gestured to the rear of the room. I walked through a set of swinging doors and into a dingy room with nine lockers nailed against one wall. In front of them was a long wooden bench where Diego sat lacing up his sneakers. Beside him was an open beer can in a paper bag and a cigarette left burning at the edge of the seat.

I called his name.

The boy looked up dumbly.

”Diego?” I called again.

It took a full thirty seconds for him to react, and when he did he only heaved a tremendous sigh. Diego was good and high.

”Do you remember me?”

He swayed a little on the bench. ”Yeah. You one of the lady cops.”

”No, I'm not, Diego. I came in with them, but I'm not a cop.”

He smirked then, enjoying a joke I wasn't in on.

I sat down at the edge of the bench. Not only was Diego stoned, he looked as if he hadn't slept in days.

”I need to talk to you for a minute, Diego.”

No answer.

”It's about Inge, the woman who was killed upstairs.”

”What?” He sat a bit straighter then, and suddenly ran his hands over the post adolescent stubble on his chin.

”I want to know if Inge ever mentioned something called Rhode Island Red to you. Do you ever remember hearing those words before-from her or anybody else?”

”Say what?”

”Rhode ... Island ... Red.”

”No. No. I don't remember.” He found his cigarette and took a desperate pull on it but it had gone out.

”Are you sure, Diego? See, maybe when you thought you heard-”

He picked up his beer then but apparently the can was empty. I guess that tore it, because in a second he was on his feet, hurling the empty can against the nearest locker.

”I didn't hear nothing, man!” he bellowed. ”I don't know what those stupid f.u.c.king words are!” Next, he grabbed the bench itself, nearly knocking me to the floor, and sent that flying against the wall. His little frame was trembling with rage.

I wanted to get out of there but I was afraid any sudden move might send him after me. He took a step toward me. I tensed, searching the room for something to fend him off with.

But Diego had no more violence in him. He staggered over to the lockers and collapsed against them. ”Don't you think I remember everything she said to me?” he choked out. ”Don't you think I know what she said, man?” Then he was overtaken by the sobs.

Oh wow. d.a.m.n. He had been in love with her.

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