Part 8 (1/2)
”I buy it.”
”How terribly kind!” Bruce said acidly.
”Meyer, I would not like to untie him and have him start making out like we are pine boards and cinder blocks and going into that yelling and grunting bit. So why don't you just take that same walk again, and take a cab from the square to the hotel, and if I'm not there by the time you think I should be...”
So I gave him five minutes and then untied Bruce. He flexed his hands and went at once to David, turned and asked me where my car was and would I please bring it to the front.
They sat in the back. I heard Bruce coaching him in what to say at the hospital. Bruce told me the turns to take. They talked in low tones. I heard Bruce say at one point, ”But really! Somebody is going to have to wait on you hand and foot, and shouldn't I have that right? Besides, Davey, it was all settled, wasn't it? And your things are at my place, aren't they? Be practical, darling!”
They got out. Bruce said he could manage from there on, thank you. He gave me an absent nod, and walked David slowly toward the ambulance entrance.
I managed to get lost and ended up back in town rather than out on the Mitla Road. I got lost because my mind was too busy trying to make order out of too many fragments. I went up the hotel hill and around past the lobby entrance and down the cobblestone drive to the cottage carport.
Meyer hadn't left any lights on. I stumbled on the steps to the front porch of the cottage, and I heard the legs of the metal porch chair sc.r.a.pe on the cement as he moved. I groped for the other chair and sat down, feeling a few twinges from the tumble along the tile, and wondering if they would turn into morning aches.
”Hoo, boy,” I said. ”Dandy little village they've got here. These sweet kindly folk tear me up, they really do. I'm even beginning to wonder about Enelio Fuentes. He'll probably turn out to be a retired female wrestler going around in drag.”
”Never fear,” said Lady Becky from the neighboring chair. ”Enelio is muy hombre. I can so certify.”
”How the h.e.l.l did you get here?”
”That's what I like, dearest. A warm welcome.”
”Where is Meyer?”
”He's really a dear man. Did you know that? Oh, I packed him off. I expect he's settling down for the night in one of the other cottages. Things are thinning out, you know. We had a nice little visit, and he went puddling off carrying his little kit. He's marvelously tactful and understanding.”
”And treacherous.”
”I was driving around and about looking for you, darling, and saw him walking toward the zocalo, so I gave him a lift back here. Thought you might spot my car and turn into a ninny and drive away again. So I parked it discreetly. Travis dear, such a lot of nuisance and nonsense for you to hammer poor Bruce about. All you had to do was come to me. I should have told you all the rest of it.”
”If I lived long enough to hear it all.”
”But darling, you'll want to hear it from me too, to see if it all matches up, won't you? So doesn't it come out to the same thing? You do struggle so. One would think I was quite sickeningly ugly or a horrid bore.”
”If you would kindly be ugly or boring, I would be very grateful.”
”But I shall be both soon enough! Any day now one ghastly wrinkle will appear, and all of a sudden I shall be... Doriana Gray? Or like that carriage one of your sentimental poets wrote about. Quite suddenly I shall dwindle into a scruffy little old lady in tennis shoes, peering through bifocals, fussing with her hearing aid, who, in a quavery little old voice, will bore everyone with her memories of lovemaking. I am here because I forgave you.”
”Thank you very much, Lady Rebecca. But you see, I wrote you down in one of the pages of my life, and now the pages have been turned, and we cannot go back and reread them because... because...”
”Because the book is very long and life is very short. Nice try, ducks. But I did the writing, and all I wrote was a preface. I told you. I was being a horrible show offy person. I shan't be like that at all. Promise. Besides, you would be cheating me dreadfully. I granted myself a few little moments of climax, dear, but then I nipped the poor struggling things in the bud because, should I let one get truly started, it goes on and on and on, quite unendurably. It is so terribly lasting and intense and exhausting that I have to ration myself carefully. Even so, I go dragging about for days, looking quite puffy and done in. It would be wicked at this stage to deprive me.”
I stood up slowly and made a wide circuit of her chair to reach the door. ”It may be wicked, Becky. It may be unforgivable. It might even be a shocking lack of courtesy. But I am going to deprive the h.e.l.l out of both of us, and I am going to get a long night's sleep, alone. Sorry about your pride and all that. Someday I may think back and kick myself. Sorry. Go drive that bubblegum car home. Good night, Lady Rebecca. Bug off, please.”
I opened the screen door and reached in and found the switches for the room lights and porch lights and clicked everything on. She stood up and turned to face me, eyes sparkling green through the sheepdog ruff, mouth broadened in a delighted bawdy grin.
”You know, I thought you might be stuffy and standoffish and difficult. So one does what one can to make it a fait accompli, what?”
She wore a wine red hotel blanket gathered closely around her. She laughed and said, ”It would take you hours to find where I hid my clothing, dearest.”
She dropped the blanket to the porch floor. ”What is that quaint Americanism you people use? Peekab.o.o.b?”
I flapped a weak and frantic hand at the switches until I hit them back the way they were and we were in darkness. Well, shucks. And puh-shaw, fellas.
”That's right,” I said, as she found me, locked on, and strained close. ”Exactly right. Peekab.o.o.b. Very quaint old saying.”
Ten.
I SAT out on the cottage porch in the Sundaymorning clang-bang of church bells and rooster announcements. Blue-gray smoke of breakfast fires hazed the morning bowl of the city.
Meyer came tentatively around the corner and looked up at me on the porch. Dopp-kit dangled from one hairy finger.
”Yoo-hoo,” he said.
”Yoo-hoo to you, too, my good man.”
”I didn't see her car, so I thought... ”
”Come, on up. You live here, Meyer. Remember?”
So he came up onto the porch, started to say something, and changed his mind and went silently into the cottage. He came out in a few minutes and sat in the other chair.
”McGee, I thought that you had gotten back and somehow managed to send her on her way, implausible as that may seem. But I can see from the... the wear and tear... that she stayed for a while.”
”She went tottering out of here about forty minutes ago, Meyer. She claimed she could walk to her car unaided.”
”But... how do you feel?”
”Vibrant, alive, regenerated, recharged.”
”I... I'm sorry I let her talk me into moving out for the night, Travis. But I guess you know you can't argue with that woman. She doesn't listen. And after all, it was your personal problem and-”
”Stop apologizing, my good man. No trouble at all. Quite a pleasant night. Active, but pleasant. Now if you would pick me up and take me up to breakfast, we can begin the long day.”
We went back to Los Pajaros trailer park. The office and store were closed and locked. We left the rented car outside the gates and walked in. In the s.p.a.ce numbered twenty, a Land Rover was parked under a tree with dusty leaves, near the travel trailer of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Knighton. The Rover was battles.h.i.+p gray, dusty and road-worn, with tools and gas cans strapped abroad.
He was sitting at an old table, typing with two fingers at respectable speed, apparently copying from,ycillow handwritten sheets. She was hanging some khaki s.h.i.+rts on a line to dry. They both stopped working as we approached, staring with an air of expectant caution. They could have been brother and sister, slat-thin young people, deeply sun-weathered, small statured, with colorless eyes, mouse hair, that elusive pinched and underprivilaged look around the mouth that seems typical of slum people, swamp people, coal mine people, and mountain people. He wore steel-rimmed gla.s.ses, and she had a plastic clothespin in her mouth. ”Good morning!” I said.
He took off the gla.s.ses and she took out the clothespin. ”Howdy” he said, in a voice more appropriate to a seven foot cowboy. ”'Morning,” she murmured.
”Sorry to bother you. My name is Travis McGee. This is my friend Meyer. The manager said you were acquainted with a man who stayed here for a while, right over there in number seventeen. His name is Rockland.”
”Why do you want to talk to me about him?”
”I thought you might have some information that would help us locate him, Mr. Knighton.”