Part 3 (2/2)

”What happened?”

”Let's just say”-she flings her shoes onto the floor and props her feet up on the coffee table-”he had some bad habits.”

”Other women?” ”Even more pressing interests, honey. I'm an open-minded gal, G.o.d knows, but even I got my limits.”

”Do you ever run into him?”

”Nah. He moved to Mexico last I heard. I was looking for him to get back some of my clothes and a brand-new straw hat when I ran into Joe Avalon. He was staking out his place looking to collect on some debts owed. It got pretty complicated.”

”I didn't know you knew him, too.” Hearing her say his name gives me a start.

Lois punches out her cigarette and begins to apply a bright lipstick without a mirror. ”Everybody knows Joe, honeybunch. Everybody.”

”Did Alice introduce you?”

”Oh, gosh, peach, it don't work like that.”

”What do you mean?”

She places her palms together and twists her wrists in opposite directions in a gesture that seems as though it is supposed to mean something to me.

”Time, Lora, works different in your world.” She twists her wrists back again.

”To me, I've always known Joe Avalon. He was the number-one cherry picker on my block. He changed all our diapers, tweaked our mamas' teats. He was the glimmer in my papa's eye. He lived on the rooftop of every house on our block, and could slither down the chimney at night. He was, is, and always will be your four-leaf clover and dangerous as h.e.l.l. He's always been here. This town will always have guys like him, as long as it keeps going.”

This is the longest speech Lois has ever given me. I won't forget it ...

As we hurtle toward the end of the school year, I see less of Alice on the weekends. Her teaching and her swelling social schedule fill every minute. Still, she seems unable to stop. It is around this time that she begins suffering from what she calls her ”old affliction,” migraine headaches, hissing pain so severe she feels her own skull will crush her. These headaches send her into dark rooms with cool, oscillating fans for hours, even days on end. ”It's related to my cycles,” she confides nonchalantly. ”So there's nothing I can do about it.”

The headaches are almost daily occurrences by the time Bill's baseball league starts up its season. She makes most of the games, putting on a brave face, but I fill in when the pain becomes too much. It helps make Bill less worried. He never wants to leave Alice alone, but she insists, setting a cramped hand on his chest and swatting him away.

Long hours in the bleachers, hands wrapped in knitting or spread out over McCall's, the investigators' wives sit, and often I sit with them. Tonight, it is with the blond and blunt-nosed Edie Beauvais.

”Lora, I'm desperate. I've got to get pregnant. We've been waiting for so long now.” She runs her tiny hand up and down her arm, which is flecked with goose b.u.mps from the chilling night air. ”We had this fantasy of getting pregnant on our wedding night. That's what I expected. But now ... I just want it so bad, Lora.” Edie is the young wife of Charlie Beauvais, one of Bill's coworkers at the investigators' office. Although he was always willing to take a coworker who'd had a hard day out for a beer, and he'd always stop in at the local tavern when an after-work gathering was under way, Bill never had many friends. Besides, most of the men in his department are either heavy drinkers or gamblers or both, or are wrapped up in the politics of the office.

But Charlie has been a kind of mentor to Bill, showing him the ropes when the other men resented Bill's quick rise, which they attributed to luck or imagined connections.

”But you're so young, Edie,” I say, watching the action absentmindedly, watching Charlie waving his hat, waving a player in, laughing mightily, big white teeth against his stubble-creased face. ”You've got plenty of time.”

”I know,” she says. ”I've got nothing but time.” She stifles a long sigh by dipping her chin and tucking her mouth into her collarbone.

Edie is twenty-three, Charlie's second wife. Born in Bakersfield, she was straight out of modeling school when they met four years before. She had talked her way out of a speeding ticket, claiming a ”feminine emergency.”

”Are you going to help out at the fund-raiser again?” I ask.

”Sure, sure,” she says, eyelashes fluttering, trying gamely to focus on the action. ”Where's Alice?”

”She wasn't feeling well,” I say.

Edie nods vaguely, watching Charlie bounding in from the infield, removing his hat and rubbing his crew cut vigorously.

”Looking good, honeybunch,” she coos, waving and twisting in her seat. Charlie's face bursts out into a grin. It seems to explode over his whole rubbery face as he turns to join his teammates on the bench.

”When are you going to get yourself one of those? A husband, I mean,” Edie asks as we watch Bill take a few practice swings.

”So you think I'm in danger of old maid status too?”

She turns to me with a smile. ”Don't you want to have a house and kids and nice things?”

I look at her with her blond lashes, eyebrows penciled with delicacy, face so fresh and flat and empty, as only California faces can be. ”It's hard to find a man like Charlie, though, isn't it?”

”Hmmm,” Edie says, eyes roaming dreamily back to the game, to the shoving match that seems about to unfold between Bix Carr and Tom Moran, who always fought, over sports, old debts, patrol a.s.signments, cars.

I am supposed to say these things, the things I should want. It is what you say. I look at Edie, looking at the other tired, careless faces on the bleachers, hair tucked in curlers under scarves, bodies straining or flaccid, pregnant or waiting to be.

We watch as Bill and Charlie separate the men, and Bill talks them down, his hand on Bix's shoulder, Bix nodding, cooling. Tom abashed, kicking the dirt.

”I'm going home, sugar.” Edie sighs, stumbling forlornly down the bleachers.

I wave good-bye.

An hour later, the game finally over, Bill wanders over. ”Where's Edie? Charlie's looking for her.”

”She left,” I say.

”Oh. Really? That's funny. Charlie-”

Tom Moran comes running up behind Bill, slapping him mightily on the back. ”Billy, where's that gorgeous wife tonight?”

Bill extends a hand to help me descend the bleachers. ”Under the weather.”

”Too bad. Don't mind gazing up at her.”

Bill looks over at him for a second, as if caught between annoyance and good humor.

”You know.” Tom shrugs, grinning at me anxiously. ”She's different than the others. Than the other wives. Ain't she?”

I smile faintly, and Bill tilts his head, unsure how to respond.

I know this isn't the first time he's heard these comments. I've seen the way they look at her. They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.

Their wives come from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St. Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisters with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliances and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club members.h.i.+p. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling to them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ...

Charlie Beauvais, he once said it. Said it to Bill in my earshot. He said, Don't worry, pal, don't worry. It's not that they want her. It's just they have this feeling-and they're off, Billy, they're way off-but they have this sense that, somehow behind that knockout face of hers, she's more like the women they see on the job, on patrol, on a case, in the precinct house. Women with stories as long as their rap sheets, as their dangling legs...

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