An Independent Woman (14 page)

He reread what he had written, and in utter despair he started all over. His second attempt was far from satisfying, and he found himself checking words of more than two syllables. Then he threw the dictionary aside and said bitterly, “So much for four years at Princeton.”

Ms. Gomez entered his office and said, “It's five o'clock, Mr. Lavette. I'll be going now, unless you want me to stay.” She put a sheet of paper on his desk. “You had seven calls. I listed all of them. The one from Mr. Carroll in Oakland he said was urgent and would you please call him back. He'll be in his office until six. Candido wants to see you, but I told him you couldn't be disturbed. Your mother wants to know whether you'll be there for dinner.”

“Yes, yes, sure,” he muttered.

“For dinner?”

“Yes.”

“I'll call her and tell her.”

“Yes, that's fine. Sure. Thank you.”

She left, and he set about writing the letter.

B
ARBARA CAME HOME
at about eleven o'clock in the evening. Her friend Birdie dropped her off in front of her house. Barbara had led a discussion of the Democratic Women's Club and then had sat for another hour with Birdie and some other members of the club, trying to clear her head with two cups of coffee and wishing that she had never met Tony Moretti. It was Tony Moretti, now long dead but at one time the moving force behind the Democratic Party in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties; who had talked her into running for a seat in Congress. Now, years later, she could thank God that she had lost the election, had not become a commuter between Washington and San Francisco, and had not become a part of an organization for which she had little respect and less hope.

But the margin of defeat had been so small that she could not dispel her friends' belief that she was a super-candidate, and that if she ran once more in the same district, she would win. Their argument was that her candidacy would throw the whole Reagan movement in California off base and possibly tilt the state against him—none of which she agreed with. Indeed, her feeling was that the whole idea was nonsensical, that with Reagan sweeping the state, she would lose by a huge margin—and she had come to a point where she hated politics. She said she was thinking of resigning—which was the reason that four of the leading lights of the club had corralled her into Katy's Place for coffee and cake. There she tried to convince them of Tony Moretti's maxim, that in politics one took advantage of what was on the edge of happening and that one did not come out of the woods with some cooked-up notion and attempt to make it happen. “And it can't happen,” she said decisively. “Reagan is going to take the state, and nothing we or anyone else can do will stop him.”

Now, dropping her off at Green Street, Birdie said, “You might just change your mind.”

“Never! Not a chance,” Barbara responded.

Birdie drove off, and Barbara, tired and irritated, fumbled for her key, opened the door, walked through the tiny hallway with its night-light, switched on the living room light, and confronted Robert Jones in the flesh. She felt a moment of almost overwhelming fear, and then Jones held up both hands, palms out, and begged her, “Please don't scream, Ms. Lavette.”

The fear vanished. “I'm not going to scream,” she declared in as close to a snarl as she had ever achieved. “What in hell are you doing here, and how did you get in?”

“I picked the lock.”

“Yes, that's your thing! What do you want? Jewelry—but you took it all. Or did you come back for the ring?”

“I came to return the jewels. They're all laid out on your desk. I was leaving as you came in.”

“Yes, of course you were!” She snorted.

“Look at your desk,” he said hopelessly. “I won't run away. The telephone's working if you want to call the cops.”

She strode past him without giving him another glance, swept into her study, flicked on the light, and stared at the jewelry—all laid out neatly on her desk, just as he had said. She studied the desk for a very long moment, and then she sighed and walked back into the living room. He was standing where she had left him.

“You didn't call the cops,” he said.

“They wouldn't arrest you for bringing it back.”

He shrugged. “Breaking and entering.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

He hesitated and then nodded.

“Come into the kitchen and sit down. You look better without the mask.”

“Tools of the trade,” he said resignedly. He followed her into the kitchen, pulled out a chair, and sat quietly while Barbara prepared the coffee.

“Are you hungry?”

He nodded his head.

“Toast and butter and cheese?”

“If it's no trouble, Ms. Lavette.”

“I'm hungry, too. No trouble. Tell me, are you still a thief?”

“No. I gave it up. I don't like cops, and sooner or later they get to you. Anyway, I have a job. Mr. Lefkowitz has a client who owns an engineering firm. He got them to take me on.”

“That was very decent of him,” Barbara said.

“He's a decent white man,” he admitted.

“Couldn't he be just a decent man?”

He hesitated over that. “I suppose so, if you want it that way.”

“You're a civil engineer?”

“Yes.”

“What,” she asked, “does a civil engineer do?”

“Public buildings, bridges, roads.”

“That should be very rewarding.”

“If you do it. I don't. I do some specs, pricing, call manufacturers for prices and compare them, and I'm also a gofer when they need coffee or lunch inside—”

“It's a beginning, isn't it?”

“I guess.”

“Why did you bring back the jewelry?”

“I knew you couldn't claim the insurance with all that stuff in the papers.”

“I gave the jewelry to you.”

“Not really, Ms. Lavette. You gave me a second chance.”

She poured the coffee and put out the toast and cheese without replying.

Jones ate hungrily, and Barbara regarded him thoughtfully. He was a handsome man, strong bones in a lean face, dark skin, and a good mouth. His long-fingered hands were deft and smooth in their movements.

“Do you want to smoke?” she asked him.

“If you don't mind?”

“No, I don't mind.”

She brought out an ashtray, and he lit a cigarette.

“Are you married?”

He shook his head. “I have a girl. She was spooked by the newspaper stories, but we'll work it out. Can I tell you something, Ms. Lavette?”

“Anything you wish.”

“I'd like to repay you sometime. I don't know how, but if you need anything that I can do…” He took out his wallet and gave her a card. “I had them printed up. You can reach me at that number.” He bent his head and shrugged. “I don't know what else to say. But like I said, if you need anything…”

“Like picking a lock?” And then she would have given anything to take back the words, but he simply said, “Yes, like picking a lock or anything else.”

When he had gone she climbed the stairs to her room, took a hot shower, and crawled into bed. But sleep did not come easily.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
she drove out to Napa with Philip, so that he could talk to Sally about the wedding. Philip had readily agreed to do the marriage ceremony. Their relationship had progressed no further than a restrained kiss on her cheek, but Barbara sensed his affection and his struggle to hold back. They were both in their seventies, and each of them carried a large backload of life and grief and happiness. Barbara enjoyed the feeling of being with a man who cared for her. Since Carson's death her life had been hollow and empty. She was not the kind of a woman who could settle down to widowhood and allow empty days to slide by, or do charity work in some hospital. There was a small gift shop in the hospital where Sam, her son, was chief surgeon, and he had suggested that if time hung heavily, she might take over the shop. The pay was nothing, the shop being nonprofit; and Barbara had rejected the notion indignantly. “I am a writer by profession,” she replied, “and when I am ready to retire, I will let you know.”

Driving to Napa now with Philip, she told him of her encounter with Robert Jones. “Why did it leave me so empty, Philip? Why couldn't I have at least a bit of satisfaction at getting the jewelry back? What is wrong in all this?”

Barbara expected him to brush aside her question with a few reassuring words, but after a minute or two of silence, he asked her whether he could tell her a story.

She shrugged. “If you wish—of course.”

“It's an old Sufi story—the Sufis are a small mystical sect of Islam, not like the fundamentalists—something else. It concerns a smuggler, Abdul Hassan by name. For thirty years, he practiced his trade—the most famous smuggler in the Middle East. Every month, month after month, he would come across the border with ten donkeys, each loaded with wood. Each time, the guards searched him head to foot, went through his clothes, unloaded the wood, even split the larger pieces, but they could never find what he was smuggling. Yet they knew he was a smuggler. He made no secret of it. As the years passed he became rich, built himself a fine house, took care of his many children; and after thirty years he announced that he had retired and that he would smuggle no more. When he made this announcement the customs inspectors decided that they would send a small deputation to visit Abdul Hassan and to ask him, please, for the sake of their profession, to explain what he smuggled and how he did it.

“He greeted the customs men pleasantly, gave them Turkish coffee and halvah, and smiled in answer to their question. ‘Gentlemen,' he said, ‘it is really very obvious what I smuggled. I smuggled donkeys.'”

“That's it?” Barbara asked.

“Yes, the whole story.”

They drove on in silence while Barbara brooded over the story. Finally she said, “I resented him bringing back the jewelry.”

“The cynics say that no good deed goes unpunished.”

“What did I miss?” Barbara asked with some asperity.

“A black man who earns what—what could they pay him? Nine, ten thousand a year? The edge of the poverty level. What's inside of him? You gave him fifteen years of his life. He could easily think that he deserved it, that it's no crime to steal from a rich white woman. To him, it's the difference between wealth and poverty.”

“Do you really think it's no crime for a black man to steal from a wealthy white woman—as you put it?”

“I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about him. There is a point to that Sufi story. It's so easy to miss the obvious—especially when we're clever. We're both very clever, Barbara. I mean no putdown. I have so much respect for you. But forget for a moment that he's black. He's a good man, and we're surrounded by so much rot that plain decency becomes difficult to accept.”

They drove on, and they were almost at Napa when he said, “You're angry with me, aren't you?”

“No, I've been thinking.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Well, yes. I
was
provoked. I wanted sympathy, and instead you told me something about myself. That's always cruel.”

“I didn't intend to be cruel.”

“No, I'm sure you didn't. I'm a writer. I know the addiction to stories. I suppose for a minister it's even worse.”

“It is,” Philip admitted. “I wasn't going to speak about personal things, and I know we've only been together a few times, but I'm very fond of you and…”

“And what?”

“Another time,” he said uneasily. “We're almost there.”

How will I ever know this man?
Barbara wondered. At one moment he was a sage, and the next moment a high school boy at the senior prom. Well, he had been a Catholic priest and had left the Church and married a nun. That must have been hard.
Let it be. Whatever will come will come.
She certainly wasn't in love with him—and could she ever be, with him or with anyone else? The story still annoyed her. He could have told her what he felt she had missed without the parable, but then he was a priest and a minister, or had been a priest, and at least the story was interesting and provoking.