Fadeaway Girl (26 page)

“Okay,” he said.

He did not mean
Okay I'll roll out from under;
he meant
Okay don't
. He enjoyed taking things literally to annoy me.

Yet, I had already told him most of it, since I could not resist the telling, even if he could resist the listening. Yet, he was listening, I knew. There were times I thought he was even anxious about me.

At last Dwayne stopped what he was doing under the car and rolled out.

“Sometimes I think you save underneath-work for when I come around.”

The oily rag was out and he was wiping down his fingers. “Me too.”

“Ha-ha.” I hated when he reduced me to ha-ha's. It's a typical Ree-Jane response.

“Okay, what's next?”

Narrowing my eyes, I looked closely at his face for a sign of amusement at my expense. I found it too, his mouth kind of twitching away from a smile, as if he were holding it back. “The baby's name was Fey.” I had tricked Aurora with this. “How would you spell it, if asked?”

“F-a-y. Same as if I wasn't asked. That's how you spell ‘Fay.' You, of course, are about to spell it different.”

“There's a point here, you know.”

“I hope so.” He stood with arms crossed, leaning against the Chevy, looking at me.

“The
point
is, it's spelled f-E-y. It's a nickname. The baby's real name was Raphael, according to Sheriff Mooma.”

“That's a boy's name. You mean this kid was a boy?”

Eagerly, I nodded.

Dwayne thought this over. “First it was: she's back. But that doesn't work anymore, so now it's:
he's
back.” He looked at me. He was chewing gum that I didn't even know he had in his mouth. Dwayne was subtle that way. “My God, girl, but you got enough ghostly characters roaming around to stage a production of
Hamlet
.”

“What? They're not
my
inventions!”

“Uh,” he grunted. “And everyone thought the vanished child was a girl?”

I said, stumbling about for meaning, “There weren't that many ‘everyones' to even have an opinion. The baby was only here for a day. His importance was born with his kidnapping. That's what I'd bet. The baby didn't mean a thing to anyone; he was invisible till he got kidnapped.”

He was silent. Then: “Sorry, did I miss something? This Raphael—that's supposed to mean something to me?”

I guess it didn't, since he hadn't known about Mr. Woodruff's father. So I told him, adding, as I had for Aurora, “Fey they called him as a baby. There's a more familiar nickname than Fey, though, for Raphael.”

“Ralph, I'd say.”

“Or Rafe.”

He chewed so slowly you could hardly see his jaw move. “You're not supposing that this new guy you've got working at the hotel is this vanished child?”

The vanished child. The disappeared baby.
It was as if this defined them, as if they had no existence without the vanishing or disappearing. What did I mean? And why
they
? There was only one. “Yes. I think Ralph Diggs is who people thought was Fey Slade.”

Dwayne was stock-still. It made me nervous. I thought he was about to say something, when Abel Slaw walked in with You-Boy. I jumped down from the tires when I saw Abel was working his way up to giving me a verbal licking about how a garage could be a dangerous place.

I left before I gave
him
a verbal licking about danger.

I
didn't want to walk into town or even back to the hotel to call Axel's Taxis. I was not about to ask Mr. Slaw if I could use his telephone, so I went to the pay phone next door, just in front of the lumber shop. Then I sat on the bench outside and waited for Delbert.

Naturally, he wanted to know why I was at Hanna's Building Supply, and I told him because we were building an ark at the rear of the hotel grounds and were charging fifty cents for anyone who wanted to bring his pet to get blessed.

Anyone else would have been questioning the whole ark-building plan, but not Delbert, who instead had to comment on Noah: “Now I don't think he blessed the animals; I think his job was just to get 'em on board, march 'em up the ramp and inside the ship and that was all.”

I slid down in my seat and did not contradict him, because that would encourage conversation. Probably, it served me right for the ark story. And I forgot that silence could encourage conversation as much as speaking.

“So who's doin' the blessin'? I mean, who's qualified? Who's got the papers?”

Delbert had been referring a lot to “the papers” lately, and I wondered why he'd got that bee in his bonnet; what he meant by it I certainly wasn't going to ask.

“Walter,” I said.

Delbert's neck was going to seize up if he didn't stop turning it so fast. “Walter? You talkin' about Walter Knepp? Him that works at the hotel?”

“If you mean the Hotel Paradise, yes.” It irritated me I'd forgotten Walter's last name was Knepp.

We were driving by Arturo's with its busted neon sign.

“Don't kid me,” said Delbert. “Walter ain't got the qualifications for givin' blessin's.”

“You mean the papers?”

“What? What d'ya mean?”

“Nothing.” When we came to the corner of the street where the Rainbow Café stood, I suddenly thought of something. “Delbert, have you driven anyone new lately? New to town?”

“Like who?”

I gritted my teeth. “If I knew who, I wouldn't be asking, would I?”

“Well, you could. It could be somebody you know and you're keeping tabs on.” He pulled up to the curb and gave the transmission stick a smart little push upward, pleased with himself.

If I didn't get out of the cab quickly and bolt into the Rainbow, I'd strangle him.

It wasn't lunchtime yet, but the usual row of counter sitters were there silently studying the same menu that had been in effect since before I was born.

Maud was racking glasses, and Wanda Wayans was placing fresh doughnuts in neat rows on a tray on one of the glass shelves. I asked Maud if the Sheriff had been in yet for coffee. She said no, and looked toward the door.

“He's just coming. Go on back.”

I did, and turned to see the Sheriff talking to Dodge Haines. Not one of the men sitting at the counter really liked the Sheriff. The Mayor was afraid he'd be out of a job if the Sheriff ever ran for public office; Bubby Dubois had been caught with the Sheriff's wife; Dodge Haines was in fear of losing his dealership license; and Melvin Creek was a crook whom the Sheriff had arrested a bunch of times. But at times, to see them all glad-handing him, you'd think the Sheriff had just deputized them all and handed out keys to the courthouse.

Then he was at our booth. “Emma,” he said, with an unsmiling face and in an unsmiling voice as he slid into the booth. “What's this about you going to see Carl Mooma?”

My mouth, open to say hello, said instead, “How do you know that?”

“Carl told Donny a reporter girl came to see him. You got Donny to tell you where his uncle lived.”

“Where he lives isn't a secret, for heaven's sake.”

“No, but I don't like the idea of you going off on your own and talking to strange men.”

I threw up my arms in what I hoped was a dramatic gesture of disbelief. “Sheriff Mooma was there at the Belle Ruin the night the baby disappeared.”

“I know that.”

“And I'm writing a story for the paper, re
-mem-
ber?”

“You can get your information without going around talking to strange men. You've knocked on more doors in Cold Flat Junction than the Fuller brush man.”

“Oh, really? I guess you think Gloria Spiker's dangerous, then.”

No need to bring up Jude Stemple and Reuben Stuck and Morris Slade. “And you don't know a thing about reporting. Mr. Mooma was an eyewitness! Eyewitness, doesn't that mean anything to you? In other words, it wouldn't be hearsay, what he says, like it was for me about Isabel Devereau.”

As if by magic, Maud appeared and set down a cup of coffee for the Sheriff and a Coke in front of me. “What're you on about?” This was directed to the Sheriff. She shook a cigarette out of her pack of Camels.

“He's telling me not to go ‘Talking to Strange Men.' ” I was seeing it now as a movie. Starring me.

“Are there some strange men? I wouldn't mind talking to them myself.” A long look at the Sheriff made him turn and look grimly at her.

“You're not concerned that Emma goes off on her own hook and into houses she doesn't know anything about and starts jawing off about a crime being committed?”

“I don't ‘jaw off.' I'm good at disguising why I'm there.”

“ ‘Disguise,' I can believe. You've got to stop playacting, Emma. That's what you think life is—a play or a movie.”

Having just turned “Talking to Strange Men” into one, I was a little embarrassed. “No, that's what Will does. He thinks life is—”

The Sheriff shook his head and bummed a cigarette off Maud. “Your brother stages plays. So did Ziegfeld. He doesn't think he
is
the play. He can tell the difference between fiction and reality.”

“What? What?” I was leaning so hard up against the tabletop that my “what?”s came out in breathless spurts. “The difference between fiction and reality? Will can't tell the difference between his own two feet. I'm the one that knows the difference. I have to look at things as they are to be a newspaper reporter.” That was a terrific answer, I thought.

The Sheriff didn't. He too shoved himself up against the tabletop. “There are dangerous people out there, Emma—”

“Like Ben Queen?” I hoped my voice just dripped with sarcasm.

“You didn't know Ben wasn't dangerous.”

Well, I guess I had to admit that when I ran into him with a gun in his hand, I probably thought there was some danger involved. I didn't know what to say, so I just made something up, having no idea what I meant. “Danger is what you make up to be danger.”

“Oh, well, then I'll just turn in my badge and my sidearm.”

Maud shook her head, annoyed. “Oh, why don't you two just give up? You're always fighting.”

This shocked me, for we didn't used to. Didn't used to fight, I mean. I felt suddenly sad. He was right, I knew. I'd always known I shouldn't go around knocking on strangers' doors. And it wasn't reporting either. I wasn't working for the newspaper when I started investigating the old Devereau house. And look what happened there. Even though I thought he was being bossy, telling me what to do, still, I guessed he was really worried that something might happen to me.

“I think I'll have some chili.”

“Me too,” said the Sheriff.

He never ate chili. I don't even think he liked chili. So I guess this was a kind of truce we were calling.

Maud brought the chili and we ate it, happily making small talk.

And I completely forgot to tell him about the Slade baby, that it had been a boy. I also didn't tell him about Ralph Diggs or Morris Slade, which I think I would've in better days.

Talk about talking to strange men.

 

I had missed serving lunch. When I realized it was noon by the time I finished my chili, I raced out of the Rainbow and around to the taxi stand, where Delbert was reading a comic, and Wilma, the dispatcher, was putting bright coral polish on her nails.

Delbert grabbed up his keys and we left.

Even while he was pulling away from the curb, he started in: “They have to come two by two? If they don't, why build an ark? I mean you could just put up a tent for cover if you needed it.”

Being full of chili, I was pretty dozy and closed my eyes, if not my ears. Here was someone who didn't give a hoot about reality sitting up there, driving.

That really miffed me, that the Sheriff thought my brother lived more in the “real” world than I did. Had the Sheriff ever visited the Big Garage? Every day, dawn to dusk, Will and Mill were in there giving the real world a run for its money.

Mrs. Davidow was in the kitchen, cigarette in one hand, some pale drink in the other, waiting apparently for her lunch, some version of her beef and grapefruit diet, to be served up. My mother was strangely unmoved by my excuse that I had had to wait forever for a taxi.

“You never have to wait for a taxi. Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright have already eaten.”

“Fortunately, Ralph was here,” said Mrs. Davidow.

“ ‘Fortunately'? You're
paying
him to be here.” Then I remembered that wasn't strictly true.

There was a laugh behind me, a deep one. I hadn't seen him, sitting in the shadow at the round table where I ate my meals, joined sometimes by Walter, there by the rear door. I didn't like him sitting at our table.

Mrs. Davidow looked toward him with a simpering smile. “Well, he's certainly earning whatever he gets.” My mother put two very succulent-looking hamburgers on the two plates, and Mrs. Davidow carried them over to the table
herself.
I'm surprised she knew how to carry anything but a glass. She was actually
lunching
with Ralph Diggs.

I smiled in Walter's direction. “Well, I've always said Walter
Knepp
is as good as any waiter we've got. He can have the tip too, when he takes my place.”

Walter said, in his drawly way, “Miss Bertha don't leave no tips.”

“I meant at the end of summer, when they go.” I hadn't meant anything at all; it was just empty talk.