Mrs. Million (26 page)

“What we have to do,” he said, “is take it. If you ask her for it, she won’t give it to you. We have to take it. Then we get the hell out of Dodge.”

André said, “We?”

“You won’t get anywhere near the money without me.”

“Be that as it may, your untrustworthiness has been clearly demonstrated.”

“I had a bad moment. I was scared. Look, this whole thing will go a lot easier if we work together.”

André pursed his lips and regarded Bobby, looking him up and down. He said, “All right, Robert, tell me what you have in mind.”

Bobby rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen his neck muscles, wondering what the hell was about to come out of his mouth. “Okay then. She gets the money, cash, right?”

“Of course.”

“How about you peel off” some of this tape?”

“In good time. Please continue.”

“Okay. She’s got the money, and the problem is to get it without getting nailed by some cops coming out of the woods or in a helicopter or something, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So here’s the problem. If you ask her for the money before you release me, she won’t go for it. She’ll want to see me, to know I’m okay. That’s Barbaraannette. She always has to know what she’s getting. The other end of it, if she gets her hands on me before she gives you the money, she won’t give you the money. That’s Barbaraannette, too. You’ve pissed her off, so she’s not gonna give you anything she doesn’t have to. So the way I see it, the only way this can work is if I meet her someplace, and she’s got the money with her, then I tell her that you’ve got a rifle pointed at me or something, and I take the money and run. Then we meet up someplace and whack it up.” Bobby nodded vigorously, agreeing with himself. “That’s what I think we should do.” He smiled at André. “What do you think?”

André said, “Get in the trunk.”

“I
T’S NOT FOR ME.
It’s for my sister,” said Barbaraannette
.

The drugstore delivery girl-she looked vaguely familiar-gave her a why-would-you-think-I-care expression and handed over the package of Nicorette gum. She looked to be about fifteen, which would have put her in the second grade seven or eight years ago.

“Were you one of my students?” Barbaraannette asked.

“I don’t
think
so,” the girl said.

“Did you go to elementary school here in Cold Rock?”

She shook her head. “I was in Mora, okay? It’s thirty-four ninety-six with tax.”

Embarrassed, Barbaraannette fumbled in her purse. They all looked the same sometimes, so innocent and full of themselves. She gave the girl two twenties and told her to keep the change. The girl stared at the bills for a second, either overcome by Barbaraannette’s generosity or astonished by her stinginess, there was no way to tell. She stuffed them into the front pocket of her jeans with a muttered thank-you and rode off on her bicycle.

Barbaraannette closed the door and took her thirty-five-dollar package of gum into the kitchen. Thirty-five dollars! A carton of cigarettes would’ve been cheaper, but she had quit the habit ten years ago and that was that. No way was she going back on her promise to herself. When she had asked Toagie for a cigarette she’d been serious about wanting one, but she’d known that Toagie wouldn’t go for it. Toagie understood. Toagie would protect her. Toagie was safe. Barbaraannette hoped that the gum was safe, too. She hoped it would make her feel better, help her pass the time. She unwrapped a piece, put it in her mouth, began to chew, slowly. The flavor reminded her of a full ashtray left out in the rain.

The telephone call came at four o’clock. Barbaraannette answered the phone, one hand on the wall to stop the room from spinning. She was on her third piece of gum.

“I am afraid you called the police,” said André Gideon.

Barbaraannette pictured his face, his pink cheeks and gray tuft of beard, his small hands on the steering wheel of his green car. Her hair was alive, wriggling her scalp. “I don’t expect you to believe this, Mr. Gideon, but I didn’t. I just wanted to meet you, to talk.” She was Medusa; she wished he could see her. The man said nothing. She could hear cars whooshing in the background. “I came alone. My sister called the police.”

“You were there? Who were those other people? How did you learn my name? How did you know how to find me?”

Barbaraannette opened the top of the garbage pail, and spat out the wad of gum. “It’s a small town.”

“It is not that small. How did you find me? Answer my questions.” His voice had gone shrill.

Barbaraannette considered whether she had anything to gain by lying. It would be simpler, at least. “Your car was seen. Someone had your license number.”

“Who were those people?”

“At your house? It was me and Dale Gordon—he’s the police chief—and some other people. It was kind of a coincidence, all of us being there.”

“I do not like coincidences. The two men who followed me now wish they had not.”

“Oh.” She did not like the sound of that. “Is Bobby okay?”

“In a manner of speaking. He is, in fact, in the trunk of my car. He is both unhappy and uncomfortable. Do you have the money?”

She hesitated. “I’ll have it tomorrow, just like I told you before.”

“I will call you.”

“Wait—let me talk to him.”

“That is not convenient at the moment.”

“Let me hear his voice or this conversation is over.” She held her breath, counting heartbeats.

“That is your choice,” he said after a moment. The line went dead.

Barbaraannette hung up the phone, her hand shaking violently. She grabbed her wrist, pulled it against her abdomen and leaned against the door jamb. The nicotine in her system had gathered into a ball of fuzz filling her stomach. She sank to the floor, the hard edge of the jamb creasing her shoulder blade. What if it was Bobby’s blood?

The pay phone had left a sticky deposit on the palm of his hand. André went into the service station restroom. The sink was filthy. He washed his hands, using a wad of paper towels to turn off the tap and another paper towel to insulate his hand from the doorknob. He got back in the car. A few blocks away, on High Street, his mother would be sitting in her little house, smoking cigarettes and watching the big screen television he had sent her for Christmas. André took a deep breath, wind whistling through his tight nostrils, bracing himself for reentry. He had grown up in that moist, overheated, smoky little burrow, but familiarity made the experience all the more repugnant.

But it would be safe, at least for a day. The police would not be looking for a woman named Theresa Grubb. A noise came from the trunk, a halfhearted thumping. He started the car and drove, very slowly, through the diminutive town of Diamond Bluff until he reached a small parchment-colored clapboard house, plastic stapled over the windows to keep the winter winds out, daffodils blooming on the south side.

When Bobby made love to her the first time Barbaraannette had known at once that her life would never be the same. She remembered the experience vividly. Driving into the woods in his El Camino, the scent of summer in the air, the rough blanket, the singing of the birds in the trees. She had given herself to him eagerly, without hesitation, and he had taken her with such confidence and skill—or so it seemed to her at the time—that she had never for a moment doubted that she belonged there forever in Bobby Quinn’s arms.

She remembered his smell and the hardness of his belly, and the way his big hands had held her, stripping away her clothing with practiced ease, letting the light caress her in places that had never seen the sun. She had wrapped herself around him, taken him deep into her body, satisfying seventeen years of famine in a few explosive, never to be forgotten moments.

She knew now that most women did not experience such joy upon losing their virginity. Most of them were too frightened, or experienced physical pain, or were simply overwhelmed by concerns over birth control and the state of their souls to enjoy the experience. Most women had the best sex of their lives later, after learning how to make love by trial and error and by reading articles in
Cosmopolitan.
Barbaraannette envied them. She had had the misfortune of going straight to the pinnacle of erotic satisfaction. After she and Bobby had broken up and she left Cold Rock, Barbaraannette had devoted considerable time and energy to finding a replacement. She had gone through seven or eight boyfriends and had found each of them wanting. It was not that they lacked technique, or physical attributes, or the will to please her—every one of the men she had tried to love had been attractive and capable and willing. The problem, as near as she could determine, was that they were not Bobby Quinn.

What was it about him? She had been puzzling over this for years. Bobby was clearly not the brightest or nicest guy around. He was handsome, certainly, but so were a lot of other men. Was it simply that he had been her first? Possibly, but that did not explain why so many other women found him irresistible. Could it be the size and shape of his penis, or some highly attractive pheromone, or the distribution of body hair? Barbaraannette found such notions disturbing. They suggested that she was driven by primitive impulses. If such were the case, she would prefer to remain ignorant.

The most likely answer, she decided, was that with Bobby a woman knew where she stood. When Bobby wanted her—or any other woman—he simply took her—gently, forcefully, without a hint of tentativeness or apology. Not like a rapist, although there were hints of that. Barbaraannette thought that if a woman said
no
it was probable that Bobby would back off. However, it was difficult for her to imagine. It would be like refusing a hungry child food.

T
HE LOCAL GTE TELEPHONE
directory was one-half-inch thick, including the Yellow Pages. It contained listings for twelve towns in that section of western Wisconsin. Phlox found four Grubbs in Diamond Bluff. One of them, a Mrs. Howard Grubb at 112 High Street, had the right phone number. She closed the book and pushed it across the lunch counter, cut the tip off the wedge of lemon meringue pie with the edge of her fork, speared it, put it in her mouth. Very sweet, with a citrus tang that hit her at the back of the tongue, just the way she liked it.

“You finding what you’re looking for, hon?” the waitress asked, adding a dose of fresh coffee to Phlox’s cup. She was plump and gray-haired with washed-out blue eyes and strong yellow teeth.

“I think so,” said Phlox. “Do you know Mrs. Howard Grubb?”

“Which Grubb would that be, I wonder?”

“She lives on High Street.”

“Oh yah, sure, I know her. Teri Grubb. She comes in here, always orders the ham steak. She still calls herself Mrs. Howard in the book? That man died nearly fifty years ago; I was just a little girl. Howie took a nap on the tracks, he did. Are you a friend of hers?”

“We’ve talked on the phone. Does she have a son?”

“Sure she does. Little Andy. Only I haven’t seen him around here in years. He’s a college professor, she says. Always talking about him, how he bought her a big TV.”

“This is good pie.”

“Why thank you, hon. You come back this way in June, you try our blackcap pie. It’s our speciality.”

“I’ll do that. Can you tell me how I get to Mrs. Grubb’s place?”

“You can see it from here, hon.” She pointed. “All you’ve got to do is turn your pretty head.”

Phlox looked out through the cafe window.

“Catty-corner to us, just past that white house there, you can sort of see it. That tan-color house with the plastic on the windows? That’s Teri’s place. She’s lived there since God made the Green Bay Packers.”

Phlox saw the house. She also saw the car parked in front of it. It looked like a green Ford Taurus.

“Some new people bought the Tuttle place. I believe they’re Catholic. Would you get me a cup of coffee, dear?” Muttering images from the thirty-two-inch RCA danced across her spectacles. She had sunk deep into her recliner.

“Of course, Mother.” André took her empty mug into the kitchen, marveling at the fact that he had spent the first seventeen years of his life in this abode. Nothing had changed, not even the refrigerator, an old Philco with a door that could be opened from either side and a rind of grease-stabilized dust on top. The blue and green tile pattern in the linoleum floor brought waves of memory. Crawling on it, being sick on it, cleaning it, seeing it in his nightmares. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight penetrated a rent in the plastic window covering, illuminating a soup of tobacco smoke and dust motes—what were they? Bits of fabric? Flakes of dry skin? He was breathing his mother. She was slowly disintegrating, floating away a few molecules at a time. He sucked her in, spewed her out. Air whistled through his nostrils.

Only the television he had bought her was new. She ran it constantly, the sound turned so low it was difficult to make out the words. From the kitchen it sounded like someone rubbing dry fingers together—
wishwishwish.
He filled the mug from the Mr. Coffee, added a tablespoon of creamer and three cubes of sugar and carried it to her, careful not to spill.

His mother, accepting the coffee in her powdery hands, said, “You heard about the Reinke boys being arrested?”

André had not heard. The Reinke brothers had done everything they could to make his adolescence a nightmare. Some evil instinct had told them that he was different long before he had admitted it to himself. Teasing him about his bookishness and the way he talked. What was wrong with the way he talked? He never knew. Calling him Dandy Andy. Writing lewd offers in restroom stalls with his name and phone number. Worst of all, mercilessly harassing anyone who attempted to befriend him. He had left Diamond Bluff for many reasons, but the Reinke brothers were one of the big ones.

“Who did they beat up?”

“They were making drugs, dear. Meta—something, I believe.”

“Methamphetamine ?”

“Yes, dear, in that big old barn behind their house. The state took all their property. It just sits there empty now. Their parents will be spinning in their graves. You know, that makes seven of your classmates that have become criminals, and only twenty-nine in your class. And do you know what all seven had in common?”