Pagan Babies (7 page)

"That's not bad."

"Cadillac El-do-ray-do?"

"Eldorado was on the list, but what'm I doing driving a Cadillac? So I went with the Riviera."

"Yeah, that worked."

Fran, antsy in his tweed sport coat, a sweater under it, said, "We'll go someplace we can talk and get something to eat." Debbie lit a cigarette, Terry holding her bag, while Fran told them he'd forget to eat with Mary Pat and the little girls in Florida. "This guy"--meaning Terry--"all he eats is peanut butter since he got home. Eats it with a spoon." That was something she could ask: why there wasn't any peanut butter in Africa. Fran led them out of the Comedy Castle, on Fourth in Royal Oak, and around the corner to Main, Fran telling his brother how he'd suggested she act nervous when she comes out, scared, so if the act doesn't exactly rock, the audience would still sympathize with her, like her spunk.

The priest said, "Debbie doesn't need spunk. She's cool." Surprising the hell out of her.

She hunched her shoulders saying, "Actually I'm freezing," almost adding, "my ass off," but didn't. The priest, huddled in his parka, said he was too. So then Fran had to tell them it wasn't cold, it was spring, forty-seven degrees out. Terry said, "Oh, then I guess I'm not cold," and she felt in that moment closer to him and knew that if she'd said, "my ass off," he still would've agreed, maybe given her the smile.

They got a table at Lepanto. Fran, still on, asked the waitress if they had banana beer, the only kind his brother here from Africa would drink--Debbie wishing he'd please get off the fucking stage. The waitress said with no expression, or showing any interest, "We don't carry it," and Debbie could've kissed her. Fran was out of it while she ordered an Absolut on the rocks, but then got back in when Terry said all he wanted was a Scotch, Johnnie Walker red if they had it. Fran told him he should eat something besides peanut butter. How about an appetizer and a salad? Terry said he wasn't hungry. Fran was studying the menu now while Terry sat there in his parka.

Debbie thought he looked beat, maybe some African disease like malaria hanging on. She loved his eyes, his quiet expression. She said to him, "I've been trying to picture where Rwanda is exactly."

"Right in the center of Africa," Fran said, his nose still in the menu, "practically on the equator. You're a missionary over there you come home every five years to cool off and get your health back." He looked up now to say, "If you're not gonna eat I'm not either." But now the waitress was back with their drinks and he ordered a Caesar salad and some rolls.

Looking at Terry she said to Fran, "Did he always want to be a priest?"

Terry smiled as Fran said, "Even as a kid he felt he had a vocation. Like you might've thought of becoming a nun when you were at Marian."

"The Academy of the Sacred Heart, please. I was a rich kid." She was dying to ask Terry about smuggling cigarettes, but would lose her nerve when he looked at her. She asked what order he belonged to. He told her the Missionary Fathers of St. Martin de Porres.

"There's a school in Detroit with that name," Fran said, "all black kids, but there's no connection."

"Other than Martin de Porres was black," Terry said, "on his mother's side. His dad was a Spanish nobleman. They weren't married and for a long time the father wouldn't have anything to do with Martin, since he was a mulatto. Or you could say he was African--South American. This was in Lima, Peru, around sixteen hundred. He was canonized because of his devotion to the sick and the poor." There were no comments, a silence, and Terry said, "Martin de Porres is the patron saint of hairdressers."

Fran said, "Yeah, well that was a long time ago."

Debbie passed. She might ask why some other time. So she asked if he'd run into any comedy over there. "Any African stand-up?"

Terry seemed to think about it as Fran said, "Deb, it's hard to think of anything funny when hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. Terry was right there during the entire period of the genocide."

Debbie said, "I can't even imagine that." She couldn't remember hearing much about it, either, the genocide.

"On the altar saying his first Mass," Fran said, "when they broke into the church. A scene that'll stay with him the rest of his life."

Terry's expression didn't change. She thought of it now as kind of a saintly look, the dark hair and beard part of the image, the hood of the parka hanging like a monk's cowl. She hoped he might add something, so she'd know what Fran was talking about.

But now Terry was telling her again, "You were really funny. You must've felt good about it."

"Most of it," Debbie said.

"Where'd you get the pet bat?"

"Out of the air. I wanted to describe Randy as evil in a funny way, if you know what I mean, this good-looking but sinister guy with a bat flying around the house. It didn't get much of a laugh."

"It worked for me," Terry said, "but then I'm used to bats. They'd come out every night and eat a few tons of bugs. I liked the skin on the bathroom floor, too, Randy the snake molting."

"That's right," Fran said, "you were gonna see if you could make that work."

"It either didn't," Debbie said, "or only a few people got it. Or if you're gonna do weird humor you have to establish it right away, not slip it in somewhere."

"The only thing I didn't get," Terry said, "was the worst thing in the joint being the TV show. But then I never saw it. What's the name of the show? Urkel?"

"He's the character," Debbie said. "The show's called Family Matters. Urkel's a nerdy black kid with the most annoying voice I've ever heard, and the ladies in the dorm'd cry laughing at him. But you're right, it doesn't work. I'm getting rid of Urkel."

"Maybe do more with Randy."

"I could; but I get mad thinking about him and then it's not funny. I didn't hurt him enough."

"You mean there is a Randy and you hit him with a car?"

"A Ford Escort. But you say you happened to run into your ex-husband, beat, with a Ford Escort, it doesn't make it. And I didn't just happen to run into him."

"She ambushed him," Fran said, eating his salad now, "laid in wait."

"You have to understand," Debbie said, "the guy wiped me out, totaled my Beamer, got rid of my dog, stole cash I'd hidden away . . . He's the only guy I know comes out of the bathroom he doesn't have a magazine or the newspaper under his arm. He'd be in there forever. Finally it dawned on me, he's snooping around, looking in the medicine cabinet, the drawers . . . I'd hide extra cash in there, 'cause if I had it in my bag I'd spend it. I'd put it in a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom closet, in that hollow center, or in a box of tampons. The sneak found twelve hundred bucks and then lied about it. 'No, it wasn't me.' Or I'd forgot where I hid it. Another time I come home, my dog's gone. 'Where's Camille?' Randy goes, 'Oh, she must've run away.' This is a Lhasa Apso that had the dog world by the ass, had anything she wanted, toys, gourmet pet chow--and she ran away? I know what he did, he took Camille for a ride and threw her out of the fucking car, a helpless little dog." Debbie took a sip of vodka and looked up to see Terry's quiet gaze on her. She said, "I get upset, I don't normally use that kind of language."

"You don't," Fran said, "since when?"

She watched Terry grin, like he thought his brother was being funny, then surprised her with, "How much did he take you for altogether?"

"He hit her at the perfect time," Fran said. "I'd just paid Deb her commission on a big case we settled."

"The total," Debbie said, "counting what he borrowed, comes to sixty-seven thousand. Plus the car and the cash, all in less than three months."

"And Camille," Terry said, "she's worth something."

Looking at her with his innocent eyes. Was he putting her on? Now he said, "The guy must've charmed you out of your socks," not sounding much like a priest.

"What he does," Debbie said, "Randy looks you right in the eye and lies, and you want to believe him. We met at a wedding reception at Oakland Hills I find out later he wasn't invited to. Read about it in the paper. We're dancing, drinking champagne, he asks me if I like to sail. I told him I'd only been out a few times, on Lake St. Clair. We're dancing, Randy whispers in my ear, 'I'm getting ready to sail around the world and I want you to come with me.' You have to understand, this guy is movie star good-looking, early forties, he's tan, buff, gold ring in his ear; he has hair like Michael Landon, a home in Palm Beach he tells me he's putting on the market, asking price eight mil. I was ready to go to Hudson's and buy a little sailor suit. He draws a map on a napkin how we'd sail from Palm Beach to the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal to Tahiti, Tonga, New Caledonia--"

"Only," Fran said, mopping up salad dressing with a roll, "the guy didn't have a boat."

"A yachting cap," Debbie said, "and a picture of a boat he tells me is in drydock in Florida, getting it ready for the trip. This was his excuse to start borrowing money. First a couple of thousand, then five, then ten--for navigational equipment, radar, all boat stuff, because his money was tied up in investments he didn't want to move just yet."

Terry said, "What's he do for a living?"

"Preys on stupid women," Debbie said. "I still can't believe I fell for it. He tells me he's retired from Merrill Lynch, one of their top traders, and I believed him. Did I check? No, not till it was too late. But you know what did me in, besides the hair and the tan? Greed. He said if I had a savings account that wasn't doing much and would like to put it to work . . . He shows me his phony portfolio, stock worth millions, and like a dummy I said, 'Well, I've got fifty grand not doing too much.' I signed it over and that's the last I saw of my money."

"But you saw Randy again," Terry said, "on Collins Avenue?"

"You've got a good memory," Debbie said. "Yeah, a couple of months later. In the set, the opening, I say I was in Florida visiting my mom, and that part's true. She's in a nursing home in West Palm with Alzheimer's. She thinks she's Ann Miller. She said it was hard to dance in her bedroom slippers, so I gave her an old pair of tap shoes I had."

"She any good?"

"Not bad for not having taken lessons."

"It was on Royal Poinciana Way you ran him down," Fran said, finished with his salad, wiping the plate clean with half of a roll he stuffed in his mouth.

"If you want to get technical about it," Debbie said, "but Collins Avenue works better in the set."

Fran was pushing up from the table. He said to his brother, "You know I'm going to Florida in the morning, early. We better leave soon as I get back."

Debbie watched him heading toward the men's. "He was in Florida last week."

"The girls are out of school," Terry said, "so Mary Pat stays down with the little cuties and Fran's joining them for a long weekend. But I think he wants to go home 'cause he's still hungry. Mary Pat loaded the freezer with her casseroles, and they're not bad. Mary Pat's a professional homemaker."

"I've never met her," Debbie said. "I've never been invited to the house."

"Fran's afraid Mary Pat would see you as a threat."

"He told you that?"

"I'm guessing, knowing Francis. I think he would like to believe you're a threat."

"He's never made a move that way."

"Doesn't want to risk being turned down."

"You're saying he has a crush on me?"

"I can't imagine why he wouldn't."

Looking right at her, like he was saying he'd feel that way if he were Fran. It startled her. She said, "Oh, really?" and it sounded dumb.

His gaze still on her, he said, "I was wondering, when you hit Randy, were you still married to him?"

"We never were. In the bit I call him my husband and I've got the divorced women in the audience with me. I say I hit my ex-boyfriend it doesn't have the same, you know, emotional effect."

"But you lived with him?"

"He lived with me, in Somerset. Where I am now, back again. Fran got me the apartment." She said, "Does that sound like I'm being kept?"

"If it was anyone but Francis," Terry said. "Did you really put Randy in a body cast?"

He kept going back to Randy.

"No, but I banged him up pretty good."

"Have you seen him since?"

"You mean, did he visit me in prison?"

"That's right, you've been out of circulation. What I was thinking," Terry said, "the next time you see him, get him to hit you and sue him for sixty-seven thousand. I thought working with Fran, the personal-injury expert, you might know how to arrange that kind of accident."

The priest sneaking up on her with a straight face. Playing with her.

"Fran and I," Debbie said, "have never staged a car wreck, ever. Or hired people who do it." She paused for a beat. "And I've never smuggled cigarettes."

It brought his smile. It told her they could kid around, not take each other too seriously. She said, "We're not in a confessional, Father, so I'm not telling you any of my sins, business-related or otherwise."

"You still go?"

"Not in years."

"Well, if you ever feel the need--I never give more than ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys."