Songs in Ordinary Time (40 page)

Ashamed?”

“Careful,” he said, reaching to touch her face. “Extremely careful.” Her cheek was cold.

She looked down at him. “Omar?” Her voice trembled. “Who’s car’s that you drive?”

“One of my investors. I already told you that.”

“Yah, but the way you said it, I thought you meant some guy.”

“Well, it’s not,” he sighed. “It’s Mrs. Fermoyle, who as of tomorrow morning will be my very first franchisee.”

“Jeez!” she squealed happily. “Well, let’s celebrate, then! C’mon!” She tugged on the sheet.

“I’m really very tired,” he said, anchoring it at his chin.

“Are you and her, you know, are you doing it?”

“What? For God’s sake, child, the woman is an associate, a respected member of the business community, a vital link in my franchising network.

Please!” He shuddered.

“So. You could still be doing it.”

“Bernadette, listen to me. I swear to you. On my honor, Mrs. Fermoyle and I are not
doing it. You
and
you
alone are the only one I
do
it with.”

“Yah? Well, anyway, I wish I could be your first franchisee,” Bernadette said, pouting.

“Well, you can be my second, dear.”

“Yah! With what, my good looks?”

He glanced up at the sound of a car slipping into the alley. The window swelled with light. The car idled a moment, then backed out. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.” She yawned. “My X-ray vision’s a little off tonight.”

He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t you be flip with me! Did you tell anyone I come here?”

“No! I swear! I said I wouldn’t and I haven’t! Honest!” she cried, pulling away from him. “It’s probably just the cops. Sometimes they check the back door of the fruit store.”

The cops. He jumped up and crept from window to window. He ran down the hallway and stood on the wooden landing. Except for Marie’s car and a jumble of crates, the alley was empty. His heart was racing. The biggest mistake would be to start thinking everyone was after him. He assured himself that he hadn’t made a false step in this town. Not a single law had been broken. This was his fresh start, the reason, the justification, for every other fiasco. The old ways were over. Now he would do it with honesty and hard work.

He came back to bed, apologizing and trying to explain what a bad day he’d had. “I finally get there with the papers and it’s the night before the SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 193

loan and Mrs. Fermoyle goes and gets cold feet. It took me hours! Hours! I thought I was going to jump right out of my skin. There weren’t—”

“Omar?” she interrupted. “How could I be your second franchisee?

What’d you mean by that?”

“Well, it would probably take a little juggling of the figures, but it looks like I’m going to make enough cash off Mrs. Fermoyle to maybe—just maybe, now—eke out a franchise for you. Provided,” he said over her squeals,

“provided you can come up with
some
money. Maybe, I don’t know, fifty, seventy-five? Could you manage that?”

“Maybe!” she cried, collapsing next to him.

“But of course Mrs. Fermoyle can’t know any of this. That, you see, is being circumspect.”

“I don’t even know Mrs. Fermoyle,” she said. “But I know her kids.”

“What do you mean, know them?” he gasped as she curled close, her face in the crook of his arm.

“I mean I know who they are. Alice and me were in the same grade. She was always real quiet, one of those goody-goodies.” She slid her hand down the front of his shorts.

“Not like you,” he muttered, spreading his legs.

“Yah, and her brother, he tried to put the make on me.”

“What? He what?” He kept trying to sit up, but she had climbed on top of him.

“Yah, but that was before I knew you.” She was licking his mouth. “So how would I come up with the money?”

“What about your diamond?” he said, feeling it graze his thigh.

“I couldn’t do that,” she gasped, pulling away. “That’s my engagement ring from Kyle!”

M
arie couldn’t stop shivering in the bank’s air-conditioned conference room with its marble walls and high paneled ceiling. Opposite her at the long oak table were Jim Hubbard, the senior loan officer, and Cleveland Hinds in their dark suits, white shirts, and striped ties. Grunting from line to line, Hubbard read another form, which he passed to Hinds for his elaborate signature.

Hubbard glanced up at her. “Will Renie be here soon?” He slid over another paper, and Hinds’s pen scratched his name.

“Umm. No, he won’t be,” she said, trying to clear the nervous tickle in her throat.

Both men looked at her.

“You see, I’d really like to do this myself. You know, to keep my business to myself,” she tried to explain, squirming under their gaze. “I mean, I have a good job and my own car and, you can check for yourself, I just finished off paying on the refrigerator, and right now the only money I owe is Dr.

Yale and really, that’s my son’s—”

“It’s out of the question,” Hubbard sputtered, gathering up the papers.

He held them against his chest. “I’m really rather surprised, Mrs. Fermoyle.

194 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

I thought I’d made everything quite clear.” He slid the papers into a folder, to which he gave a sharp tap for proper alignment before pushing back his chair.

He couldn’t be leaving. No, this couldn’t be it. “Wait!” she said, hitting the table as he stood up. “I need this loan!”

“You
need
a cosigner,” snapped Hubbard.

“Why? I’ve never once been late with a mortgage payment, you know that! That house is all I’ve got. I’d never let anything endanger that,” she said, her voice rising.

“Now, Marie.” Hinds sighed. “What can I say? This is the way we do it.

This is the way it’s done. This is the way!” He threw up his hands. “We know you’re a good person, a hard worker. But the only income you’ve got is your own. Someone in your circumstances needs a cosigner, someone who’ll—”

“My circumstances? You mean because I don’t have a husband?”

“Yes,” said Hinds with a smile and a grateful nod.

“Because I’m divorced.” She stared at him.

“Well, now, not just that you’re divorced. It would be the same if you were a widow. It’s because you’re a woman alone. And a woman alone is a woman in tenuous circumstances and therefore needs a cosigner, someone who’ll pay the bank if you should get sick or laid off or if you can’t pay.”

He took a breath. “Nine times out of ten it doesn’t matter. It’s really just a name on the dotted line, you know, to satisfy the auditors and all the darn government regulations.”

“So in other words, it’s like a formality,” she said slowly, taking care both to decode his message and show that she understood.

“A formality,” he mused. “Well, I suppose, in a sense.”

“So what you need is Renie’s signature on those forms?” She watched his face, relieved when he smiled and nodded. “Can I take the forms over to Renie?” she asked him.

“I’m afraid not,” Hubbard spoke up. “Bank regulations mandate these be signed in person.”

“But that way,” she tried to explain, “he won’t have to close up the store, and I won’t have to take time off work to come back, and you won’t have to take up any more—”

“Hell, what’s the harm?” Hinds interrupted, with a sour glance at the piqued Hubbard.

“Just drive around the block a minute,” Marie told Omar. “Go slow now,”

she muttered as she signed “Renie LaChance,” on both documents. “It’s just a formality,” she said, uneasy with his silence. “Besides, it’s not as if he’d even care.”

When she returned to the bank, Cleveland Hinds was alone in the conference room. With Hubbard gone, something had changed. Hinds seemed more subdued, distracted. Had it occurred to him that she might have forged Renie’s name? Forgery! The word’s reality stung her cheeks. Hubbard was SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 195

probably calling Renie right now. Then he’d call the police. She held her breath as Hinds glanced at the forms. The check was being prepared, he said in a soft voice. If she had to get to work, she could pick it up later.

Later! He was obviously stalling for time. Oh God, she never should have done it. What had she been thinking of? If she could only get the forms back, she’d rip them up and never do anything like this again.

“I’ll wait, if you don’t mind,” she said in a small voice.

“Mind! Heavens no! It’ll give me a chance to find out how things’ve been going for you lately.”

“Oh, pretty good.”

“That’s all? Just pretty good?” He smiled and slid the forms into the folder.

“Very good, actually,” she said, relieved to see him push aside the folder.

“Now with the refrigerator paid off. And the car’s running okay.” She knocked on the tabletop. “And the two oldest have jobs this summer, Norm and Alice. And Benjy’s taking swimming lessons. He’s always been afraid of water. Mr. Briscoe wants to take him fishing. He’s such a nice man. Such a good businessman.” She was beginning to babble with his eyes boring into her like this. “I couldn’t ask for a better boss.”

“That’s good to hear. But how’re things with you? I mean with you personally, Marie.”

“Everything’s fine,” she said stiffly.

“I know it must be difficult with three children, but do you ever go out?”

She froze. She had been right. This was a trap.

“You’re a very interesting woman,” Hinds said. He kept smiling at her, trying to give her time to confess, to stop this fraud before it went any further.

“You know, Renie didn’t really read any of those papers,” she blurted, gesturing at the folder. “Maybe I should take them back and tell him to read them. I really rushed him. I’ve had so much on my mind lately.”

Hinds chuckled. “About the most the women I know ever have on their minds is a hat.” He reached across the table and patted her hand. “The papers are fine,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about them.”

“I just want everything to be done right,” she said, not moving.

His hand covered hers. “And I just want to get to know you better, Marie.

How do you feel about that?” He stared at her.

“Well, I’m awfully busy and…” Shocked, she pulled away her hand.

“And you’re married!” Not just married, but, my God, married to Nora Cushing, who’d been engaged to Sam.

His cool gaze warmed with amusement. “And I’m a very nice man, too.

And a very good businessman.” He grinned. “We’ll have a lot to talk about.”

O
mar hadn’t wanted to take her check from the bank, but she was glad she’d insisted. One thousand dollars had obviously snagged Roy Gold’s attention. For the last three days Omar had been in Connecticut, where Gold was giving him a personal run-through of the whole operation 196 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

from top to bottom. Marie was cooking dinner when Omar called to say he’d have to spend at least one more day there.

“He’s showing me everything,” Omar said, “the plant, executive offices, his suite, the distribution…”

“What’s that?” she interrupted, straining to hear.

“What? I don’t hear anything.”

“Sounds like a little kid crying.”

“Must be crossed lines again. You really ought to have your phone checked. For all you know, somebody’s listening in on your calls.”

“But all they keep hearing is me being stood up again.” She laughed uneasily. He had promised to come to dinner tonight with the paperwork for her two franchises.

“I wish you could see this, Marie, the people here just hanging on my every word,” Omar whispered into the phone.

“I should hope so, with all the money you’re giving them.” All your money, she expected him to say.

“Well, this is a different element now,” he said with the hushed urgency of a reporter calling from the midst of some tumultuous event. “These are the men that make the world turn, and they don’t do it with small talk.”

“Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“I hope so. There’s so much to learn. I can’t keep all the different solvents straight, much less all the new business terms,” he said. In the background there was a woman’s sudden laugh.

“Where are you calling from?” she asked, hating the shrillness that betrayed her fear, her certainty that in the end no man could be trusted because she herself was so inadequate.

“Somebody’s office, I’m not sure whose. I’ve met so many different people.”

“What’s the number there?”

“I’m not sure. Let me see here….” In the pause came a rustling sound.

“Well, I’ll be…it doesn’t say. That’s strange.”

“There must be a phone in another office,” she said, her temples pulsing with the old dread. He seemed so far away. When Sam was drinking she never knew where he was.

“They’re all locked, though.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Tonight I’m not sure. I couldn’t get my room back at the motel. Why, Marie? Did something happen? Is anything wrong? Is anyone looking for me? Do you want me to come back? I’ll tell Gold some other—”

“No! Oh no, no, don’t! Don’t change anything. Just do what you have to.”

“I miss you,” he said.

Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss you, too,” she said, looking up as Norm’s bright whistle carried down the street. She quickly removed Omar’s place setting from the table.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 197

At dinner Norm had seconds of everything, but Benjy only picked at his food. He kept glancing at Omar’s empty chair. Norm was telling them how every time Joey Seldon complained about his popcorn stand Jarden Greene made sure he accompanied the laborer who would be repairing it. Aside from these tales about Greene, Norm seldom complained about his job anymore. He liked his work crew, especially his foreman, Kenny Doyle.

She could see how much he enjoyed not having Omar here. He had the floor to himself again. “When something breaks, like today it was the whole front counter, Greene says, ‘Don’t rip it out. Just nail a new board over it.’”

A car pulled into the driveway, and Benjy looked toward the door. Outside, Harvey Klubock was clapping his hands, calling the dog.

“What’s the matter, Benjy?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He shrugged.

“One of these days you’ll go up and find the whole thing boarded up,”