The Man on the Washing Machine (24 page)

My mother found the minestrone recipe in a magazine. It earned so many hosannas from me and my father that she and our succession of cooks and housekeepers kept making it even back at our home in Belgravia, although it never tasted quite as good as the version we ate from mismatched bowls on the side of a Swiss mountain. It's probably not authentic minestrone, but it starts with a ham hock stock, skimmed and kept in the freezer. I toss in a mixed handful or so of lentils and various dried beans; some herbs—heavy on the oregano—a half cabbage, chopped; a couple of cans of Italian tomatoes; and as much sliced pepperoni as I feel like adding. This is heated until the beans and lentils more or less dissolve, and it's ready. I began to cook it when the last of the police officers left at around eight that morning. “Don't forget to lock your door,” he said, looking at the splintered doorjamb where my gunman had forced his way into the flat.

Very funny.

I took Lucy down into the garden, and used some picture wire and nails to jury-rig a back door fastener, promising myself to have a dead bolt installed as soon as the hardware store opened. I left the soup to simmer on the stove while I took a shower, swept up about two acres of feathers in the bedroom, put the phone on vibrate, and fell into bed. I didn't wake up again until late in the afternoon.

Antonio Carlos Jobim was a genius. Almost anything can be improved by listening to his recordings. “The Girl from Ipanema” was insinuating itself around the flat when I took a bowl of the minestrone to the empty fireplace and sat on the floor, tearing chunks off a French loaf for dipping. Lucy sat next to me gnawing a rawhide chew. As I was about to take my first taste, I heard a knock at the back door.

I untangled my makeshift wire lock and found Ben leaning against the wall outside. Like everyone I knew lately, he looked tired. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. It was remarkably good to see him.

“Quaint of you to knock,” I said.

Lucy was squirming and wriggling with joy and he leaned down to scratch her. He inspected the picture-wire lock carefully. “May I come in? Hello, Lucy.”

“Do you want some soup?” I said impulsively.

“If it's no trouble,” he said. “I haven't eaten since yesterday.”

“Bowls in the cabinet over the sink. Spoons in the drawer to the right of the dishwasher. You'll have to share my bread and sit on the floor.”

“That's starting to sound attractive,” he said, almost to himself.

I reattached the wire after he was inside. When he joined me in the living room, holding his bowl and spoon, he sat down on the floor on the other side of the fireplace.

I missed the first tremblings of the house.

Ben didn't though. “What's that?” he said, and put the bowl on the floor. Out-of-staters are always more sensitive. We live with the earthquakes and it starts to feel like no big deal when the house shakes a little.

“Earthquake,” I said. The tremor rattled the windows and shook the floor and we sat in that half-cautious, half-expectant way that people have in an earthquake waiting for it to stop, except that it didn't. It matured in intensity until every beam and nail and window frame protested like live things at the stresses tearing them loose from their accustomed places. I snatched up Lucy and scrambled for the archway to the dining room, trying not to hear the snapping and cracking and the terrifying low rumbling noise.

“Come on,” I shouted at him over the din. “You're safer away from the fireplace!” I went back to grab his arm and pulled him over with me, and we stood in the archway with our backs to the walls on either side. With no fanfare, everything stopped shaking and the noise quieted and died. The house swayed languorously for a few more seconds, as if reluctant to give up the novelty. And then everything was impossibly, unreasonably mute.

“Jesus.” Ben's face looked strained.

“I've felt worse,” I said, but I was rattled, too.

“I haven't.”

“It was probably less than a 6.0 and not on the San Andreas.”

He looked at me with respect and I was reminded how arcane the commonplace can seem to an outsider. “You can tell all that?”

“More or less.” I smiled faintly. “You seem like a guy who prefers data to poetry. I don't usually spout factoids.”

He looked around the room as if to check on the devastation that such arrogant force had wrought, but I had no knickknacks to break and nothing on the walls, so everything looked the same.

“Is it safe to stay inside?”

“For now. Sometimes the aftershocks are worse than the original quake. They can go on for weeks. Months. This was probably related to that small one we had a few days ago.”

“Good factoids,” he said.

I kept trying to reassure him, remembering my response to my first earthquake. “I've had shear walls put in and the place is bolted onto the foundation. All the modern conveniences.”

He was staring at me, his expression unreadable. He touched my cheek with his open hand. It felt cool and hard. I closed my eyes in a gesture that was partly relief and partly surrender, and covered his hand with my own.

“I heard about last night. I was afraid I'd left it too late.” He frowned at my hand, at the torn skin, and drew it toward his mouth.

I felt short of breath. “Left what too late?” I said.

For an answer, he kissed my wrist. It stung where the handcuff had scraped the skin and I started to draw away. He pulled me toward him slowly. I moved the last few inches under my own power and my mouth was hard on his before I could talk myself out of it.

After a long moment, I shucked his jacket from his shoulders and felt his tongue on the tender skin of my neck.

Nat's fluorescent orange condoms from the evening before caused a raised eyebrow and an accepting grin. We made love on the Oriental carpet in front of the fireplace, eagerly, as if we'd both waited a long time. And again, more slowly. Every second was sweeter than the last. And then we were quiet, draped around each other like eels, lying on a patchwork of underwear and sweaters and his leather jacket, watching dislodged soot drift onto the hearth like black snow.

I ran questing fingers along a scar that traveled down his back and disappeared underneath his arm. He rolled over lazily and answered the question I hadn't asked. “A friend of mine got into an argument with a drunk and a broken beer bottle. I tried to help him out.”

“That was brave—and you were lucky.”

He smiled. As always, it made him look ten years younger. “Not so brave; you'll notice he got me in the back. I learned a bunch of things though.”

“Like what?”

“That the exercise gurus are right—running can save your life.”

I gurgled with laughter. “What else?”

He was suddenly serious. “Faced with a friend in need, I forget everything I've learned.” He stared thoughtfully at the soot dislodged by the earthquake, still drifting into the hearth from the chimney. He placed the flat of his hand gently against the scar on my arm. His eyes asked me the question.

“I'll tell you sometime,” I said uncomfortably.

“Now's good. I'm not doing anything much. At least not for fifteen minutes or so.”

But I couldn't bring myself to share the joke or answer the smile in his voice. “Do you want some hot soup?” I said, and wriggled into my jeans.

He watched me for a few seconds. He reached out and took my hand, not preventing me from leaving, but inviting me to stay. “We don't need to talk,” he said gently.

The lack of pressure loosened my tongue.

“I was robbed not long after I moved here.” I glanced at him quickly; his eyes were dark and unreadable. I felt a wave of something—encouragement? empathy?—coming from him and I went on more calmly:

“He came into Aromas early one morning when I was alone and forced me into the office at knifepoint. I didn't know what he planned to do, but—” Despite the effort it was costing me, my voice shook. “I was able to get away from him because someone came into the store and hit him in the back of the head with a gallon jug of shampoo.” I chuckled without humor. “When he was half dazed, we were able to get away, and by the time the police arrived, he'd escaped.”

Ben waited, still without speaking. I thought he might be regretting his curiosity about the scar, although I didn't blame him. It caught the eye.

“So this week was even harder on you than it seemed. Nothing like getting a reminder of how vulnerable we are.”

My head was splitting and I felt as if I'd run a marathon. I tried to get my voice and breathing back to normal. “Thanks for being here when Lichlyter talked to me—when was that? It feels like weeks.”

He responded to the change of subject and the change in my mood. “All part of the service—no pun intended.”

He surprised me into a laugh. This was what I had missed; I was responding like a thirsty plant to some of the best parts of physical love—the relaxation of tension, the joy, and the first delicate tendrils of trust. I felt something in me relax, like a tendon held taut for too long, aching without being noticed.

Lucy, disturbed by the laughter, took it into her head to walk through the hearth; she left tiny sooty smudges on the pale floor as she wandered around the living room.

I stirred in his arms after a long time and pulled my sweater over my shoulders. He was partly dressed, like me, and I'd been lying against his naked chest. He was in good shape, with powerful shoulders and a taut, muscled stomach—I made a small involuntary noise. He looked down at me. “Are you cold? Shall we build a fire?” he said lazily, and kissed me.

I gathered my wits. “No, best not. After a quake the chimney ought to be checked for cracks, so that it doesn't—” I sat up suddenly.

“Doesn't what?” he said.

“The chimney!”

“What about it?”

“Charlie O'Brien left sooty smudges all over the apartment when he broke in here. Why did he do that? He couldn't unless he'd been…” As I talked, I crawled to the fireplace and peered up the flue, seeing nothing for my trouble. I reached up the chimney as far as I could. I waggled my fingers around and they caught on something. I tugged. When whatever it was remained stubbornly jammed in the flue, I tugged harder.

A choking puff of soot fell down into the hearth, followed by a soft-bodied, red nylon gym bag.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The bag was smeared with velvety black streaks and the greenish zipper had a couple of broken teeth at one end. I picked it up gingerly by its only handle. The opposite side only had two torn patches where a handle had once been. I was willing to bet that the red strap I'd seen in Charlie O'Brien's hand would fit exactly.

“Aren't you going to open it?” Ben said impatiently as I continued to stare at it. “You're looking at the thing as if it was full of vipers.”

The bag was limp and looked empty. No vipers. I dragged it onto the hearth, opened the zipper. I felt around inside and pulled out a cardboard envelope several inches square.

I offered it to Ben to look over. He flipped it over and handed it back. “Maybe it's a tarantula,” I said.

“Too flat.”

“A killer bee?”

“It's not buzzing.”

“A letter bomb? Charlie O'Brien had an Irish accent.”

He hesitated. “It could be, but my guess is something much more mundane.”

“What?”

“Size and weight's about right for a CD or DVD. Or it could be a tarantula.”

“You said it was too flat.”

“A crushed tarantula. For God's sake, Theo, open the damn thing.” I opened the flap warily and pulled out a plain and unremarkable CD with no labels or identifying marks.

“I was hoping for an emerald necklace,” I said.

“Have you checked the heating ducts lately?” With a quick glance at my undoubtedly pale face, he added briskly: “I'm getting cold. How about some soup?”

“Let's think about it tomorrow, you mean?”

“Not tomorrow, Scarlett, how about in half an hour?”

He was right. The doughnut I'd eaten for breakfast yesterday wasn't making it as a foundation for rational thought. I was still hungry and some food might help me to think.

While he reheated our untouched soup, I washed the soot off my arms, turned up the thermostat, and found him a bathrobe in case he wanted a shower—a masculine quilted number in dark green. I thought of telling him I'd bought it on Haight Street for last year's Halloween costume party and decided not to; he could believe what he wanted.

He examined the disk. “No way to tell if this is music or data. We've got a computer set up at the shelter. Do you want me to have a look and see what's on it?”

“The laptop downstairs will work.”

I put the disk into its envelope and stuffed it back into the gym bag. Then I put the bag in the copper tub of firewood next to the fireplace and arranged a couple of logs on top of it. Ben raised an eyebrow, but I said: “People have been marching in and out of here pretty much at will.”

Ben took a spoonful of his minestrone and made an appreciative noise. “Ever hear the old army joke about an officer giving the command to fire at will?”

I shook my head, smiling.

“One of the recruits drops his rifle and runs for the hills. The officer says ‘Who was that man?' And another recruit says: ‘That was Will.'”

I snorted into my soup. “That may be the worst joke I've ever heard.”

“I know a lot of worse ones. Did you hear the one about the golfer—”

“No, please. Not in my weakened condition. I need food.” We applied ourselves in companionable silence. “I was hungry,” I said unnecessarily as I put my bowl down a few short minutes later.

“Feeling better?”

I nodded.

“Good. You seem to be in the middle of this whole story. Why don't you try running through it for those of us,” he nodded at Lucy, “who don't know what the hell is going on.”