Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (29 page)

           
Kate Monroe, while they talked, used
and shredded any number of tissues from the box Maria Elena had given her. “I
love him, and he loves me! You can’t hold a man who doesn’t love you!”

           
“I know that.”

           
“You have to let him go!”

           
Maria Elena spread her hands, at a
loss. “Yes, if he wants. That is the American law.”

           
“It’s a mockery,” Kate Monroe went
on in her shrill voice, obviously not listening to a word Maria Elena said, “to
hold on to him if he doesn’t love you any more! We deserve our chance at
happiness!”

           
Maria Elena lifted her head at that,
suddenly incensed at this slobby ignorant person in her house. “Deserve? Why do
you deserve happiness? What did you do that you
deserve
happiness?”

           
“You
must
let him go!”

           
But Maria Elena would not be
sidetracked. “You said that you deserve happiness. But why? Why do you deserve
anything? Why
you?”

           
This time Kate Monroe heard the question.
It made her blink, and look briefly evasive. “I said a
chance
she decided, and became self-assured again, crying, “You
had
your chance!”

           
“Yes, I did,” Maria Elena agreed.

           
Kate Monroe misunderstood: “If you
and John lost what you—”

           
“Oh, not Jack,” Maria Elena told
her. “No. My chance at happiness was long before that.”

           
Kate Monroe couldn’t follow the
conversation, and it was making her angry. She’d come into this house with a
clear simple burning truth to express, but now it was all turning muddy and
difficult. Maria Elena could understand what had happened there, could almost
sympathize with the woman; this is the way it is when you try to act out your
fantasies in the real world.

           
Trying to recapture the initiative,
Kate Monroe said, loud and angry and vicious, “If that’s the way you feel, if
you
never
cared for John, if all you
ever wanted was a ticket to the United States—”

           
“Yes, that’s true.”

           
Kate Monroe stared, thunderstruck.
“You
admit
it?”

           
“Why not?”

           
“Then why won’t you let him go?”

           
“Because he hasn’t asked.”

           
“That’s a lie!”

           
“I’ve never heard of you, Miss
Monroe,” Maria Elena said.

           
“Jack and I don’t talk much. But of
course he can go, if he wants.”

           
“He did ask you,” Kate Monroe
insisted, clutching to the chair arms. “You refused.”

           
Maria Elena got to her feet. “John
will be home in six or seven hours. Why don’t you look around the house, become
familiar with it? When he comes home, you can discuss it all with him. You can
tell him I will not stand in your way. That you yourself asked me if I would
let him go, and I said yes.”

           
Kate Monroe was getting frightened
now. The solid base of her universe was sliding beneath her feet. Staring up at
Maria Elena, she said, “Where are you going?”

           
“I have a friend to visit in the
hospital. I will probably be several hours.” Maria Elena pointed at the
television set. “You could watch TV while you’re waiting for Jack. There are
several interesting dramas on in the daytime. I hope your car isn’t blocking
the garage.”

           
“No, I put it on the—
Why?
Why won’t you stay and talk with
me?”

           
“Because it has all been said,”
Maria Elena told her. Imagining Kate Monroe’s future, she couldn’t hold back
the smile. “You’ll have your chance,” she told the wretched woman. “At
happiness.”

           
More and more, in these latter days,
Grigor couldn’t get out of bed at all. He had a knob of controls handy beside
the bed, and could raise himself to a sitting position, and there he’d stay all
day, sometimes reading, but more often—when the books were too heavy to hold,
even the paperbacks—watching television. There were many channels to watch, and
almost always there was something of a news or non-fiction nature somewhere
within range. Grigor watched such programs because he still thought of them as
grist for the mill, the raw material for more jokes for Boris Boris. But the
truth of the matter was, there were now weeks when he didn’t fax even one
miserable reject of a joke to the studio in
Moscow
.

           
He knew what the problem was, of
course. It was obvious, and inevitable, and there was no way to counteract it;
like the disease itself. The problem was that he’d been away too long. He no
longer knew
Russia
as naturally as before, as automatically as he knew himself. What
changes had taken place there, that Boris Boris should be commenting on? What
was the
cm courant
subject in
Moscow
this week? Grigor didn’t know. He would
never know.

           
Almost the only bright spot in his
darkening and narrowing world was Maria Elena Auston, that strange lady they’d
picked up at the demonstration. She wasn’t exactly a cheerful person, not as
enjoyable
as for instance Susan, but
Susan had her own life to live, had a man of her own now—not some bedridden
shell of a man—and very seldom came all the way up from the city to visit.
Maria Elena did visit, usually twice a week, and there was something about her
very solemnity, that awareness that at all times she carried sorrow somewhere
deep within her, that made her a comfortable companion for the person Grigor
had become.

           
We have both been damaged by life,
he thought. We understand each other in a way the undamaged can’t know.

           
What a quality to share; he ought to
make a joke about it.

*
 
*
 
*

           
When Maria Elena walked in, it was
her third visit that week, a new record, and she was in better spirits than
he’d ever seen her.
^cc
The plant is on strike!” she announced.

           
Grigor had just been brooding on how
litde of the world he recendy understood, and here came Maria Elena to prove
it. Unable to keep the impatience and irritation out of his voice, he said,
“Plant? What plant?”

           
“Green Meadow! The nuclear plant!”

           
“Oh, yes. Where we first met. But
you said you didn’t go there any more.”

           
“I drove by it.”

           
Maria Elena pulled the green
Naugahyde chair closer and sat down, her strong face transformed by what
appeared to be happiness. She was actually a beautiful woman, in a dark and
powerful way.

           
It’s more than a nuclear plant being
on strike, Grigor thought, but he didn’t know enough about her private life to
be able to guess at what had changed her. A new lover? Something.

           
Something to make her drift away
from him, like Susan?

           
Maria Elena was saying, “It’s the
quickest route, so I sometimes drive by, and today there were many more
pickets, and
 
some had signs saying they
were on strike! The workers are, because they know the experiments in there are
too dangerous. A school bus was just going inside, with the pickets trying to
stop it, so I had to wait, and one of the strikers told me the school bus was
full of managers and supervisors!”

           
“But it’s still operating?”

           
“Oh, yes. And they're still
experimenting. But you know how they are, they don’t care about the danger, the
most important thing to them is that their authority not be questioned.”

           
Grigor looked at the window. “That’s
very close to here.”

           
“Eight miles.”

           
“Too close.” With a bitter smile,
he asked, “Am I going to be assaulted by two nuclear plants in one lifetime?”

           
Maria Elena looked startled, then
frightened, then disbelieving. “They wouldn’t let that happen!”

           
“No, of course not.” Grigor nodded.
“No more than the officials at
Chernobyl
would let such an unthinkable thing
happen.” Again he brooded at the window, thinking of that structure eight miles
away. “I’d like to get inside that place,” he said. “Alone. Just for a little
while.”

           
Sounding breathless, Maria Elena
said, “What would you do?”

           
Grigor turned his head to look at
her. When he smiled, his gray gums showed, receding from the roots of his
discolored teeth. “I would play a joke,” he said.

           
What
is he doing?

           
I prowl the earth, I tear furrows
from the ground in my frustration, I sear the rocks and lash the gravestones.
What is that silken slavey
up to
?

           
I can’t attack him head-on, that’s
the most aggravating part of it. I have to acknowledge that now, after two
encounters. He’s too strong for me to meet in direct confrontation.

           
Well, what of it? Direct
confrontation has never been
our
specialty.
He has a back; eventually, I will find it, and I will drive a sword into it.

           
In the meantime, I watch the woman.
Susan Carrigan. Dull as church, predictable as famine. She does nothing to even
endanger
herself,
much less the
species, the planet. God’s alabaster moth hangs around her, sometimes in his
enriched white- bread guise—Andy Harbinger!
that’s
his idea of humor!—so I don’t dare to make a move against her, not yet.

           
But what is his
plan
? What is this woman supposed to
do
? The aggravation is unbearable. Oh, the
revenge
I will take, once it’s safe!

           
As for the other one, my little
Pami, she’s also disappeared. That’s less important.

           
I dare not fail. I dare not even ask
for extra help.
I dare not.
What
would be done to me—

           
No. We don’t even think about what
would be done to me.

           
The doctor took Frank aside while
Pami was getting dressed. “Have you had any sexual contact with that young
woman?”

           
“Not me,” Frank said. “I won’t even
shake her hand. I’m just here as a friend.”

           
The doctor was a pleasant enough
guy, skinny, balding, about forty. It was hard to tell if he was looking
worried about Pami, or if he just looked worried all the time. Being a doctor
with a specialty in AIDS, he might as well look worried all the time. He said,
“I get the impression she’s an illegal alien.”

           
Frank gave him a careful look. He
said, “The other doctor.”

           
“Murphy. Who referred you.”

           
“Yeah, him. He agreed, the deal was,
medicine’s the only thing we’re talking about. Cause we don’t want her to
spread it, right?”

           
The doctor smiled thinly, but went
on looking worried. “Don’t worry, Mr. Smith, I’m not going to call the
Immigration Service. The only point I want to make is that Pami will be needing
hospitalization very soon, and I’m not so sure she’ll qualify under any medical
plan at all.”

           
“So what happens? They leave her in
the street?”

           
The doctor shrugged, looking
uncomfortable. “They might.”

           
“Nice people,” Frank said. “How
long’s she got?”

           
“A month or two before she’ll need
to be in the hospital. After that... Less than a year, certainly. Less than a
week, perhaps.”

           
“And what can you do for her,
between now and then?”

           
“You’ll have those prescriptions
filled,” the doctor said. “The unguent will ease the chafing of the sores. The
other things will help her symptomatically, make life a litde more pleasant.
That’s all that can be done, short of hospitalization.”

           
Pami came out, dressed again in the
clothes Frank had bought her. She didn’t quite lmow how to wear them yet, so
they hung on her as though they didn’t fit, but in fact they did. She smiled
her crooked smile at the doctor. “Thank you.”

           
“You’re welcome,” he said, and
smiled back.

           
The doctor liked her; Frank could
tell. The thing about Pami was, when she wasn’t being tough she was like a
sweet little kid. Like a pet that could talk. Frank was keeping her around
because, as he told himself, she gave him an interest in life, now that he was
in semi-retirement with the
East St. Louis
cash. Anyway, it’s nice to know somebody that’s worse off than you,
somebody you can feel sorry for.

           
The doctor pointed to his
receptionist, telling Frank, “You can pay Mrs. Rubinstein.”

           
“Right.”

           
Mrs. Rubinstein said, “How will you
be paying today, Mr. Smith?”

           
“Cash,” Frank said, bringing a wad
of it out of his pants pocket.

           
The doctor, about to turn away,
looked back and gave Frank a smile as crooked as Pami’s. “You, Mr. Smith,” he
said, “are one of those enigmas that will keep me awake at night. I don’t
suppose you’d care to satisfy my curiosity just a bit.”

           
“Nah,” Frank said.

*
 
*
 
*

           
They came walking around to the back
of the NYU Medical Center, where they’d left Frank’s most recent car—a blue
Toyota, stolen in New Jersey, now sporting altered New York plates— and some
bum was lying on the ground against the curbside rear wheel. It looked as
though he was drunk or something and fell off the curb, and now he couldn’t get
up again. The way the car in front was jammed up against the
Toyota
, Frank wouldn’t be able to get clear
without backing up, and he couldn’t do that with this bum lying draped around
the rear wheel, so he poked the guy with his toe, saying, “Come on, pal, rise
and shine. Make love to some other tire, okay?”

           
The bum moved, in some kind of
fitful and ineffectual way that did no good at all. Wiped out on cheap port
wine, probably. Frank bent and grabbed the guy’s arm through the sleeve of the
ratty topcoat, but when he pulled, the guy just flopped over onto his back, the
topcoat gaping open, showing striped pajamas underneath. “Jesus,” Frank said,
in disgust, “this turkey doesn’t even have any clothes.”

           
“Oh, look,” Pami said, “look at his
neck.”

           
There was some sort of wound on the
guy’s neck, obscured by dried blood. There was more blood around his nose. He
was Japanese or Chinese or something like that, and only half-conscious.

           
“Aw, crap,” Frank said. “I don’t
even wanna touch him.” And he thought, him, too. All round me, people I don’t
want to touch.

           
Pami hunkered beside the wounded
drunken Jap, looking into his eyes. “He’s from the hospital.”

           
“You think so? Okay, lemme go get
somebody, bring him back.”

           
But that roused the Jap, who
suddenly, fitfully, shook his head back and forth, massive woozy headshakes, as
though he had a lobster stuck to his nose.

           
Frank frowned down at him. “You from
the hospital? Why you don’t wanna go back?”

           
The Jap was lying mostly on his back
now on the asphalt, between the parked cars. He held his arms up toward Frank
and pressed the insides of his wrists together, looking mutely past them at
Frank.

           
“Handcuffs,” Frank decided. ‘They’ll
arrest you?”

           
Now the Jap nodded, as vigorously and
erratically as before.

           
Frank gazed upon him without love.
“You got anything catching?”

           
Headshake.

           
Frank offered a sour grin.
^cc
Well,
that’ll make a change. Come on,” he told Pami, “we’ll throw him in the backseat
and get the hell out of here.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
While they packed he groused. “I
don’t see why we gotta keep the guy around at all,” he muttered, putting his
new all-cotton shirts in his new all-leather bag. “Some dumb Jap, can’t even
talk, probably a loony.”

           
Pami paid him no attention. She
didn’t have a whole lot of clothing to pack, but she took a long time at it
because she had to stroke and refold and grin at every damn piece.

           
“Can’t even stay in one place on
account of him,” Frank griped.

           
The problem was, in New York City
there was no hotel room anywhere that you could get to without going past the
front desk, and there was no way Frank was going to carry that mute sick Jap in
and by the front desk and up to a room, without getting stopped. What they
needed was a roadside motel somewhere, that Frank could go into the office of
and pay in advance and then drive right on down and park in front of the room.
So nobody sees the Jap at all.

           
“I don’t know how long we can carry
him around, though,” Frank said.

           
Pami said, “Maybe he’ll get better.”
She shrugged, and looked more bitter than she had for several days. “Maybe
he’ll
get better.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
They’d left him in the backseat of
the
Toyota
, lying there like a pile of wash on its way
to the laundromat, and when they came back around the corner from the motor
hotel they’d been staying in on
Tenth Avenue
he was still there. Either asleep or dead.
He moved slightly, disturbed, when they climbed in, so he wasn’t dead.

           
Frank made the light at the corner
and turned right and they went up
Tenth Avenue, north
. He was still nervous about highways, after
his experience when coming into this city, so he was going to avoid them. Drive
city streets, and after that country roads. Just keep heading north, with no
place special in mind. Stop where the country looks nice; with a motel.

           
The eyes that watched him all the
time, judged him all the time, liked it that he was hanging out with these
people.