“Oh,” she said flatly, when he opened the front door. “You’re not Simon.”
“Not today.” He grinned. “May I give him a message?”
“He’s still gone, is he?”
He nodded. “He’ll be back just after Easter. We swapped apartments.”
“I see. You’re from California?”
“Right. Uh … would you like to come in or anything?”
She considered his lame offer, frowning slightly, then said: “Yes, thank you.” She cast a flinty glance at two black children playing in the sand next to the cement mixer. “If nothing else, it’s safer inside.”
He had no intention of agreeing with her. “I’m Michael Tolliver,” he said, extending his hand.
She held hers out limply, as if to be kissed. “Fabia Dane.” As she followed him into the corridor, her face knotted like a fist. “My God. That smell! Did someone park another custard in here?”
She meant puke, he decided, and he suddenly found himself feeling uncharacteristically defensive about the place. He loathed this woman already. “It’s an old building,” he said evenly. “I guess the smells are unavoidable.”
She dismissed that thesis with a little grunt. “Dear Simon’s problem is that he’s never been able to tell the difference between Bohemian and just plain naff. One could certainly understand a grotty little flat in Camden Town, say … or even Wapping, for God’s sake … but this. It must be awful for you. And those horrid abos with their drums going night and …”
Her diatribe came to an abrupt end as she barged into the living room and caught sight of Wilfred sprawled on the sofa. “Booga booga,” he said brightly.
Michael grinned at him. Fabia turned to Michael with a granite countenance. “What I have to say is personal. Do you mind?”
Wilfred sprang up. “Just leaving, milady.”
Michael saw no reason to humor her. “Wilfred, you don’t have to.”
“I know.” He winked at Michael. “Talk to you later, mate.”
As soon as he had gone, Fabia eased her centaur haunches into an armchair and said: “I’m sure Simon wouldn’t appreciate that.”
Michael sat down as far away from her as possible. “Appreciate what?”
“Letting that aborigine have the run of the house.”
Michael paused, trying to stay calm. “He said nothing about that to me.”
“Just the same, I would think that a little common sense might be in order.”
“Wilfred is a friend of mine. All right?”
“They’re squatting, you know.”
“Who?”
“That child and his horrid father. They don’t pay rent on that flat. They just moved in and laid claim to it. Never mind. I’m sure you think it’s none of my business. I felt it only fair to warn you.”
“But … if that’s illegal, why hasn’t …?”
“Oh, it’s perfectly legal. Just not very sporting. So-o-o … if Simon is cross with you, you’ll know the reason why.” She gave him the smug little smile of a snitch. Michael fell a sudden urge to wipe it off her face with a two-by-four. Instead, he changed the subject: “What is it you’d like me to tell Simon?”
“He’s coming home in a fortnight?”
“More or less.”
“He hasn’t gone queer on us, has he?”
Not a two-by-four, a four-by-four. With a nail in it. “I haven’t asked Simon about his private life,” he answered blandly.
She studied him for a moment, then said: “Well, anyway … the message is that he missed a marvelous wedding.” She paused, obviously for effect. “Mine, to be precise.”
“All right.”
“Dane is my new name. My maiden name was Pumphrey. Fabia will do, actually. I’m quite sure Simon doesn’t know any others.”
Michael was quite sure too.
“At any rate, my husband and I will be giving a little summer affair at our new place in the country, and it wouldn’t be complete without Simon, God knows. The invitation will becoming later, but you might give him a little advance warning, so he can think up a truly masterful excuse.”
The last remark was so full of poison that Michael wondered if she was a jilted lover. Did she stop by just to rub Simon’s nose in her marriage?
“Come to think of it,” added Fabia, “better make sure he gets the last name. I wouldn’t want there to be any confusion. It’s Dane.” She spelled it for him.
“As in Dane Vinegar Crisps?”
“Yes,” she answered, “as a matter of fact.”
“No kidding?”
“That’s my husband’s company.”
“How amazing, Wilfred and I had some of those just this afternoon.”
“Wilfred?”
“The aborigine.”
“I see.”
Michael rose. “I’ll give Simon your message.” Fabia regarded him coldly for a moment, then got up and went to the door. She paused there, apparently considering an exit line. Michael folded his arms and squared his jaw. She gave him a faint, curdled smile and left.
Michael stood fast until she was outside, then sat down and finished his sandwich.
Wilfred returned ten minutes later. “She’s gone, eh?”
“Thank God.”
“What did she want?”
“Nothing. Nothing important. Just a message for Simon.”
“It isn’t us with the drums, you know.”
Michael smiled at him. “I don’t care about that.”
“Just the same, it isn’t me and me dad. It’s those bleedin’ Jamaicans across the way.”
“Sit down,” said Michael. “Forget about that harpy. Finish your sandwich.”
The kid sat down. “You know there was a bloke watching your flat?”
“When?”
“Just now. A fat bloke. I saw him from me window.”
“Oh,” said Michael. “Probably her husband waiting for her.” The all-powerful Mr. Dane, King of the Vinegar Crisps.
“No.” Wilfred frowned. “Not likely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he ran off when she left the flat.”
Michael went to the window. The children were still romping by the cement mixer, but there was no one else in sight. “Where was he?”
“Down there.” The kid pointed. “Next to the phone box.”
“And he was … just watching?”
Wilfred nodded. “Starin’ hard at the window. Like he was trying to see who it was.”
The Jesus Tortilla
THEIR PALM SUNDAY WEEKEND WAS ONLY HOURS AWAY when Brian phoned Mary Ann ai work. “I made a sort of unilateral decision,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
By now, she had grown extremely wary of new developments. “What is it?” she asked.
“I canceled our reservations in Sierra City.”
“Why?”
“Oh … I thought we owed ourselves something a little fancier under the circumstances. How does the Sonoma Mission Inn sound to you?”
“Oh, Brian … Expensive, for starters.”
“We can afford it,” he replied, with somewhat less wind in his sails.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“You don’t sound very excited.”
“Sorry. I’m just … I think it sounds great. Really. I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“I remembered that,” he said.
She felt a nasty little twinge of guilt. She hated to see him make such elaborate plans on behalf of her fraudulent miltehchmerz. “Do we need to do anything special?” she asked. “Won’t I need dressier clothes?”
“You’ve got time to pack them,” he said. “They aren’t expecting us until seven tonight.”
“Great. I should be home no later than four.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon tying up loose ends: editing footage for a feature on California Cuisine, making phone calls, answering memos that had languished on her desk for weeks. She was on the verge of making a discreet exit when Hall, an
associate producer, caught sight of her in the hallway.
“Kenan’s looking for you,” he said.
“Shit. With an assignment, I’ll bet.”
Hal grinned at her. “No rest for the perky.”
She weighed her options. If she walked out without checking with Kenan, she had no guarantee that Hal wouldn’t rat on her. He was famous for that, in fact. So she gritted her teeth and stormed off to the news director’s office, already stockpiling an arsenal of excuses.
As always, Kenan’s inner sanctum was a hodgepodge of promotional media kitsch: miniature footballs imprinted with the station logo, four or five different Mylar wall calendars, a Rubik’s Cube bearing the name and address of a videotape manufacturer. The only recent change was that Bo Derek had vanished from the spot on the ceiling above Kenan’s desk, and Christie Brinkley had taken her place.
Arms locked behind his head, the news director eased his chair into an upright position, and fixed his tiny little eyes on Mary Ann. “Good. You’re here.”
“Hal said you wanted to see me.”
His smile was a form of aggression, nothing more. “Do you remember … oh, way back when, when you first came to work for us … remember I told you a good reporter is the only person who is always required to respond to an Act of God? Do you remember that?”
“Sure,” she said, nodding. For all she knew, even the janitors at the station were subjected to that asinine speech. “What about it?”
“Well, lady …” He was drawing out the suspense as long as possible. “I’ve got something for you that just might qualify.”
When she broke the news to Brian, he was just as angry as he deserved to be. “Fuck that, Mary Ann! We’ve been planning this trip all week. You told them that, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well, why do they have to pick on you?”
“Because … I’m the lowest on the totem pole, and they know I’ll do …”
“What’s so goddamn important that they can’t wait until Monday, at least?”
“Well … it’s kind of an Easter story … Holy Week, rather … so they need it now, if …”
“The Pope is coming? What?”
“You’ll just get mad, Brian.”
“I’m mad already. What the hell is it?”
“A woman in Daly City. She thinks she’s seen Jesus.”
“Terrific.”
“Brian …”
“Where did she see Him? On her dashboard?”
“No. On a tortilla.”
He hung up on her.
She left the station minutes later and drove to Daly City. The site of the miracle was a tiny Mexican restaurant called Una Paloma Bianca. A white dove. Not a bad tie-in for the Holy Week angle. The cameraman was already there, fretting over technical problems with the tortilla.
“I’m telling you,” he snapped, “it just won’t read. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Look,” she countered. “I can see it. Sec … there’s the beard. That’s part of the cheekbone. That wrinkle going left to right is the top of His head.”
“Swell, Mary Ann. Tell that to the camera. There’s not enough contrast, I’m telling you. It’s as simple as that.”
Mary sighed and muttered “Shit” to no one in particular. This provoked a disapproving cluck from Mrs. Hernandez, the tortilla’s discoverer. In anticipation of her television debut, the portly matron was decked out in her grandmother’s lace shawl and mantilla.
“Excuse me,” said Mary Ann, bowing slightly to underscore her sincerity.
“We could highlight it,” the cameraman suggested.
“What?”
“The tortilla. We could touch it up.”
“No!” She was feeling sleazier by the minute. Her perennial wisecrack about working for the “National Enquirer of the Air” contained more truth than she cared to admit, even to herself.
“But if we explained …”
“Matthew, don’t touch up the tortilla, all right?”
He called for truce with his hands. “O.K., O.K.” He looked around at the blackened pots and pans of the cramped kitchen. “Should we shoot it here?”
“She found it here, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but there’s not enough room for the others.”
“What others?”
He smiled at her lazily. “All those pilgrims in the front room. They came to be on TV.”
“Well, they can’t be!”
“Swell. You tell them that.”
She groaned at him, then stomped to the pay phone in the front room. She called Larry Kenan and suggested that the story be scrapped. His response was clipped and vitriolic: “If it’s too much for you, lady, I’ll put Father Paddy on it. Wait there and don’t touch that friggin’ tortilla!”
Forty-five minutes later, the television host of Honest to God alighted cassock-clad from his red 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. “Darling!” he beamed, catching sight of Mary Ann. “You poor thing! This is your first miracle, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure it qualifies,” she muttered.
“Tut-tut. Miracles are like beauty, I always say. They’re in the eye of the beholder. Where is the beholder, by the way?”
“In the back,” she answered, pointing past the mob in the front room. “In the kitchen.”
“Grand.” Father Paddy glided through the throng like a stately pleasure craft, eliciting devout murmurs of recognition from the television viewers present. “The thing is,” he told Mary Ann, “miracles are very, very good for people. We can’t let a little faulty technology stand in our way. Some miracles are easier than others, of course, but I’m sure we can manage. Have you noticed, by the way, how it’s always Jesus or the Blessed Virgin? Good evening, my child, God bless you. They should be seeing the Holy Ghost, since he’s the ambassador-at-large, if you know what I mean, but no one ever spots the Holy Ghost on a tortilla—God bless you, God bless you—since no one has the faintest idea what the poor devil looks like. He gets no press at all. Christ, it’s hot in here. Where’s the tortilla?”
When they reached the kitchen, an elderly friend of Mrs. Hernandez was using the tortilla as a sort of compress against an arthritic elbow. “Oh, dear,” said Father Paddy. “We may have lost Him.”
A hasty examination of the tortilla reassured them that the holy features were still discernible.
“It won’t show up on tape,” said the cameraman.
Father Paddy gave him a knowing smile. “Backlight it,” he said, “then tell me that.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me, Matthew. Father knows best.” He gave Mary Ann’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Never fear, darling. We’re home free now.”
He was right, it turned out. Backlighting the tortilla not only emphasized the color variations in the dough, thereby revealing the Christus, but also imbued the pastry with an inspirational halo-like effect. When the image finally appeared on the monitor, all twenty-three members of the Hernandez entourage uttered a collective murmur of appreciation.
“Perfect,” purred Father Paddy. “Nice work, Matthew. I knew you could do it.”
The cameraman smiled modestly, giving Mary Ann a thumbs-up sign. She was still uncertain, though. “They won’t see the clothespins, will they, Matthew?”
“Nah.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll shoot just below them. Don’t worry.” He reached out and touched the length of twine from which the tortilla was suspended. “We wouldn’t want Him to look like He’s hanging out to dry.”
She laughed feebly, hoping Mrs. Hernandez hadn’t heard the remark. She was actually beginning to warm to this story. The face on the tortilla did look an awful lot like Jesus, if you discounted the lopsided nose and a dark spot that might be construed as an extra ear. She could already imagine the music she would use to score it. Something soaring and ethereal, yet basically humanistic. Possibly something from a Spielberg movie.
On the other ha
nd, maybe the story was no longer hers. She turned to Father Paddy. “Will you be doing this for Honest to God?”
The cleric made a face. “What?”
“Well, Kenan sounded so pissed I thought maybe he had given you …”
“No, no, no. I’m just a consultant tonight. The story’s all yours.”
“Oh … well, in that case, maybe I should interview you about it. Just to get an official position from the church.”
“Darling.” Father Paddy lowered his voice and cast his eyes from left to right. “The church has no official position on this tortilla.”
“What would we have to do to get one?”
The cleric chuckled. “Call the archbishop at home. Would you want to do it?”
“You don’t have to declare it an official miracle or anything. Couldn’t you just say something like …” She paused, trying to imagine what it would be.
“Like what?” said the priest. “ ‘My, what a pretty tortilla. Such a good likeness, too!’ Come now. The archbishop has a tough enough time with the Shroud of Turin. The very least we can do is spare him the Tortilla of Daly City.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You called him for that statue story last December. I remember.”
“What statue story?”
“You know … the bleeding one. In Ukiah or somewhere.”
The cleric nodded slowly. “Yes … that’s true.”
“So what’s the difference?”
Father Paddy sighed patiently. “The difference, darling girl, is that the statue was actually doing something. It was bleeding. That tortilla, for all its parochial charm, is simply lying there … or hanging there, as the case may be.”
She gave up. “All right. Forget it. I’ll wing it.”
He ducked his eyes. “You’re cross with me now, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes you are.”
“Well … you were the one who called it a miracle.”
“And for all I know, it is, darling.” He chucked her under the chin. “I just don’t think it’s news.”