They heard the phone ring again, once.
Carmen stood still, listening, then needed to move, do something, and looked at Molina, at his perfect hair as he brought out his cigarettes. He seemed at ease lighting one, used to having a U.S. marshal in the house, blowing the smoke out in a slow stream.
“You don’t need this,” Molina said.
“I know that, for God’s sake.”
“Take it easy. You got to stay cool, but you got to watch him, too. What I mean by you don’t need this, you don’t need government protection. So you got two guys looking for you—go someplace else, wherever you want, you don’t have to stay here. Just don’t tell nobody.”
Carmen stepped around the coffee table and sat down thinking, Why not? Sell the pickup, get in the car and go. She said, “My husband has a job. He likes it here.”
“So what? You don’t. Tell him you’ve had enough of this shit, you want to leave. Go where you want, California, someplace out there. You know what the kid marshal wants, don’t you? What he’s gonna get around to before long,” Molina’s voice fading as he said, “if he hasn’t already.”
“Well, I was right,” Ferris said, coming in from the hall. “Wrong number. They called twice. The second time—you hear me? I go, ‘Hey, I just gone done telling you there’s nobody here by that name.’ “ He came over to the coffee table. “So what’re you talking about now?” Looking from Carmen to Molina. “Ernie, you telling stories about me? Man, I thought I was rid of you. Here you turn up again.”
“Mr. Molina’s wife left something,” Carmen said. “He came to get it.”
“Oh, that’s right, it’s Mr. Mo-leen-ah,” Ferris said, winking at Carmen. “I keep forgetting how important he is, big Mafia witness, and call him Ernie. Hey, Ernie? What’d Roseanne forget, her diaphragm?”
Carmen watched Molina. He didn’t bother to answer.
Ferris moved around the end of the coffee table to get closer and look down at him.
“You and her back together?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Gee, I’m surprised,” Ferris said. “From the way she acted I thought, well, she either had enough of you or she wasn’t getting enough from you, one.” He looked at Carmen. “Roseanne liked company. Old Ernie’d go to work tending bar, Roseanne’d call me up. ‘Hi, watcha doing? Why don’t you come over and have a drink? Me and Bitsy are all alone here.’ Her and that goddarn dog. You still have Bits, Ernie? Nobody’s kicked her little teeth in?”
“We still have her, yeah.”
Molina drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke out in a sigh and Ferris began waving his hand at it.
“Ernie, what’re you doing?” Sounding disappointed, glancing at Carmen as he said, “I’ve been trying to get him to quit ever since I got assigned here. Ernie, you know what smoking does to you.”
Carmen watched him take hold of Molina’s hairpiece, grab a handful and lift it from his head. Molina didn’t move.
“It makes your hair fall out. This here,” Ferris said, inspecting the rug closely, feeling it now, a small animal in his hand, “is from a lifetime of smoking.”
Molina’s eyes raised to Ferris for a moment, Carmen watching him. He looked at her then and seemed to shrug. Carmen pushed up from the sofa.
She heard Ferris say, “Where you going?” as she walked out of the living room, crossed the hall to the kitchen and could feel him behind her by the time she reached the table and picked up the phone. “Who you calling?”
“The police.”
“Hey, come on. Who you think I am?”
“The biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life,” Carmen said, dialing the operator.
He reached past her and took hold of the cord. “I’ll yank it right out of the wall.”
Carmen put the phone down. She stood against the end of the breakfast table, her back to Ferris. She could smell his after-shave, feel his hands slide up on her shoulders.
“That’s not nice, talking like that,” Ferris said, his voice low, close to her. “You want me to wash your little mouth out with soap? I will, I’ll wash your little ears, too, and your little neck. I’ll wash any parts you want. How’s that sound to you?”
“You’re sure,” Richie said, “you didn’t dial it wrong.”
“I was a telephone operator twenty-five years. I don’t dial wrong numbers.”
“And you’re positive when you wrote it down—”
“Listen to me, will you? I know numbers. I hear a seven-digit number it registers in my head till I jot it down. And there it is, right there.”
He looked past her shoulder where she was bent over the desk, hands flat on the surface, staring at the number.
She’d said they were in Missouri someplace. St. Louis? No, that wasn’t it. Richie said he’d never been to Missouri. He’d been to East St. Louis, but that was over in Illinois. East St. Louis, shit, you had to stand in line to commit a crime, but didn’t tell her that.
This woman was pretty smart. She knew something was wrong and even said it, though more to herself than to him. “There’s something wrong somewhere.”
“You mentioned you had trouble with your phone.”
“I had trouble with callers, not the instrument. I told you, I referred the matter to the Annoyance Call Bureau and they put a trap on my line.”
“They listen in?”
“No, a trap records what number is calling this number. That’s how you catch obscene callers.”
“You had any?”
“Yes, I did, I’m sorry to say.”
“What’d he do, talk dirty to you?”
“I would never ever in my life repeat one word of what that man said.”
“You have to wonder about people like that,” Richie said, “what gets in their head and makes them become perverts. Here, let me help you.” Lenore was groaning as she tried to straighten up from the desk. Richie got under one of her arms and lifted.
“I should never bend over that far from the waist,” Lenore said. “It’s like somebody stuck a knife in me.”
“That’s your sacroiliac. I mentioned I could give you a back rub. I learned how from a foster mom I had one time named Jackie. She was some kind of therapist before that, worked with cripples. Let’s get you on the couch. . . . No, let’s get you down right here on the floor, over here on the carpet. I’ll get a pillow for your head, so you’ll be comfortable.”
Lenore eased down to her hands and knees on the living-room floor. Now she looked up at Richie taking off his ironworker’s jacket.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You aren’t gonna hurt me, are you?”
17
* * *
CARMEN OPENED HER EYES to see the lamp turned on, Wayne kneeling next to the bed looking at her, waiting.
“You awake?”
“I am now. What time is it?”
“Quarter after two.”
“You must’ve closed the bar.”
“We barely made last call. I’ve been working since I left here this morning till just a while ago. Had supper on the towboat, it wasn’t bad either.”
Carmen could smell the strong soap Wayne used. She stared at his face, for a moment wanting to touch it, the tough weathered skin shiny clean but drawn. He looked worn out.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I tried to. I forgot the number and the operator wouldn’t tell me ’cause it’s unlisted. I said, it’s my house. Didn’t do any good.”
“I called the drydock when you didn’t come home,” Carmen said. “Whoever it was said you hadn’t been there all day.”
“The foreman knew where I was.” Wayne smiled. “That’s why we sound a little cool, huh? I’ll show you my coveralls, you’ll see I wasn’t out chasing women. You know where I was? On the Curtis Moore, the harbor tug. We brought some barges up from Westlake, putting together a tow. They’re gonna leave first thing in the morning, like in four hours. That bo
at I helped repair.”
“Your new life,” Carmen said.
“Well, I’m looking it over. You get out there, talk to guys who’ve been on the river a while, they wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”
“Maybe it’s all they know.”
“It’s more than that. I think the river gets to you.”
Carmen rolled her eyes at him.
“Well, it’s what you said, it’s a life, it’s not just the river. It’s places, it’s . . . like they’re talking about running the Lower Memphis bridge southbound, how you come along Interstate-Forty, stay close to Mud Island and point at the High-Rise Motel. Like you’re driving along the highway, only you have a quarter of a mile of barges out in front of you.”
Carmen said, “Not like walking on high steel.”
“It’s different, yeah, but you get the same kind of feeling that, you know, you’re doing something. It’s not just a job where you get paid, you go home and put hamburgers on the grill and sit there thinking, Shit, I gotta go to work tomorrow.”
“When did you put hamburgers on the grill?”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s big stuff,” Carmen said.
“That’s right. It’s not a building you can look at after, but you know you’ve done something.”
“Like today?”
“Yeah, putting that tow together, getting ready . . .” He stopped and said, “What’d you do today?”
Remembering her. He did it sometimes when she least expected and it made her feel comfortable, nothing to worry about. She said, “You first.”
“Well, this morning I’m on the drydock, a company boat arrives with a tow. They come down from Burlington, Iowa, with hopper barges loaded with grain they have to get to New Orleans by a certain day, a ship’s waiting at the dock, so it’s what they call a hot tow. But they also have eight coal barges they’re supposed to drop off at Cairo, Illinois, a thousand ton of coal in each one, you talk about big stuff. But if they stop at Cairo they won’t get to New Orleans on time . . . You listening?”
“A thousand tons of coal in each one.”
“You feel all right? You look tired.”
“I am. I just got to sleep before you came home.”
“What were you doing?”
“Lying here trying to sleep . . . thinking.”
“You want to leave, don’t you?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“You know what I hear is a good place? St. Louis. A hundred and ten miles north of here. Burlington, where they picked up the grain, is another couple hundred miles. Anyway, they have to get to New Orleans, so they leave the eight coal barges here for the Robert R. Nally, the boat I worked on. It’s repaired now, ready to go. We used the Curtis Moore to bring up eight barges of crushed rock from the quarry at Westlake and now we’ve got a sixteen-barge tow. What they’ll do is drop the coal off at Cairo and haul the rock down to Louisiana to use as building revetments. See, the federal government won’t let contractors use shell anymore, you know, seashells, to mix their concrete. So they use this crushed rock from up here.”
Wayne paused and Carmen waited, knowing he wasn’t finished. Finally she said, “Yeah . . . ?”
“They asked me if I want to go.”
“Are you?”
“It’s okay with the drydock foreman. I could get off just about anywhere I want and catch a northbound tow to come back.”
“Is that river talk?”
“What?”
“Catch a tow?”
“I don’t know—I’d only be gone a few days.”
“Then why don’t you go?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Well, if they’re leaving this morning . . .”
“In about four hours.”
“You’d better get some sleep.”
“I thought maybe I’d get in with you. It’s been a while, and if I’m gonna be gone . . .”
“We made love last night,” Carmen said. “You don’t remember?”
Wayne stared at her thinking about it. He said, “Was that last night? Uh-unh, it was the night before, after you threw the beer can at me.” He said, “Well, I can wait if you can.” He gave her a kiss good-night, got in his own bed and said to her in the dark, “We could check it off on the calendar each time and keep score. The way your mom used to do it.”
He thought that was funny. He’d say, well, it is. You take things too seriously.
Lying awake listening to him snore. Trying not to resent the way he could fall asleep almost at will.
She could say something that was really funny and he wouldn’t get it, but she was the one who took things too seriously or was too sensitive. He’d say, if that’s the word. Sensitive. He didn’t trust it. When she used to have problems at work, someone in the real estate office stealing her leads, she’d be afraid to tell him. He’d say, well, you settle it or forget it, don’t piss and moan. Now she had Ferris making the moves, touching her, telling her he’d be back, he’d look for her car in the drive and stop in when she was home, telling her he was a patient man and once she got to know him . . . But if she told Wayne she was afraid he would go after Ferris and get in trouble, threatening or assaulting a federal officer. Or was she afraid he might not and say she was imagining it? Why would the guy make the moves on a woman ten years older than he was? Seven years. All right, seven years. Good-looking guy, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting girls. Wayne would say that being a moron had nothing to do with it. But being smarter didn’t solve the problem either. Getting straight A’s twenty years ago. If she mentioned Ferris tonight, Wayne might decide it was a problem to be settled now, not put off or forgotten, and he’d miss his boat ride. So maybe you’re playing the martyr, Carmen thought.
And then thought of her mother. She’d better call her tomorrow.
That business about keeping score, marking a calendar each time you made love, was something her dad had told Wayne. Her mother never said a word about it. The way Wayne had told it to Carmen:
“Your dad says, ‘You understand, all those years of marriage we’re using the rhythm method of birth control. It gives you about a week a month when it’s safe to do it. So it became known as Love Week with us and among some of our friends, all the micks. The problem was, the wife could hold it over your head. Say you’re at a party and she wants to go home and you don’t, you’re having a good time. She whispers in your ear, “We go home right now, buddy, or you don’t get any.” You have to decide quick. You want to get smashed, have a good time? You do, you’re gonna have to wait a month to get laid. This goes on for years of marriage. One night I’m not feeling so good, I’m constipated, sitting in the bathroom trying to get something going. Lenore says to me through the door, “If you want to have sexual intercourse”—that’s what she called it, sexual intercourse—“you have to come right this minute.” I sat there thinking about it and decided, that’s it for Love Week. No more. I left the house the next morning and we got a divorce.’ He tells me all this, I say, ‘Yeah, but there’s one thing you didn’t mention. Did you have sexual intercourse that night?’ And your dad says, ‘Why not?’ “
Maybe it was funny.
* * *
Wayne rolled out of bed saying, “Jesus, I’m late. I’ll never make it.”
“That clock’s fast,” Carmen said. She stood in her robe watching him. “The coffee’s made. What else do you want, a sandwich?”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I did, twice. I thought, well, if he wants to go he’ll get up. If he doesn’t, he won’t. Isn’t that the way you’d look at it?”
Less than ten minutes later he was in the kitchen, clean coveralls over his shoulder. Carmen sat at the breakfast table with toast and coffee, looking out at the backyard in a mist of rain.
“I can’t find my goddamn keys. I bought new gloves, I can’t find them either.”
“The gloves are on the refrigerator.”
“I know
I didn’t leave them in the pickup. I used my house key to come in.” He stood looking about the kitchen saying, “Shit, I don’t know where they are.”
“I made you a meat-loaf sandwich,” Carmen said. “Sit down, have some coffee.”
“No, I gotta run. Listen, I’ll have to take the Olds. You mind?”
“Didn’t you park behind it, in the drive?”
“I can get around the pickup. I’m not worried about ruining that goddamn lawn.”
“What if I have to go somewhere?”
“Well, the keys’re here someplace, you’ll find them, you’re good at finding things.” He came over to the table, picked up the sandwich, took a bite and gave Carmen a kiss. “I’ll call you when we get to Cairo. It should be early this afternoon.”
“I wish I knew what time,” Carmen said.
“I think early, by two anyway.”
Wayne walked out of the kitchen, was gone only a few moments and came back in.
“You have the keys for the Olds?”
Carmen was positive Ferris would stop by sometime today. She had made up her mind, the moment she saw that cream-colored Plymouth coming up Hillglade she’d call the Cape Girardeau Police, 555–6621, she had the number memorized. Or, she’d run out back and hide in the woods. The only problem was she had to find Wayne’s keys and call her mother, and she didn’t want to be down on the floor looking under the dresser or in the kitchen talking to her mom and hear Ferris walk in. Not again. It was not ever going to happen again. She could leave here, call her mom from the mall or somewhere once she found the goddamn keys. But it was hard to stop and think where they might be when she had to keep running into the living room to look out the window. She decided, finally, to make the call. Get it over with.
Carmen sat at the breakfast table, dialed the number, cleared her throat and waited. She listened to it ring several times, thinking, Come on, will you? She got up from the table with the phone and brought it across the kitchen as far as the cord would reach, the phone ringing several more times. From here she could look straight into the living room and see the big picture window and its view: the back end of a failed subdivision where cars seldom went by. She saw the road directly in front of the house and trees beyond in this morning’s mist of rain. The phone continued to ring, Carmen listening, thinking, One more. But let it ring twice again, staring at the front window, and was startled to hear her mother saying, “Who is this?”