“He joins the ladies,” Terry said.
“And I’m with my mom. What do I do, warn the ladies? Pour a drink over his head and cause a scene? Not with my mom there. I told you she thinks she’s Ann Miller? While I’m watching Randy, Mom’s telling me how much fun she had making On the Town with Gene and Frank, but that cute Vera-Ellen was a pain in the ass the whole time.”
Terry said, “I’d like to meet her.”
“She’s still there. What I ended up doing, I took Mom over to the table and said, ‘Mother, this is Randy, the bullshit artist who stole all my money.’ My mother says to him, ‘How do you do, Andy, I’m pleased to meet you.’ She thought he was Andy Garcia. I got her out, raced across the bridge to the nursing home—it’s right on Flagler—dropped her off, and raced back to Chuck and Harold’s. I was sure he’d still be there because he’d have to clear himself, make up a long, involved story. Did you see My Dinner with André, the snob who bores the shit out of Wallace Shawn for an hour and a half? That’s Randy.”
“He was still there.”
“I checked to make sure, peeked in. Then schmoozed the valet parking guy to let me sit there and wait, double-parked. Randy comes out, finally, with the two ladies and stands there talking to them while they wait for their car. Randy, I was sure, parked on the street, he never spends his own money if he can help it. He gets the ladies into their car, still bullshitting them. They drive off and he walks along the streetside of the cars parked along the curb. I creep up next to him, my windows down, and go, ‘Hey, asshole,’ to get his attention. I told him I’d hound him, I’d keep showing up and make his phony life miserable until he paid back every cent he stole from me. But without any idea how I’d do it. He came around to my side of the car, the Ford Escort, and tells me with his face in the open window, ‘Don’t fuck with me, kid. You’re not in my league.’ ”
“That did it,” Terry said, “calling you kid, huh?”
“That and his tone of voice, Mr. Fucking Superior. I see him walking away, across the street to where he’s angle-parked against the median, Royal Poinciana Way, lined with palm trees. I had to go after him. I floored it. I saw his face as he looked back and saw me coming and I plowed into him, bounced him off a couple of cars and drove off.”
“You left the scene?”
“That was my mistake, a premeditated hit-and-run, witnessed by everybody standing in front of the restaurant.”
Terry was sympathetic. “That’s a shame, have all those people watching. You hurt him much?”
“He had to have a hip replaced.”
“I hear that’s a common procedure now.”
“He fractured his other leg, punctured a lung. There were lacerations, I think thirty-five stitches in his scalp. The state’s attorney wanted to bring me up on attempted murder. I had a court-appointed lawyer who did what he could. He tried for man two, where I’d get maybe a year; we settled for aggravated assault, three to five.”
“You poor thing,” Terry said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. “Being locked up with all those offenders. It must’ve been awful.”
She looked up at him with sad eyes, holding the yobie away from them, and he kissed her for the first time, a tender kiss, Terry seeing what it was like, then putting a little more into it to see where it would take him, then glad to feel Debbie getting into it with him. When they came apart he took the yobie from her and put it in the ashtray on the coffee table. But then when he turned to her again there was a different look in her eyes. Not quite sure about this.
He said, “I’m not HIV, honest.”
“You swear?”
He raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“You don’t have any, like, weird African diseases you might’ve caught?”
“Not even malaria.”
She kept staring at him and pretty soon the look in her eyes softened. She smiled and he believed he was home.
He was.
They went in the bedroom and kept on kissing and now touching each other as they took off their clothes, Terry holding her from behind as she pulled down the bedspread. They left the lamp off but could see each other in the light from the hall, where the bathroom was. She said, “It’s been so long for me.” And said, “I know, it’s like riding a bike.”
Only a lot better. But Terry didn’t tell her that. He wasn’t a talker in bed.
After, when they were lying there in each other’s arms, Terry said, “We were trying to remember what those crucified guys were singing?”
“The Life of Brian,” Debbie said, “yeah, what was it?”
“ ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.’ ”
She said, “Right, and then all the crucified guys would whistle the refrain. Yeah, I can hear it.” She was quiet, maybe thinking up something funny to say. Terry waited, then turned his head to see her looking down at herself, chin pressed against her chest. She said, “It’s hard to tell when you’re lying down, but you can see they’re just starting to sag a little.”
“They look okay to me.”
“When you see them sitting straight up and the person’s lying down? You know they’re fake.”
“Is that right?”
“You put on an act sometimes, don’t you?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re this simple soul.”
“I am.”
She said, “Uh-huh. Are you hungry?”
“I thought we might twist one and go for seconds.”
She said, “Oh my. Really?”
* * *
So they didn’t get to Randy and how well he was fixed until the next intermission and were resting again, Debbie telling about her visit with Randy’s ex, Mary Lou Martz. “See, she didn’t change her name when she married Randy. She’s always been Mrs. William Martz in Detroit society, a patron of anything that has to do with the arts—the symphony, the opera company, the art institute. She’s active, and very popular, known to her friends as Lulu.”
“You call her that?”
“I didn’t call her anything. On the phone I told her about my experience with Randy and she invited me to her home in Grosse Pointe Park, a beauty, like a French château on Lake St. Clair. I was surprised she was so willing to talk about him. She was Miss Michigan first runner-up about thirty years ago, looks good, keeps in shape, has had a couple of lifts—”
“She told you that?”
“You could tell. I asked if Randy wanted her to sail around the world with him. She said it was almost the first thing out of his mouth. At some black-tie affair.”
“The guy works hard, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, but you know what she said to him? ‘Your yacht or mine?’ Cool? She had her guard up and still fell for him. He told her he was writing a book on the conflict in the Middle East, having covered it during the past ten years for the Herald Tribune, living in Paris most of the time. Though he kept his boat in Haifa, Israel. Four months from the time they met, Randy supposedly hopping back and forth to the Middle East, they were married.”
“How’d she get on to him?”
“Little things. He lived in Paris for years but didn’t speak any French. He told her it wasn’t necessary, everyone there spoke English. Lulu had been to Paris enough times to know that was bullshit. She wanted to hop over to Israel with him, take his boat out and cruise the Greek islands. Randy goes yeah, let’s do it. Then he’s gone for a week. The next time she sees him he tells her the PLO blew up his boat. They hate him and he’s on their hit list. Tell a big enough lie you can get away with it for a while. But now he’s running up charges, buys a new Jaguar . . . Lulu wants to know what happened to his money. He had told her he was given a two-hundred-thousand-dollar advance by a publisher, but it ran out as he worked on his book. Lulu said, ‘What book? I don’t see you writing any fucking book.’ ”
“That’s what she said?”
“Words to that effect. He told her he’d had writer’s block for the past year but believed he was abo
ut to break through and get going again. Lulu put a detective on him and that was that. But, it didn’t happen soon enough. Because the marriage lasted more than a year, the prenuptial agreement kicked in and Randy walked away with his settlement, a few mil and the restaurant.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Not inside. I don’t want him to know I’m around just yet. Lulu won’t go near it. She said if she knew how to make a bomb she’d blow the place up. With Randy in it.”
“She wanted to get laid,” Terry said, “and it cost her.”
“She wanted to meet a nice guy, that’s all, and have some fun.”
“What was her husband’s company?”
“Timco Industries. Automotive suppliers, they make fittings.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Nuts and bolts.”
“Connectors,” Debbie said. “What they use when they’re putting together subassemblies on a conveyor line. Like, you know, engines, transmissions, fuel tanks, they have to be connected on a line that’s turning out a car every minute. You can’t use a wrench, it would slow up the line. So Lulu’s husband, Bill, invented a way to snap the parts together with a plastic fitting . . . and an O-ring for a seal. I remember it in case I want to use it sometime.”
“That made him rich, a plastic fitting?”
“With the O-ring. Terry, ten million cars a year come off the line with her husband’s patent holding them together. He sold the company so he could retire and play golf.”
“And he died right after?”
“On the twelfth at Oakland Hills, a long five par.”
“The company’s Timco?”
“Automotive suppliers,” Debbie said, “have names like that, Timco, Ranco, you never know what they do. I’ve done stand-up at dinners put on by suppliers you’ve never heard of and all those guys are millionaires.”
Terry said, “Makes you want to go to work for a living, huh?”
They got up to grill hot dogs and an hour later were back in bed, all the lights off in the apartment.
Terry said in the dark, “What’re you gonna do, slip and fall in Randy’s restaurant?”
“I’m not,” Debbie said, “you are. Fr. Terry Dunn, missionary hero from Rwanda, the sole support of hundreds of starving children.”
13
* * *
THEY DIDN’T TALK ABOUT IT last night, in bed. He did say, “I walk in the restaurant and slip and fall. On what?” All Debbie said was, “We’ll work it out.” This morning sipping her instant coffee he said, “How do we work it out?” And she said, “What?”
Well, here she was now, looking up at the high-domed foyer, Terry watching her from the top of the curving staircase: Debbie in a dark skirt and turtleneck beneath the open raincoat, Debbie clickety-clicking across the marble floor, doing a tap routine in her heels.
“You know what I wanted to be more than anything? A chorus girl.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I found out it was work. You know, to be any good and get in a show. I was a go-go dancer once, but only for a few weeks, when I was at U of M.”
“I’d like to have seen that.”
“You did. I didn’t have enough tit to be a star. And really, to do it for a living you have to be on crack.”
“Come on up.”
She said, “Wait,” and clickety-clicked over to take a look at the living room. Coming up the carpeted staircase she said, “It’s o-kay, what I call four-star hotel decor, Mary Pat not taking any chances.”
“Nothing from Taiwan,” Terry said, “or India.”
“Now you’re making fun of my decor, Pier One kitsch and St. Vincent de Paul hand-me-downs.” She reached the top and kissed Terry on the mouth. “What’s your plan, throw me on a bed?”
“I thought you wanted to see the house.”
“I do, and I won’t make any more cheap remarks.”
They came to the master bedroom, gold draperies, a tufted gold spread covering the king-size bed. Debbie looked in. “So this is where Fran and Mary Pat do it.”
“We know they have at least twice,” Terry said, and in the same moment wished he hadn’t, sounding like a smart-ass for no reason. He brought Debbie along to the little girls’ rooms.
She looked in at each one and said, “Cute.”
Nothing about the dolls and stuffed animals.
“Remind you of when you were little?”
“I was more into dancing and playing doctor.”
He said after a moment, “It’s a nice place though, isn’t it?” thinking of his brother who loved his home and was proud of it.
She said, “The house? Yeah, it’s very nice. What else is up here?”
“The guest room, where I’m staying.”
He showed her and she looked in at the twin beds with white spreads, a comfortable chair, Terry’s duffel and athletic bag on the desk, no clothes lying about.
“You keep your room neat. There’s a good boy.”
“I don’t have enough stuff to mess it up.”
Now she said, “Terry, what is that?”
His machete, lying on the desk close to the duffel.
“For cracking open coconuts.”
She went into the room and picked it up to heft it and put it down, not saying one word, and walked to a window.
“I’ve got the Rwanda pictures here,” Terry said. He picked up the athletic bag and turned to the beds, but then walked up behind Debbie at the window. They looked out at a swimming pool covered in dark-green plastic, the rest of the yard, the leafless trees and shrubs stark, the dead look of winter holding on. He said, “Fran hangs a swing from that maple tree in the summer.”
He turned and walked over to stand between the twin beds with the athletic bag, Debbie, still at the window, saying, “I should do a bit on winter in Detroit. Shit, if this is spring, I could do a whole set.” Terry was taking the color photos from the bag now as she said, “I wish Randy lived in Florida. I think I’ll move there after we score. You want to?”
Terry didn’t answer, busy laying out photos on the spread; he wasn’t sure what she meant. Did he want to move to Florida after? With her, or what? Now she was next to him between the beds, looking down at the photos. She asked how many he had and he said about two hundred. “These are the best ones.”
“Are they all boys?”
“No, but that age, it’s hard to tell them apart. Some of these kids are in orphanages, but they’re not much better off than the ones that live in the street. They form families, an older girl maybe fifteen taking care of the little ones. They’re on their own, they have to scrounge for food, clothes to wear . . . This kid’s digging in a charcoal pit. He’ll collect bits and pieces that haven’t burned and sell them.”
Terry handed Debbie a photo.
“Kids at a garbage dump looking for something to eat.”
She said, “Jesus, Terry,” and sat down on the bed behind her with the picture. She said, “But in some of the shots the land looks so green and lush, crops growing everywhere—”
“They’re children,” Terry said, “they’re not farmers, with land. They’re little Tutsis nobody wants. Here, a couple of ten-year-olds smoking cigarettes. They roll their own. This boy, he’s thirteen now, killed a friend of his during the genocide. With a machete. They were eight years old at the time.” Terry was saying, “What do you do with this boy?” and looked up.
So did Debbie. She said, “Did you hear that? Someone calling you?”
He was moving now, reaching for the machete on his way out of the room, Debbie behind him, Terry saying, “You left the door open.”
“It was open when I got here.”
In the hall they heard the voice again, calling out, “Terry, you fuck, where’re you at?”
And he knew who it was.
At the staircase railing that curved around to the hall, they looked down at the foyer to see Johnny Pajonny looking up at them.
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Terry said, “My man Johnny.”
Johnny said, “Where’s my fuckin money?”
* * *
It surprised her when he stopped to pick up the machete from the desk. Debbie, behind him, had put her hand out, almost bumping into him. She wondered if it was a reaction left over from Africa: you hear something, grab a machete.
Now she watched Terry going down the stairs with it, the blade about a foot and a half long, the carved handle a natural color of wood, Terry holding it pointed down, along his leg. Johnny saw it. She heard him say, “The fuck is that, a sword?” She heard Terry, on the stairs, say, “A machete,” and as he reached the marble floor, “one I found in the church after they hacked to death seventy people, while I was on the altar saying Mass. There was still blood on it.” Johnny said, “Jesus Christ.” She watched Terry raise the machete, hold it by the blade and offer Johnny the carved wood handle. Taking it Johnny said, “Jesus Christ, they kill people with this?” “Chop their heads off,” Terry said, “and their feet.” Debbie started down the staircase, her hand sliding along the gold leaf railing. She saw Johnny look up, but only glance at her as he hefted the machete saying, “It’s heavier’n it looks.” He made a short hacking motion with it. “They actually killed people with this, uh?” And Terry said, “Right in front of me.” Debbie paused a few steps from the floor, then remained there to watch.