“Did I. I thought, wait a minute. This isn’t what I want, get married and join clubs. I guess I made a run for it, too. All the way… gone.”
He laid his left arm along the backrest of the seat and took a good look at her profile. She had a wonderful nose. Jesus, and one of those lower lips you wanted to bite. Her nose wasn’t quite as thin and delicate as Helene’s, but it was a beauty. He liked her dark hair better. He liked red hair a lot, but not frizzy, the way Helene had it now.
“What happened to the guy you didn’t marry?”
“He met someone else. He’s quite a successful neurologist.”
“Is that right? Maureen married a urologist.”
This Sister Lucy didn’t look anything like a nun; she looked rich. She had on a loose beige-and-white striped blouse, like a T-shirt, underneath the linen jacket. She was wearing, he decided, about three hundred dollars worth of clothes. He wanted to ask her why she became a nun.
Amazing, thinking that when she glanced at him and said, “How do you happen to be in the funeral business?”
“I’m not, really. I’m helping out my brother-in-law for a while. My sister’s husband.”
“What would you rather do?”
Jack edged up a little straighter. “That’s a hard one. There isn’t much I’ve done I cared for, or wouldn’t bore you to tears.” He paused, at first wondering if he should tell her, then wanting to for some reason, and said, “Except for a profession I got into when I made my run. There was sure nothing boring about it.”
She kept her eyes on the road. “What was that?”
“I was a jewel thief.”
Now she looked at him. Jack was ready, his expression resigned, weary, but with a nice grin.
“You broke into people’s homes?”
“Hotel rooms. But I never broke in. I used a key.”
There was a silence in the hearse as she passed a semi-trailer at 70 miles an hour.
“A jewel thief. You mean you only stole jewelry?”
Other girls, wide-eyed, had never asked that. They’d get squirmy and want to know if he was scared and if the people ever woke up and saw him. He said, “I’d take cash if I was tempted. If it was sitting there.” Which it always was.
“You only robbed the rich?”
“There’s no percentage robbing the poor. What was I gonna take, their food stamps?”
She said, without looking at him, “You’ve never been to Central America. There the poor are the ones who are robbed. And murdered.”
That stopped him, until he thought to say, “How long were you there?”
“Almost nine years, not counting a few trips back to the States, to Carville for training seminars. There’s no place like it. If your purpose in life is the care of lepers, and what’s what the Sisters of Saint Francis do, then you have to go to Carville every few years, keep up with what’s going on in the field.”
“The Sisters of Saint Francis?”
“There’re a bunch of orders named for Francis, the guy had so much charisma. He might’ve been a little weird, too, but that’s okay. This one’s the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Stigmata.”
Jack had never heard of it. He thought of saying, I like your habit, but changed his mind. “And you were stationed in Nicaragua.”
“The hospital, Sagrada Familia, was near Jinotega, if you know where that is. On a lake, very picturesque. But it isn’t anymore, it’s gone.”
“You’re a nurse?”
“Not exactly. What I did was practice medicine without a license. Toward the end we didn’t have a staff physician. Our two Nicaraguan doctors were disappeared, one right after the other. It was only a matter of time. We weren’t for either side, but we knew who we were against.”
Were disappeared.
He’d save that one for later. “And now you’re back home for a while?”
She took several moments to say, “I’m not sure.” Then glanced at him. “How about you, Jack, are you still a jewel thief?”
He liked the easy way she said his name. “No, I gave it up for another line of work. I got into agriculture.”
“Really? You were a farmer?”
“More of a field hand. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola.”
She was looking at him again, now with a grin, showing dimples. It inspired him.
“Up the interstate to Baton Rouge, then Sixty-one till you get almost to the Mississippi line, turn off toward the river and you come to the main gate. Inside, you drive along a white rail fence. It’s hard to see, through the wire mesh they have on the windows of the bus, but it looks like a horse farm. Till you notice the gun towers.”
“Really? You were in prison?”
“A month shy of three years. Met some interesting people in there.”
“What was it like?”
“Sister, you don’t want to know.”
She said, in a thoughtful tone, “Saint Francis was in prison…” Then glanced at Jack and asked, “But how do you feel about it? I mean committing crimes and then being locked up.”
“You do it and forget it.” He hadn’t heard about Saint Francis doing time… But he was talking about himself now. “I have a healthy attitude about guilt. It’s not good for you.”
He saw her smile, not giving it much, but he smiled back at her, feeling a lot better, thinking maybe they should stop on the way, have a cup of coffee. She was nice, easy to talk to, and he was still a little hung over this Sunday afternoon. But when he mentioned coffee Sister Lucy frowned in a thoughtful kind of way and said they really didn’t have time.
Jack said, “I’ve found one thing in this business, there’s very little pressure. You go to pick up the deceased, and I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but they’re gonna be there waiting.”
She said, “Oh,” in her quiet, unhurried way, her gaze lingering, “no one told you.”
Jack said, “I had a feeling there was something you thought I knew. What didn’t anyone tell me?”
She said, “I think you’re going to like it.”
He had to admit he liked the idea she was playing with him now, seeing a gleam in those calm eyes as she looked over again, about to let him in on a secret.
“The girl we’re going to get-”
“Amelita Sosa.”
“Yes. She isn’t dead.”
Seven years ago, when Amelita was fifteen or sixteen and living in Jinotega with her family, a National Guard colonel came along and put stars in her eyes. This guy, who was a personal friend of Somoza, told Amelita that with her looks and his connections she’d be sure to win the Miss Nicaragua pageant and after that the Miss Universe; appear on international satellite television and in no time at all become a famous film star. “You know, of course,” Sister Lucy said, “what he had in mind.” This was during the war. Before the Sandinistas took over the government.
Jack understood what the colonel was up to, but wasn’t exactly sure about the war. He knew they were always having revolutions down there and did understand there was one going on right now. He remembered when he was little his dad, back from Honduras for a few days, telling them the people down there were crazy, hot-tempered; if they weren’t fighting over a woman they were biting the hand that fed them. Jack would picture shifty-eyed guys with machetes, straw sombreros, bullet belts crossed over their shoulders, waiting to ambush a United Fruit train loaded with bananas. But then he would see Marlon Brando and a bunch of armed Mexican extras ride into the scene and government soldiers firing machine guns from the train. It was hard to keep the borders and the history down there straight. He didn’t want to interrupt Sister Lucy’s story and sound dumb asking questions. He listened and stored essential facts, picturing stock characters. The colonel, one of those oily fuckers with a gold cigarette case he opens to offer the poor son of a bitch he’s having shot just what he wants in these last moments of his life, a smoke. Amelita, Jack saw a demure little thing with frightened Bambi eyes, then had to enlarge her breasts and put her in spiked heels and a bathing suit cut high to her hips for the Miss Universe contest.
But once he got her to Managua the colonel never mentioned beauty pageants again. The only feeling he had for Amelita was lust. Good word, lust. Jack couldn’t recall if he’d ever used it, but had no trouble picturing the colonel, the son of a bitch, lusting. Jack put an extra fifty pounds on him for the bedroom scene: the colonel taking off his uniform full of medals, gut hanging out, leering at Amelita cowering behind the bed. Jack watched him rip open the front of her nightgown, show-class breasts springing free, as Sister Lucy said, “Are you listening?”