Isabelle shakes her head, bites away a smile, lowers her voice. “Who do we really understand?”
Lenore shrugs, tries to ignore a chill rolling up her back. “Too easy an answer.”
Isabelle lets out a long, heavy sigh and makes a hedging, slow nod. “You never been married, have you?”
“You know,” Lenore says, “this is an area I really want to make people clear on. I really believe, firmly believe, okay, that there are people who, for whatever reason, are not suited to the married life. And I’ve always thought that if these people let themselves go out and fall into a marriage, enter a legal arrangement, because of pressure or doubt or whatever, I’ve always thought, how goddamn unfair to everyone in that picture. So no, I’ve never been married. And the reasons are that first, I value independence above almost anything else, and whether anyone can accept it or not, I honestly enjoy long stretches of solitude, of just being alone. And secondly, I don’t know, maybe I’ve got these ridiculous standards or something, but I’ve never met anyone whose company I’d want to be in for more than a couple of months. Tops. More than two months is pushing it. You start to go brain-dead. You start to have conversations about the color of his socks.”
Isabelle leans back in the booth, looks at Lenore, takes a sip from Lenore’s coffee, sways her head slightly from side to side, like she was giving herself time to think about this speech she’s just heard.
“Maybe,” she finally says. “But for me, Lenore, there’s this time, sometime, every night, midnight maybe, when we”—she gestures toward Harry with her skull—“get out of here and we’re gone upstairs, we’re lying down, we’re watching the black-and-white reruns of The Honeymooners, we’re drinking from the bottle of Riunite, my head’s on Harry’s chest and he’s laughing, which you really don’t hear him do down here, and my head’s going up and down with the laugh … I think, this is it, Isabelle. This is the island. You’re safe now.”
They stare at each other, then Lenore can’t help herself and she says, “Safe? That’s it? You want safe?”
“That’s part of it. You’re lying if you say it isn’t.”
“Part of it. Bingo. Part.”
“And then there’s the rest.”
Isabelle straightens up a little and then leans back again. She seems to be getting a little angry. She says, “What are you asking? You asking do I love Harry? Yes. Simple answer and it’s yes. You can believe that or not. You don’t have the last word on anything, girl.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you—”
“There’s no offense,” she says, an edge clear in her voice, “but, for your own benefit, I’ve got to say, you’re a vain girl, Lenore, girl, woman, a vain woman.”
“I have to disagree, Isabelle. I’m a realist. I’m a pragmatist. I know what my abilities are and I know my limits.”
“Vanity.”
“I guess we define the word differently.”
“Suddenly, you think you want love—”
“Excuse me, who said that? Did someone say this?”
“I, too, know my abilities, Lenore.”
“Simple statement. I place a high value on independence, Isabelle.”
“Independence? This is the reason for the twitches? The chills?”
“Jesus, everyone’s a guidance counselor today. I’m coming down with a cold, is all.”
“Listen to me, Lenore. There are many diners open in the city. They all serve hot coffee. But you’re sitting here. And you ask me about Harry and loving someone without completely knowing them.”
“Friendly discussion, Isabelle. I didn’t mean to set you off.”
“I’m not set off. You’re a very smart woman who I know almost nothing about. Harry and me, we fix your meals for the past year. Fill you with enough coffee to swim in. You smile and you talk. You make Lon’s day every time you come in the door. You know that, don’t you? You pay your check and you tip our people. But we don’t know you, Lenore. We don’t know you at all. Isabelle’s been around a little bit longer than you. She knows some things. Harry too. You’ve got some problems that are not going away. Like that chill and the twitch. No aspirin going to take that away, Lenore. Smart woman like you knows that.”
“Oh, for Christ sake,” Lenore mutters, looking out the window at her car. “You always talk to people you don’t know like that?”
When she looks back, Isabelle is shaking her head no.
Lenore gives her a forced smile and says, “‘One of these days, Alice …’”
Isabelle starts to slide out of the booth.
“I’ve got a stew to put on,” she says. “Your coffee’s on the house.”
Lenore watches her move behind the counter and start to pull vegetables from the refrigerator. When her arms are full with carrots, onions, celery, peppers, scallions, she dumps the heap on a cutting block and draws a huge chopping knife down from its holder mounted on the wall. She goes to work with speed and precision, hacking the vegetables, making a rhythmic chomping sound. Lenore finds the noise oddly pleasing, reassuring, almost peaceful.
She watches Harry at the other end of the diner, writing up a check. She knows he still writes orders in his native language and she wonders what happens if he hands #2 breakfast plate, written in Khmer, to Uncle Jorge, who still speaks only Spanish. Has enough time passed for Jorge to know that the odd lines and slashes scratched on the green pad mean two eggs, scrambled, and a side of bacon?
She thinks about where she can establish a new free zone. It’s getting harder and harder to find an unspoiled hole in the wall that’s fairly clean, uncrowded, cheap, family-owned, and open all night. It’s not that these places don’t exist, just that it’s become trendy, especially among the Canal Zone crowd, to find and usurp them, make them into clubhouses for whatever the ideology of the month might be.
There was a place over near the vocational school that had been shut down for about ten years. She’s heard someone — Shaw or maybe Peirce — mention that it was up again and running. She’ll find time to swing by, make an inspection, see if it fits her basic needs.
She glances out the window again and sees a motorcycle pull up behind the Barracuda. It’s one of those glitzy new models, a bullet bike, controversial because of its too-powerful engine and the absurd speeds it can reach. It’s an import, all metallic red and gold with silvery, speckle-paint lightning bolts slapped on the bulging gas tank. The rider, of course, is dressed all in leather, pants as well as coat. Zippers everywhere. He’s got one of those enormous high-tech helmets on, matte black and smoked visor. It makes him look like a robot extra in a pricey science-fiction movie.
He’s sitting on the bike as it idles. He seems to be looking at the back of the hand he’s just pulled a glove off of. He raises his head for a second, looks at the back of the Barracuda.
Lenore’s stomach starts to tighten a little. She raises herself up slightly off her seat, leans closer to the window. The biker pulls his glove back over his hand. He starts to pull down the zipper on his coat. Lenore is half standing in her booth, her nose almost touching the glass of the window.
Then she sees it. It’s hanging from a black stretch-strap around the biker’s neck. She sees him cradle the main body against his chest as he starts to pull out from the curb.
“Everyone down,” she screams, trying to lunge from the booth and at the same time pull her weapon from its holster.
The biker screeches into the street. He’s got enough distance to pick up a head of speed before coming parallel to Rollie’s Grill. He angles his Uzi straight out from his body like some new mutant appendage, a third arm that can pump a projectile at over twelve hundred feet a second.