“It’s nothing, Granddad,” Jim said. “It’s just the Lisa thing.”
Just the Lisa thing.
Granddad Windexed the cases to help us out and to flirt with the saleswomen, and I sat down at my desk with the pair of police. Lisa’s boyfriend had explained the case to them in detail. He had bludgeoned her with a baseball bat. I did not know where the bat had come from. Why would she have a baseball bat in her apartment? Had he brought it with him? There were more questions I would never ask.
“He blames it on you, you should know,” they told me. “Not that you did it or anything. But that you made him do it.”
“Fucked up,” the younger cop said.
“Sorry,” the older cop said. “We are professionals. Even if we don’t always act that way. We only need you to confirm the facts he’s given us. We might need you to come downtown.”
“I’m pretty busy,” I said, and gestured with both my hands at the buzzing confusion of my opening store. “It’s Christmas, gentlemen,” I said.
I did not want to take a chance that I might see him. I had shaken that man’s hand, and when Lisa had complained about him I would defend him, often, in the way one man will fraternally defend another, as part of the code of manliness. Once at a bar I had bought him a drink. If I saw him I was afraid of the look we might exchange.
I was afraid, too, that I was too cowardly to want to kill him myself. Even after the murder he kept on seeming like the same old Lisa’s boyfriend to me.
Was I trying to tell myself that Lisa had wanted to be murdered?
“It’s homicide, sir,” the older cop said. “We are doing our best not to make this difficult for you. But if this guy hadn’t confessed you would be the main suspect.”
“Yeah,” the younger one said. “Jeez. Hey, is this Baileys? Do you guys pour your customers Baileys? That’s a good idea. You got any good deals? What’s this pearl bracelet cost? That looks expensive. How expensive is expensive, anyway? In the jewelry business?”
“Gray!” the older cop said. “Please excuse Officer Gray, sir,” he said. “He’s still learning. He’s pretty new.”
“He can have it,” I said. “I buy them by the hundreds.” It was a silver charm bracelet with Christmas trees and a Santa Claus and a reindeer on it that cost us forty bucks. They had rice pearls between the charms that I guess were supposed to look like snow. I ran a promo ad on them for forty-nine dollars as a loss leader. We were going to be stuck with about five hundred of them after the season was over. You can’t sell Santa Claus bracelets on Valentine’s Day, I thought. Not on Mother’s Day, either. I’d still be selling those fucking bracelets for forty-nine bucks three years from now.
“It’s a gift,” I said. “Take it.”
“No, he really can’t, sir,” the older one said. “Let’s get moving.” He stood and walked out of my office. He left his card on my desk. The younger one lingered behind for a second, winked at me, and stuck the bracelet in his pocket.
“Thanks!” he whispered, and winked again. “Merry Christmas! Sorry about your girlfriend. We’ll be in touch.” He did not leave a card. Granddad opened the door for them.
“You fellows have a safe Christmas season, now,” he said. “Stay warm.
“Fucking pigs,” Granddad added after the door had closed behind them.
I did not hear from them again until after the season was over.
I did not want this specter in my jewelry store. He wasn’t a customer. He wasn’t a salesman or a vendor, either. He was like Santa Claus, he came with a gift, a delivery. Or just the opposite, to take something away. Santa Claus in reverse, Santa Claus inside out, Santa Claus upside down. Like those satanic rituals when they hang Jesus with his head down on the cross. Maybe if Santa Claus accidentally caught sight of himself in a mirror that’s what looked back at him from the reversed world of the reflection. Father Death.
After work I bought a six-pack of beer and drove around. I drank two of the beers and then I gave up driving and headed for my apartment. I couldn’t go home but there was nowhere to go. At my exit I saw a homeless guy with his sign and I handed him the rest of the six-pack. Someone honked at me from behind. I wanted to park right there at the bottom of the ramp and get out of the car and sit with the black bum and drink the beer. To teach them a lesson. But then the car pulled around me, still honking, so I followed it for a while, with my brights on. When they finally lost me I was in north Dallas. I searched for a familiar highway. I thought I might just sleep in my car. But there was no safe place to park. A cop would come and knock on the window and wake me up. I would want a shower in the morning.
Son. I need to tell you something.”
Our dad was calling from a pay phone in Coral Springs, Florida. He had just told me they had repossessed his car, which was a serious problem because he was still living in it. He had checked himself into a hospital but they kicked him out after a few days. He had no plans to go anywhere next. That worried me more than the rest of his situation.
“I have to go, Dad,” I said. “I’ll send the money. I’ll have one of my salespeople go and wire it as soon as I get off the phone. The sooner I get off the phone, the sooner I can send the money, Dad,” I said.
“Listen to me, son,” he said. “This is important.”
I could hear the murmur and rattle of the road traffic behind him.
A customer was sitting at my desk draping three different diamond tennis bracelets over the back of his hairy, pale hand. I smiled at him in apology for being on the phone.
Hang up, Dad, I thought. I promised I will Western Union you the fifteen hundred bucks, and I will Western Union you your goddamn, undeserved, one more time, always “this is the last time, son,” one thousand and five hundred. Measly. Fucking. Dollars.
“Son. Pay attention. What are you doing? Are you waiting on a customer? Listen to what I am telling you, Bobby.”
I sat there.
“Son, it is as easy for the dead to talk to the living as it is for the living to talk to the dead.”
I looked at the tennis bracelet dangling off the reddish-green skin of my customer’s knuckles. With those wiry hairs.
“Wait. What? What did you say, Dad?”
I had not spoken a word to my father about Lisa. What had Jim told him? But Jim wasn’t speaking to him.
“Dad? Dad, are you there?”
He had hung up.
Years later, if I was at a restaurant with Claire, or if we were just riding around in the car, she might be looking the other way and then I would search her features for that other child of mine, that second child who disappeared back into Lisa.
Was that what Dad meant? I wondered. Was that how he might have reincarnated in a new life to speak with me?
To hear her voice for a minute I thought I might try to call her old cell phone number to see if it was still on. She didn’t say who she was on the voice mail. Because of her work. When it beeped I started a message. I couldn’t really say what I needed to, and I was afraid her phone was going to disconnect me, so I started to tell her a story about my mother and father, a story about one time when they were having a party and the song “Mr. Bojangles” was playing and my father picked me up to dance with me, in that crowd of dark and tall adults. It was after my bedtime. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t told her this story before. I was starting to say that and then the cell phone stopped. “If you want to hear the message you have recorded, press one.” Et cetera.