“And Dave and you,” I finished.
“All people you care about.”
I turned my eyes away and shook my head.
“Things happen. People happen. I’ve been thinking about saving some money and buying a car.”
“So you can run away again?”
“Yes.”
“But you stay and come to me.”
It wasn’t a question.
“There’s a lot to be said for it, but depression has its downside,” I said.
“Why do you like Mildred Pierce so much?” she asked, now working on her coffee. “My husband and I watched it last night.”
“You like it?”
“Yes. I have seen it before. What do you like about it?”
“I don’t know. What do I like about it?”
“Maybe that bad things happen to Mildred, lots of bad things, but she keeps going. She never gives up.”
“Her husband leaves her,” I said. “One daughter dies. The other daughter betrays Mildred with her new husband, the husband who…She keeps going.”
“But you do not.”
“I do not, but maybe I have to.”
“Abrupt change of subject,” she said, wiping her hands with the paper napkin. “During the Civil War many people in the North still had slaves. There’s a new book about it.”
I nodded.
“On the other hand,” she went on, tossing the crumpled napkin into her half-full wastebasket, “there were many Southerners, prominent Southerners, who fought and even died in the war, who did not believe in slavery and never had any slaves or freed the ones they had before the first shot was fired.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “You going to tell me that I’m a slave to my depression, to my refusal to give up my wife’s death? That I have to take off the shackles and start to live free?”
She smiled.
“No,” she said. “I was simply making a reference to something that came to mind, but you’ve done a good job of finding something personal in it.”
“Maybe I should be a shrink?”
“God, no. You think you’re depressed now?”
“You’re not depressed.”
“I keep busy,” she said. “I have my moments, but I am not chronically depressed. A little occasional depression is normal.”
She shook her head and went on, “You are beginning to depress me,” she said. “Most of us have suffered terrible losses.”
“The Cubs have them every year,” I said.
“Your baseball cap,” she said, pointing at the cap still on my head. “It’s a hopeful sign.”
“My cap?”
“You wear it to mask your baldness,” she said. “You have some vanity, some will to feel that others view you with approval.”
“My head burns if I don’t wear it,” I said.
“A hat can have more than one function.”
“You know what the ultraviolet index is?”
“You mean as a concept or the actual number today?”
“Today?”
“You are interested in the present?”
“I’m interested in my head not turning red and sore,” I said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, holding up a finger. “I think I heard a touch of irritation in your voice, a very small one, smaller than the birth squeal of a pink baby laboratory mouse, but something. I see hope in that.”
“The squeal of a pink baby mouse?”
“Vivid memory of a moment in a biology class in graduate school,” she said. “You know what happened to the mouse? Of course you don’t. One of my classmates took it home and fed it to his pet red corn snake.”
“You know how to cheer a client up,” I said.
“I do my best.”
We went on for a while. We talked about Wilkens and Trasker, about my other client, about my relationship to Sally Porovsky and Adele’s baby.
“Time,” she said.
I pulled one of the twenties Wilkens had given to me out of my pocket. She accepted it and looked at it.
“Lucky bill,” she said. “There are four ones in the serial number. A liar’s poker bill.”
“Now you believe in omens?”
“Oh yes,” she said, reaching for the phone. “The universe is connected down to the smallest segment of an atomic subparticle. Past, present, and future are part of a continuum.”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” I said, moving toward the door.
I heard Ann chuckle and say, as I opened the door, “Lewis Fonesca made a parting joke. I’m making a note of it. Bring me three jokes on Friday. That’s an assignment. At least three jokes.”
I closed the door. There was no one in the tiny waiting room.
The homeless black guy wasn’t sitting on the bench. I had decided to break precedent and give him a dollar. It might open the door to him expecting more from me in the future, but since I didn’t have a lot of faith in the future, a buck in the present wouldn’t hurt.
But he wasn’t there.
I found a phone and a phone book at Two Senoritas Mexican Restaurant a few doors down from Sarasota News amp; Books. William Trasker was listed.
I called. After five rings, a woman picked up and said, “Hello.”
“Mrs. Trasker, my name is Lew Fonesca. Is your husband home?”
“No.” She had a nice voice, a little cold but deep and confident.
“Could I stop by and talk to you?”
“You can but you may not,” she said.
I was going to ask if she had been a grade-school teacher, but I said, “It’s about your husband.”
“Who are you?”
“A man looking for your husband,” I said. “All I need is a few minutes of your time. I could talk to you on the phone but I’d rather-”
“I don’t care what you’d ‘rather’ or who you are.”
She hung up.
I didn’t know Trasker’s wife, but I did know when someone was frightened. She was frightened.
I got back to my car, pulled out carefully, and headed for Flo Zink’s.
I took Tamiami Trail down to Siesta Drive, made a right, crossed Osprey, and then took a left onto Flo’s driveway just before the bridge to Siesta Key.
The white minivan was in the driveway. Flo couldn’t legally drive it. This was the third time her license had been taken away. Adele could drive. She wasn’t sixteen yet, so she needed an adult supervisor with her. In Florida, even though she had no license, Flo qualified as copilot.
The door opened before I could knock or ring the bell.
“Baby’s sleeping,” Flo said.
Flo was wearing one of her country-and-western uniforms: her favorite denim skirt, blue-and-red checkerboard shirt. Her hair was white, cut short, and looking frizzy. Flo always reminded me of Thelma Ritter.
Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Garth Brooks, or Faith Hill were usually playing backup for conversation at the Zink house, but not today, not now. The baby was sleeping.
Flo was carrying a drink in her hand. It was in a wineglass. The liquid was amber. She caught me looking.
“Diet Coke,” she said, handing me the glass. “Smell it.”
I did.
“I thought you’d take my word,” she said with disappointment.
“Can’t afford to,” I said as we moved out of the late morning heat and into the air-conditioned house.
“Can’t afford to?”
“I’ll get to that in a little while,” I said.
“There’s no alcohol in the house,” she said, leading me toward the kitchen. “Not the drinking kind anyway, just some baby kind. Want a Diet Coke? Iced tea?”
“Diet Coke,” I said.
She got me one from the refrigerator. I popped the tab and took a sip as I followed her through the living room and down the hallway to a half-open door. She motioned me in ahead of her and put her finger to her lips to let me know I had to be quiet.
The curtains were drawn but there was enough light coming through for me to see the face of the baby Adele had named for my wife.
Catherine was on her back, face turned toward me, eyes closed. She had a small crown of yellow hair, a round pink face. She looked vulnerable. I thought of the snake that had eaten Ann Horowitz’s pink mouse and I shuddered. The baby sensed something, fidgeted, and turned her head away.
Flo took my arm and led me out of the room. When we were back in the living room, Flo pointed at a small white plastic box on the tree-stump coffee table.