“You didn’t break off with him.”
“I have to spend the whole summer here, Tom. I thought I was pretty good, actually. I told him that being a Redwing is a career, and I wasn’t sure it was the one I wanted.”
“I told him he should decide that you’re not good enough for him.”
“I like that,” she said, meaning she did not. “Anyhow, will you please tell me what happened, please?”
He described as much as he could remember of the scene between himself and Buddy, except for the way it ended.
“Well, well. The compound is almost empty right now. So if you want to see where the bodyguards live, this is the time. The only person in the place should be Aunt Kate, and she takes a long nap every afternoon.”
Tom said he’d meet her in front of her lodge.
“I suppose I must be crazy,” she said, and hung up.
She stepped out from between the oaks as he walked toward her lodge. He went down the track to join her. She pulled him back between the big oaks and tilted her face toward his and gave him a long kiss. “I had to get out. My mother knows that something went wrong between Buddy and me, and I couldn’t stand the interrogation anymore. I called you when she went upstairs to wash her hair.”
They walked across the narrow parking area in front of the compound, and Sarah opened the door in the tall fence. “Here we go.”
Gravel paths led to three highly ornamented wooden houses with long porches, gables, and dormer windows on the third floor. The houses were so perfectly maintained they looked artificial. Banks of flowers and bright green grass grew between the gravel paths. The whole thing looked like a toyland, like Disneyland. “Well, here you are,” Sarah said. “This is it. The holy of holies. The one on Mill Walk looks just like it, except the houses are newer and they’re not all alike.”
Sarah led him up the steps of the lodge nearest the compound’s lakeside wall. “I’d better stay out here in case they come home early,” she said. “I’ll bang on the door, or something.”
“I won’t be long,” Tom said, and went inside.
The lodge smelled of cigarettes and grease. Discarded clothes and open magazines lay on the floor of the main downstairs room, and the kitchen was a mound of crusty dishes and empty beer bottles. Tom walked up the steps and peered into the bedrooms. Blue jeans, socks, and T-shirts covered the unmade beds and the bare floors. In the largest of the three bedrooms, a portable television and a tape deck stood on a low table. Tom opened the dresser drawers and found underwear, clean white shirts still in the dry cleaner’s wrappings, and clean socks. On a shelf in the closet above two grey suits he saw a stack of pornographic magazines and, in a row of books about concentration camps, Hitler, Nazis, and famous criminals, four tattered paperback books called The Torturer’s Library.
Pictures from muscle magazines decorated Nappy’s room. Crumpled O Henry and Twinkies wrappers lay around the bed. Robbie’s room was a sty of beer bottles, dirty plates, and wadded-up tissues. A cheap portable record player like the one in Gloria Pasmore’s room sat on the floor next to a stack of forty-fives and a full-length mirror where Robbie could watch himself pretend to play guitar.
Tom walked downstairs and went outside.
“I never realized that being lookout was such a tricky job,” Sarah said. “I’m sure that several birds gave me very suspicious looks. My hands were clenched so tight I practically gave myself bruises. Did you find anything?”
“About what I expected,” Tom said. “A lot of Vivaldi records and books by T.S. Eliot. Let’s get out of here.”
“Now would you mind telling me why you wanted to do this?”
“I was looking for—”
A car crunched onto the gravel of the little parking area beyond the fence. Car doors slammed shut. Voices floated toward them. Tom and Sarah were in the middle of the compound, halfway to the gate.
“Whoops,” Sarah said.
The door in the fence opened, and Katinka Redwing came through, immediately followed by her husband. Both of them froze at the sight of Tom and Sarah.
“Oh, hi!” Sarah said. “I was just showing Tom what the compound looks like. It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful,” Tom said. “So peaceful. I can really see why you love it.”
Both Redwings stared at them with implacable faces.
“Well,” Sarah said. “Tell Buddy I’m looking forward to our drive this afternoon.”
They smiled and walked past the staring Redwings.
Outside the tall fence, Jerry Hasek leaned against the Cadillac, smoking. When Tom and Sarah appeared through the door, he took his cigarette out of his mouth and stared at them and bit his lower lip. His jaws worked as if he were chewing gum.
“See you later, Jerry,” Sarah said. She and Tom walked across the gravel, and turned onto the path.
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I’ll see you later.”
At ten minutes to four Tom was standing back in the trees near the rank of mailboxes, and after a little while a blue and white mail van pulled up before the boxes. Joe Truehart jumped out and began sliding advertising circulars, catalogues, and magazines into the Redwings’ boxes. Tom walked out of hiding and gave him another long letter to Lamont von Heilitz. The mailman said he would take care of it, and pushed it into his back pocket. Tom walked back down the long hill and went back to his lodge. He read for half an hour, and then walked over to the Deepdale lodge to see Kate Redwing.
Buzz opened the door and said, “Come on in!” His bathing suit was only a narrow strip of blue cloth, and his skin glistened with oil. A red polka dot bandanna was tied around his neck. His perfect teeth shone white. He stepped backwards, and Tom followed him into a long, loftlike room with oatmeal-colored couches and chairs, cut flowers in glass vases, a piano with framed photographs, and creamy yellow rectangular rugs on the polished wooden floor. A big stone fireplace stood against the back wall. Kate Redwing stood up and smiled from one end of the long couch facing him.
“Kate is having a cup of tea, would you care for one? I can give you a Coke or a 7-Up, or any kind of drink, if you’d prefer.”
“Tea would be great,” Tom said.
“Roddy and I are working on our tans out on the deck, and Kate says the two of you want to talk about graves and worms and epitaphs, so I’ll just give you your tea and go back out, if that’s all right.” He put his hands on his narrow hips and gave Tom a humorous inspection. “Have you completely recovered from your tumble the other day? You look as if you have.”
“I think it’s been one long tumble ever since,” Tom said, and Buzz laughed and walked into the kitchen to boil up the water.
“Come sit next to me,” Kate said. “Are you really all right?”
He walked around to her, nodding. Through the window wall on the far end of the room, Tom waved to Roddy Deepdale, who was lying back in a recliner. He wore the same nearly nonexistent kind of bathing suit as Buzz, and his chest and shoulders were turning a smooth, uniform gold. A brown plastic bottle of suntan lotion and a pile of books stood on the deck beside the recliner. Roddy propped himself up on one elbow and waved back. The kettle whistled in the kitchen.
“You’ve succeeded in stirring up my nephew and his wife, at any rate,” Kate said. “There was some kind of unpleasantness between you and Buddy this morning, wasn’t there? Of course everybody’s terribly tactful, but I don’t suppose you’ll be able to keep me entertained at any more family dinners.”
Tom said she probably wouldn’t be able to entertain him, either.