She knew exactly where she’d go, too. Back to a night not unlike this one, enclosed in a speeding car, but with the animal presence of Christo next to her on the first leg of that journey to New York that had been so alive with possibilities … Yes, Christo next to her. He’d know how to fence the jewelry, how to deal with Sparn and his ticklish suspicions, the whole squalid mess. This sort of thing wasn’t merely in Christo’s territory, it defined that territory. Amazed and sorry that she hadn’t thought of this before, Tildy stopped at the next rest area and went to the telephone.
This had nothing to do with desire or nostalgia, she reminded herself, piling coins on the chewed-up yellow pages. You’re only looking for guidance. There’s no reason for the stiffness in your fingers. She got Pierce’s number out of her handbag, threw in a bunch of quarters and shuffled her feet listening to the rings.
“Hi. I’m not here right now, but if you leave your name and number at the sound of the tone, I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can.”
Tildy left the receiver dangling and backed away.
Karl was waiting up for her. He took the sack of diner food from her hand and mashed her in his arms.
“Take it easy. I’ve only been gone since this morning.”
“Yeah, but I had these bad feelin’s once it got dark, could see pickin’ up that phone and there’d be a cop or a doctor on the other end.”
They tore into lukewarm hamburgers, dribbling ketchup and fat on the bedspread. Tildy ate so fast that she bit down on the inside of her cheek, a salty taste of blood seasoning the food.
“Gonna tell me what come off with Sparn or do I have to guess?”
“Nothing much. We talked about old times, what some of the girls were up to, stuff like that.”
“You know I’m talkin’ about the gold. What’s that old turnip bleeder gonna do about it?”
Good question. His big lie-to-me eyes were looking at her across the bed. “Well, I don’t expect he’ll be much help. We’ll be on our own. Independent, like it or not.”
“That’s a long way to go, and I ain’t just talkin’ Jacksonville and back, to come away with so little. You all right, baby? You look bone tired.”
To fill him in would be the decent thing, let him hear what she’d heard in that cold room with the velour furniture. Sometimes decency served no purpose; dead echoes, an alarm shouted into a cavern miles long.
“You’re right, I’m beat. But before I get in bed I’d like to wash this dirty trip off in the shower.”
“Can I come with you?”
Waiting for something to happen, Tildy called in sick to work the next couple of days. It rained very hard the first night, exposing two separate leaks in the roof. Inexplicably, a tape-recorded lecture on estate planning was delivered to them in the mail. Karl jabbered incessantly about the set of drums he wanted to buy. Ondray Keyes fell off his bicycle and broke his wrist. But nothing happened.
When Tildy showed up at the Medi Quick on Friday morning, Holstein asked what she was doing there.
“I work here, Ray.”
“Not anymore.”
She turned and looked to the back of the store where he was pointing with his chin. DaVita was buttoning herself into the red and blue company smock. She had a lavender bruise on her face and her hair was much shorter.
“Hey, wow … This is very embarrassing and all. I came in looking for you a couple of times ’cause I wanted to talk and finally he asked me if … You gotta understand. Dennis cracked up the car and the kids were coming out of the bottom of their shoes and we been living on macaroni and lunch meat the last few weeks. I’m sorry, I’m real sorry.”
“You two know each other?” Holstein was crushed.
Tildy’s eyes pinned him. “Does the Pope shit in the woods? Sure, Ray, we were turning tricks together in high school.” She tugged at her belt, extruded a sliver of tongue.
Holstein just stared with mouth open as if watching a hardcore loop.
DaVita, her mouth going white at the corners, lunged forward and grabbed Tildy’s hands. “Don’t, don’t,” she stage-whispered. “I know you must be sore and everything, but don’t mess this up for me. Those kids, you just don’t know. I can’t deal them off like an old washing machine and Donnie’s no good to us out in the street all day and they won’t let me on the welfare and I need this job.”
Tildy pulled free and for one small moment laid her palm on DaVita’s bruised cheek. “You can have it. I don’t want it.”
DaVita looked amazedly at the hand that had just touched her. On its third finger was a fat emerald ring that Karl had put there during breakfast.
“That’s so beautiful.”
“This?” Tildy smiled thinly and turned. “I grow them from seeds.”
Then she went up the street and drank herself into a thunderous high-noon headache.
14
DISAPPOINTMENT — SHARP, PRECISE AND direct — is a good sign of native intelligence. After the humiliating failure of his one and only big-time move, Christo had to get back to basics. A man who doesn’t know his limits is a man forever doomed to doing things the hard way.
Christo chose a doctor’s name at random from the telephone listings, checking the address to determine which banks were in the neighborhood. He called the office and, posing as a patient, told the receptionist he’d just received a check for overpayment from the doctor and wanted to make sure it was correct. They had a very cheerful conversation. The receptionist was an effusive woman. Her father was the mayor of a town in Nebraska, but the stench of the feedlot had been too much for her; she was studying the guitar at night. Christo found out where the doctor banked.
He got a haircut, put on a Milbank topcoat, went to the bank and filled out a credit card application, using the doctor’s name and estimating his income. These things were tiresomely mechanized, he understood, but would it be possible to pick up the card within twenty-four hours? He was leaving the following night for Bonn to attend an international symposium on childhood leukemia. Symposium in Bonn, the clerk repeated gratefully — it was the most unusual thing he’d heard all week. He promised to expedite matters.
Christo collected the card during the next day’s lunchtime crush. Four hours later he was back on the road again.
He spent three days at a sedate hotel in Annapolis, stuffing himself with oysters and crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. In the bar one evening he became friendly with the parents of a first-year student at the naval academy; they’d come all the way from Hartford for a weekend visit. The boy was having trouble making the adjustment. His childhood stammer had returned. Christo was invited upstairs for a nightcap. Mom kicked off her heels and turned on the color teevee. Dad put on his lounging robe. Christo checked out of the hotel a bit later with Dad’s Rolex and two hundred in cash from Mom’s alligator bag.
Smooth as cream, nothing noticed until Dad awoke and fumbled around the nightstand for his watch. By the time he sat down tight-lipped and meek to be interviewed by the police, Christo was having a liquid breakfast in a place called the Clown Town Bar with an old hound from the Racing Form who’d just finished clocking morning workouts at the Shenandoah Downs racetrack across the street.