“Obviously, I’m not going to live forever, but I don’t want to die in here if I can help it. Would you?”
I decide not to ask her about the sex-in-a-box business right now. It is irrelevant and of only prurient interest.
Though Clan will be disappointed if I don’t come back with details, surely he can survive without knowing the sex life of an eighty-four-year-old woman who looks a bit like the pictures I’ve seen of Gertrude Stein. I get her to sign a couple of releases so I can look at her records and talk to her doctor.
Since she has no control over her money and can’t hire her own doctor to examine her, we are at the mercy of the nursing-home physician, who, if he knows anything, surely is aware which side his bread is buttered on, but it can’t hurt to talk to him. I visit with her for another thirty minutes, and as I am picking up my briefcase to leave she clears her throat and says, dropping her voice, “There’s something else you ought to know.”
As I cram my notes into my briefcase, she begins to hum.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Mrs. Gentry looks over at her comatose roommate and says, with great dignity, “I’m still sexually active.”
I nod, unable to bring myself to tell her that I am aware of this remarkable fact.
She says,”
“They discourage that sort of thing here. In fact, they treat you like a child and make you feel dirty. You have to sneak around.” Her voice has become a whisper.
“I have a friend here whom I’ve known ever since my son admitted me. He and I were caught in kind of a compromising position a couple of weeks ago in the food pantry. I would die if that comes out in court.”
Mrs. Gentry’s spotted, wrinkled face has turned a bright red.
“I think it’s totally irrelevant,” I assure her, “and I’ll object if your son’s attorney tries to bring it up.”
Mrs. Gentry sighs, apparently relieved, but it occurs to me that the incident would be wonderful evidence that she shouldn’t be here. As I try to suggest this, however, the humming grows louder until it seems to fill the room. It sounds like “Sentimental Journey,” but I couldn’t swear to it.
Hell, I don’t blame her. A person ought to be able to screw in peace. Still, it would be nice. As I finally leave, telling her that I will see her again before the hearing, she looks at me as if she has known all along that lawyers are perverts.
Rainey scrapes the bottom of her empty yogurt cup like a chicken scratching for food. A kiddie-size cup hardly seems worth the trouble, but Rainey, as I have learned to my regret, has the self-discipline of an old-fashioned nun.
“I have some information for you,” she says and then licks the white plastic spoon.
“It’s all gossip, but since it’s about sex, you’ll pay attention.”
This reference is prompted by my disclosure that I have a date with Kim Keogh tomorrow night. We could never work out lunch, so I swallowed hard and asked her out to dinner.
Rainey and I have gotten to the point where we tell each other about our love life, or at least parts of it. It seemed strange at first, but since we have become such good friends it was probably inevitable.
“She’s probably home looking at herself in the mirror,” I say gloomily. Now that I’ve asked Kim out, I’ve started to worry that we don’t have anything in common. I scoop out an M amp;M from my cup and pop it onto my chocolate-and-vanilla-flavored tongue. God, if chocolate tasted any better, it’d have to be outlawed.
“What’s the deal?” I ask, remembering that I have asked her to find out what she could about Yettie Lindsey.
As if she has forgotten, Rainey stares for a moment at the traffic whizzing through the intersection of Davis and Edgemont and then back at me. She is wearing pink twill jeans and a soft, clingy aqua top. She brushes a strand of her frizzy red hair back from her temple in the humid, oppressive night air, raising her left breast in the process.
“Yettie supposedly used to have a thing for your client,” she says, “but apparently he wouldn’t give her the time of day.”
I watch as some teenage boys who don’t look old enough to shave pull up to the red light in a 280 Z and then scratch off.
“Why wouldn’t he?” I ask, thinking I know the answer.
“She’s attractive, young, and available. At least she wasn’t wearing a ring.”
Rainey snaps her spoon against the table, splintering it into two jagged pieces of plastic.
“What you mean is that she’s got a figure that would wear out the elastic in your jockey shorts.”
Somebody has given Rainey a good description of her. I dig into my yogurt. “If a woman that good-looking were to come on to me…” I say, letting my voice trail off.
My friend takes her napkin and wipes her mouth.
“It doesn’t take much to set you off,” she says.
“Maybe she just wasn’t his type.”
An M amp;M goes down the wrong way, and I launch into a fit of coughing after I say, “I think he’s the type who likes white women.”
Rainey watches me unsympathetically as I hack until I think I’m going into convulsions.
“That sounds so racist. I thought you were married to a black woman yourself. Is that how you choose women by color?”
Her voice is sharp, even hostile. I wonder what I have said that is so offensive to her.
“Not particularly, but some white women, for example, prefer black men,” I say, trying to defuse the subject. “It’s just a matter of taste.”
Rainey sniffs, as if this subject is far more complicated than my simple-minded statement implied.
“Anyway, he has never even asked her out once and it pissed her royally, ac cording to my sources.”
I try one M amp;M at a time.
“Have you heard any rumors about my client and Olivia Le Master?”
“No,” Rainey says irritably.
“You know, I might as well get on your payroll.”
I wish I could afford her. On the way to her house to drop her off, I get Rainey to promise she won’t breathe a word of what I’m about to tell her and then give her the whole story.
If I am violating any of Andy’s confidences, then so be it. I would trust her with my life. We pull up in front of her house and sit in the dark in the car until I finish.
“Do you think there’s a chance anything funny could have been going on, or was it just an accident?” I ask.
Rainey sits with her back against the door of the Blazer.
Apparently mollified that I have told her about the case, she says, “It’s all too problematical. If that aide who was holding her hadn’t let go, Pam wouldn’t have been electrocuted.”
My eyes have begun to adjust to the darkness. I respond with my latest theory, “Unless he was in on it, too.”
Rainey snorts, “You’re beginning to sound like those people who still write books about the Kennedy assassinations.”
I grin in the darkness, yet I am serious. Ever since the Hart Anderson murder, I see conspiracies everywhere.
“Well, what do you think happened, based on what I’ve told you?”
Rainey opens her door, and the dim, dirty car light comes on, causing her face to appear harsh and prematurely old.
“It sounds like a tragic accident to me, but I know I think that your client should never have shocked that child!”
Her tone is almost shrill, on the verge of being out of control. Why is she so mad? I wasn’t the one who used a cattle prod. Irritated, I shoot back, “Hindsight doesn’t take much courage. If she had been your child, wouldn’t you want somebody to try to give her as normal a life as possible?”
Rainey fairly yells, “Not that way, for God’s sake!” She pushes open the door and takes a deep breath.
“I guess I’m just tired, Gideon. I’m sorry.”
Tired myself, I take her at her word. “That’s okay,” I say.
She must be getting her period. Poor women.
“I’ll call you this weekend and let you know how my date goes.”