“How long a while?”
“Oh, not long. An hour? He’s just… well, you know how he is. He’s just running through things in his mind, getting it all to hand, so to speak.” She looked past me. “I see you’ve brought that trailer again.”
“The hitch is broken.”
“Yes, well. Still, it’s a piece of good fortune. Button has been talking about nothing else since yesterday. Jud took them up to Conway for swimming first thing but the boy just won’t be distracted. He’d dearly love to see inside. I’ll send them out to you, shall I?” She smiled brightly, back to the Kind Christian Lady mode of getting her own way.
Aud rhymes with cowed.
“Luz!” Adeline called as she headed back into the house, “Button! Miz Thomas is here, and she says you can play in her trailer!”
I had barely dropped the briefcase on one of the recliners before Button was picking up the grapefruit knife I’d left in the drainer that morning. I took it away from him and asked Luz to sit for a moment while I made sure there was nothing else sharp lying within reach. She seemed fascinated by the luxury of the leather recliners; as I put away a bottle opener, I saw her furtively stroking the leather of her shoes and then the chairs, as if wondering how both could be the skin of an animal. She eyed the briefcase. My knee was less swollen today, but the pain was worse, as was the pain in my ribs. Stretching up to the higher cupboards hurt.
Eventually everything harmful was out of reach. Button found a paper clip and became absorbed in its shape, so I left him to it. I moved the briefcase from the chair opposite Luz and sat. My heart was beating faster than it should have been, and my mouth was dry. Perhaps it was a blood sugar problem.
“Is your knee better?” she said.
“Yes, thank you. The, ah, the kiss worked. For my knee.”
She nodded solemnly. “Aba always puts a Band-Aid on mine.”
“Good,” I said. Gentian violet. That’s what Hjordis had used on my cuts and scrapes.
I looked at Luz, she looked at me. She had seen me bludgeon two adults half to death with a gun. I had no idea how to begin, or even what I wanted to begin.
“How are you?” I said.
She shrugged. Her eyes were clear, no sign of a sleepless night, but it would come: the nightmares, the sweating, the fear that nothing around you is safe. Payment always came due.
“If you have bad dreams, you can talk to me. If you want.”
She shrugged again. I looked around the trailer. Maybe my mother hadn’t known what to do with a little girl, either.
“Would you like to see my computer?”
She didn’t say no, so I got out the laptop. The case was soft black leather. While I booted up and acted busy with screen and keyboard, she pulled the case onto her lap and stroked it with the back of her hand.
I swiveled the whole thing around on my knee so she could see the SimCity screen. “This is a game where you can build your own city.”
She gave me an uncertain look.
“Here,” I said. “Let’s put it back in the case, keep it safe while we play.” She handed over the case unwillingly, but once the laptop was snugged in place with the screen still up, I put it back on her lap, and now she paid attention. I couldn’t kneel, so I squatted next to her to type. Her hair smelled faintly of chlorine. “See, I can make factories, and parks, and farms.”
“Can you make churches?”
“Yes,” I lied, and put in a hotel.
“It doesn’t look like a church.”
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not a very good program.”
“Program,” she repeated under her breath.
“We could see if we can draw a better church.” She looked around, as if expecting crayons and paper to appear from thin air. “No, look, here.” I pulled up Photoshop. “This, here, works like a paintbrush, and this a bit like a spray can.” I sketched an outline of a cathedral. It looked like a derelict shed. She smiled politely. I erased it. “Or we could borrow someone else’s picture. From the web.” For once the connection worked first time. I went to the Library of Congress image database. And then I knew exactly what I wanted.
I worked quickly. It didn’t take long. “There,” I said, and sat back. It was the Mexico City cathedral. She was riveted. “If you like, we can copy that over, use the image, the picture, for cathedrals in the game.”
She nodded mutely. I kept a small window open in the top left of the screen for her to look at while I got back to SimCity.
“Now, see, we paste this into here, and look, there it is.” A tiny cathedral in the middle of downtown SimCity.
“Not there. Here,” she pointed to a park. Quick look to see what Button was up to. He had abandoned the paper clip and was examining the hinge on a cabinet door. “It should go there, on this side. And there should be government edificios on the other side.”
Just like Mexico City, where the Catholic cathedral, built on the ruins of an Aztec temple, faced government buildings across a huge plaza. Maybe one day I’d tell her about Montezuma’s palace.
“You do it,” I said. I showed her how to work the touch pad. Her fingers weren’t used to machine ways, but after a while she got the hang of it. She moved the cathedral.
Button was trying to dismantle the stove, but I had disconnected the propane before leaving North Carolina, so I didn’t worry.
“How do I make buildings?”
“You have to pay for them.” I showed her how, and she set to work with a curiously bland face, no frowns of concentration or lip caught in her teeth.
Button started in on the fridge. I distracted him with the remote for the TV, and while he sat, fascinated with the changing pictures, Luz played god, or at least mayor.
“What are taxes?” she asked after a while.
I thought for a minute. “The government’s tithe.”
“Oh.” Ten minutes’ silence while she put in too many parks, stroked the leather carrying case absently, hummed tonelessly under her breath, checked once or twice to make sure Button was still amused by his own toy, and finally turned to me for help. “There’s no money left.”
“You’ll have to demolish some of those parks.”
She frowned. “Parks are nice.”
“Yes. But there’s no point having them if everyone’s leaving.”
Fidget. Check on Button again. Sideways look. I just waited. “So what should I do?”
“Hard choice. Demolish the parks or have an empty city.” I knew which I’d choose.
“No.”
“They’re your only choices.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well then, you’ll have to cheat.”
Consternation. Cheating was probably not much encouraged by the Plaume City Church of Christ congregation. Aud as devil’s advocate.
“You don’t like that idea?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Cheating’s bad.”
“Who says?”
“God.”
“Where does it say that in the Bible?”
Thoughtful look.
“Is there a commandment against it?”
She ran through the commandments in her head. “Thou shalt not bear false witness?”
“You don’t actually have to lie. You just sort of step around what everyone expects. It depends, of course, on what you want from the game.”