“I’m no expert on the tradition, Mrs. Colesceau, but the eggs are beautiful.”
Colesceau smiled and bowed to Trudy very slightly. In the afternoon light that came through the still-open door Trudy Powers looked like a goddess. She was radiant, beautiful and filled with power. The dust rising in the sunlight around her was gold. Her skin and her hair and her thoughts were gold. Beside her, Helena seemed like one of those black holes they always talked about on the Discovery Channel, a place of hungry nothingness that ate solar systems like appetizers.
“Miss Powers,” he said, bowing again.
“I’m concerned that they did the wrong thing in demonstrating at the Parole Board building today. I’m really sorry they did that, and I advised them it was wrong. I apologize for what they’ve done. I made you a pie.”
Helena turned away and waddled into the living room. Colesceau extended his arm toward the kitchen, encouraging Trudy to go in ahead of him. She smiled on her way past him, a nervous smile. “Can I set it here on the counter?”
“That’s fine. It was kind of you.”
She put the pie on the counter, then looked at him. She was nervous but she didn’t back away. He could tell it took resolve. But she seemed convinced that she was animated, or at least endorsed, by a higher power than herself. God’s little errand girl, he thought, placating the evil monster.
“How nice to have your mother here.”
“Oh, very.” Colesceau felt a swirl of things just then: hatred, attraction, frustration, power. And a light, fizzing sensation down in the fleshy end of himself.
“Mine died when I was young.”
“But you still are young.”
“I’m thirty-four. You’re just twenty-six, aren’t you?”
“Miss Powers, I feel a hundred. At least.”
“After all you’ve gone through, it’s understandable.”
“I’ve sinned. But it was a long time ago. And I have honored the promise I made you. My behavior has been excellent I in all ways.”
Colesceau thought he heard his mother grunt from the living room, but it could have just been the TV, or the blood rushing against his eardrums.
“It’s good you can acknowledge your sins.”
“It’s easy when they’re as large as mine.”
“Paul was the great sinner, until his conversion. The farther you have fallen, the higher you can rise.”
He pursed his lips and looked down. It was a look of contrition he’d practiced for years on Holtz. “What’s inside the pie?”
“Apples. Organic apples. I hope you like apple pie.”
“Oh, powerfully.”
“Mr. Col... Moros. I brought you something else. I hope you don’t think it’s presumptuous or something, but I just thought, from some of the things you’ve said, that you’d understand it.”
“I understand your kindness.”
“It’s about a kindness far greater than my own.”
She opened the flap of the purse, leaving it over her shoulder. Out came the black book he fully expected to see. He could see a sheet of folded paper marking a place about halfway through. Trudy set the Bible on the counter next to the pie.
“It’s yours to keep.”
“I feel it could ignite in my hands.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of forgiveness.”
He stepped forward and set his hand on the cover. He smiled at her, then looked down again.
“Well, I should go. Maybe we can talk again.”
“I would like that very much.”
She smiled — all of life and goodness was contained in that smile — and hiked up the purse strap. He could see her breasts move under the blouse. Soft and large, still fairly high. She walked by him, then stopped behind Helena.
“Mrs. Colesceau, it was nice to meet you.”
“Moros does not need the company of American women. You confuse him. You cost him his testicles.”
She pronounced it with a long “e” at the end, so it sounded like a Greek philosopher. Testiclese. Colesceau winced. Even though Trudy Powers knew what he had gone through, knew the rough outlines of it, anyway, when his mother said that word it brought a fresh sense of shame to him.
“God can give them back,” said Trudy.
“And he hates apples.”
“Then give the pie to someone who doesn’t.”
Trudy looked at Colesceau and walked out.
He read the note left in the Bible by Trudy Powers. It was written in graceful, feminine script, with the eyes dotted by circles that looked like happy balloons:
Dear Matamoros,
My husband and I will pray with you any time you need God, any time of the day or night. Just call if you need us! We could meet at a chapel or park or down at the ocean, allow you to get away from the crowd for a while. Please do call. 555-1212.
With Jesus’ Love
Helena went out for dinner groceries around six, promising him a good meal. She came back with cube steaks — the kind with the gristle like rubber bands, frozen peas, a coconut custard pie with a clear plastic lid and two half gallons of generic vodka. He watched her approach his apartment home on TV again, shopping bags in one hand and the other held in front of her like a battering ram as the neighbors and reporters converged.
Dinner was a tribulation he thought would never end, and through it Colesceau could feel his shame turning into anger, his anger into rage, his rage into calm, his calm into hatred.
“Moros, it hurts me when a woman like that neighbor steps into your home. The home I pay for.”
It was after dinner, time for dessert but still before nine, so the chanting outside was going strong. Some of the Parole Board demonstrators had joined the neighborhood demonstrators, so it looked like twice as many of them. The increased numbers had brought more media, too — there were three network vans outside, plus some local L.A. stations, and some whose call letters Colesceau didn’t even recognize. Where was WJKN, anyway?
Helena drank deeply from her tumbler. Colesceau heard her slurp. He took another long draw from his own glass — the generic vodka smelled just like the swabs that Holtz’s fat nurse used to wipe his arm before she plunged the needle in.
“It was the first time Trudy Powers has ever been in here,” he said.
On screen he saw Lauren Diamond and Sergeant Merci Rayborn, lead Sheriff’s investigator in the Purse Snatcher investigation. He’d forgotten about her in all of this;
But at the sound of his own voice saying Trudy’s name — or was it at the sight of Merci on his TV–Colesceau felt his desire stir. Actually felt a nudge against the forearm lying across his lap. He breathed deeply.
... the Purse Snatcher investigation is moving ahead on a number of fronts right now...
“She’s an impudent, self-righteous whore.”
“She means well.”
We were considering Veronica Stevens of Santa Ana to be the Purse Snatcher’s third victim until we discovered...
Helena sighed hugely. She sat her bulk back into the couch and sighed again. She slurped down some more vodka. “Do you miss Romania, Moros?”
“Not at all.”
“I love America, too. But sometimes I remember the good things about home. I miss them.”
“Name me one good thing about home, Mother.”
“Oh, I remember the springtime in Tirgu Ocna. The sunrise over the Danube. The beach at Constanta in August.”
“They mean nothing to me.”
... uie try not to make predictions like that...