Of course, I think. Cherie, on cue. Cherie and Rob. I’m partly irked and possessive: Cherie. In this bar. With Rob. How dare they? And partly triumphant. Sure, I expected this. And how do I appear for the occasion? Triumphant. Dancing with a handsome man. Getting applauded for my skill. How great is that? The goddess who arranges such things did right by me; I send up a thank-you to her.
Except that Scott intervenes, deflating my balloon. “Well, guess what? It’s Rita.”
“Rita?” I bleat, as if I had never heard of such a person.
“And she’s with . . .” I brace myself, prepared to hear that Rita is with Rob. I’m still aimed in that direction. And you never know.
“She’s with your dad.”
Surprise of surprises. Yes, there they are, as the lights continue to get higher, a couple at a table near the door, Rita with something glittery in her spiky dark hair, my dad in what I think is his best tweed jacket. Rita is waving with both hands. Now she stands up. My father just sits, looking pleased.
And Cherie and Rob aren’t here at all. Not present, when I was expecting them. I find that I’m feeling disappointed.
Now Rita is bearing down on us, arms outspread. “Hey, fellow art lovers. Scott, old stud.” She moves forward into a kiss, both cheeks for me, one cheek for Scott, while he mutters, “Oh, shit.”
“We have got to sit together,” Rita says. “Your dad is so excited.” My father is waving now. “We’ll bring all our junk over. Oh, this is going to be great. It’ll be such fun.”
“Hey, Reet,” Scott says, “you look nice.” Which surprises me. Scott hasn’t been heavily into complimenting Rita, who does look nice. She sparkles, Rita-style, with a sequin bird, wings outspread, across the front of her white dress. Like my outfit, this is too formal for our setting, but it looks great on her, with her tan arms swinging free and wild black hair standing up above.
Rita and I will go to the ladies’ room. “Hey, a lady-act, right?” She puts a matey arm around my shoulder. “I read somewhere that’s what ladies do when they want to talk about the men.
“I can talk about your dad just fine,” she expands, pushing me ahead of her into the corridor. “He is my best guy and I don’t care if he remembers anything or not. And I’m sorry I was mean to him. That was the nuttiness speaking. Scott, now . . .”
Rita is behind me, with a finger in my back. Now she drops farther back, which means she has to yell, since the band is hotting up again, preparing to assault another Golden Oldie. They signal this with a couple of percussion booms and some saxophone squeals. The lights begin fading.
“This is crazy, but confession’s good for the soul, right?” Rita shouts into my shoulder blades. “I mean, I’m here because I got suspicious of that Scott. Maybe about his intentions with you, babe. And then when your dad wanted to come along . . . Well, that was sweet, right? So here we both are. And oh, hey, Carla, guess what . . .”
I think it is after “guess what” that it happens. But maybe not. Maybe she says another couple more words and I just don’t remember. It’s possible that what happened then is partly wiped out by what comes now.
A noise. Not terribly loud. From someplace behind us. Pretty much covered up by the band’s boops and squawks, but not entirely, if you have good hearing, which I do.
Why I think that noise is meant for us, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just editing backward. Maybe all I remember is Rita smiling back at me while I looked at her over my shoulder, seeing her, and part of the room beyond, and Scott waiting for us, and Rita saying, “Carla, guess what,” and then this noise, which is a sharp one—no, two sharp noises—from someplace behind. And Rita looking kind of surprised. Or apologetic. I think she moves her hand around toward her breast, but maybe not.
I recognize the noise before I understand anything else. That noise is the smothered pop that a gun with a silencer makes, being fired. I heard gunfire, every kind, plenty in Egypt and later in other places. The sounds here are louder than they would normally be—that’s the enclosed space; there are some echoes; they’re followed by the beginnings of a burned smell and maybe by a savor of smoke. One gunshot, then perhaps another gunshot.
Rita turns, arms out, and looks at me pleasantly, her remark stuck somewhere behind her teeth. She makes an embarrassed gesture as if to say, “Hey, it’s not my fault.” She opens her mouth; a waterfall of blood jumps out and cascades down her sequined front. She pitches forward. She’s plump, and she makes a noise as she falls.
I make a noise, too. I’m screaming. I think I’m screaming incoherently, but Scott later tells me that I was yelling for him. What did I say? Something like “Scott, come, Scott, come,” he thinks.
Whatever I said, it brings people, a lot of them. I’m aware of them as shapes jostling and crowding in; by that time, I’m kneeling beside Rita. “You were trying to give her mouth-to-mouth,” Scott says.
I don’t remember that, but I must have been doing mouth-to-mouth because later I have to wash the blood off my face as well as off my hands and my knees.
Now I’m on the floor on my knees and holding on to someone who is standing. This person is saying, “Okay, okay.” He says, “Carla, listen, let go of me for a minute, I have to try something here.” He bends over Rita, who is stretched out, half on her side, her face resting in a big dark patch.
I look at the person who says this and he turns out to be Scott. There are a lot of other people here, too. The lights come on, very bright, and I say, “She’s hurt.”
He doesn’t pay attention. He’s bent over Rita. I think he’s saying, “Reet, honey.” And “Baby, no.”
When I focus on him again, he’s on his knees, doing something.
“She’s hurt,” I say.
He’s saying stuff that doesn’t make sense, like, “Rita, don’t,” and, “You can. Try. Try really hard.”
“She needs a
doctor
,” I say.
He starts to straighten up. “Oh, Christ.” He has to sit down again. “God.”
After a minute he adds, “A doctor is coming.
“Now try to move over. Sit with your back against the wall.”
I move over, sliding along. I notice the pattern on the rug, which is orange and tan diamonds. When I am lined up with my back against the wall, I see that Scott is sitting beside me. He has his knees up and his face on his knees.
“Oh, yes, that would feel better,” I say about Scott’s posture. I think he’s crying, but I don’t want to cry. I raise my knees and put my head on them.
More people (I see them as legs) have pushed in, and I remember that there’s something I have to do. I pull at Scott. “My father. I’m worried about my father.”
I think he says, “Okay, okay.”
“And she needs a doctor.” I wonder if I’ve said this before.
Scott says, “Yeah.”
“Soon?” I ask, and Scott says, I think, “Yeah.”
The racket around us increases. Someone tries to help me onto my feet, but I resist.
“She’s gone,” Scott, beside me, says.
This doesn’t make sense. I think about it for a minute. Then I hear myself tell him he can’t be sure and he says, “Oh, yes, I can. She’s gone.”
I stare down at my knees and at my right hand, with the blood still running down it.
I can only sort of see. But I think about my father and lift my head and squint, and yes, there, off at a table in a corner, is my dad. He has a glass.
I’m halfway up onto my feet. What should I do? Get him, bring him along into this scene of chaos? Go sit with him? Somehow that doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t I be here? I can’t leave Rita; she needs me.
She has a set of small holes in her back. But she must have a very big hole in her front, because she has gushed blood all down her front and into the orange-and-tan carpet. An awful lot of blood.
Now I am coming out of it. I can hear what some people who have just arrived are saying to each other. These people have black shoes and dark blue pants and have laid a canvas stretcher on the floor. They say things like, “Put a mask on her,” and “Easy now,” and “May not matter, that mask.” One of them says to the other, “Hey, reach in my back pocket, will you? I got a clean handkerchief there.” Now Scott is talking to somebody; he has his face raised and is talking up; he says, “Try anything. Everything.” And the person answers, “Sure, guy, sure.”
I scramble to my feet, holding on to the wall for support.
My father appears by my side. He has settled the question of who goes where by doing the moving around himself. He’s holding his glass. He has managed, in his Edward Day way, to squeeze through the mob of people.
“Come with me,” he says.
“Can I?” I have the feeling that I’m supposed to stay right here.
He doesn’t bother to answer, but grabs me by the elbow and leads me out of the corridor, and then slowly, between tables. There is a chair.
“Well, my dear.” He pats my shoulder. “Are you scared?” He leans and tries to put his arms around me. “Darling, it’s going to be all right.”
After a few minutes he talks, in an elliptical way, about his coming here. “She was very worried, you know? She is a lady who worries a lot. And I wanted to come. It was nice of her to include me. I am so sorry this happened to her.”
“Daddy, did you see anybody? Somebody trying to shoot her? Did she say anything about somebody . . .” I let this question sag off. What am I trying to ask? Did Rita say anything like, “Someone is going to shoot me tonight”?
“Would you like a taste of my drink, dear?” He is having white wine. At first I say no, and then change my mind. The gulp of wine is a help. I can feel it straightening the clogged snarls in my brain.
I sip and watch the corridor, where I can see Scott. He staggers to his feet, leaning against the wall. Now he is talking to one of the blue-outfitted guys, heading toward the fire door with the litter. There’s a figure on the litter; I guess that’s Rita. It’s hard to be sure, there’s a white sheet over most of her.
The sheriff arrives. He comes in through the side door and pauses there; maybe he’s trying for an overview. The Best Western management has been attempting to keep people in place, but with zero success. “Sorry, I gotta go.” “Baby at home.” The room is now a sea of angled tables, dirty glasses, dropped table napkins.
We at our table have been good and have stayed put; we turn our faces toward the sheriff. He squints at us. He’s holding an armful of books; he fixes on my father. “Dr. Alzheimered Day, right here, king of the action again.”
The books are bound in red leather and look legal. “You’re not supposed to leave this room,” the sheriff says in an uncertain voice.
Scott has his head in his arms. I am clutching my wine in one hand and the table edge in the other. My father seems almost okay. He looks up at the sheriff and suggests cautiously, “I think you’re supposed to ask us where we were.”
“Goddamn it to hell, you interfering old buzzard.” This man is scared. I remember Cherie’s analysis: he doesn’t know what to do.
I have an idiot recollection of the schoolgirl fantasy about the exam when you haven’t read the book.
“She’s dead,” the sheriff says loudly.
Nobody answers.
“Everybody in your group gets a skin test. For firing a gun.”
I start to say, “She was shot in the back,” and then don’t say it. I’m the only one of us who wasn’t behind Rita. I was the one in front; everybody else was back here with a good chance for a shot. A dark room. Dark corners. A lighted corridor with Rita outlined in it.
I’m grateful to the med crew for not bundling her into a black plastic bag.
And so we move shakily along Sheriff Munro’s part of the evening. I think he wants to open the law books and look things up, but he doesn’t. He squints at us sideways. He delivers instructions in a scratchy voice. He contradicts himself. “We’ll find a room and question you now. No, later.” The deputies sidle up and say, “Hey, boss.” He tells them to shut up.
We do not get the skin test for firing a gun. There are some mutters with the deputies about, “Tomorrow? For God’s sweet sake.” I’m guessing that this means that the skin-test equipment isn’t available to Del Oro County until tomorrow; Sheriff Munro klunks one of the books down and says, “What a jerkwater place.” He tells us to go away. No, don’t go away. Yes, leave. He promises to be in touch.
Sheriff Munro has made my father worried. He stares after him with his lost Edward Day look. “That man was in Thebes. I haven’t been in Thebes for years, have I? You would remember.”
“That’s the sheriff, Daddy. He wasn’t in Thebes.”
“Yes, yes. But I haven’t been in Thebes for a long time, have I?
“Thebes is the center of the remaking,” he adds. “
I will go down into Thebes and be made whole.
“But a place of death, perhaps,” he adds. “Oh, dear.”
Much later that night, back at Egypt Regained, I am still not alone.
First I have had to drive us home. Pretty much against my will. In Scott’s little low-slung rental.
I’m an all-right driver, but I’m not anxious for this duty. And at first Scott assures me, “Sure I can do it. Of course I can.” After which he climbs into the driver’s seat and can’t turn the key. He tries twice. His hand is shaking too hard to get the key in the slot. He doesn’t even object too much when I take over.
On the trip home my father talks about Egyptian poetry and Scott tries to answer. “
I shall cross over to the mansion of him who finds faces,
” Daddy says. And Scott responds, “Yeah. Right. Good.” Just before we get to the museum Scott says, “
You have your blood
; that’s a quote.” He throws the remark into the night, where it warbles idiotically and hangs like an accusation.
It’s a bright night, with a lot of the brilliant overhanging stars we get when we’re fog-free.
Upstairs in the residence my dad says, “Well, I’ll go to bed.