Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (35 page)

“Because that’s where the bucks are,” she said. “And you know it.”

“I’m not sure I know that, but I’ve never been married.”

“You know what I mean. Men have the money. A woman needs a man to get it.”

“I wonder if Gloria Steinem makes house calls,” I said.

“Oh, that’s crap,” Patty Giacomin said. Her color was high. “You probably mouth the liberal line like everyone else around here, but you know what’s reality all right. Men have the money and the power and if a woman wants some, she better get hold of a man.”

I shrugged. I was beginning to see where Paul had picked up the habit.

“I know some folks who might argue with you,” I said. “But I’m not one of them. I’m too busy counting my money and consolidating my power.”

She smiled. “You do look quite powerful,” she said. “Do you lift weights?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“I thought so. My husband, my ex-husband, used to.”

“Not enough,” I said.

“That’s right, you’ve seen him, haven’t you. He’s gotten fat. But when we met he was really quite good-looking.”

“You really think he’ll make another try for Paul,” I said.

“Absolutely,” she said. “He’s, he’s.…” She groped for words. “I don’t know, he’s like that. He has to get even. He can’t stand to lose.”

“Capture the flag,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “Just musing aloud.”

“No, please tell me. You said something. Do you disapprove of me?”

“It’s not my business to approve or disapprove,” I said. “It’s my business to see that your kid is okay.”

“But you said something before. Please tell me.”

“I said capture the flag. The kid’s like a trophy you two are fighting for.”

“Well, that son of a bitch is not going to get him,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why don’t you take your coffee into the living room and read the paper,” she said. “I’ll clean up here.”

I did.

She bustled about in her flowered apron and put
the dishes away in the dishwasher and swept the floor. When my breakfast had settled and I’d finished the paper I went to my room and changed and went out to run.

The winter was over. The weather was good and somewhere the voice of the turtle was probably being heard. What I heard were mostly sparrows. I jogged toward the center of town, feeling the spring sun press on my back. There was still an edge to the air. It had not yet softened into summer. But by a mile I had a pleasant sweat working and my legs felt strong and my muscles felt loose. There were other joggers out, mostly women this time of day. Probably looking for a man to grab so they could cut in on the money and power. Probably why Susan had latched on to me. Poor old Patty. She’d read all the stuff in
Cosmopolitan
and knew all the language of self-actualization, but all she really wanted was to get a man with money and power.

Ahead of me a young woman was jogging. She had on the top of a beige-and-blue warmup suit and blue shorts cut high. I slowed down to stay behind her and appraise her stride in the high-cut shorts. Women looked realer in the spring. Like this one. She hadn’t had a chance to get this year’s tan yet and her legs were white and vulnerable-looking. Good legs though. I wondered if I offered her money and power if she’d jog with me. She might. On the other hand she might accelerate and run off and I wouldn’t be able to catch her. That would be humiliating. I picked up the pace and went past her. She had big gold hoop earrings on and she smiled a good-fellowship smile at me as I went past. I tried to look powerful and rich, but she didn’t hurry to catch me.

I cruised down through Lexington Center past the
Minuteman and looped back in a wide circle to Emerson Road. It took about an hour and a quarter, which meant I’d done seven or eight miles. Patty’s car was gone. I did some stretching, took a shower, and dressed. I heard Patty’s car pull in. And when I went out, she was just breezing into the kitchen with some groceries.

“Hi,” she said. “Want some lunch?”

“Are you after my money and power?” I said.

She looked quickly sideways at me. “Maybe,” she said.

On the weekend Paul improved his TV viewing average. Patty Giacomin had departed to self-actualize in New York. I had the living room and Paul stuck to his bedroom except to make a periodic trip to the kitchen to stare, often for minutes, into the refrigerator. He rarely ate anything. Looking into the refrigerator seemed merely something to do.

I had to stick with him, so I couldn’t run or build some cabinets in Susan’s house like I’d promised I would. I read most of the day about Enguerrand de Coucy and life in the fourteenth century. Saturday afternoon I watched a ball game on the tube. About six o’clock Saturday afternoon I yelled up the stairs to him.

“You want some supper?”

He didn’t answer. I yelled again. He came to his bedroom door and said, “What?”

I said, “Do you want some supper?”

He said, “I don’t care.”

I said, “Well, I’ll make some, I’m hungry. If you want some, let me know.”

He went back into his room. I could hear the sounds of an old movie playing.

I went to the kitchen and investigated. There were some pork chops. I looked into the cupboard. There
was rice. I found some pignolia nuts and some canned pineapple, and some garlic and a can of mandarin oranges. I checked the refrigerator again. There was some all-purpose cream. Heavy would have been better, but one makes do. There were also twelve cans of Schlitz that Patty Giacomin had laid in before she left. She hadn’t asked. If she’d asked, I’d have ordered Beck’s. But one makes do. I opened a can. I drank some. Perky with a nice finish, no trace of tannin.

I cut the eyes out of the pork chops and trimmed them. I threw the rest away. Patty Giacomin appeared not to have a mallet, so I pounded the pork medallions with the back of a butcher knife. I put a little oil into the skillet and heated it and put the pork in to brown. I drank the rest of my Schlitz and opened another can. When the meat was browned, I added a garlic clove. When that had softened, I added some juice from the pineapple and covered the pan. I made rice with chicken broth and pignolia nuts, thyme, parsley, and a bay leaf and cooked it in the oven. After about five minutes I took the top off the frying pan, let the pineapple juice cook down, added some cream, and let that cook down a little. Then I put in some pineapple chunks and a few mandarin orange segments, shut off the heat, and covered the pan to keep it warm. Then I set the kitchen table for two. I was on my fourth Schlitz when the rice was finished. I made a salad out of half a head of Bibb lettuce I found in the refrigerator and a dressing of oil and vinegar with mustard added and two cloves of garlic chopped up.

I put out two plates, served the pork and rice on each of them, poured a glass of milk for Paul, and carrying my beer can, went to the foot of the stairs.

I yelled, “Dinner,” loud. Then I went back and sat down to eat.

I was halfway through dinner when Paul appeared. He didn’t say anything. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down at the place I’d set.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Pork, sauce, rice, salad,” I said. I took a bite of meat and washed it down with a sip of beer. “And milk.”

Paul nudged at the pork medallion with his fork. I ate some rice. He picked up a lettuce leaf from the salad bowl with his fingers and ate it.

I said, “What were you watching?”

He said, “Television.”

I nodded. He nudged at the pork medallion again. Then he took a small forkful of rice and ate it.

I said, “What were you watching on the television?”

“Movie.” He cut a piece off the pork and ate it.

I said, “What movie?”

“
Charlie Chan in Panama
.”

“Warner Oland or Sidney Toler?” I said.

“Sidney Toler.” He reached into the salad bowl and took a forkful of salad and stuffed it into his mouth. I didn’t say anything. He ate some pork and rice.

“You cook this?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How’d you know how to do that?”

“I taught myself.”

“Where’d you get the recipe?”

“I made it up.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Well, I sort of made it up. I’ve eaten an awful lot of meals and some of them were in places where they
serve food with sauces. I sort of figured out about sauces and things from that.”

“You have this at a restaurant?”

“No. I made this up.”

“I don’t know how you can do that,” he said.

“It’s easy once you know that sauces are made in only a few different ways. One way is to reduce a liquid till it’s syrupy and then add the cream. What you get is essentially pineapple-flavored cream, or wine-flavored cream, or beer-flavored cream, or whatever. Hell, you could do it with Coke, but who’d want to.”

“My father never cooked,” Paul said.

“Mine did,” I said.

“He said girls cook.”

“He was half right,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Girls cook, so do boys. So do women, so do men. You know. He was only half right.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What did you do for supper when your mother wasn’t home?”

“The lady who took care of me cooked it.”

“Your father ever take care of you?”

“No.”

We were through eating. I cleared the table and put the dishes into the dishwasher. I’d already cleaned up the preparation dishes.

“Any dessert?” Paul said.

“No. You want to go out and get ice cream or something?”

“Okay.”

“Where should we go,” I said.

“Baskin-Robbins,” he said. “It’s downtown. Near where we ate that time.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Paul had a large cone of Pralines ’n Cream. I had nothing.

On the ride home Paul said, “How come you didn’t have any ice cream?”

“It’s a trade-off I make,” I said. “If I drink beer I don’t eat dessert.”

“Don’t you ever do both?”

“No.”

“Never?”

I deepened my voice and swelled up my chest as I drove. I said, “Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, boy.”

It was dark, and I couldn’t see well. I thought he almost smiled.

It was almost the first day of May and I was still there. Every morning Patty Giacomin made me breakfast, every noon she made me lunch, every evening she made dinner. At first Paul ate dinner with us, but the last week he’d taken a tray to his room and Patty and I had been eating alone. Patty’s idea of fancy was to put Cheez Whiz on the broccoli. I didn’t mind that. I used to like the food in the army. What I minded was the growing sense of intimacy. Lately at dinner there was always wine. The wine was appropriate to the food: Blue Nun; Riunite, red, white, and rosé; a bottle of cold duck. I’d eat the eye of the round roast and sip the Lambrusco, and she’d chatter at me about her day, and talk about television, and repeat a joke she’d heard. I had begun to envy Paul. Nothing wrong with a tray in your room.

It was warm enough for the top down when I dropped Paul off at school on a Thursday morning and headed back to Emerson Road. The sun was strong, the wind was soft, I had a Sarah Vaughan tape on at top volume. She was singing “Thanks for the Memories” and I should have been feeling like a brass band. I didn’t, I felt like a nightingale without a song to sing. It wasn’t spring fever. It was captivity.

While I could get in my miles every morning, I
hadn’t been to a gym in more than two weeks. I hadn’t seen Susan in that time. I hadn’t been thirty-five feet from a Giacomin since I’d come out to Lexington. I needed to punch a bag, I needed to bench press a barbell, I needed very much to see Susan. I felt cramped and irritable and scratchy with annoyance as I pulled into the driveway.

There were flowers on the kitchen table, and places set for two, with a glass of orange juice poured at each place. And the percolator working on the counter. But Patty Giacomin wasn’t in the kitchen. No eggs were cooking. No bacon. Good. My cholesterol count was probably being measured in light-years by now. I picked up one of the glasses of orange juice and drank it. I put the empty glass into the dishwasher.