Out at Night (21 page)

“Arnie,” Wes admonished.

The man turned purple and started to rise and his wife put a restraining hand on his arm.

Arnie turned his back on him. “Well, he
engaged
,” he harrumphed. “He didn’t have to horn in on our conversation.”

A high piercing whine emanated from the vicinity of Raymond’s right cheekbone and his hand stabbed at his ear. “My damn hearing aid,” Raymond muttered. “Don’t say anything important until I get it calibrated.”

He twisted a few invisible wires that only served to make the sound more piercing. Raymond closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide and for an instant, Grace saw his uvula vibrating in a good imitation of the haunted figure in Munch’s
The Scream
. He twisted harder and the sound stopped.

“Fine,” Raymond said, “I killed it. It’s dead now. I didn’t need it anyway. I was just wearing it to humor you.”

“You need it,” Wes said. “You can’t read lips.”

“I heard that,” Raymond said.

“What exactly did he say,” Grace tried again, her voice a little louder and slower.

“About what?” Arnie squawked.

“What do you mean, about what? Aren’t you paying attention?” Wes glared across his coffee cup. “She’s trying to figure out how Janey fits into this whole deal.”

Janey picked that moment to reappear through the swinging doors, carrying plates of food. Her face was pink and splotchy from crying and her lips glowed with fresh crimson lipstick. There was something valiant and sad about the way she walked.

“She might not factor in,” Grace said. “Probably doesn’t. But I’m not going to know that for sure until you tell me everything. Even the parts you think don’t matter.”

“Well,” Wes leaned in, casting a quick look behind him to make sure Janey was a distance away. “She cooked him dinner Sunday night. That was the big turning point.”

Raymond nodded. “Ted had all these dietary restrictions from his diverticulitus.”

“No popcorn on that menu,” Arnie said.

“Not even the seeds of tomatoes. It was discussed in detail. See, what happens is, things like that get stuck in his—”

“Grace doesn’t need the details, Wes, for crying out loud. Janey served pork,” Raymond said. “That’s the long and short of it. It was nice and succulent from the sounds of it, because she went to the butcher and asked him to—”

Arnie held up his fork in a threatening manner.

“All I said was pork.”

Arnie made a growling sound low in his throat.

“Fine, fine, I’m done, but, Grace, if you ever need my help on where to position the knife to flense the shoulder—”

Arnie arranged the fork tines over Raymond’s forearm and made a stabbing downward motion.

“Fine,” Raymond said mildly. “I’m done.”

Grace picked up a chunk of iceberg lettuce and ate it. Talking to them was like standing on top of two stagecoaches, galloping teams veering in opposite directions.

“Janey made him dinner last Sunday night,” Grace repeated, getting things back on track.

“That’s what we just said.” Arnie tapped the button on his voice box.

“And by Tuesday morning, he was making noises about breaking things off. But he never said why.”

The three old men exchanged looks.

“Oh, he said why,” Wes said finally.

“Do you mind telling me?” She was trying hard not to lose her patience. She opened her bag and found her wallet.

“He had met somebody who fascinated him,” Arnie said, a little too loudly.

“And that was. . .?” Grace counted out cash and an extravagant tip, and left it under her cup.

“And that was what?” Wes frowned, confused.

She forced herself to speak slowly, clearly, distinctly. “Who was the person who fascinated him?”

“Oh, for goodness sake.” Raymond snapped the newspaper closed and refolded it. “Why in the world would you think he’d want to tell us that?”

“A man’s got to have his secrets,” Arnie agreed.

Grace threw up her hands. “Okay. Interesting. Thank you all.”

She dumped the salad into the take-out container, pulled a card from her wallet, and stood. It was the business card from the Comfort Inn. She blockprinted her name on the back and handed it to Raymond, who was closest. Raymond shot her a coy look and smiled. He tucked the card into his shirt pocket and patted it with a liver-spotted hand.

“If any of you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to give me a call. I’ll be at the Comfort Inn until checkout time tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute,” Wes said. “Why does Raymond get the card? I want a card.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Arnie said. “I don’t want to be the only guy without a card.”

She inhaled through her nose, rummaged in her bag until she found two more cards. The blockprinting this time was not as neat. “Anything else?”

“You sure are a cutie-pie,” Arnie said. “If I was forty years younger.”

“If you were forty years younger,” Wes said, “Grace wouldn’t even be born yet. Isn’t that right, honey?”

“There is one other thing,” Raymond said suddenly. “At breakfast one morning, when he was pulling out his cash, he also pulled out this stack of…” He paused.

Grace sat back down.

Raymond picked up his water glass and sloshed the ice around slowly, stretching the moment until Wes blurted out, “Oh, for crying out loud, Raymond, you take the cake, pulling out a stack of stubs—”

“From the Follies,” Arnie squawked.

“He’d been going by himself, over and over again,” Wes finished.

“It’s my story,” Raymond said. “A man should be allowed to tell a story at his own pace.”

“Raymond, we’re old. We don’t have that kind of time. At your pace, we’ll be dead before you get to the good part.”

Grace got up. “Thank you. All of you. It’s been very interesting.”

Wes twinkled, “Oh, no, honey,
you’re
the interesting one.”

“Where are these Follies?”

“Downtown at the Plaza Theatre. Starts in half an hour.” Raymond leaned up, his hair a fragile tuft of delicate white cornsilk. “And, Grace, I think her name is Jewel.”

Chapter 24

Grace joined a long line of white-haired men and women in high spirits shuffling past a tiled kiosk and under three stuccoed archways into the theater.

She peeled away—these were people with tickets—and waited in the much shorter ticket line.

“Very lucky, are you,” the ticket seller said when it was her turn. Grace wondered if he’d been watching Star Wars a little too long.

She smiled.

“We are completely sold out, as usual—people buy seats months in advance— but we had a comp seat promised—well, to a wildly famous person, and she’s been delayed and will attend another performance. That means you have a seat in row 2, center stage. Ninety dollars, please.”

Grace swallowed. “Alrighty then. Do you take American Express?”

__

It was like nothing she’d ever seen. On each side of the stage, the names of long-gone entertainers had been lit in orange neon, written in the crabbed flourishes of their own handwriting. Elvis, Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore.

The conductor, wearing a white tux with a red silk hankie and black pants with a sequined red stripe, stuck his head up, grinned at the audience, ducked his head down, and waved a baton with a sparkling tip at what Grace was certain was empty air. Skillful empty air, though; the sound quality of a live band reverberated through the theater.

The women of the Follies came out in a clattering blaze of tapping and twinkly lights, wearing black-and-white tails with short skirts that resembled piano keys, accompanied by men in red-sequined suspenders. None of the women had cellulite. All of the men were able—in unison—to kick up their heels and click them together and find the floor again without losing their balance. It was remarkable.

Especially since the youngest cast member was fifty-nine and the oldest over eighty.

Grace looked at the faces of the women carefully, trying to spot a tell, a face blotched from crying, eyes red, feet stuttering. They were flawless, black false eyelashes curled over smooth cheeks, lips red and glossy. They looked like the senior set of Stepford Wives, choreographed by Fred Astaire.

She straightened in her seat when master of ceremonies and co-creator of the show Riff Markowitz, hand in the pocket of his tux pants, introduced the men one by one, each dancer blurting into the mike a staggering laundry list of Broadway shows in which he’d participated.

The women had to be next.

Perhaps she’d been expecting giggles, modesty, a slightly apologetic we’re just kidding shrug to the shoulders.

Each came down a sweeping staircase alone, wearing little except high heels, a jaunty smile, and thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of boas and glitter.

Jewel was a tall blonde with perfect posture, dressed like an exotic bird. Scallops of red and silver sequins took the place of a fig leaf; a fringe of silver and red beads jounced wildly over her breasts. Attached to her rump and head fanned ten feet of green and blue feathers, red boas, crystal beading, and shimmering opalescent jewels, as if a costume designer had upended an entire box of stuff he’d been saving.

Jewel was sixty-seven, she informed the audience, and had danced on Broadway in a blurring array of hits that spanned thirty years, followed by dinner theater and touring in Europe. It made Grace want to seriously hit the gym.

Good eye contact. No sagging under the weight of the feathers, or catching a heel on a stair as she swiveled down the steps.

Grace’s phone vibrated and she checked the text in the dark.
it’s coming

A volley of heat slammed up her body.

She scooped up her purse and climbed out over knees, apologizing, racing up the aisle to the lobby.

She burst through the lobby door and an usher in a pink shirt and a black fringed hat pointed toward an arrow. “Ladies’ room that way,” he said in a stage whisper.

She shook her head and kept running.

Chapter 25

It took ten minutes to get from downtown Palm Springs to Karen Avenue, another five to reach the greenhouse and in that time, Grace found a quiet place inside, impervious to stress, or panic. She needed to distance herself from her own history. She needed to give her cousin a gift she didn’t think she had.

Up close, the building was constructed of high-tech polyethylene. The splintered door looked damaged by wind, but there were fresh gouges, too. She thought of the FBI raid that morning, the intensity of it.

Grace pulled in behind a car she recognized. Bright red. Sarah’s car. If Sarah was there, it meant Andrea was, too.

The door wouldn’t move and Grace pushed into it hard and it gave way. She tumbled into the building and regained her footing. Dim grow lights illuminated high frothy plants. The air was hot and cloying. Tall plants bristled in the gloom.

She could hear grunting and she stiffened involuntarily, her heart racing. She moved cautiously down a row of mulch-smelling plants and rounded a corner. Vonda was bent over, sitting on a wooden crate, panting. A green grow light cast a shadow up her face, illuminating the stalks behind her, an exotic bloom flowering in some lethal greenhouse.

Sarah and Andrea knelt in front of her, murmuring encouragement, as if they were midwives and expected her to deliver among the plants.

Andrea sensed her presence and turned. In the green glow of lights, her eyes looked catlike, unblinking. “What are you doing here?”

“Grace. You came,” Vonda cried.

“How are you feeling?” Grace shoved in between Andrea and Sarah, and Sarah lost her balance and tipped off the planting pot she was using as a seat.

“Jesus! Watch where you’re going!” Sarah grappled for the planting pot.

“Give it to me. Now.”

Sarah bared her teeth and shoved the pot toward Grace, and Grace settled on it and pressed her fingers against Vonda’s wrist, counting. Vonda’s pulse was strong, so there was that, but her skin was moist and her expression interior, watchful. She shifted and clamped her hands around her belly.

“Vonda?”

Vonda made a small sound and scrabbled for the edge of the crate, her face popping with sweat. At her feet lay a denim bag that Grace would have recognized anywhere: the baby bag a pregnant woman packed getting ready to go to the hospital.

Grace shoved her seat closer. Her shoe struck metal. A second bag lay in shadows. This one velvet, half open. Inside, hidden in its soft, secret folds, the edge of a blade winked. She swiveled on her seat.

“Is that a siren? Do you hear EMTs?”

Andrea and Sarah jerked to their feet and trotted in the direction of the door as Grace yanked up the velvet bag and shoved it into Vonda’s hospital bag, looping the strap over her shoulder.

“Okay, sweetie, here we go.” Grace slipped Vonda’s arm around her neck.

Vonda grimaced. “Hurts.”

“I know honey, I know.”

Vonda made a small sound as she staggered to her feet. The weight of her body shot a pain through Grace’s shoulder blade and they half shuffled down the aisle in a thicket of soy. An automatic sprinkler misted the plants and the air felt humid and wet.

They rounded the corner. A bright stamp of light fell across the floor. Andrea stood illuminated in the doorway, blocking the exit. She reached out her hands.

“We agreed, right, Vee? You’re riding with us. We get to go in with you. Cut the cord.”

Grace braced Vonda’s back with a hand. Through the cotton T-shirt, Vonda’s back was wet with sweat.

Surprise actions generally lead to victory. Sun Tzu. “Andrea, you forgot something.”

“Vee, we’ll put you right in the front seat. Sarah’s getting it ready.” Andrea’s voice was soothing.

“I’d rethink that one, Vonda.”

Grace kept her voice light and Vonda moving. They were almost within touching distance of Andrea and Grace got ready. She kept talking as if Vonda was having an actual conversation with her instead of caught in a seizing pain.

“See, Andrea packs a knife.”

That broke through and Vonda jerked up her head and locked eyes with Andrea, her gaze wild.

“She has a knife?”