Parishioner (33 page)

“And if he wants to leave?”

“Try to talk him out of it. Tell him that I brought him here, that I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“Okay,” George said. “I’ll do what I can. What if he asks me what’s going on?”

“Tell him that I’m talking to the woman who hired me and I’m trying to get him some cash.”

“Uh-huh. Is this one like Charlotte?”

“Sorry about that, George. And yeah … this one’s just as bad.”

Ecks reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol—the one he took from Doris Milne.

“This yours?” the Parishioner asked.

“That little bitch.”

“Thanks for the help, man.”

Ben smiled and, after taking the handgun, said, “I love you too, Ecks.”

Yellow River was a simple restaurant: no silk hangings or fancy woodwork, just a big blue linoleum floor with seven beat-up black lacquered tables, each set with four chairs that had skinny legs. The waiter wore broad-legged black trousers and a short white jacket that buttoned up to the throat.

When Ecks walked in at seven thirty, three of the seven tables had people sitting at them. Two had been pushed together to accommodate a party of six.

Everyone else in the room was Chinese, all of them speaking at once—shouting without anger.

“Mister Ecks,” the ageless olive-skinned waiter said. He guided Xavier to a table toward the back of the room.

“Thank you, Wu,” Ecks said.

“Whiskey?”

“No.”

“You eat now?”

“I have a guest coming.”

Surprise showed only in the man’s brows. He nodded and backed away.

Putting his elbows on the rickety, dented table, Ecks laced his fingers and pressed his lips against his right thumb. He wondered, while the room resonated with loud conversations of the
displaced Asian population. He was thinking about the room not as a stopping place but more like a passageway. And he was not a human being but a chameleon changing his spots to fit the world around him.

He’d been changing with the days since Benol had walked into the nameless house of worship. He shouldn’t have been meeting the Brazilian student/waitress. He shouldn’t have been doing Frank’s bidding without more information and explanation.

Thinking these things, Ecks smiled. He’d never done one thing in his life that he should have done. Why start now? he thought with a smile.

It was seven forty-three on the round numbered clock hanging from the wall when Ecks grinned and Benicia Torres walked into the blue room.

She took the smile for her and returned it.

Ecks’s expression intensified. He liked her white dress and the leopard skin–patterned scarf that mostly covered her blond-and-blue hair. The cream hem came down to the middle of her copper knees.

He stood up and pulled out a chair.

Two Chinese men in business suits turned their heads to get a better look.

Ecks couldn’t remember the last time he stood up for a woman or pulled out her chair.

“You’re early,” he said.

“You’re earlier.” She took the seat, giving him a slight nod of approval.

Ecks felt like laughing. He was almost giddy.

“It’s not a fancy place, but the food is really good,” he said. “Anything you don’t eat?”

“I don’t really like squash,” she said.

“Okay, they don’t have menus except for tourists. Wu—that’s the waiter—he just asks if you’re ready to eat and if you want something to drink.”

“That’s odd.”

“It’s family-style. I see a lot of the same people coming in and out of here.”

The Brazilian’s Mardi Gras eyes glittered. When she smiled Ecks could see that her teeth were a little crooked. This flaw made his heart skip, and once again he wondered about the man he had been and was no longer.

“You want a drink?” Wu asked, appearing at Benicia’s elbow.

“Red wine?”

He smiled and nodded. “Whiskey?” he said to Ecks.

“Not tonight.”

The waiter went away. A family of five came in and he waved them toward the two empty tables.

“I like this place,” Benicia said.

“Me too.”

“So?” she asked.

If you find yourself laughin’ a lot an’ thinkin’ that you havin’ a good time
, Panther Rule had told his preadolescent son more than once,
then there’s prob’ly somebody sneakin’ up behind you with a baseball bat
.

“What?” Benicia said.

“Huh?”

“You just frowned like something hurt you.”

“Red wine for the lady,” Wu said, placing a juice glass three-quarters filled with dark burgundy. “You eat now?”

“What’s for dinner?” Ecks asked.

“Some soup,” the waiter recited, “duck, pork, green bean, and shrimp bun.”

“Squash in any of that?”

“Not season.”

Ecks looked to his date. She shrugged.

“Bring it on, Wu.”

Benicia waited for the nearly expressionless waiter to walk away before asking, “And are you having a good time again, Mr. Noland?”

The baseball bat his father had warned of made Ecks think about Doris.

“I like this place because it doesn’t judge me,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“A lot of places, when you walk in, they size you up. Got money, got a knife, big tipper, or just a cheapskate. No matter what, they know you before you got the chance to be whatever you are—or to change.”

“My father always says that people never change,” Benicia said in a tone implying that she hadn’t made up her mind yet.

“My whole life people been sizin’ me up. On the street, in the schoolyard—anywhere I go. But the first night I came here Wu just asked me how many. I told him that it was just me and he asked what I wanted to drink. I told him whiskey and he never forgot it.”

“I don’t understand,” Benicia said.

“When I came into your restaurant I said some words that you liked and you wrote down your number. When we got together you talked to me like I was just somebody sitting across from you. If I said something you found hard to believe you said so.”

“All that sounds pretty normal,” she said, smiling.

“I have never been normal—hardly ever saw it before. Where I come from normal packed its bags and moved without leaving a forwarding address.”

“Are you maybe romanticizing your life?”

“No,” Ecks said in a tone that caught the young woman up short.

She frowned long enough for Wu to bring a platter of some delicacies from the yellow kitchen on the other side of two blue swinging doors.

“Not so fast,” she said, and then, “Oh … oh, yes, yes. That’s right. Just … just like that.”

“Oh, shit,” Ecks said, and then he came. “Damn.”

He was hovering over her, his stomach muscles contracted so as to make his abdomen concave and taut.

“You haven’t been with a woman for a while,” she said, smiling up at him, her ankles caressing his neck.

“The man I am might not have ever been with one.” Ecks slumped down on his side, trying to stifle his hard breathing.

“I don’t understand,” she said, turning on her side to face him.

When he didn’t respond she put her palm against his cheek.

“This is kinda … kinda new for me,” he admitted.

“Being with a woman?” Surprise showed on her face.

“No. No, not that. I been with women, hundreds of ’em. But all that was different. There was this one girl once, but …” Ecks was remembering Dorothy and his son. He had loved her,
but there was cocaine in the mix, at least at the beginning. By the time his son was born he felt like his father at the police station: a panther in chains.

“What?” she asked, pulling away.

With shocking speed Ecks grabbed her wrist, keeping her hand in place.

“I never been gentle,” he said. “Never. It makes me feel too much, you know?”

Benicia was stunned by the quick movement but then she smiled.

“So you’re telling me that you’re the man version of a virgin?” she said.

For a moment Xavier’s vision blurred and his neck muscles went taut. Then that breath, that inhalation like the first cigarette after a few days in lockdown.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling an unaccustomed grin spread across his mouth.

“Then let’s practice sleeping next to each other,” she said.

“Wake up,” Ecks said.

“Huh?”

“You said you wanted to go on my paper route, right?”

“Really?” Benicia sat straight up. “You weren’t kidding?”

“I already called the guy been covering for me. I can go and you sleep if you want.” He wasn’t worried about anything incriminating. All that stuff was in a flat, watertight safe that he kept under the bed.

“No,” Benicia said, standing up naked and unashamed.

Her breasts were slightly lighter than the rest of her skin, as was her pubis. The pubic hair had been trimmed to a razor line to accommodate the bikinis she obviously wore often.

“I wouldn’t miss this.”

She threw on the white dress that she’d folded earlier and laid across the back of a kitchen chair.

They trundled down to the alley and climbed through the driver’s side into the cab of the ancient,
wood-paneled truck.

“Aren’t you scared coming down this alley by yourself in the dark?” Benicia asked when he turned the key in the ignition.

“Scared?” he said. “No, baby. Scared is scared of me.”

Benicia frowned and Ecks wondered whether he had said too much. He worked the gas pedal to keep the engine turning over as she looked out of the passenger’s window at the plaster wall that had blocked the passenger door from opening.

When they took off she pressed her right palm against the glass.

“You need the heat?” he asked.

“Maybe a little.”

Ecks fooled around with the knobs.

“Music?” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“Sorry about what?” She swiveled her shoulders to face him.

“I’m not no Romeo.”

“I always thought that Juliet made bad choices.”

“That and the condom breakin’ like that.”

“Do you have any diseases?”

“Church gave me a clean bill of health.”

“The church?”

“They look after their members.”