The Undertaker (41 page)

“Well, I might be.”

“Talbott, you must love bruises, don't you?”

“No offence meant, ma'am.”

“Don't you know, petite women don't like being teased about sizes and physical inadequacies? Especially by someone who took so much delight from them just a few short hours ago,” she said, as her right claw dug a painful inch into my side.

The laundromat was painted stark, institutional white and it was lit as bright as day. The only customer was a dumpy, older woman in a housedress who sat in a chair in front of the washers, knitting. She had three large, empty laundry baskets on the floor, and a half-dozen tall stacks of clothes on the table in front of her. Behind her there was another load thumping around in a drier.

We walked up to the woman arm in arm and I gave her my friendliest, most pathetic smile. “Pardon me; I wonder if you could help us out?”

She looked at us and our clothes and the dried mud smeared on Sandy's legs and probably thought we were homeless. “I ain't got no money, Mister,” she said.

“Money isn't our problem,” Sandy said as she looked down at our muddy clothes. “We were walking in the Common and got chased by some kids, some muggers. We got away, but we took a tumble down a big hill. Look at us,” she laughed. “I am humiliated.”

“Yeah, humiliated. I can see that,” the woman looked at her, still wondering.

“If I take her home like this,” I added. “Her old man will kill me.”

“Yeah, I got girls. I'd kill you too,” the woman said, starting to laugh. “So, what do you want? You want to use a washer?”

I looked at the piles of clothes on the table. “I've got a better idea. That's your kids stuff, right? How old are they?”

The woman frowned. “I got five — three girls and two boys, sixteen to twenty-four, and my husband Theo. You can add him to that list too. But why do you care?”

“Are any of them about our sizes?” Sandy asked.

The woman looked us both over, up and down. “Yeah. Maybe. Why?”

I pulled out the money I had taken from the goon's wallet and peeled off three crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills. “How about you sell us some of your kid's stuff — we'll pay double what you paid for them — and you can have our dirty clothes. It's all new. Deal?”

The woman plucked the three hundred from my fingers, and tucked it into her bra. “Lena's Clothes Emporium is now open for business, Mister. Show me what you want.”

It took less than a minute to pick out some jeans and a maroon pullover shirt for me and some faded blue jeans and a dark-blue MIT sweatshirt for Sandy. None of it was exactly our size, but it was close and that would be good enough to get us out of town. I even got her to trade her kid's nylon windbreaker for my gray herringbone sports coat plus ten dollars to have it dry cleaned.

We slipped into the restrooms to wash up and change. When I came out, Lena was standing by the washing machine pushing our stuff in, adding the soap. I waited by the restroom door for Sandy. When she came out, I noticed there was a pay phone on the back wall. “I'm going to call Billingham.”

“At this hour? You don't think he's still there, do you?”

“No, but I can leave him a message and that might start him thinking.” I dialed Area 212 Information and asked for the phone number of Steiner, Ernst, and Billingham. Before they shunted me off to the computer, I even got the NYNEX operator to give me the firm's address, not a small task when you are dealing with trained, phone company, customer service representative. Through years of illegal lab experiments, secret in-breeding, drugs, chemicals, and electro-shock therapy, call centers had elevated rude and dumb to near-Darwinian perfection.

When they connected me to the law firm's phone number, I found myself trapped in one of those multi-layered answering machines that let me dial the first four letters of the last name of whomever it was I was foolish enough to be calling. I punched B-I-L-L and after the Beep, I said, “Charlie? This is Peter Talbott. A mutual friend, Gino Parini, told me you had Jimmy's ear. To be perfectly frank, I need some help. I'm in the City and I'll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can get together and talk things over. Ciao. Who loves ya, Baby?”

“You had to say that, didn't you?” I smiled, embarrassed. “But what did calling him accomplish?” Sandy asked.

“Well, now we know he's real and that he hangs his hat there. And now he knows I'm real too.”

We turned and walked out the front door. “Thanks, Lena,” I waved.

“Hey, Mister, she's a cute little thing. Next time you get her dirty, you come back here and see old Lena.” She waved.

We walked back to Hanover along the dark, twisting neighborhood streets of the North End. Many of the city's long-time produce distributors were located here, and the smells of fresh fish, bakery goods, flowers, and vegetables from their warehouses filled the damp, night air. In the evening, after the city's normally brutal traffic faded away, the streets and parking areas around the warehouses were packed with delivery trucks loading for their late-night runs into a three-state area around Boston.

I looked over at Sandy in her new clothes. “MIT? That's a new look for you.”

“I'm studying to be a rocket scientist.”

“We already have one in the family, we don't need another one.”

“Whoa!” She stopped walking and turned me around where she could see my face. “What was with that “family” thing? Don't tease me about something like that, Talbott.”

“I wasn't teasing, but you're right. This isn't a real good time to be making long-range plans.”

“Don't worry, I'm not going to trap you into something you aren't ready for.” She threw her arms around my neck. “But you're damned lucky you didn't say anything like that to me back in the laundromat. I'd have dragged your butt into the restroom and given Lena a real story to take home to the kids.”

We crossed over to Hanover Street and ducked into a dark doorway near a flower distributor. She snuggled underneath my new windbreaker. “Is there some reason we're hiding here watching trucks?” she whispered.

“Maybe we can scarf a ride. If we can get to Providence or New Haven or somewhere, we can sneak on a morning train to New York.”

Two buildings over was the warehouse of a large vegetable distributor. The overhead door was up and the bright light inside cascaded out into the street. Three men with handcarts carried out stacks of small wooden crates filled with vegetables and loaded them into a large, white panel truck with “DeFanucci Brothers, Green Grocers, Providence” stenciled on the side. The truck appeared to be loaded. The driver was a middle-aged man in a long grocer's apron, with a thick head of curly black hair. He checked the paper on his clipboard and then rolled down the rear door and walked back into the warehouse.

“Come on,” I said as I pulled Sandy to the side of the truck.

A few minutes later, the driver came out and walked around the front of the cab, where he saw us standing next to his door. He stopped short. “Can I help you?” he asked suspiciously, eyeing us both up and down.

“Are you with DeFanucci's in Providence, by any chance?” I asked.

The driver nodded, still not sure. “Yeah, I'm Dominick. Why?”

“I'm Steve Bowen. This is my friend Wendy. She goes to Brown, in Providence…”

“In an MIT sweatshirt?”

“Oh, that's mine,” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, we were up here at a concert and my car got stolen. I've
got
to get her back to campus, and I saw your truck. Well, I wondered if we could talk you into a ride. I mean, I'll pay you some money if you'll take us, but we're like,
really
in a bind.”

He looked us both over again, but we must not have looked too threatening. “How much?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I tried to look as helpless as I could. “Fifty?”

“Make it a hundred,” Dominick answered.

“Seventy-five!” Sandy shot back. “And we get to ride in the back.”

“Deal,” he snorted as he looked at her. “But no squashing the veggies. I know these Brown girls. She gets too excited back there, you pay for anything you crush.”

“Deal,” she said with a big grin.

He rolled up the back door and let us climb inside. “There's a couple of tarps and a stack of mover's blankets over there on the side so you can get comfortable. You sure you're up for this, Steve? It's going to be an hour and a half before I let you out of there, you know. That can be a lifetime with a Brown girl.” he winked at her. “But I'll honk when we get near Providence.”

He waited for us to throw the moving pads on the floor, then rolled the door down and latched it from the outside. It was pitch black inside as I joined her on the floor. She put her hands under my shirt and put her head on my chest, then lay there quietly.

This was a mood I had not seen, I thought, as I stroked her hair.

“Here I have you alone in the dark again, and all I want to do is crawl under your shirt and hide. I'm sorry,” she whispered. “But I'm terrified that something's going to happen to you. Can you understand that?’

We lay there quietly like that all the way to Providence, her head lying on my chest while I stroked her hair. After what we found in Doug's kitchen and all the rest of what they had been throwing at us the past few days, we needed some quiet time to reaffirm life and get comfortable with what was going on between us, but that was good.

As we crossed into Rhode Island, she pulled my shirt up and slowly ran a line of kisses across my chest. “When we get to Providence, let's get a room. There's no sense getting to New York in the middle of the night and I'm really, really tired.”

It was almost 11:00 when we heard the horn beep. Five minutes later, we felt the truck slow and stop moving. The driver's side door opened and slammed shut, and we heard footsteps coming around to the rear. When Dominick rolled the truck's rear door up, we were sitting innocently on the moving pad.

“How did my veggies do back here?” he asked.

“We didn't crush a single grape,” Sandy said. “But the avocadoes blushed.”

“Ain't love wonderful? Then I'll cut you some slack on the veggie abuse, but I don't have to send those moving pads to the cleaners, do I?” he chortled.

“Heavens no,” Sandy answered demurely. “I'm a Brown girl.”

“Yeah, my ass!” Dominick laughed as we dropped to the ground and he rolled the rear door down. “Well, Brown girl, there's the front gate, as promised.” He pointed to two brick columns a short distance up the street.

“You're a life saver, Dominick,” I told him as I handed him a hundred dollar bill.

“The deal was only for seventy-five,” he said.

“Yeah, but the lady's embarrassed and we were hoping the extra twenty-five might help you forget all about us being in the back of your truck tonight.”

“I already did,” he said as he pocketed the money and helped us down. He got in the truck and drove off, while we walked down to a taxi stand that was outside the campus gate. We hopped in the first cab in line.

“What's the nicest hotel downtown?” Sandy leaned forward and asked the driver.

“That would be the Marriott. It ain't far.”
“Is the train station near there?”

“Yep, just down the street.”

“Great!” She sat back and pulled my arm around her. “When it's late at night and you need a room in a strange town, with no reservation and no luggage, money talks. And the more you pay and the bigger the tip you leave, the less the desk clerks will remember… Sister Josephine, and don't ask.”

The room cost us another $380 of the goon's money, but Sandy was right, discretion comes at a price. The room was on an upper floor. I was exhausted and collapsed in the middle of the King-sized bed on my back while she headed for the Jacuzzi in the equally large bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes in her wake. By the time she reached the bathroom door, she had nothing on and looked back at me over her shoulder, “All I want is a long, hot bath to get the mud from that alley and the smell of vegetables off me, followed by a good night's sleep.”

“Sounds great,” I answered as she closed the door. I got up long enough to get undressed and pull the bedspread and blankets down. I heard the water running in the bathroom and I guess I heard the Jacuzzi motor start, and then I was out like a light. The next thing I remember was warm, moist skin settling down gently on top of me. She put her arms around my neck and I could smell her and feel her engulfing me.

“Remember the part about me only wanting a hot bath and a good night's sleep?” she whispered in my ear. “Well, I lied.”

New York: a rolling stones is harder to hit…

I
didn't sleep long, but I did sleep well. This was the first time we had slept together in something that wasn't narrow, moving, or bouncing down the road smelling of lettuce and avocados. You would think that moving from a narrow bunk no more than four feet wide to a huge king-sized bed might gain a tiny bit of separation. No. Even when Sandy was sound asleep, if I moved, she moved with me, up, down, across, and right up to the edge of the bed, never losing contact. The girl was like Crazy Glue. Obviously, she would take some getting used to.