Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (32 page)

           
But not yet. Neither Maria Elena nor
Frank was tired yet; for different reasons, both felt keyed up, needed more
time to unwind and relax. They went into the kitchen, closing the swing door,
and did the cleanup together while Maria Elena told him about her background in
Brazil
, and he gave her a capsule summary of his
own useless and repetitive life. He also gave her a more full account of the
East St. Louis
heist and the change it had made in his
life. “Now I
can’t
let myself get
caught. No more litde hits, litde risks,
three to five
inside and back out again. This time, I go
in, I’m done for.”

           
“So you must reform,” she said, as a
kind of joke. She wasn’t sure why she was taking his biography with such moral
neutrality, but somehow it seemed to her that he was more a good man who did
bad things than a bad man. He’d never, for instance, poisoned any children.

           
Frank was amazed at the things he
was telling this woman, and finally said so: “I never shoot my mouth off like
this. I don’t know what’s with me tonight, I just put my life in your hands and
I don’t even know you. One phone call, and you could blow me away.”

           
“Why would I do that?”

           
“I dunno,” Frank said.
^cc
Why
do people do
any
of the shitty things
they do?”

           
They had finished the kitchen work
and were just standing there, she with her arms folded and her back against the
sink, he leaning slouched against the refrigerator. Maria Elena said, “I would
not do anything to hurt you, Frank.”

           
He shrugged and grinned, in a
joke’s-on-me way: “I guess I must believe that,” he said.

           
She unfolded her arms and spread
them, saying, “You are the first person to talk to me in five years.”

           
His grin widened. “Longer than that
for me. Listen, you want to dance?”

           
Surprised, she said,
^cc
There
isn’t any music.”

           
“You don’t hear the music?”

           
She lifted her face, and at last
returned his grin with her own rueful smile. “Now I do,” she said.

           
He stepped away from the refrigerator,
and she came into his arms. He was a miserable dancer, and knew it, so he just
led them in a litde slow-paced circular shuffle around the kitchen table. She
felt heftier, more solid, than he’d guessed; but he liked that. She wasn’t a
girl, she was a woman. Her hair smelled clean, her throat was soft and musky.
Holding her, moving in that slow jailhouse shuffle, he cleared his throat,
geared up his courage, suffered a couple of false starts, and finally murmured,
“Could we uh, uh...”

           
“Yes, Frank,” she said, and patted
his shoulder, and kissed the side of his neck.

           
In the morning, Kwan was weaker. He
remained on the pallet on the living room floor, sitting up twice to force down
small portions of purees Maria Elena had made for him. He was having trouble
now even swallowing the melicrate (rhymes with consecrate, desecrate,
execrate), and spent much of the day asleep.

           
But in the intervals when he was
awake, Kwan burned with a new kind of desire. He had gone through the despair,
and out the other side. He still wanted to die, he still wanted to throw away
this failed self, but now, somehow, somehow, he wanted the world to know. The
governments, the bureaucrats, the uncaring, unnoticing people who made it
possible; he wanted them all to know.

           
Grigor also stayed mosdy in the
living room, seated on the sofa where he’d slept, looking out at the empty
suburban road once Maria Elena had opened the drapes. He and Maria Elena were
supposed to leave by ten-thirty, to get him back to the hospital before lunch, but
when she came to tell him it was time, he admitted, awkward and hesitant, that
he didn’t want to go. ‘There’s nothing for me there,” he said, speaking sofdy
because Kwan was asleep again across the room. “Not any more. There’s nothing
they can do for me. I want to be... somewhere. Maria Elena? May I stay?”

           
“I don’t think the hospital will let
you,” she said carefully, sitting down beside him.

           
“If you don’t want me—”

           
“Grigor, of course I want you!”

           
“It would only be for a few days.”

           
He was trying so hard not to plead,
to retain his dignity. She saw that and responded to it. “I could call the
hospital, ask if it’s—”

           
“No,” Grigor said. Slyness did not
come naturally to him, the expression sat oddly on his face. “Maria Elena, they
don’t know where you live. They don’t even know what
state
you live in.”

           
“But if you just disappear, they’ll
call the police, they’ll worry.. .”

           
“Then let
me
telephone.”

           
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said,
thinking the doctors would talk sense into him. She wouldn’t at all mind having
Grigor here, but what about his medicines? What about the entire hospital
routine? Would he survive on his own, and for how long?

           
“Let me do it in private,” he said.
“There is a telephone in the kitchen?”

           
“Yes.”

           
He walked there, with some help from
Maria Elena, who saw to it he was more or less secure on the tall stool near
the wall phone before she left the room, pulling the swing door closed.

           
In the front hall were Frank and
Pami, getting ready to go out. At first, Maria Elena thought they intended to
leave permanendy, and something very like panic touched her, making her arms
shiver with nervousness. “Frank?” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you going
away?”

           
He grinned at her. “I’m not that
easy to get rid of. Pami and me’re gonna go get some groceries. We kinda used
everything up last night, didn’t we?”

           
It was true. The unexpected addition
of three new people, and Grigor as well, had left Maria Elena with very litde
food in the house. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said, with a sudden rush of relief,
knowing he didn’t after all mean to go away, at least not now, not yet. I’ll
make a list,” she offered. “I’d go with you, but Grigor...”

           
“No, that’s okay,” Frank told her,
“we can handle it. And that’s good, you make a list. And tell us how to get to
the store.”

           
She did all that, and he kissed her
goodbye without awkwardness in front of Pami, and they left. Maria Elena stood
in the living room near the sleeping Kwan and watched out the window as Frank
and Pami got into his
Toyota
and drove away.

           
How extraordinary to have this house
full of strangers all at once. To go from the loneliness of life with
Jack—without Jack, really—to absolute solitude, and then all at once to
this.
In place of Jack’s aloof
perfection, these imperfect people, sick, criminal, dying. But how much more
alive to be among these dying than to be with Jack.

           
I don’t ever want them to go away,
she thought, though she knew that death would be taking some of them very soon,
no matter what.

           
Faintly she heard Grigor’s voice
calling, and hurried out to the kitchen, half afraid he’d fallen, hurt himself,
was in some sort of crisis she wouldn’t be able to handle. But he was still
perched on the stool, leaning on the counter. He held out the phone, saying,
“They want to talk to you. I told them I refuse to go back for at least a
week.”

           
As she was taking the phone, he put
his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Don’t give them your address or
phone number or
anything
.”

           
“All right.” Into the phone she
said, “Hello?”

           
It was Dr. Fitch, one of the staff
she’d gotten to know; an older man, calm and professional, with an orange and
gray beard. He said, “Mrs. Auston?”

           
“Yes, Dr. Fitch, hello.”

           
“Are you a party to this, then?”

           
“Well, I guess I am.”

           
“Is Grigor right there?”

           
“Yes, he is.”

           
“All right, then,” said his
professional voice. “You needn’t say anything, I’ll talk. Except that we could
keep him physically much more comfortable than you possibly can, Grigor’s right
about the hospital not being able to do him any good any more. Mrs. Auston,
there’s no particular reason why he isn’t dead already. He may last a week, he
may last a month. If he stays with you, the likelihood is he’ll die with you.
Will you be able to handle that?”

           
“I think so,” she said, holding
tight to the phone.

           
“I want you to write down some phone
numbers,” he said. “If you need help, any time, for anything, call.”

           
“Thank you, I will.”

           
She wrote down on the pad by the
phone the telephone numbers he gave her, and the over-the-counter medicines
that might be symptomatic help if Grigor began to break apart in this way or in
that way. He then urged her to urge Grigor to rethink this idea, saying, “He
might go as long as two days without serious difficulty, but certainly no
longer. Very soon it will become extremely uncomfortable there for both of
you.”

           
“I understand.”

           
Grigor sat smiling with closed lips
as she finished her phone conversation, then said, “We will pretend you told me
everything he said you should tell me.”

           
“Good.”

           
“This afternoon,” he said, “we will
go for a ride. You will show me things.”

           
“I’d like to,” Maria Elena said.

           
“And if there’s a tomorrow,” he
said, with that compressed little smile, “we will do something else.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
When Frank came back with groceries,
he was bouncing and fidgety with some kind of excitement. Grigor was back in
the living room by then, seated on the sofa, watching Maria Elena help Kwan
down a small amount of broth. Frank appeared in the doorway holding full
plastic bags in both hands. “Grigor,” he said. “When we get this stuff put
away, I want to talk to you.”

           
“I’ll stay right here,” Grigor
promised.

           
Frank and Pami put the groceries
away, and then returned to the living room, where Kwan was still sitting up,
trying to drink. Frank sat on the sofa beside Grigor. He kept snapping his
fingers while he talked, apparendy unconsciously. He said, “Pami and I were
talking in the car. Did I tell you about the five-million-dollar hit?”

           
When Grigor said no, Frank told
him—and Maria Elena and Kwan—the lady lawyer’s advice. “She didn’t know it, but
she was right,” he said. “The
only
way I’m gonna get out from under my own history is with the one big solid hit,
and then quit. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what that hit is, and
now I got it.”

           
Clearly, Grigor had no idea what
Frank was talking about. Polite, nothing more, he said, “And it’s something you
want to talk to
me
about?”

           
“You bet it is. You really want to
get into that nuclear plant, like you said last night? No fooling?”

           
“No fooling,” Grigor said, sitting
up, becoming more alert.

           
“And you studied that stuff,” Frank
pressed him. “How to run them and all that.”

           
“I have read about them,” Grigor
said. “No one person can
run
such a
place, but I do know how it’s done. Some of the mathematics I wouldn’t be able
to do, that’s all.”

           
Kwan clapped his hands to get their
attention, and when they looked at him he grinned weakly and pointed at
himself. Frank said, “You’re a math guy?”

           
Kwan nodded.

           
“And you want to be in on this?”

           
Kwan nodded, and waved an imaginary
flag.

           
Grigor translated: “For propaganda,
like me.”

           
“I don’t care what people’s reasons
are,” Frank said, and asked Kwan, “You could definitely help Grigor, if he
needed it?”

           
Again Kwan nodded.

           
Grigor said, “Frank, I don’t
understand what
your
reasons are. You
want
to invade that plant?”

           
“You bet,” Frank told him. “All I
have to figure out is how to pick up the money.”

           
“What money, Frank?”

           
“The money they’ll pay us,” Frank
said, “to give them back their nuclear power plant, undamaged. You do your
joke, whatever you want, just so
I
can do
my
thing.”

           
Pami, twisted mouth and scrawny
voice, eyes full of leftover anger, said, “Frank and me, we gonna kidnap the
plant.”

           
“Hold it hostage,” Frank said. “For
a five-mil ransom.”

           
Maria Elena had been sitting near
Kwan. Now she stood up, looking and sounding scared, saying, “Frank, are you
sure? That’s so
public
, so dangerous.
What if you’re caught?”

           
“If I’m caught stealing a
toothpick,” Frank told her, “I’m still in forever. What difference does it
make? I can’t
do
anything that’s more
dangerous or less dangerous.”

           
Maria Elena, terrified of the whole
idea, floundered for something to reply, and could only come up with, “What if
they won’t pay?”

           
‘They’ll pay,” Frank said, with calm
assurance. “Just to be sure we don’t accidentally hit the wrong switch. Or on
purpose. This is the one, Maria, this is the only five—”

           
The doorbell rang. Grigor clutched
the sofa arm: “They agreed! They said I could stay!”

           
Maria Elena left the living room,
and the others sat silent, listening. They heard the door open, heard Maria
Elena’s question, heard a heavy dark-timbred male voice say, “I’m looking for
Pami Njoroge. Saw her at the shopping mall, wanted to say hello, missed her
there. Saw the car out front here, didn’t want to leave town without I say
hello to my old friend Pami.”

           
He’d been approaching all through
this speech, and now he appeared in the living room doorway: a big-boned, hard-
looking black man with a cold smile and mean red-rimmed eyes. He glanced once,
without interest, at the group in the room, then smiled more broadly and more
meanly: “Hello, Pami.”

           
They all saw the frightened look
that came and went on Pami’s face. They all heard the fatalism in her voice:
“Hello, Rush,” she said.