When the Women Come out to Dance (2002) (5 page)

Charlie jumped on it. He said, "Hell, I'll strike you out o
n three pitches," and wanted to snatch the words back as h e heard them. He saw Darwin smiling for the first time.

"I'll bet it was your mouth," Billy Darwin said, "kept yo
u in the minors more'n your control." Not a half hour wit h Charlie Hoke and starting to sound like him a little. Darwin said, "You're a gamer, Charlie. I'll give you four pitches."

Charlie set it up. He called Vernice at the Isl
e of Capri coffee shop, told her please not to ask any question s and let him talk to Lamont, one of the busboys. Lamont Harris was the catcher on the Rosa Fort high school baseball team. Charlie knew him from going over there this pas t spring to help the pitchers with their mechanics, hit fungoe s and throw batting practice now and then. He told Lamont t o meet them at the field after work, bring a couple of bats, a glove, his equipment and, hey, the oversized catcher's mit t Charlie had sold him for ten bucks.

By five-thirty they were out on the school'
s hardpack diamond playing catch. Charlie took his warm-u p pitches, throwing mostly sliders and knucklers, while Bill y Darwin in his sunglasses, shorts, his silky shirt and sneaker s stood off to the side watching and swinging a bat. Lamon t strapped on his protection and Charlie motioned him out t o the mound. He told Lamont, a big seventeen-year-old he'
d played catch with all spring, "Use the knuckleball mitt."

"That's all you gonna throw?"

"He'll think it and want to look the first one over. Whil
e he's looking," Charlie said, "I'm gonna throw it down th e middle of downtown."

And that's what he did, grooved it. With that poppin
g sound of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt, Lamont called , "That's a strike," and Darwin turned his head to look at him.

When he was facing this way again, swinging the bat out t
o point it at him, Charlie said, "You satisfied with the call?"

"It was a strike," Billy Darwin said, swung the bat ou
t again, brought it back and dug in, Charlie observing the wa y he crowded the plate.

This time Charlie threw a slider, a two-bit curveball tha
t came inside and hooked down and over the plate and Darwi n swung late and missed. But he hung in, didn't he?

Okay, with the count nothing and two Charlie was thinking about offering a big, sweeping curve, lefty against lefty, throw it behind him and watch him hunch and duck as th e ball broke over home plate. Or, hell, give him a knuckler, a pitch he'd likely never see. Get it anywhere near the plat e he'll swing early and miss it a mile. Charlie gripped the bal l with the tips of his gnarled fingers, his nails pressed into th e hide, went into his motion, threw the floater and watche d Darwin check his swing as the goddamn ball bounced a foo t and a half in front of the plate.

"He came around on it," Charlie said.

Lamont was shaking his head saying no, he held up.

"We don't have a third base ump to call it," Charlie said
, "but I'm pretty sure he came around."

Billy Darwin said, "Hey, Charlie, you threw it in the dirt
, man. Come on, throw me a strike."

Shit.

What he needed was a resin bag.

Darwin was swinging the bat now and pointing it way ou
t past Charlie toward the Mississippi River, then took hi s stance, digging in, and Charlie wasn't sure what to thro w him. Maybe another slider, put it on the inside corner. Or show him a major-league fastball--or what passed for one sixteen years later. Shit. He felt his irritation heating up and told himself to throw the goddamn ball, fire it in there, this gu y won't hit it, look at him holding the bat straight up behin d him, waving the fat end in a circle. Jesus, a red bat, one o f those metal ones they used in high school. You can't strike ou t a guy waving a tin bat at you, for Christ sake? Charlie wen t into his motion and bore down, threw it as hard as he coul d and saw the red bat fly up in the air as Billy Darwin hit th e dirt to save his life.

Vernice, making the toddies this evening, said
, "I don't understand why you threw it at him."

"I didn't; it got away from me is all. I should've taken tim
e to settle down, talk to myself."

"But you lost your temper," Vernice said, handing Charli
e his drink, "and your chance of getting that position."

"I ain't finished the story," Charlie said, in the La-Z-Bo
y where Vernice in her sympathy had let him sit. "I starte d toward him as he's brushing himself off. He says to me, picking up the bat, to stay out there and you bet I stopped in my tracks, in my goddamn wing tips. Now he's swinging the ba t to show me where he wants it, belt-high, and says, 'Lay one i n right here.' "

Vernice said, "He wasn't sore at you?"

"Lemme finish, okay? I laid one in and he hit it a mile ou
t to right center. He says, 'There. Just so you know I can hit a baseball.' Then he says, 'You own a suit?' I told him of cours e I owned a suit. He says, 'Put it on the day we open, and wea r a tie.' ''

Vernice seemed puzzled. "He hired you?"

"Yes, he did."

"Even though you knocked him down?"

Charlie said to her, "Honey, it's part of the game."

*

*

WHEN THE WOMEN COME OUT TO DANCE.

Lourdes became Mrs. Mahmood's personal mai
d when her friend Viviana quit to go to L
. A .
w ith her husband. Lourdes and Viviana were bot h from Cali in Colombia and had come to Sout h Florida as mail-order brides. Lourdes' husband, Mr.
Zimmer, worked for a paving contractor until hi s death, two years from the time they were married.

She came to the home on Ocean Drive, only
a few blocks from Donald Trump's, expecting to no t have a good feeling for a woman named Mrs.

Mahmood, wife of Dr. Wasim Mahmood, who altered the faces and breasts of Palm Beach ladies and aspirated their areas of fat. So it surprise d Lourdes the woman didn't look like a Mrs. Mahmood, and that she opened the door herself: this tall redheaded woman in a little green two-piec e swimsuit, sunglasses on her nose, opened the doo r and said, "Lourdes, as in Our Lady of?"

"No, ma'am, Lour-des, the Spanish way to sa
y it," and had to ask, "You have no help here t o open the door?"

The redheaded Mrs. Mahmood said, "They're in the laundry room watching soaps." She said, "Come on in," and brought Lourdes into this home of marble floors, of statue s and paintings that held no meaning, and out to the swimming pool, where they sat at a patio table beneath a yellowand-white umbrella.

There were cigarettes, a silver lighter and a tall glass wit
h only ice left in it on the table. Mrs. Mahmood lit a cigarette, a long Virginia Slim, and pushed the pack toward Lourdes, wh o was saying, "All I have is this, Mrs. Mahmood," Lourde s bringing a biographical data sheet, a printout, from her stra w bag. She laid it before the redheaded woman showing he r breasts as she leaned forward to look at the sheet.

" 'Your future wife is in the mail'?"

"From the Latina introduction list for marriage," Lourde
s said. "The men who are interested see it on their computers.

Is three years old, but what it tells of me is still true. Excep
t of course my age. Now it would say thirty-five."

Mrs. Mahmood, with her wealth, her beauty products
, looked no more than thirty. Her red hair was short and reminded Lourdes of the actress who used to be on TV at home, Jill St. John, with the same pale skin. She said, "That's right , you and Viviana were both mail-order brides," still looking a t the sheet. "Your English is good--that's true. You don'
t smoke or drink."

"I drink now sometime, socially."

"You don't have e-mail."

"No, so we wrote letters to correspond, before he came t
o Cali, where I lived. They have parties for the men who com e and we get--you know, we dress up for it."

"Look each other over." "Yes, is how I met Mr. Zimmer in person."

"Is that what you called him?"

"I didn't call him anything."

"Mrs. Zimmer," the redheaded woman said. "How woul
d you like to be Mrs. Mahmood?"

"I wouldn't think that was your name."

She was looking at the printout again. "You're virtuous
, sensitive, hardworking, optimistic. Looking for a man who's a kind, loving person with a good job. Was that Mr. Zimmer?"

"He was okay except when he drank too much. I had to b
e careful what I said or it would cause him to hit me. He wa s strong, too, for a guy his age. He was fifty-eight."

"When you married?"

"When he died."

"I believe Viviana said he was killed?" The woman sounding like she was trying to recall whatever it was Viviana had told her. "An accident on the job?"

Lourdes believed the woman already knew about it, bu
t said, "He was disappeared for a few days until they find hi s mix truck out by Hialeah, a pile of concrete by it but no reason for the truck to be here since there's no job he was pouring. So the police have the concrete broken open and find Mr.

Zimmer."

"Murdered," the redheaded woman said.

"They believe so, yes, his hands tied behind him."

"The police talk to you?"

"Of course. He was my husband."

"I mean did they think you had anything to do with it."

She knew. Lourdes was sure of it.

"There was a suspicion that friends of mine here fro
m Colombia could be the ones did it. Someone who was their enemy told this to the police."

"It have anything to do with drugs?"

The woman seeing all Colombians as drug dealers.

"My husband drove a cement truck."

"But why would anyone want to kill him?"

"Who knows?" Lourdes said. "This person who finked, h
e told the police I got the Colombian guys to do it because m y husband was always beating me. One time he hit me so hard,"

Lourdes said, touching the strap of her blue sundress that wa
s faded almost white from washing, "it separated my shoulder , the bones in here, so I couldn't work."

"Did you tell the Colombian guys he was beating you?"

"Everyone knew. Sometime Mr. Zimmer was brutal to m
e in public, when he was drinking."

"So maybe the Colombian guys did do it." The woma
n sounding like she wanted to believe it.

"I don't know," Lourdes said, and waited to see if this wa
s the end of it. Her gaze moved out to the sunlight, to the water in the swimming pool lying still, and beyond to red bougainvillea growing against white walls. Gardeners wer e weeding and trimming, three of them Lourdes thought at firs t were Latino. No, the color of their skin was different. Sh e said, "Those men . . ."

"Pakistanis," Mrs. Mahmood said.

"They don't seem to work too hard," Lourdes said. "I always have a garden at home, grow things to eat. Here, when I was married, I worked for Miss Olympia. She call her servic e 'Cleaning with Biblical Integrity.' I wasn't sure what i t means, but she would say things to us from the Holy Bible. We cleaned offices in buildings in Miami. What I do here Viviana said would be different, personal to you. See to your things, keep your clothes nice?"

Straighten her dresser drawers. Clean her jewelry. Mrs.

Mahmood said she kicked her shoes off in the closet, so Lourdes would see they were paired and hung in the shoe racks.

Check to see what needed to be dry-cleaned. Lourdes waite
d as the woman stopped to think of other tasks. See to he r makeup drawers in the bathroom. Lourdes would live here , have Sundays off, a half day during the week. Technically sh e would be an employee of Dr. Mahmood's.

Oh? Lourdes wasn't sure what that meant. Before she coul
d ask, Mrs. Mahmood wanted to know if she was a naturalize d citizen. Lourdes told her she was a permanent resident, bu t now had to get the papers to become a citizen.

"I say who I work for I put Dr. Wasim Mahmood?"

The redheaded wife said, "It's easier that way. You know, t
o handle what's taken out. But I'll see that you clear at leas t three-fifty a week."

Lourdes said that was very generous. "But will I be doin
g things also for Dr. Mahmood?"

The redheaded woman smoking her cigarette said, "Wha
t did Viviana tell you about him?"

"She say only that he didn't speak to her much."

"Viviana's a size twelve. Woz likes them young and as lea
n as snakes. How much do you weigh?"

"Less than one hundred twenty-five pounds."

"But not much--you may be safe. You cook?"

"Yes, of course."

"I mean for yourself. We go out or order in from restaurants. I won't go near that fucking stove and Woz knows it."