And Sometimes I Wonder About You

2

“What kind of work do you do?” she asked, turning in her leather seat and lifting her right ankle up under the left thigh. That way she could look at me while watching both ends of the nearly empty car.

“There’s a guy named Eddie and a woman named Camille,” I said.

My new neighbor leaned back against the window and smiled. She didn’t mind hearing a roundabout answer.

“Eddie is, or at least he was, a what you call undocumented laborer from Central Mexico, a farmer that could read and write. Camille is an investment banker, more Madison Avenue than Wall Street.”

“What’s the difference?” my temporary companion asked.

“What’s your name?” I replied.

That turn got her to grin. She looked both ways down the aisle like a cautious pedestrian and said, “Marella. Marella Herzog.”

“Interesting name,” I mused. “Where’s it from?”

“I think the origin for Herzog is German.” Her smile was as opaque as the answer. “Marella is Italian.”

“Wall Streeters are solitary sharks, Marella,” I said, relishing the name. “Madison Avenue is populated by social animals — mostly wolves.”

“What about Eddie and Camille?” she asked.

“At the same time and in very different spheres Camille and Eddie got tired of their roles in life. She began doing charity work, not giving money but rolling up her sleeves and going down to shelters. She also represented dozens of undocumented laborers in court — gratis.

“Around then, Eddie was honing his English, becoming a florist’s assistant, and studying for his citizenship exam.”

“Don’t tell me,” Marella said. “He was arrested by the INS and she got his case.”

Before I could answer, Marella looked up suddenly, seeing something at the front of the car. I turned my gaze and saw a tall, olive-skinned man with a scar along the right side of his nose like an editor’s diacritical marking. He was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and gray slacks. Slender and likely strong, he reminded me of an unsheathed hunting knife — both haft and blade.

I say “tall” because he was a shade or two over six feet, but really most American men are tall compared to me. I’m half an inch under five and a half feet. What I lack in height I like to think I make up for in muscle. I weigh one eighty-three most mornings and not too much of that is fat.

The taller man’s body didn’t slow down as he passed our aisle but his eyes did. Those dark slits took her in — glanced at, and then dismissed, me. He didn’t look crazy and so I remained calm.

When he passed through the back door of the car I said, “No. Eddie brought a woman from his Bronx apartment building to Camille’s after-hours, downtown office on Bowery.”

The woman calling herself Marella Herzog took in a deep breath through her nostrils and looked back at me with what I can only call a bit of pride.

“And he spoke such perfect English that she fell in love with him,” she said.

“Something like that. Eddie knew a world that offered her something, and she was like the Statue of Liberty as far as he was concerned. They shared intelligence, he passed his citizenship test, and she stopped worrying about where banking could take her. It was like a multicultural fairy tale until about a month ago.”

“So you’re a marriage counselor?” Marella guessed.

“One morning Camille woke up in her Park Avenue South condo and found Eddie gone. He’d taken with him his four pairs of cotton pants, six shirts, shoes, and toothbrush.”

“You’re a PI.”

“She called me after the police told her that it was just a man leaving a woman. I found a trail of calls and a few bills that led me down to Philly. I spent the week in the City of Brotherly Love buying roses. It took longer than I expected because Eddie had opened his own kiosk in Reading Terminal Market. I talked to him about Mexico in my best Cuban Spanish and he said that he loved it in America. After fifteen minutes of yacking I told him that I worked for Camille and that she wondered why he ran away.”

“What did he say?” I think at that moment she had almost forgotten the olive-skinned hunter that had marked her with his slow eyes.

“People were always looking at him,” I said. “White people, other Mexicans, policemen. He had started to feel that he didn’t belong with Camille or in her world. He felt that he brought nothing to the table and the table belonged to her.”

“Wow,” she said, pursing her well-formed dark lips. “That’s some kinda man, huh?”

“I told him that my father told me that the first thing a farmer learns is that the man doesn’t own the soil but the earth owns him. The same thing, I said, was true of tables and monies and fancy streets.”

“Your father sounds like a wise man.”

“Yeah. Maybe too wise.”

“What did Eddie say?”

“He hugged me. Threw his arms around my neck and pressed his cheek to mine. I think he must have been hoping for a sign to go back home.”

“To Park Avenue,” Marella said.

“To Camille.”

“So did he?”

“She came down this morning, paid my fee, and took her man to the Belmont Arms.”

“That’s a wonderful story,” Marella Herzog said. She placed a hand on mine.

“Why don’t you tell me one,” I suggested, turning my palm upward to press against hers.

“What would you like to hear?”

“Why a stunningly beautiful woman like you would ask to sit next to an old, off-the-rack straphanger like me.”

“You looked like a strong man and so I wanted to sit down next to you.”

“Not before you asked Haystack back there,” I said.

“He looked a little stronger,” she admitted with a smile.

“And what use do you have for strong men?”

“You saw the guy who walked by?”

I nodded.

“He works for a man that I was engaged to down in DC. I saw him on the Acela to New York and got off in Philly. I guess he saw that and followed me.”

“And what does this man want?” I asked.

“To take me back.”

“Why?” I said, thinking about Camille. She was a plain woman with naturally blond hair and a figure made for a ’40s film. She asked me to find Eddie, and when I did she came to him.

“He broke off the engagement. I’m pretty sure he wants the ring back.”

“Why not give it to him?”

“Because it became my property when he gave it and I accepted,” Marella said with all the commitment of an outer-borough storefront lawyer.

“But if he’s so adamant why not let him have it anyway?”

“Because I will not be intimidated by thuggery.” Something about her choice of words seemed... unnatural.

“If that was true you wouldn’t be using me as a buffer.”

She turned to look out the window. We were entering the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey.

After a moment or two she said, “I sold it, got quite a bit of money.” Then she turned to face me again. “Are you a strong man, Mr. McGill?”

“I think so.”

“Can I trust you?”

“In what circumstance do you mean?”

“I need protection.”

I pretended to think about her request, but the answer was a foregone conclusion. After a beat, maybe two, I nodded. “Sure.”

“Sure I can trust you or sure you will help me?”

“Both.”

“And, if you don’t mind me asking, why should I trust you?”

“Because I work for money.”

Marella’s smile seemed to enhance her forest scent.