Ask for Me Tomorrow

Three

The swimming pool in the middle of the patio was larger than the one at the YMCA where Aragon had learned to swim as a boy. At the bottom lay a ceramic mermaid which no YMCA would have tolerated. She wore nothing but a smirk.

A dark-haired good-looking man in very brief tight swim trunks was cleaning the pool with a vacuum. His movements were tense and angry. He pushed the vacuum back and forth across the mermaid’s face as though trying to obliterate her smirk. At the same time he was conducting a monologue which Aragon assumed was aimed at him.

“Nobody manages this place. It’s simply not managed. Take a look around, just look. Disgusting.”

Aragon looked. The early-morning wind from the desert had thrown a film of dust across the water and littered it with pine needles and the petals of roses and jacarandas and cypress twigs and eucalyptus pods, all the leaves and loves and leavings of plants.

“We have two daily gardeners, a cleaning woman, a day maid, a pool boy who comes twice a week and a handyman living over the garage. So what happens? The handyman has arthritis, the gardeners say it’s not their job, the day maid and cleaning woman can’t be trusted with anything more complicated than a broom, and the pool boy has a term paper in biology due this week. Guess who’s left? Reed. Good old Reed. That’s me.”

“Hello, good old Reed.”

“Who are you?”

“Tom Aragon. I have an appointment with Mrs. Decker.”

“Aragon. There was a fighter named Aragon once. Remember him?”

“No.”

“Too young, eh? Actually, so am I. My mother told me about him. She was a fight fan. I’ll never forget her actually, really — can you beat it? — putting on the gloves with me when I was six or seven years old. She was one weird old lady.”

He thrust the vacuum across the mermaid’s face again, then suddenly dropped it in the pool and continued his monologue. “It’s only the middle of October. How could the kid have a term paper due the second week of school? And the handyman with his arthritis — hell, I’m a registered nurse, I know an arthritis case when I see it. There are over eighty different kinds and he hasn’t got any of them. What he’s got is a hangover, same as he had yesterday and the day before and last month and last year. If this place were managed, he’d be kicked out. What’s behind the whole thing is this — I’m the one who uses the pool most, so if I want it clean I better bloody well clean it myself.”

He was beginning to sound like a querulous old man. Aragon guessed that he was no more than thirty-five. He also guessed that Reed’s bad mood hadn’t much connection with merely cleaning the pool. Reed confirmed this indirectly: “Gilly told me to stick around till you got here. I had to give up my five o’clock cooking class. I was going to do beef Wellington with spinach soufflé orientale. The food around here is vile. If you’re invited for dinner, split fast. Gilly hired this crazy cook who keeps getting hyped on various diets. We haven’t been served any decent red meat for a week... I don’t know what Gilly expects me to do, size you up, maybe. She can be so obscure.”

“Well, size me up.”

Reed stared. He had green murky eyes like dirty little ponds. “You look okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, it’s hard to tell nowadays. I had my wallet lifted last Thursday by two of the most innocent-faced chicks you ever saw... Go right across the patio to the glass door and shake the wind chimes good and hard. She’s in Marco’s room. If I hurry, maybe I can catch at least the soufflé part of my class.”

“Good luck.”

“A soufflé is more a matter of correct temperature and timing than luck. Do you cook?”

“Peanut butter sandwiches.”

“You might enjoy the food around here,” Reed said and disappeared around the side of the house.

It wasn’t necessary for Aragon to shake the wind chimes. Gilly was waiting for him inside the door of what seemed to be a family recreation room. Its focus was a round barbecue pit level with the floor and made of used brick. The steel grill in the pit was spotless, and underneath it there were no ashes from yesterday’s fire and no charcoal for tomorrow’s. Only a few stains indicated the pit had been used. Above it was a huge copper hood which reflected everything in the room distorted in various degrees, much like the convex mirrors utilized in stores to spot shoplifters.

Aragon saw himself in the copper hood, a bit taller and thinner and a great deal more mysterious than he looked in the mirror of the men’s room at the office. The lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses seemed almost opaque, as though they’d been designed to disguise his appearance rather than to improve his vision. He might have been a college professor who did a little spying on the side, or a spy who taught a few classes as a cover.

Gilly, too, looked different. Instead of the beige suit she’d worn earlier she had on a pink cotton dress a couple of sizes too large and espadrilles with frayed rope soles. Only the faintest coating of make-up remained on her face. The rest had disappeared, the mascara blinked off, the blushes rubbed off, the lipstick smiled or talked off. Or perhaps it had all simply been washed away in a deluge of tears. She was carrying a large manila envelope with some letters hand-printed across the front in black ink.

“Your name’s Tom, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you’re curious about why I dragged you all the way out here.”

“It’s not far.”

“Now, that’s a nice evasive response. You should make a fine lawyer.”

“Well, okay. I am curious.”

“I couldn’t talk to you freely this morning because I didn’t want Smedler or that witch in his office to overhear.” A smile swept across her face like a summer storm, leaving it refreshed, softer. “The old devil has the place bugged, you know. What did he tell you about me?”

“Very little.” Go along with her, Smedler had said. I’m sure she won’t ask you to do anything too indiscreet. And whatever it is, you’ll get some money and some experience out of it and we hang on to her business. She’s one of our golden oldies. “I don’t think he has his office bugged, by the way.”

“No? Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“Tell that to Smedler sometime when I’m around. I’d love to watch his face come unglued.” She put the manila envelope on a leather-topped table. Then she sat down in one of the four matching chairs and motioned for him to sit opposite her. “I’ve played a lot of games at this table, bridge, Scrabble, backgammon, Monopoly. This one will be new.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“See for yourself.” She turned the manila envelope so he could read the letters, printed on the front: B. J. PHOTOGRAPHS. CERTIFICATES, ET CETERA. “Let’s just call it B. J., for short.”

“And the rules?”

“We make them up as we go along... Did Smedler tell you about B. J.?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“Charity mentioned him.”

“I have to watch you, you really are evasive. What did she say?”

“That he was your first husband, B. J. Lockwood, and that he was long gone.”

“Long gone. Yes, he’s long gone,” she repeated, almost as if she were tasting the words to identify their flavor. Spinach soufflé? Peanut butter sandwiches? Sour grapes? It was impossible for an observer to judge from her expression. “Eight years, to be precise. We’d been married five years and things were going along fine. Maybe not storybook peachy keen — we weren’t kids, he’d been married before and I’d been around here and there — but certainly a whole lot better than average. At least, I thought so.”

“What changed your mind?”

“He did. He took off with one of the servants, a Mexican girl no more than fifteen years old. She was pregnant. B. J. always wanted a child and I refused for a number of reasons. His family had a history of diabetes and frankly my side of it wasn’t too hot either. Besides, you don’t start having kids when you’re in your late thirties, not unless your maternal instincts are a hell of a lot stronger than mine.”

“What was the girl’s name?”

“Tula Lopez. Whether B. J. was the father of her child or not, she persuaded him he was and he did the honorable thing. B. J. always did honorable things, impulsive, stupid, absurd, but honorable. So off the two of them rode into the sunset. It was what they rode in that burns me up — the brand-new motor home I’d just bought for us to go on a vacation to British Columbia. I was crazy about that thing. Dreamboat, I called it. On the first night it was delivered here to the house B. J. and I actually slept in it, and the next morning I made our breakfast in the little kitchen, orange juice and Grapenuts. A week later it was goodbye Dreamboat, B. J., Tula and the rest of the box of Grapenuts.”

“What do you want me to do, get back the rest of the Grapenuts?”

She didn’t smile. She merely looked pensive as if she was seriously considering the proposition. “It’s hard for me to make you understand the position I’m in. How can you? — You’re young, you have choices ahead of you, alternatives. Nothing’s final. You get sick, you get well again. You lose a job or a girl, okay, you find another job, another girl. Right?”

“In a general way, yes.”

“Well, I’m fifty. That’s not very old, of course, but it cuts down on your alternatives, narrows your choices. There are more goodbyes and not so many hellos. Too many of the goodbyes are final. And the hellos — well, they’ve become more and more casual... I’ve lost one husband and I’m about to lose another. I’m depressed, scared, sitting in that room with Marco, listening to his breathing and waiting for it to stop. When it does stop, I’ll be alone. Alone, period. I have no relatives and no friends I haven’t bought.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good. It will help motivate you.”

“To do what?”

She ran her fingers across the letters on the manila envelope as if it had turned into a Ouija board and she were receiving a message. “I’d like to see B. J. again. I think — I have this strong feeling he’d like to see me, too.”

“And my job is to go looking for him?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“No.”

“Or whether he’d want to contact you if he is alive.”

“No.”

“He and the girl, Tula, may in fact be living happily ever after with half a dozen kids.”

“No.” She moved her head back and forth, slowly, as if her neck had suddenly become stiff. “They only had one, a boy. He was born crippled.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“B. J. wrote me a letter five years ago.”

“Do you still have it?”

“It’s in here.”

She opened the envelope and shook out the contents on the table, snapshots, photographs, newspaper clippings, notarized documents, a bunch of letters tied together, a single one by itself.

The largest photograph was that of a bride and groom: Gilly, in a white lace gown and veil, carrying a tiny bouquet of lilies of the valley. Her expression was mischievous and girlish, as if the photographer had caught her between giggles. B. J., in morning coat and striped trousers, seemed to be sharing the joke and trying hard to keep from laughing. He had a small round face, very red, as though the strain of suppressing his laughter had sent the blood rushing to his head and the tight collar had trapped it there. He looked like a kind man who wished other people well and expected nothing but kindness from them in return. Aragon wondered how often he’d been surprised.

Gilly stared at the photograph for a long time. “We were very happy.”

“I can see you were.”

“Naturally he won’t look like that anymore. The picture was taken thirteen years ago when he was forty-one. Maybe we’ve both changed so much we wouldn’t even recognize each other.”

“You haven’t changed much — some loss of weight, hair not so brown, laugh lines a little deeper.”

“Those aren’t laugh lines, Aragon, they’re cry lines. And they’re deeper, all right. They’re etched all the way through to the back of my head... Well, anyway, I wanted to show you a picture of him as he was in his prime. I thought he was simply beautiful. I see now, of course, that he wasn’t. In the cold light of an eight-year separation he may even look a little silly, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“No, neither do I, really.” The pitch of her voice altered like an instrument suddenly gone flat. “I was crazy about him. I’m not the kind of woman who attracts men without any effort. I’m not pretty enough or tactful enough or whatever enough. I had to fight like hell to land B. J. He was married when I met him. So was Marco. I often wonder if it isn’t some kind of retribution that I should lose them both.”

“I don’t believe in retribution.”

“You haven’t met Violet Smith.” She put the wedding portrait back in the manila envelope, her hands trembling slightly. “You’ll need some pictures of him with you when you go.”

“Exactly where and when am I going?”

“When is as soon as you can get ready and we can agree on terms. Where I’m not sure... There are several good snapshots of B. J. Here’s the last one. I took it myself. And I know it’s the last because by the time the negative was developed and returned to me, B. J. was gone.”

The snapshot showed B. J. behind the wheel of an elaborate new motor home. The fancy gold script across the door identified it as Dreamboat.

B. J. needed no identification. He hadn’t changed much in the five years since the wedding portrait was taken. His face was still plump and ruddy, and he wore a placid smile as if nothing whatever was bothering him, least of all the fact that he was about to run away with a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl. Obviously B. J. was expecting pleasant things ahead. He may have been imagining himself in the new role of father, helping his son learn to walk, taking him to parks and zoos, teaching him to play ball, swim, sail a boat, telling him about the birds and the bees and how a little sister would be arriving, or a little brother... They didn’t live happily ever after with half a dozen kids. They only had one, a boy. He was born crippled.

Aragon said, “Do you have a picture of the girl, Tula Lopez?”

“Why should I? She was a servant, not a member of the family. In fact, she was only employed here for about six months. She proved incompetent and lazy. But she must have been a fast worker in her off hours. By the time I decided to fire her, the decision had been made for me.”

“How did you hire her in the first place?”

“Stupidly. There was a sob story in the local newspaper about some illegal aliens who were going to be sent back to Mexico if they weren’t sponsored and given jobs. B. J. and I offered to help. He had a soft heart and I had a soft head, or maybe it was vice versa. Anyhow, for a couple of softies we did some pretty hard damage.” She added cryptically, “The whole thing was like a war — nobody won.”

Aragon set aside the pictures he wanted to take with him: the one of B. J. in Dreamboat, another of him sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet dangling in the water, a couple of full-face Polaroid shots and a copy of his passport photo. In all of them, even the passport, he looked pretty much the same, rather homely in a pleasant way, the kind of man who posed no threat to anyone and offered no challenge. Only a woman Gilly’s age could have considered him beautiful; a fifteen-year-old would see him more clearly.

Gilly picked up the letter that was separate from the others and handed it to Aragon. It was heavy. The envelope — addressed to G. G. Lockwood, 1020 Robinhood Road, Santa Felicia, California — was expensive bond paper, engraved Jenlock Haciendas, Bahía de Ballenas, Baja California Sur. The grade of paper and the engraving were obviously meant to impress, but the handwriting inside ruined the effect. It was like that of a child not accustomed to the use of pen and ink or the discipline of forming letters.

Aragon said, “Are you sure this is B. J.’s handwriting?”

“Pretty sure. He never learned to write decently and he forgot to take along his typewriter.” She smiled wryly. “I guess it’s one of the things you tend to overlook under the circumstances... Can you make it out?”

“I think so.”

“Read it aloud.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to hear how it sounds coming from a stranger. Maybe it’ll give me a few laughs.”

“If it’s very personal, you might want to reconsider your decision.”

“There are no torrid passages, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“I’m not worried exactly. I’d simply like to spare you any embarrassment.”

“Is that what they teach you in law school, not to embarrass people? Don’t be such a stuffed shirt.”

“Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell,” Aragon said, “only hire stuffed shirts.”

“Really?”

“To protect their image.”

“Well, I don’t give a cow chip about their image. And you won’t either when you find out what it is.”

He already had and already didn’t, but he wasn’t eager to admit it, especially to one of Smedler’s golden oldies.

“Why are you staring at me?” she said, frowning. “Haven’t you ever heard the word ‘cow chip’ before?”

“Sure. About every half-hour from my old man, only he said caca de toro. Otherwise my old lady wouldn’t have understood. She never learned English.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Here. I was born in the barrio on lower Estero Street.”

“What’s a barrio?”

“A Mexican ghetto.”

“Good. You’ll be able to deal with these people on their own level.”

“And what level are these people on, Mrs. Decker?”

“Oh hell, don’t get fussed up over some silly little remark. The Tula Lopez incident gave me kind of a prejudiced view of her whole race.”

“I’ll try to correct that,” Aragon said. “I think we’ll get along fine.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’m being paid to think so.”

“Why, that’s downright cynical. Did you learn such stuff in your boy scout manual? That’s what Smedler called you, you know, a real boy scout.”

“It’s an improvement over some of the things I’ve called him. In private, of course, like between you and me.”

“I see. The lawyer-client relationship works both ways.”

“Ideally, yes.”

“Smedler also told me you were a very nice young man. That worried me because I’m not a very nice old lady. I wonder if we’ll have any common ground. Do you have a sense of humor?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, read B. J.’s letter and let’s have a few laughs. Or didn’t you believe that about me getting some laughs out of it?”

“No.”

“You could be wrong. Laughter, as Violet Smith says, is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe this time I’ll behold it funny. Go ahead, read it.”