Burn Marks

28

A Few Kind Words from a Friend

Robin phoned later that evening, concerned that he hadn’t been allowed to see me in the hospital and glad I was still in one piece. He was eager to drive down for a convalescent visit. I was too worn out for more company but said he could stop by on Saturday if I felt better.

Before he hung up I remembered a question. “By the way, did Ajax insure the Prairie Shores Hotel-the place I was in?”

“No. It was the first thing I looked at, but of course we don’t cover abandoned buildings. And if it’s any comfort to you, it wasn’t owned by your pal Saul Seligman. So it’s either a vendetta against that block of Indiana or someone with a grudge against the Warshawski family.”

The last comment was meant as a joke, but it reminded me again of Elena, her red-veined face slack and empty. I muttered something to Robin about feeling too feeble for jokes and hung up. I did not have to be a Victorian angel and go sit with her. I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t.

I stumbled into the dining room and dug around in the cupboards hunting for stationery. It had been so long since I’d written any personal letters that the box had landed behind the fondue set and silver salad servers left over from my brief marriage. I stared at the pieces in bewilderment: Why had I carted those particular items all over Chicago with me for the eleven years since my divorce?

I wasn’t up to making a decision about them today; I thrust them back into the cupboard and sat down with the yellowed stationery to write my uncle Peter. It was a difficult letter-I had to overcome my dislike of him enough to plead Elena’s case with conviction. I described the accident, made much of my own decrepitude and the fact that I’d saved her life, and concluded with a plea that he either take her in himself or put her up in a convalescent facility. In the morning I’d express it to Mission Hills. It was the best I could do for Elena.

In the bathroom mirror my face looked sunken, nothing left but cheekbones and eyes, their gray looking almost black against the pallor of my skin. No wonder Mr. Contreras had been eager to fill me with steak. I stepped on the scale. My weight had fallen below a hundred and thirty pounds. I couldn’t afford to be that light if I wanted to have the energy to do my job. I wasn’t hungry but I’d better eat something.

I wandered moodily to the kitchen. After all this time any resemblance between the stuff in my refrigerator and human food was purely coincidental. I smelled the yogurt. It was still okay, but the vegetables and fruit had passed the point of no return while the orange juice smelled both rotten and fermented.

I took a bag of fettucini from the freezer and sawed off a hunk with my big butcher knife. While it boiled I ate the yogurt directly from the carton, trying to put some order into the chaos that enveloped me.

Several people had been annoyed with me the last week or two. Ralph MacDonald had descended from his throne to hint me away from Roz Fuentes’s affairs. Saul Seligman was upset that Ajax wouldn’t honor his claim. Zerlina Ramsay blamed me and Elena for her daughter’s death. It was quite a list, but I didn’t know that any of them would express their annoyance by leaving both Elena and me to die by fire. Of course Lotty was angry with me, too, but she preferred to do her scorching directly.

Then there was Luis Schmidt. He’d called me a bitch on Tuesday and told me not to ask any more questions about Alma Mejicana or he’d make me sorry. I’d flipped back some good macha retort and he’d hung up on me. So if I was going to go pawing around any of these people, Luis was the place to start.

The hissing of water on gas startled me back to the present-the fettucini had boiled over, extinguishing the pilot. Of course I couldn’t find a box of matches among the jumble on the stove. I started slamming doors open and shut. I just couldn’t take this life anymore, living alone, no one to pet me when I came home from the wars, nothing to eat, no matches, no money in the bank. I grabbed a handful of spoons and spatulas and flung them as hard as I could at the kitchen door.

When the clatter died down the grate over the door vibrated in a mournful bass for a few seconds. My shoulders sagged in defeat. I shuffled over to the door to collect my utensils. A wooden spoon had landed on the refrigerator. When I reached up for it I knocked a box of matches down. Okay, good. Have fits. They get results. I stuffed the implements back into a drawer and relit the stove.

Besides Luis and the possible problems of Alma Mejicana, I had to consider my aunt’s affairs. I didn’t want to think about her anymore-and not just because I didn’t want Victoria the Victorian Angel nudging me to look after her. Her tales of woe had sucked me into a series of hideous events lately, starting with my hunt for her new home and culminating in my near death. I couldn’t take much more probing into her life.

I still wasn’t hungry, but I was starting to feel lightheaded from lack of food. I drained the pasta and grated some rock-hard cheddar onto it. It was slow work with my padded hands. My arm muscles were still sore enough that I gave it up, panting, with only a few teaspoons of cheese for my effort. My right palm stung so violently I was afraid I might have rubbed the scab off through my mitt.

I carried the plate in my left hand into the living room. After forcing several mouthfuls down I leaned back in my armchair and made myself think about my aunt. Elena ran away when she learned about Cerise’s death. It’s possible something else had frightened her-I didn’t know much about her day-to-day life. With her character she could easily have stubbed more than one toe.

But I had to start somewhere. Linking her flight to Cerise’s death made sense. It would take a strong compulsion to force her from a secure berth. Since losing the Norwood Park bungalow she’d lived precariously on the small annuity scraped out of the remains of the sale. Even though the Windsor Arms was a desolate place, she’d had too much experience of hand-to-mouth living to turn her back on it lightly.

She and Cerise had been working some scam together. When I told Elena that Cerise was dead she’d been both crafty and uneasy. So she’d gone to their mark. That made sense too-twenty-four hours had lapsed between my telling her about Cerise and Elena’s disappearance. She’d had time to talk to their target and find out…

My thought trailed away. She’d found out that Cerise had been murdered? Was that possible? What else could frighten her into running away, though? Someone saying, Look what we did to your friend. The same thing could happen to you. A quart of whiskey inside you and death by exposure on Navy Pier and who’d be the wiser.

I rubbed my aching head. Romance, Victoria. You need facts. Just say for starters that Cerise and Elena had a tiger by the tail. To find out what it was I needed Elena to start talking. Or Zerlina Ramsay-it was remotely possible that Cerise had confided in her mother.

My phone books were buried under a stack of music on the piano; I’d been singing more recently than I’d been looking up numbers. No Armbrusters were listed on south Christiana. I called directory assistance to make sure. So I’d have to make another trip to north Lawndale. I gritted my teeth in anticipation of this treat. And after that I should find out where everyone on my list of annoyed patrons had been early Wednesday morning. Although if Ralph MacDonald or Roz’s cousins had tried torching me, they’d probably hired someone else to do it. Still, it would be worth finding out where they’d been. It wasn’t exactly a job for a convalescent. Maybe I could wait until Sunday to start working on it.

My eyes were too sore for television or reading. My body ached too much for anything else. After I force-fed myself the plateful of fettucini I went back to bed. Lotty capped my wonderful day by phoning at eight-thirty to see if I was still alive.

“I’m doing okay,” I said cautiously. If I told her I hurt like hell, I’d only get a lecture on my just deserts.

“Mez told me he’d released you today. He didn’t think you were ready to go home, but I assured him you had an iron constitution and would be ready to do something else life-threatening next week.”

“Thank you, Lotty.” I lay down in the dark with the phone propped on a pillow next to my mouth. “If I turned my back on people who came to me in need, I can imagine how loudly you’d cheer. And if I avoided all risks-stayed home watching the soaps or something-you’d really be leading the applause meter.”

“You don’t think you could find some point of balance between doing nothing and putting your head in the noose?” she burst out. “Do you know how I feel every time I see your body come in on a stretcher not knowing if you’re alive or dead, not knowing if this time your brain is ruined, your limbs paralyzed? Do you think you could manage your affairs so that you stopped a few feet short of the point of death, maybe even ask the police to take those risks?”

“So someone else’s friend or lover can do the worrying, you mean?” I wasn’t angry, only very lonely. “It will happen inevitably, Lotty. I won’t be able to jump through hoops or climb up ropes forever. Someone else will have to take over. But it won’t be the police. Not when I have to fight them every inch of the way to look into arson and they still won’t do it. Or when their only answer to my near death is to accuse me-”

I broke off. Maybe Cerise and Elena had seen who set fire to the Indiana Arms and were going after him. Or her. Or them. Still, if that was so, it could be the arsonist was disposing of her by his favorite means. And maybe assumed she’d confided in me so I had to go too? And-but had they murdered Cerise? The police said it was an overdose, pure and simple.

“I know I shouldn’t be losing my temper with you. It’s only my fear of losing you, that’s all,” Lotty said.

“I know,” I said wearily. “But it just puts that much more pressure on me, Lotty. Some days I have to fight a hundred people just to be able to do my job. When you’re the hundred and first I feel like all I want to do is lie down and die.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “So to help you I have to support you doing things that are a torment to me? I’ll have to think about that one, Victoria… One thing I don’t support, though. That you dedicate your life to your aunt. Mez mentioned that part of your conversation to me. I suggested that if you were a man, he would never even have raised the topic with you except to ask if you had a wife to do the job.”

“What did he say?”

“What could he say? He hemmed and said he still thought it was a good idea. But there’s a limit to how much of yourself you have to immolate for people, Victoria. You almost killed yourself for Elena. You don’t have to sacrifice your mind as well.”

“Okay, Doctor,” I muttered. I blinked back tears-I was so weak that one little sentence of support made me feel like crying.

“You’re exhausted,” she said curtly. “You’re in bed? Good. Get some sleep. Good night.”

When she hung up I switched my phone over to the answering service. I fumbled around with the switch in the dark to turn off the bell. When my thick ungainly hands had managed that I finally fell into a deep clear sleep.