Odd Hours

FORTY-TWO

IN CASE THE REDHEADED GUNMEN HAD COME visiting Hutch, had not been convinced by his performance, and had settled down to wait for me, I examined the compact pistol. The ten-round magazine held nine. I switched off the safety.

Most likely because I had recently spent too much time at sea, I muttered, “Okay, fish or cut bait.”

The Ziploc pill bag in the terra-cotta bowl of cyclamens. The key in the bag.

Ease open the door. Quiet. The fading cinnamon aroma of homemade cookies. The golden glow of the string lights hidden in the recessed toe kick of the cabinets.

All as it should be. Never a good sign.

This time wearing pants, I crossed the cozy kitchen and warily entered the downstairs hall.

When I peered cautiously through the open parlor door, I saw Hutch in the armchair where I had left him. The chenille throw lay across his lap and draped his knees; but he had put the book aside. He snored softly.

I engaged the safety on the little pistol, and pocketed the weapon.

Hutch must have had dinner while I’d been gone, and had returned to the parlor to watch television. On the TV played an old movie in which he had starred. He had muted the sound.

I stood watching the silent screen.

His co-star in this one had been the wondrous Deborah Kerr, as beautiful as she had been in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, as haunting as in An Affair to Remember, as elegant as in Bonjour Tristesse, as fresh-faced and innocent as in Black Narcissus.

Hutch had not been storklike in those days. With his height and his mane of hair, he had been a lion on the screen. Time had not yet carved his noble profile into a caricature, brow and beak and blunted chin.

Whatever he was currently saying to Deborah Kerr and she to him, the conversation was intense. He held her tenderly by her shoulders, and she gazed up at him, and the moment was building to a kiss as surely as lightning leads to thunder.

“She was magnificent,” Hutch said, having awakened as I stood entranced by the images on the TV.

“Were you in love with her, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Very much so. From a distance. She was untouchable, however. A true lady. There are none like her now.”

And here came the kiss. A few more words. And a second kiss. Dissolve to a European battlefield.

Hutch sighed. “Half a century goes by in what seems like a year. Don’t waste an hour in boredom, son, or wishing for tomorrow.”

“I do my best to keep myself occupied,” I assured him.

Sitting up straighter in the chair, he said, “I’m sorry to say no one has come looking for you.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“I would have given a stirring performance, one for the ages. Acting is a marvelous profession, son. If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don’t have to think too much about your own character and motivations.”

“To save my skin, I had to be someone else tonight. I called myself Harry Lime.”

“That takes chutzpah. You’re no Orson Welles, young man.”

“I wouldn’t disagree, sir.”

“I almost landed the lead in The Third Man. But I can’t begrudge Joseph Cotten getting it. He was superb.”

I sat on the footstool. “Mr. Hutchison-”

“Call me Hutch. Everyone does.”

“Yes, sir. Well, as you know, I didn’t arrive on this job with many clothes-”

Leaning forward in his armchair, eyes alight, he interrupted: “We’ll go to a thrift shop tomorrow! I’ve been afire with the idea since we talked about it earlier.”

“Well, gee, what I was about to say is…I’m going upstairs to change into a clean sweatshirt. And I’m in such a hurry, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience if I asked you to dispose of my clothing.”

He understood but didn’t want to understand. “What a peculiar request.”

“I have to leave tonight, sir.”

“But why?” He held up one hand that, in the day, held Deborah Kerr. “Yes, I see. Big guy with a chin beard, then a redheaded guy who does or does not have bad teeth. So am I to assume that your differences with them could not be resolved?”

“Not entirely, sir.”

“Now you’re going on the lam.”

“Exactly.”

“Once, I was on the lam myself.”

I said, “With Henry Fonda in relentless pursuit.”

“Relentless in his relaxed way. I think it would have been better if Henry shot me down.”

“But you were innocent.”

“Yes, but sometimes the innocent die, and audiences occasionally like a tragedy.” He frowned. “Son, you came here with one suitcase, and you’re leaving with just the clothes on your back.”

“I prefer to travel light.”

“Just be certain to wear pants.”

“I intend to, sir.”

“Call me Hutch. Everyone does. These thrift-shop clothes of yours…do they come with an obligation?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“When one buys clothing in a thrift shop and is done with it, is one contractually obligated to pass the clothing on to someone poorer than oneself?”

“Oh, no, sir. You can just throw them in the trash.”

“That’s easy, then. I thought there might be some protocol that I would want to honor, if you had committed to it.” He pulled aside the chenille throw on his lap and prepared to get up from the chair.

I said, “One more thing, and I regret having to ask.”

He looked crestfallen. “You want to take the rest of the cookies you made today.”

“No, no. Those are yours.”

“Oh, good. Splendid. Lovely.”

“Sir, I was wondering if I could borrow one of the cars.”

“Of course. You’re a superb driver.”

“I can’t risk trying to leave town by bus or train.”

“They’ll be watching public transport.”

“Precisely. If I could drive your car to Santa Barbara, I could leave it with your nephew there, and maybe he could arrange to get it back to you.”

His brow creased with worry. “But what will you do then?”

“Make it up as I go along. It works for me.”

“Sounds grim.”

“No, sir. It’s adventurous but not grim.” I got up from the footstool. “I’d better change sweatshirts and get moving.”

Each of his long legs seemed to have two knee joints as he unfolded them and got to his feet. “I shall meet you in the kitchen with the car keys.”

“Oh,” I said, “and a flashlight? I’ll need a flashlight. That’s it. I won’t keep asking for stuff.”

“One needs a good flashlight on the lam. No problem.”

Upstairs in my room, I realized that I would also be leaving a collection of Sinatra biographies. I suspected that I would not need them anymore.

In the bathroom, I stripped to the waist, washed my upper body, face, and hands, careful not to disturb the taped wound on my side. I put on a fresh T-shirt and a sweatshirt that did not have a word on either the chest or the back.

When I went down to the kitchen, a flashlight and the keys to the Mercedes were on the kitchen island.

“Sir, I can’t take the Mercedes.”

“It is much better cover than the Explorer. They might expect a young man such as yourself, in sneakers and a sweatshirt, on the lam, to split town in an Explorer, but never in a Mercedes.”

“I’d rather have the Explorer.”

“I refuse to give you the keys to the Explorer. The Mercedes is better cover. And I am the director for once.”

“But-”

Hutch pointed to a plastic-wrapped package also on the kitchen island. The label said PORK RIND, and the plastic was still crusted with frost from the freezer.

“I want you to have that,” he said.

“Gee, sir, I do love pork rind, but I’m not going to have any cooking facilities for a while.”

“Pork rind is merely my code, so I’ll know what’s in the package. If it said beef tongue, then it would contain entirely twenties. If it said sweetbreads, it would contain a mix of half twenties and half hundreds.”

“Money? Oh, no. No, no, no. I can’t accept that.”

“I have bank accounts, of course, but I don’t entirely trust banks, you see. When I was nine years old, a lot of banks failed.”

“I have money,” I assured him. “I’ve saved some of my pay.”

“That’s not enough to go on the lam. You need to be flush when you go on the lam, as I learned the hard way.”

“But that’s too much, way too much.”

“How would you know? Maybe pork rind is my code for a brick of one-dollar bills.”

“What is it your code for, sir?”

“None of your damn business.”

He produced a pink hostess-gift bag decorated with yellow birds flying with curls of blue ribbon in their beaks. He put the package of so-called pork rind in the bag and held it out to me by the two braided gold-cord handles.

I waved it away. “Really. Really, I can’t.”

His face darkened with disapproval, tightened with authority, thrust forward with the expectation of obedience. His voice was that of the heroic captain demanding of his men more than they think they are capable of giving. He raised his free hand in a bony fist for emphasis.

“Soldier, you are going to take this, and you are going to do the right thing with it, and I will brook no debate, accept no excuse. Is that perfectly clear?”

Annamaria said that people gave her money. I doubted that any of them had forced it upon her with an implied threat of violence.

“This is very generous, sir.”

He broke character and grinned. “Take, take. Don’t be silly. It’s Nibbles’s money, anyway.”

“Nibbles the swashbuckling rabbit.”

“He just keeps earning royalties that I don’t know what to do with.”

Accepting the hostess-gift bag, I said, “If I ever have kids, sir, each of them will have his own full set of Nibbles’s adventures.”

As I put the flashlight in the bag with the frozen money and picked up the keys to the Mercedes, Hutch said, “Through dinner and everything this evening, how many times do you think I sanitized my hands with Purell?”

“Well, you had the chicken enchiladas, and though you like the taste of chicken, it makes you nervous because of all the salmonella and E. coli stories in the press. So I’d say…twenty times?”

“Guess again.”

“Thirty?”

With an unmistakable note of pride, he said, “Five.”

“Only five?”

“Five,” he repeated.

“That’s really something, sir.”

“Isn’t it? Having touched money, even wrapped in plastic and frozen, I’m half desperate to Purell my hands right now, but I’m not going to.”

“You’re not going cold turkey, are you?”

“No, no. I’ll wean myself from it as best I can. I had a brother who was a heroin addict and went cold turkey. It was ghastly.”

“Yes, sir. The young Anthony Perkins.”

“The experience so shattered him that later he wore his mother’s clothes and stabbed people. I shall minimize my use of Purell but not risk such a fate as his.”

He smiled and so did I.

“Take care of yourself, son.”

“I will, sir. You, too.”

I started toward the door.

“Odd?”

I turned.

He said, “We had some fun this past month, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir. We sure did.”

“Good. Very good. That’s how I feel. I hoped you did.”

“The world is often dark these days, sir. But not in here, in this house. It was a pleasure to work for you. To know you.”

As I opened the door, he said, “Son?”

Again I looked back.

He said, “Maybe…a hug?”

I put down the hostess-gift bag and returned to him. His height and the strong presence that he projected in life, as he had on the screen, disguised his frailty.

When he could, he said, “You know that son I lost in the war?”

“You mean Jamie, the son you never had.”

“That’s the one. Well, if I had married someone named Corrina and if we’d had a son named Jamie and if I had lost him in the war, I now kind of know how that would have felt.”

He had surprised me in many ways. Now I surprised myself by being unable to reply.

At the door again, after picking up the bag of money, I was able to say, “I’ll do my best to come back one day, sir.”

“Everyone calls me Hutch.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best to come back, and when I do, we’ll go to a thrift shop.”

He bit his lip and nodded. “Well. All right, then. I’m going to have a cookie now.”

“Have one for me.”

“Splendid. Yes. I will indeed. I’ll have two.”

I stepped outside and closed the door.

Not immediately able to proceed, I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace.