R is for Ricochet

Chapter 6

I had a brief debate with myself about working in a three-mile jog. I'd had to skip my morning run in the interest of reaching CIW by nine. I usually run at 6:00 when I'm still half-asleep and my resistance is down. I've discovered that as the day wears on my sense of virtue and resolve both rapidly diminish. Most days, by the time I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is change into my running clothes and drag myself out. I'm not so fanatic about exercise that I don't occasionally let myself off the hook; however, I'd noticed a growing inclination to seize any excuse to sit on my butt instead of working out. Before I thought too much about it, I went up the spiral stairs to change my clothes.

I kicked off my loafers, peeled out of my jeans, and pulled my T-shirt over my head, tugging on my sweats and my Sauconys. In circumstances like this, I make a little deal with myself. If I jog for ten minutes and really really hate it, I can turn around and come back. No shame, no blame. Usually by the time the first ten minutes have elapsed, I'm into the swing of it and enjoying myself. I tied my house key in the laces of one shoe, locked the door behind me, and set off at a brisk walk.

Now that the marine layer had burned off, the neighbors were out in their yards, mowing lawns, watering, and pruning deadheads from the rosebushes massed along the fences. I could smell ocean brine mingled with the scent of freshly clipped grass. My block of Albinil Street is narrow. Aside from vehicles parked on either side, there's barely room for two cars to pass. Eucalyptus trees and stone pines provide shade for the assorted stucco and frame houses, most of them small, dating back to the early forties.

By the time I reached the jogging path, I was sufficiently warmed up to break into a trot. After that, I only had to cope with my protesting body parts, which gradually melded into the smooth rhythms of the run. I was home again forty minutes later, winded, sweating, but feeling virtuous. I let myself into the apartment, stripped off my sweats, and took a short hot shower. I was out and drying myself when the telephone rang. I took the call while turning the towel into a makeshift sarong.

"Kinsey? This is Reba. Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"Well, I'm standing here soaking wet, but I should be good for a minute until the chill sets in. What's up?"

"Not much. Pop was feeling bad so he's gone to bed. The housekeeper just left and the home-care nurse called to say she'd be a little late. I was just wondering if you were free for dinner?"

"Sure. I could do that. What'd you have in mind?"

"Didn't you mention a place in your neighborhood?"

"Rosie's. That's where I was headed. I wouldn't call it fancy, but at least it's close."

"I just need to get out. I'd love to join you but only if it doesn't interfere with your plans."

"What plans? I don't mind a bit. You have transportation?"

"Don't worry about that. As soon as the nurse arrives, I'll meet you down there. About seven?"

"That should work."

"Good. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"I'll grab a good table and see you there," I said, and then gave her the address.

After she hung up, I finished my routine, putting on fresh jeans, a clean black T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. I went downstairs and spent a few minutes tidying my already tidy kitchen. Then I flipped on the lights and sat in the living room with the local paper, catching up on the obituaries and other current events.

At 6:56, I walked the half block to Rosie's through the lingering daylight. Two sets of neighbors were having cocktails outside, enjoying conversation from porch to porch. A cat crossed the street and eased its slim body through the palings in a picket fence. I could smell jasmine.

Rosie's is one of six small businesses on my block, including a laundromat, an appliance-repair shop, and an automobile mechanic, who always has clunkers lined up along his drive. I've been having supper at Rosie's three to four nights a week for the past seven years. The exterior is shabby, a building that might have served as the neighborhood market once upon a time. The windows are plate glass, but the light is obscured by sputtering neon beer signs, posters, announcements, and faded placards from the health department. As nearly as I can remember, Rosie's has never been awarded a rating higher than a C.

Inside, the space is long and narrow, with a high, darkly painted ceiling that looks like it was made of pressed tin. Crudely constructed plywood booths form an L on the right. There's a long mahogany bar on the left, with two swinging kitchen doors and a short corridor leading to the restrooms located at the rear. The remaining floor space is occupied by a number of Formica dinette tables. The accompanying chairs have chrome legs and upholstered marbleized gray plastic seats, variously split and subsequently mended with duct tape. The air always smells of spilled beer, popcorn, ancient cigarette smoke, and Pine-Sol.

Monday nights are generally quiet, allowing the day-drinkers and the usual sports rowdies to recover from their weekend excesses. My favorite booth was empty, as were most of the others, as a matter of fact. I slid in on one side so I could watch the front door for Reba's arrival. I checked the menu, a mimeographed sheet inserted in a plastic sleeve. Rosie runs these off on a machine at the back, the blurred purple lettering barely legible. Two months before, she'd instituted a new style of menu, closely resembling a leather-bound portfolio with a handscripted list of the Hungarian Specialties du Jour of the Day, as she referred to them. Some of these menus had been stolen and others had served as hazardous flying missiles when opposing soccer teams enjoyed a hot dispute about the last big match. Rosie had apparently given up her pretensions to haute cuisine and her old mimeographed sheets were back in circulation. I ran an eye down the list of dishes, though I'm not even sure why I bothered to check. Rosie makes all my food decisions for me, compelling me to dine on whatever Hungarian delicacies come to her mind when she's taking my order.

William was now working behind the bar. I watched him pause to check his pulse, two fingers of one hand pressed to his carotid artery, the other hand holding aloft his trusty pocket watch. Henry came in and flicked a look in his direction. He chose a table near the front, pointedly turning his back to the bar. As I watched, Rosie moved out from behind the bar bearing a glass of lip-puckering white wine that she passes off as Chardonnay. I could see an inch of gray hair growing in along her part. In the past, she's claimed to be in her sixties, but now she's so quiet on the subject I suspect she's slipped over the line into her seventies. She's short, pigeon-breasted, and the red portion of her red hair is dyed to a hue somewhere between cinnabar and burnt ocher.

She placed the glass of wine in front of me. "Is new. Very good. You sip and tell what you think. I'm saving two dollar a bottle over other brand."

I sipped and nodded. "Very nice," I said. Meanwhile, enamel was being eaten off my teeth. "I see Henry and William aren't speaking."

"I'm telling William to mind his own business, but he's no listen to me. I'm shock to see a woman can come between them two brothers."

"They'll get over it," I said. "What's your take on the situation. You think Mattie has designs on Henry?"

"What do I know? That Henry's a catch. You should hev seen little old ladies flirt with him on cruise ship. Was comical. On other hand, her husband die. Meybe she don't want to connect with some guy. Meybe she want freedom all to herself and Henry for a friend."

"That's what I've been worried about, but William's convinced there's something more going on."

"William's convince she won't be living two more years. He wants Henry to hurry in case she's dropping dead already."

"That's ridiculous. She's barely seventy."

"Very young," Rosie murmured. "I myself hope to look so good when I'm getting her age."

"I'm certain you will," I said. I picked up the menu and pretended to study. "I'm expecting a friend so I'll hold off on ordering. Actually this all sounds pretty good. What do you recommend?"

"Lucky you esk. For you and your friend, I'm fixing Krumpli Paprikas. Is stew made of boil potato, ongion, and what you call weenies cut in pieces. Is always serve with rye bread and on the side you hev choice of cucumber salad or sour pickle. Which you want? I'm think pickle," she said, scribbling a note on her pad.

"Sour pickle, my favorite. So perfect with the wine."

"I'm bring you food as soon as he come."

"It's a 'she' friend, not a 'he.'"

"Is pity," she said, shaking her head. She added an emphatic mark to her pad and then returned to the bar.

At 7:15 Reba appeared, pausing at the door to scan the room. She saw me waving from my booth and made her way toward the back. She'd changed out of her jeans and T-shirt into slacks, a red cotton sweater, and sandals. Her color had improved and her eyes looked enormous in the perfect oval of her face. The spikes were gone from her hair, strands of which she'd tucked behind her ears, causing them to protrude like an elf s. When she reached the booth, she slid in on her side, saying, "Sorry I'm late, but I ended up taking a cab. Turns out my driver's license expired while I was in the can. I was worried I'd be pulled over if I tried driving without one. I could have applied for a renewal from prison but never got around to it. Maybe tomorrow we can go to the DMV."

"Sure. No problem. Why don't I pick you up at nine and we can take care of your license and then run any other errands you have in mind."

"Maybe some clothes. I can use a few things." Reba craned her head, doing a quick survey of the room behind her where the patrons were starting to trickle in. "Would you mind switching seats? I hate sitting with my back to the room."

I slid out on my side of the booth and traded places with her, though in truth I wasn't any fonder than she was about sitting with my back to the room. "How'd you manage in prison?"

"That's where I learned to keep an eye on my ass. I trust what I can see. The rest is way too scary for my taste." She took up a menu and ran her eye down the page.

"Were you scared?"

She lifted her enormous dark eyes to my face, her smile fleeting. "At first. After a while, I wasn't scared so much as cautious. I didn't worry about the staff. It took me about two full seconds to figure out how to get along with them."

"Which was what?"

"Compliance. I was nice. Polite. I did as I was told and I obeyed all the rules. It was really no big deal and it made life easier."

"What about the other inmates?"

"Most of them were okay. Not all. Some of the girls were mean, so you didn't dare let 'em see you as weak. You backed down on anything, they'd be all over you like flies. So here's what I learned. Some bitch gets in my face? I get right back in hers. If she escalates, I do the same and keep on upping the ante until it finally dawns on her she'd better leave me alone. What made it tricky was you didn't want to be written up, especially for anything involving violence – there was hell to pay for that – so you had to find a way to stand your ground without calling attention to yourself."

"How'd you manage it?"

She smiled. "Oh, I had my little ways. The truth is I never messed with anyone who didn't mess with me first. My goal was peace and quiet. You go your way and I'll go mine. Sometimes it just didn't work out that way and then you had to move on to something else." She glanced down at the menu. "What is this stuff?"

"Those are all Hungarian dishes, but you don't need to fret. Rosie's already decided what we're having. You can argue with her if you like, but you'll lose."

"Hey, just like prison. What a happy thought."

I saw Rosie approach, bearing another glass of second-rate wine. Before she could put it down in front of Reba, I reached for it, saying, "Thanks. I'll take that. What about you, Reba? What would you like to drink?"

"I'll have iced tea."

Rosie made an officious note to herself like a proper journalist. "Sweet or no sweet?"

"I prefer plain."

"I'm bring lemon on the side in little diaper so you squeeze in your tea with no seeds come out."

"Thanks."

Once Rosie left, Reba said, "I would have turned that down. It really doesn't bother me to see you drink."

"I wasn't sure. I don't want to be a bad influence."

"You? Not possible. Don't worry about it." She set the menu aside and clasped her hands on the table in front of her. "You have other questions. I can tell."

"I do. What were they in for, the mean ones?"

"Murder, manslaughter. A lot for selling drugs. The lifers were the worst because what did they have to lose? They'd get thrown in detention? Whoopee-do. Big deal."

"I couldn't stand having all those people around. Didn't that drive you nuts?"

"It was terrible. Really bad. Women living in close proximity always end up on the same monthly cycle. I guess there must be primitive survival advantages – females fertile at the same time. Talk about PMS. You tack a full moon on top of that and the place turned into a loony bin. Moodiness, quarrels, crying jags, suicide attempts."

"You think being among hardened criminals corrupted you?" "Corrupted me? Like how?"

"Didn't you pick up new and better ways to break the law?" She laughed. "Are you kidding? All of us were in there because we got caught. Why would I take instruction from a bunch of fuckups? Besides which, women don't sit around trying to teach other women how to rob banks or fence stolen property. They talk about what lousy attorneys they had and how their case is going on appeal. They talk about their kids and their boyfriends and what they want to do when they get out, which usually involves food and sex – not necessarily in that order."

"Was there an upside?"

"Oh, sure. I'm clean and sober. The drunks and druggies are the ones who end up back in the can. They go out on parole and the next thing you know, they're on the bus again, coming through Reception. Half the time they can't even remember what they did while they were out."

"How'd you survive?"

"I walked the yard or read books, sometimes as many as five a week. I did tutoring. Some of the girls barely knew how to read. They weren't dumb; they'd just never been taught. I did their hair and looked at pictures of their kids. That was hard, watching them try to maintain contact. The phones were a source of conflict. You wanted to make an afternoon call, you had to get your name on a list first thing in the morning. Then when your turn came, you had twenty minutes max. The big beefy dykes took as long as they liked and if you had objections, tough patooties to you. I was a shrimp compared to most. Five-two, a hundred and four pounds. That's why I learned to be devious. Nothing sweeter than revenge, but you don't want to leave your fingerprints all over the deed. Take my advice: never do anything that points back to you."

"I'll remember that," I said.

Rosie returned with a tray bearing Reba's iced tea, the lemon swaddled in cheesecloth, and an order of Krumpli Paprikas for each of us. She set down rye bread, butter, and sour pickles, and disappeared again.

Reba leaned close to her bowl. "Oh. Caraway seeds. For a minute, I thought I saw something move."

The potato stew was tasty, served in big porcelain bowls flecked with caraway seeds. I was using my last piece of buttered rye bread to sop up the remaining traces of gravy when I saw Reba glance over my left shoulder toward the front of the restaurant, her eyes widening. "Oh my goodness! Look who's here."

I leaned left, peering around the edge of the booth so I could follow her gaze. The front door had opened and a guy had come in. "You know him?"

"That's Beck," she said as though that explained everything. She pushed herself out of the booth. "I'll be right back."