Shakespeare’s Landlord

Chapter Seven

I woke up cheerful, a condition so rare, I didn’t even recognize it for a few minutes. I stretched in the bed, feeling a little sore in a most unusual way for me. Since I had had such a good workout the day before (and I smirked to myself when I thought that), I decided to do some push-ups at home rather than trek in to Body Time. I turned on the coffeepot and went into the room with the punching bag, then hit the floor and did fifty quick ones. I showered quickly and pulled on some loose-cut jeans and a T-shirt, my ordinary working clothes.

I have never figured out how other women think they are going to fight- or clean house-in skintight jeans.

After retrieving my paper, I sat down for some cereal and coffee. I was conscious all the time of being extraordinarily relaxed and pleased, a mood so unusual, I hardly knew how to handle it.

I caught myself beaming out the kitchen window at the lovely morning. It’s truly amazing what a good screw can do for your outlook, I thought. And it wasn’t just the wonderful physical sensation; it was the successful completion of the sex act without a panic attack or a wave of revulsion for my partner.

I found myself wondering if Marshall would call me that day. What would happen at class tonight? I crushed those thoughts ruthlessly. It had been what it was, good sex, nothing more. But boy, it sure was nice to remember.

I glanced at my watch, then reluctantly gathered up my portable caddy of cleaning materials and rags to set out for the first job of the day, Deedra Dean’s apartment.

Deedra is supposed to be at work by eight, but today she was still getting ready when I knocked on the door before using her key. This wasn’t the first time Deedra’d been late.

She had hot curlers in her hair and a black lace slip on her body. Marcus Jefferson was coming out of his door as Deedra opened hers, and Deedra made sure he got a good look at the slip. I stepped in and turned to shut the door, catching a good look at Marcus’s face as I did so. He looked a little… disgusted-but excited.

I shook my head. Deedra stuck her tongue out at me as she flounced back to her bathroom to finish her face. I had to make a great effort not to slap her cheek in the hope of knocking some sense into her head; there must be some intelligence rattling around in there, since Deedra is able to hold down a job where she actually has to perform work.

“Lily!” she called from the bathroom as I stared grimly around the chaos of the apartment. “Are you a racist?”

“No, Deedra, I don’t believe I am,” I called back, thinking pleasurably of Marshall’s ivory body. “But you’re just playing-you’re not serious about Marcus. And sleeping with a black man is still such a delicate thing that you really have to be serious about him to take the crap you’re going to be handed.”

“He’s not serious, either,” Deedra said, peeking out for a minute, one cheek pink and the other its natural white.

“Well, let’s do something totally meaningless,” I muttered, and began to pile up all the magazines and letters and bills scattered over the coffee table. I paused in midact. Was I the pot calling the kettle black? No, I decided with some relief, what Marshall and I did had some meaning. I’m not sure what yet. But it meant something.

I went about my business as though Deedra wasn’t there, and I certainly wished she wasn’t. Deedra hummed, sang, and chattered her way through the rest of her toilette, getting on my nerves to an incredible degree.

“What do you think will happen to us now that Pardon’s dead?” Deedra asked as she buttoned up her red-and-black-striped dress. She slid her feet into matching pumps simultaneously.

“You’re the third person to ask me what the fate of the apartment building will be,” I said testily. “How should I know?”

“Why, Lily, we just figure you know it all,” Deedra said matter-of-factly. “And you never tell; that’s the nice thing about you.”

I sighed.

“Now, that Pardon, what a son of a bitch,” Deedra said in the same tone. “He sure was a pain to me. Always hovering, always asking me how my mama was, as if I needed reminding she’s paying my rent for me. Always saying how nice it was I was dating so-and-so, if it was anybody white and professional, lawyer or doctor or bank president. Trying to scare me into living right.”

I would have tried that, too, if I’d thought it would work, I admitted to myself. Deedra was able to be flippant about Pardon Albee now that he was dead, but she’d been deathly afraid at the very idea of his searching her apartment the last time I’d talked to her.

The final button secured, Deedra went back to the bathroom mirror to add the finishing touches to her elaborately tousled blond hair.

She began in her nasal voice: “When I went to pay my rent Monday afternoon”-I jerked to attention- “I was going to have to plead with that old fart to keep his mouth shut about Marcus. He was asleep on the couch, though.”

“What time was that?” I called, trying to sound casual.

“Ahm… four-thirtyish,” Deedra said abstractedly. “I left work for a few minutes. I forgot to take him a check at lunchtime, and you know how he was about being paid by five.” I walked down the hall so I could see her reflection in the mirror. Deedra was redefining an eyebrow.

“Did the apartment look okay?”

“Why, did you clean his, too?” Deedra said curiously, throwing down the eyebrow pencil. She began moving quickly to gather things up now that her face and hair were perfected. “Actually, the couch with its back to the door was pushed out of place. You know, it was on rollers. One end of it was touching the coffee table, and the throw rug in front of it was all runkled up.”

“You stepped in and had a good look, huh?”

Deedra stopped dead in the act of reaching for her purse on the table by the door. “Hey, wait a minute,” she said. “Hey, Lily, I just went inside the room when he didn’t answer my knock. I thought maybe he was in the back of his apartment, since the door was unlocked. You know he was always home on rent day, and I thought it would be a good day to talk to him. I should have known better. It had already been a shitty day-my car wouldn’t start, my boss shouted at me, and then on my way back to work I almost hit the camper. But anyway, I thought I heard a sound in the apartment, so I opened the door, and there he was, out like a light. So I left my check on the desk, since I saw some there already, and I tried to talk loud to wake him up a couple more times, but then I left.”

“He wasn’t asleep,” I said. “He was dead.”

Deedra’s mouth fell open, obscuring her minimal chin entirely.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “I never thought… I just assumed he was asleep. Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.” Though how to reconcile that with Tom O’Hagen’s story-the rumpled rug, the couch sitting askew, but no body, an hour or more earlier-I couldn’t fathom.

“You have to tell the police this,” I said as Deedra continued to stand there in a stupor.

“Oh, I already did,” Deedra said absently. “But they didn’t tell me- Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“So that’s why he didn’t hear me. And I was talking real loud.”

“And did you tell them why you wanted to talk to Pardon?”

A glance at her tiny gold watch lit a fire under Deedra.

“Hell no! I just said I went down there to pay the rent.” Deedra grabbed her keys, then glanced at herself once more in the big mirror over the couch. “And don’t you tell, either, Lily Bard! They don’t need to know anything about my personal life.”

I had a lot to ponder after Deedra was out the door.

Pardon Albee’s body had been on the couch of his apartment at 4:30, give or take fifteen minutes. It hadn’t been there at three. But at three, when Tom saw it, the room was disarranged, the door left ajar, as though a struggle had taken place.

Where had the body been in the hours before I had watched it being trundled across the street into the arboretum?

I gathered up my cleaning things when Deedra’s apartment looked habitable again, then locked the door behind me carefully. I didn’t want to hear any more accusations like Deedra’s last week. I went down the stairs slowly to the O’Hagens‘. Cleaning their apartment would use up the rest of my Friday morning.

Jenny answered my knock, so I knew she’d had the two o’clock to ten o’clock shift at Bippy’s the night before. After closing, the O’Hagen on night duty usually got home by eleven or twelve and slept in the next morning, while the other one had to get up at five o’clock to make the six o’clock opening. Shakespeare is a town that rises early and beds early.

Jenny has red hair and freckles, a flat chest, and wide hips, and she dresses well to camouflage those features. But today in her flowered bathrobe, she was not aiming to impress me. Jenny likes to regard me as part of the furniture, anyway. After saying hi indifferently, Jenny plopped back in her recliner and lit a cigarette, her eyes returning to a talk show I had never thought of watching.

Jenny was the only person I’d seen in the past five days who was acting completely normal.

The O’Hagens do their own laundry, but Jenny and Tom hate cleaning their kitchen, not too surprising when you consider they manage a restaurant. So I almost always have plenty to load in the dishwasher, sometimes what I estimate to be a whole week’s worth, and the garbage is always full of microwave meal trays and heat-and-eat cans. It also isn’t too surprising, I figure, that they don’t want to cook when they are home.

Jenny ignored me utterly as I moved around the apartment, to the point of not reacting at all when I took everything off the TV tray table set up next to the recliner and dusted the tray, putting its contents back in pleasing order afterward. I hate Jenny’s cigarette smoke; she is the only client I have who smokes, I realized with a little surprise.

The phone rang after I’d had been working an hour. I heard Jenny pick it up and turn down the volume on the television set. Without trying, I heard Jenny murmur into the receiver for a few minutes, then thunk it back in its cradle.

I had worked my way back to the master bedroom, where I changed the sheets in a flash and snapped the bedspread back into order. I dumped the ashtray on Jenny’s side of the bed (red hair on that pillow) and was walking around the bed to empty Tom’s ashtray when Jenny appeared in the doorway.

“Thanks for backing up Tom,” she said abruptly.

I glanced up, trying to read the round freckled face. All I could see was reluctance. Jenny didn’t like feeling beholden.

“Just told the truth,” I said, dumping the butts into the garbage bag and wiping out the ashtray. I replaced it with a little clunk on the bedside table. I spied a pencil on the floor, stooped to pick it up, and dropped it in the drawer of the bedside table.

“I know Tom’s story sounded a little funny,” Jenny said tentatively, as though she was waiting for my reaction.

“Not to me,” I said crisply. I scanned the bedroom, couldn’t spot anything I’d missed, and started out the door to the second bedroom, which the O’Hagens had fitted up as an office. Jenny stepped back to let me pass.

I’d tucked the corner of the dust cloth into my belt as I finished the bedroom. Now I whipped it out and began dusting the office. To my surprise, Jenny followed me. I glanced at my watch and kept on working. I was due at the Winthrops’ by one, and I wanted to have something for lunch before I got there.

The glance wasn’t lost on Jenny. “Keep right on working,” she said invitingly, as though I wasn’t already. “I just wanted you to know we appreciate your remembering correctly. Tom was relieved he didn’t have to answer any more questions.”

One had occurred to me during the morning. In the normal course of things, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to ask Jenny, but I was fed up with Jenny alternately ignoring me and following me around.

“So, did the police ask him what he was doing coming down the stairs from the other apartments, when he lives on the ground level?” I asked. I had my back to Jenny, but I heard a sharp intake of breath that signaled shock.

“Yes, Claude did, just now,” Jenny said. “He wanted to ask Tom about that, since Tom hadn’t mentioned that earlier.”

I could see why Claude Friedrich would think of asking, since his own apartment was on the second floor, opposite Norvel Whitbread’s.

“And what did Tom say?”

“None of your business,” flashed Jenny.

Now, this was the familiar Jenny O’Hagen.

“Guess not,” I said. I ran the dust cloth over the metal parts of the rolling chair behind the desk.

“Well…” Jenny trailed off, then turned and marched into her bedroom, closing the door behind her firmly.

She emerged just as I finished cleaning-which I did not exactly consider a coincidence-clad in a bright green camp shirt and gray slacks.

“It looks great, Lily,” Jenny said without looking around. So she’d reverted to the new Jenny. I preferred the familiar rude Jenny; at least then I knew where I stood.

“Um-hm. You want to write me a check now, or mail it to me?”

“Here’s the money in cash.”

“Okay.” I wrote a receipt, tucked the money in my pocket, and turned to leave.

I could feel Jenny moving up behind me, and I spun quickly, to discover she was much closer.

“It’s okay!” Jenny said hastily, backing up. “I just wanted to tell you that Tom wasn’t doing anything wrong on the second floor, okay? He was up there, but it was okay.” To my amazement, Jenny looked red around the eyes and nose, as though she was about to cry.

I hoped that Jenny wouldn’t actually weep; I would not pat Jenny O’Hagen on the back.

Evidently, Jenny felt the same way. “See you next week,” she said in a clogged voice.

I shrugged, picked up my caddy of cleaning materials, and left. “Good-bye,” I said over my shoulder, to prove I was not uncivil.

I’d closed the door briskly behind me as if I intended to leave the building at my usual clip. But I stopped and looked up and down the hall. There was no one in sight; I could hear no movement in the building. It was about noon on a Friday, and aside from the Yorks and Mrs. Hofstettler, everyone should be at work.

It had occurred to me that the closet under the stairs (where Pardon kept odds and ends like extra lightbulbs and the heavy-duty vacuum for the halls) would have been an excellent temporary resting place for Pardon’s wandering corpse.

And it just so happened I had a key.

Pardon himself had given it to me three years before, when he’d taken the only vacation I could remember. He’d gone to Cancun with a bus tour made up mostly of other Shakespeareans. While he’d been gone, I’d had the job of cleaning the halls and the glass panels in the back door, making sure the parking lot was clear of garbage, and channeling all the residents’ complaints to the proper repairman. Pardon had given me the key then, and he had never asked for its return, perhaps anticipating more package tours in his future.

But all his fussing about his health had proved to have some basis, finally, when a specialist in Little Rock had told Pardon his heart actually had some small problem. Pardon had sworn off tours forever, for fear he’d have some kind of crisis in a foreign place, and he never tired of showing people his Canciin photos and telling them of his near brush with death.

I’d marked all the keys entrusted to me with my own code. If they were stolen, I didn’t want the thief to be able to get into my clients’ homes and offices. The code I used was not sophisticated: I just went down to the next letter of the alphabet, so the key to the closet of Shakespeare Garden Apartments had a little strip of masking tape on it with the initials THB in heavy black ink.

I tossed my key ring up and caught it with my right hand while I debated whether to look or not.

Yes, I decided.

The disappearance and reappearance of Pardon’s body, and its ultimate disposal in the park via my cart, had opened a vein of curiosity and anger in me. For one thing, it revealed unexpected depths in one of the people I saw often-for I didn’t think it possible that the killer could be someone other than an apartment resident.

I didn’t know I’d reached that conclusion until I had the key in the lock and was turning it.

I looked inside the large closet. It opens facing the hallway, and since it conforms to the rise of the staircase, it is much higher at the left end than the right. I reached up for the long string that hangs down from the bare bulb overhead. Just as my hand touched it, a voice spoke behind me.

“What you looking for, Miss Lily?”

I gasped involuntarily, but in a second, I recognized the voice. I turned around to face Claude Friedrich.

“Anything I can help you with?” he continued as I looked up, trying to read the broad face.

“God Almighty, where were you?” I asked ferociously, angry at myself that I hadn’t heard him, angry at him for the fear he’d made me feel.

“In Pardon’s apartment.”

“Just skulking?”

I was not going to be able to provoke him into anger so he’d forget to ask me again, I saw.

“Examining the scene of the crime,” he said genially. “And wondering, as I suspect you are, how come one person sees a body on the couch at four-thirty after someone else saw an empty couch at three o’clock, though at three o’clock the apartment looked like someone’d had a fight.”

“Pardon could’ve survived for a while,” I said, surprising myself by simply telling the policeman what was on my mind.

He looked equally surprised, and rather pleased.

“Yes, indeed, if it’d been another kind of wound.” Friedrich nodded his head of thick graying hair slowly. “But with that blow to the neck, he would have suffocated pretty quick.”

And he looked down at my hands, empty now, since I’d put down the cleaning caddy when I opened the door. My hands looked thin and bony and strong.

“I could have killed him,” I said, “but I didn’t. I had no reason to.”

“What if Pardon had said he was going to spread the story of your bad time all over town?”

“He didn’t know.” I’d come to that conclusion early this morning. “You know what Pardon was like. He loved knowing all about everyone, and he’d bust a gut to tell whoever it was that he’d found out something about them. He’d have loved to sympathize with me about what happened. No one knew until you called Memphis and left that report lying around.” That was something else I’d have to do on my own-find out who in the police department had been talking, and to whom. I thought it quite likely that whoever had planted the cuffs and gun on the Drinkwaters’ stairs had learned the significance of those items from a loose-mouthed police department employee.

“Probably you’re right on that,” Friedrich admitted, giving me a pleasant surprise in return for the one I’d given him, “and I’m looking into it. So you’re checking out the closet to see if that’s where he was stowed?”

I blinked at the change of subject. Friedrich was touchy about my reference to the poor security at the police department, as well he might be.

“Yes.” I explained how I came to have the key.

“Well, let’s look,” Friedrich suggested, with a geniality I distrusted.

“You’ve already looked,” I said.

“Actually, no. Pardon’s key ring hasn’t turned up. We didn’t want to break down the door. A locksmith was coming this morning to open it up, but now you’ve saved the city of Shakespeare a little money. I never thought of asking you if you had a key.”

It didn’t seem a good time to tell him that I had keys to the front and back doors of the building, too.

“Why didn’t you ask Norvel Whitbread?” I asked. “He was supposed to be working for Pardon one morning a week.”

“He said he didn’t have a key. And it seemed likely to me that Pardon wouldn’t trust him enough to give him one, that Pardon would unlock the closet for him if Norvel needed to get in.”

I tucked the puzzle of Pardon’s missing key ring in with all the other elements involved in the strange death of the landlord.

Friedrich stepped past me, reached up to pull the string, and scanned the closet when the light flooded into every corner. Pardon, whatever his faults, had not been stingy with wattage.

“Does it look like it always does, as far as you can tell?” Friedrich asked after we’d both taken a good look.

“Yes,” I said, a little disappointed. The shelves to the rear and left side of the closet were neatly lined with necessities-garbage bags, lightbulbs, cleaning materials-and odds and ends that Pardon had thought might be useful someday-mousetraps, vases, a doorknob, the big doorstop Pardon used to hold the front door when he got the hall carpet cleaned, and it was still damp. The big vacuum cleaner took up the right side of the closet. It was ancient, huge, and parked neatly, with its cord wrapped in a precise coil. That proved Norvel hadn’t vacuumed last; Norvel would never wind a cord that pretty, I thought admiringly.

But Norvel was supposed to be doing the janitorial work.

Friedrich was looking over the shelves carefully and thoughtfully, apparently doing an item-by-item inventory.

I reached over to touch his sleeve, then thought the better of it. “Excuse me,” I said.

“Yes’m?” Friedrich said abstractedly.

“Look at the cord on the vacuum.” I waited till he’d taken a good look. “Someone other than Norvel Whitbread put that vacuum in here, and Norvel was supposed to do it.” I explained why I thought so.

Friedrich looked mildly amused. “You got any idea who might have put the vacuum in here, based on the way the cord is coiled?” he asked, and I realized he was gently pulling my leg.

Ho-ho. “Yes, I have. I’ve seen the way Pardon put things away. That’s the way Pardon did it. Every Monday morning, before he went to church, Norvel was supposed to vacuum and clean the glass in the doors, sweep the front walkway, and pick up trash in the parking area in the back. It doesn’t seem he did that on Monday.”

“That’s a lot to infer from a vacuum cleaner.”

It was an effort to shrug indifferently.

I took the key to the closet off my ring and handed it to Friedrich. Before he could say anything, I hoisted my caddy and strode out the front door, evicting Friedrich from my thoughts. I cast around in my mind for any reason I needed to go in my house; all of a sudden, I wasn’t hungry anymore. Maybe I should jump right in the car to go to the Winthrops’ house.

But there was yet another bump in my path-a car parked, blocking mine, in my driveway, and someone standing in my carport, leaning against my Skylark. My heart lurched when I recognized Marshall. I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do or say, feeling my cheeks get hot.

He took the caddy from me and put it on the ground. He drew me farther up under the carport and put his arms around me. After a moment, my arms went around his neck.

“I couldn’t call you,” he said in my ear. “I didn’t know what to say over the telephone. I don’t know what to say now.”

If he didn’t, I sure wasn’t going to venture anything. I was managing to enjoy being held, but I didn’t like being in the carport; I didn’t want to be seen. But the intoxication of Marshall’s nearness, his remembered smell and touch, began to chip away at my anxiety. I felt a little dizzy. His tongue touched my lips.

“Marshall, I have to work,” I managed to say.

He held me a little away, looked at me sharply.

“Lily, are you putting me off because you don’t want to be with me? Are you sorry about last night?”

“No.” I shook my head to reinforce it. “No.”

“Are you having trouble, remembering what happened to you?”

“No…” I hesitated. “But you know, having had sex once successfully doesn’t mean I’m never going to live in the shadow of the rape again. The rest of my life, I’ll have to deal with it.”

I am not a trouble-free woman. I am not always user-friendly. He had to have that brought to his attention, if he was trying to ignore it.

“But really, and I regret this, I’m late to my next cleaning job,” I finished prosaically.

“Lily,” he said again, as if he enjoyed saying it. I’d been looking down at the spot where our chests were touching. Now I met his eyes. His mouth came toward mine, and I could feel he was ready.

“We can’t now,” I whispered apologetically.

“Tonight, after class?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t eat first; we’ll fix something at my place.”

I never ate before calisthenics, anyway. I nodded, and smiled at him. A red car going by in the street alerted me to the passage of time. I looked at my watch over his shoulder, wishing I could afford to call the Winthrops and tell them I was sick. But Marshall was an anomaly, and my work was the norm.

I was beginning to hope that with Marshall I could be exactly who I felt like being. The Memphis Lily, the Lily with long brown hair, who puffed and panted after twenty minutes on the treadmill, would never have done what blond strong Lily did to Marshall next. My caress made him shiver all over.

“You don’t know what it’s been like,” he said when he could speak. I realized that Marshall had a story to tell, too.

“If you’re sure you don’t have ten extra minutes now,” he went on breathlessly, “I guess I’ll have to wait until tonight. We better not spar together in class!”

I found myself smiling at the thought of Marshall seething with desire while blocking my kicks, and seeing me smile made him laugh out loud.

“See you then,” I said, with a sudden resurgence of shyness. I gently extricated myself from his arms and went to my car. As he passed me to go to his Toyota, I had a back view of broad shoulders and tight butt to admire.

It had been so long since my plans had extended beyond my latest batch of library books or a movie I’d rented that I hardly knew what to think of as I drove the familiar route to my next job. I would be sweaty after class. Could I shower at his house? Would he expect me to stay the night, or would I come home to sleep? Where would I park my car? It was nobody’s business that I would be visiting Marshall’s rental house. I liked my life private.

As I slid out of my car at the Winthrops’ back door, I decided I was excited, and scared. But most of all, I felt unsettled, a feeling I was having trouble enjoying. I’m not used to having so many variables to contend with, I realized.

But I had to put all that away in the back of my mind and get to work. I let myself in, locked the door behind me, and looked around the kitchen. The cook, Earline Poffard, had been at work; the counter was spotless and there was a full garbage can under the sink. Earline comes in twice a week, and she cooks enough suppers for the Winthrops to eat until she comes again. I had never met Earline face-to-face, but I knew her from her work; Earline labels everything she prepares, all her garbage lands in the bag, and she scours all the dishes herself, drys them, and puts them away. I have only to clean the outside of the microwave and the door of the dishwasher from time to time, and mop, and the kitchen cleaning is done.

For the first time, it occurred to me that I would like to meet Earline. Perhaps Earline was equally curious about me.

The habits of years reasserted themselves, and I set to work. I didn’t want to be late to class this night; I looked forward to seeing Marshall my lover, and I didn’t want Marshall my sensei to be shooting me the disapproving look he’d given me last time.

I’d gotten the dusting done and was getting the mop out of the closet when I heard a key in the lock.

“Hey, Lily,” called a casual male voice.

“Hi, Bobo,” I replied, making a mental note to tell Beanie she needed a new mop.

“Hey, what about that old guy getting killed over by your place?” Bobo said, his voice getting closer.

I glanced over my shoulder. The boy-the six-foot-two boy-was leaning against the kitchen sink, looking spectacular in cutoffs and an Umbro shirt. His grin betrayed his age, but his body had grown up ahead of him. I answer the phone while I’m working at the Winthrops‘, and most of the calls in the summer are inevitably for Bobo. He has his own phone, of course, but he gives only particular friends that number, much to his mother’s irritation.

“He died,” I said.

“That’s no answer, Lily! C’mon, you must know all about it.”

“I’m sure you know as much about it as I do.”

“Is it true someone called old Claude Friedrich while he was sacked out and told him where the body was?”

“Yes.”

“See, now that’s the kind of thing I want you to tell me.”

“You already knew that, Bobo.” My patience had almost evaporated.

“Well… give me the inside scoop. You gotta know something that wasn’t in the paper, Lily.”

“I doubt it.” Bobo loved to talk, and I knew he’d follow me around the house if I gave him the slightest encouragement.

“How old are you, Bobo?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m a senior. I’m seventeen,” he said. “That’s why I’m outta class early today. You gonna miss me next year when I go off to college, Lily?”

“You know it, Bobo.” I got the Mop & Glow from the cupboard, then turned the sink water to hot. “For one thing, I ought to charge your parents less money because I won’t have your mess to clean up.”

“Oh, by the way, Lily…”

When he didn’t finish his sentence, I glanced over, to see Bobo was blushing a bright red.

As I raised my eyebrows to show I was waiting for him to finish his sentence, I squirted some cleaner on the floor. The water was running hot; I squeezed out the excess water and began to mop.

“When you were cleaning my room the other day, did you happen to find… something… ah, personal?”

“Like the condom?”

“Um. Right. Yeah.” Bobo stared at something fascinating by his right foot.

“Um-hmm.”

“What’d you do with it?”

“What do you mean? I threw it away. You think I was going to sleep with it under my pillow?”

“I mean… did you tell my mom? Or my dad?”

“Not my business,” I said, noting that Howell Winthrop, Jr., came a decided second on the list of people Bobo feared.

“Thanks, Lily!” Bobo said enthusiastically. He met my eyes briefly, his shoulders relaxed: He was a man looking at blue skies.

“Just keep using them.”

“What? Oh. Oh, yeah.”

And Bobo, if possible, grew redder than before. He left with a great show of nonchalance, jingling his keys and whistling, obviously feeling he’d had an adult conversation about sex with an older woman. I was willing to bet he’d be more careful disposing of personal items in the future, as well he ought.

I found myself singing as I worked, something I hadn’t done in years. I sing hymns when I’m by myself; I know so many, from the countless Sundays I’d spent sitting with my parents and Varena in church-always in the same pew, fifth from the front on the left. I found myself remembering the mints my mother always had in her purse, my father’s pen and the notepad he produced for me to draw on when I got too restless.

But thinking of my childhood seldom brings me anything but pain. Back then, my parents hadn’t cast their eyes down when they spoke to me. They’d been able to hold conversations without tiptoeing verbally around anything they thought might distress their ravaged daughter. I’d been able to hug them without bracing myself for the contact.

From long practice, I was able to block out this unproductive and well-traveled train of thought. I concentrated on the pleasure of singing. It’s always an amazement to me that I have a pretty voice. I’d had lessons for a few years; I used to sing solo in church, and perform at weddings from time to time. Now I sang “Amazing Grace.” I reached up to brush the hair out of my face when I was finished, and it was a shock to find it was short.