The Scared Stiff

48

She didn’t call Tuesday. She didn’t call Wednesday. She hadn’t called by two o’clock Thursday afternoon when Rafael Rafez came by.

I was in the living room, looking out at nothing happening in the sunshine out there, when that white Land Rover stopped out front and Rafez stuck his head out the car window. He’d seen me up here, and he gestured I should come down.

He was out of the Rover, strolling in the shade of the house, when I came down the stairs. He was snappily dressed, as usual, this time in a flowing amber gaucho shirt and ecru linen pants. “How you going, amigo?” he asked me.

“Pretty good,” I said. “Bueno, I guess.”

“What do you hear from up north?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” He didn’t like that.

“I talked to Lola on Sunday,” I explained. “Told her to bring the cash but didn’t say why. She’ll bring it.”

He nodded. “When, that’s the question.”

“As soon as she gets the check,” I promised. “Believe me, I want this as much as you do. But you know these bureaucracies.”

“Sure,” he said. “Well, I’ll be around.”

“Great,” I said, and he drove off, with a wave and a smile.

When Arturo came home at four-thirty Friday afternoon, I said, “Arturo, call her. You gotta call her, that’s all. What’s the problem? What’s the delay? Is Kaplan making trouble again? Is he coming back down here? Is there a screwup someplace?”

“Slow down, hermano. I’ll call her, okay?”

“Okay.”

It was a fairly long call, though probably not the six hours it felt like. At last he hung up and said, “Sit down, hermano, stop pacing; you’re gonna wear out the floor; we’re gonna fall through, land on Madonna.”

“What’d she say?”

“Sit down,” he said.

“She didn’t say sit down,” I said, but I sat down. “All right, I’m sitting down. What did she say?”

“No check,” he said.

“What? They’re not gonna pay? How can they—”

“No no no,” he said. “No check yet.”

“Okay,” I said. “I know that much. No check yet. But how come? Did she talk to our insurance man?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “She told me, if nothing comes in Monday, she’ll make a lot of phone calls, find out what’s the holdup.”

“Monday? Another damn week!”

“What she gonna do, hermano? The check didn’t show.”

“The check is in the mail,” I said bitterly.

He nodded. “That’s what I figure,” he said.

“No,” I said. “That’s an American idiom. The check is in the mail. It’s ironic, see, it means the check isn’t in the mail, it means they’re gonna stiff you.”

He said, “In America, you say, ‘The check is in the mail,’ when you mean the check is not in the mail?”

“Yes.”

“Americans are crazy, you know,” he said. “No offense, hermano, not you personally, but Americans are loco.”

“Everybody’s loco, Arturo,” I said. “But so far I’m just poco loco. But if that check doesn’t show up goddamn soon, I’m gonna be multo loco.”

“Mucho,” he corrected me.

“Whatever,” I said.