No Regrets, Coyote Page 11

  There was no closet, but there was, on one side of the bed, a chrome rack for hanging clothes that looked like the frame of a small children’s swing set. On the other side of the bed was a narrow, three-drawer wood and wicker nightstand. On top of the stand was a compact microwave oven, and on top of the oven, a small table lamp with a torn lampshade. Kelly had done what she could to make these cramped quarters a home. She may have felt that she did not deserve to take up much space in the world. On a pine-board shelf above the bed, Kelly had a boom box; a deck of playing cards; two laminated library books, For Girls Only: What You Need to Know About How Guys Think and Just as Long as We’re Together, not due back for another week; a thirty-two-ounce Big Gulp cup; and an Il Divo CD. I cut the deck of cards. The four of hearts. Did Kelly have four people in her life, I wondered, who loved her? Whom she loved? I asked Carlos if he’d contacted the next of kin. He told me they hadn’t yet been able to locate any family.

  There was a framed photograph of Kelly on the shelf, the only photograph, apparently, that she had. She’s about a year old, and she’s in the arms of a woman I presume to be her mother. Little KK—I’ll bet they called her that—has her thumb in her mouth and a hand in her wispy hair. Who took the picture? I asked Carlos what he knew about Kelly.

  She was born in Belle Glade, her mother’s only child. Mom was addicted to meth. She’d gone missing and was probably dead. Dad went to the Palm Beach County jail when Kelly was three and died there of AIDS when she was ten. She pretty much grew up on her own. She went to high school but did not seem to have graduated. Somehow she drifted here to Everglades County. “My guess,” Carlos said, “is she arrived on a bus with some boy. Or some man. Folks in the building say she was very pleasant but very shy. Never had any visitors. She’d been working the lunch shift at Arby’s for about five weeks. Her boss said she was a bit of a daydreamer but learned her responsibilities quickly. She’d be hard to replace.”

  I opened the top drawer of the nightstand. Kelly’s underwear, with the exception of a single red lace thong, was conventional and threadbare. In the middle drawer she kept a blue enamel dish, a red plastic cereal bowl, a can opener, plastic utensils, and two cans of cream of mushroom soup. There was a goldfish bowl in the bottom drawer, and in the bowl an opened box of goldfish food flakes, some blue gravel, and a plaster medieval castle. Two polo shirts hung on the clothes rack, one an employee’s shirt from Publix, the other from Burger King. There were two pairs of black chinos and a pair of khaki shorts.

  The bathroom sink was unsurprisingly pitted and the shower stall barely wide enough to turn around in. Kelly used Ivory soap, Prell shampoo, Pantene conditioner, Crest toothpaste, and Nivea skin cream. Her green Oral B toothbrush was in need of replacement. She’d taped a magazine photo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to the wall beside the medicine cabinet. There was not much in the way of medicine in the cabinet—a small plastic jar of aspirin, a tube of Neosporin, and a stick of Blistex. The cabinet had a slot like a piggy bank’s where you were instructed to drop your used razor blades.

  Carlos told me to have a look in the small, unplugged refrigerator in the corner by the window. He said, “We tossed the food already. Junk.”

  Kelly kept her Hello Kitty diary in the fridge. In case of fire, I figured. Carlos said, “Why don’t you take it home and read it.”

  I opened the book at random and read the entry for November 16:

  Today at the Arb a customer who was talking on his cell phone when he ordered his Bacon & Bleu Roastburger and his Onion Petals and his Sierra Mist told me that I was underambitious and throwing my life away and then he told whoever he was talking to You pay peanuts and you get monkeys and he laughed and I was upset and ran to the ladies’ and cried until Querida came in and said Calvin needed me he was having a conniption fit trying to keep up with the orders and I said we’re at Arby’s it’s never crowded.

  Kelly’s handwriting was upright, slender, and slight. Each letter stood unattached.

  “What kind of animal …?” Carlos shook his head. “Who are we looking for?”

  “Someone, I’d say, in his mid- to late twenties. A loner. Ill at ease with women his own age. So he seeks out younger girls. He has a kind of brash charm that would appeal to a girl not used to attention and flattery.”

  “Like Kelly.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Strangulation. The cutting, the gore, and the sex were posthumous.”

  “I don’t think it’s just sexual. I’m not sure the guy understands death as anything other than spectacle and the imposition of his will.”

  “You’re not saying he’s insane?”

  “If he’s also responsible for the other missing girl, then we may have a man who thinks he’s found his calling.”

  Patience worked at Jaunts & Junkets Travel on Mangrove. I stopped in to ask her if she could suggest a very cold destination where I might see the northern lights, maybe at the end of the month or in early February. Patience said it was so weird—she had just been thinking of me. She turned her memo pad around and slid it across her desk to me so I could see where she had written, Call Wylie. I wondered if she had had the diamond in her nose at Christmas, and I just missed it. It was adorable.

  “And now I don’t have to,” she said.

  “Call me about what?”

  “My friend Dermid Reardon would like to see you. Professionally, I mean.”

  “Tell him to come to the office Monday morning at ten. I’ll be free.” I handed her my card.

  “How about Norway?” she said.

  “Something on this continent?”

  “Fairbanks,” she said. She woke up her computer and typed. “Stay there three nights and your chances of seeing the lights are eighty percent.”

  “Make it five nights. I just want an idea of the cost.”

  “Average high February temperature is eleven degrees.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Let me look for flights and accommodations and get back to you. One adult?”

  “Two.”

  “Good for you.”

  I stood and shook Patience’s hand goodbye. “May I ask if your friend Dermid is in a wheelchair?”

  “Not yet.”

  I drove to the Aventura Mall, went to the Apple store, and got myself an iPhone. One of the geniuses in blue T-shirts got me up and running, showed me how to use the camera and video, asked me if I thought I’d need an app for calculating my blood alcohol level. It’s called iAlcohol and the Russians made it and they know everything about public drunkenness, so you know it’s good. I passed. What about a sleep machine—drift off to the sound of crickets?

  We had a decent house on opening night at the Eden Playhouse. I guessed seventy-five people or so. We were up against the big bowl game and Eden’s Festival du Québec. I peeked out from backstage and saw Red, wearing a tennis visor, backpack on his lap, chatting with Zack Dolan, the Journal-Gazette’s theater critic. Hiroshi paced the green room threatening to have a migraine. His partner, James, held his hand and told him to empty his mind and let the clumsy fire arise, whatever that means. James was wearing a QUEER AND PRESENT DANGER T-shirt, pleated harem pants, and leather slip-ons with peaked heels and turned-up toes. Phoebe and Kai came backstage and presented me with a bouquet of roses. I thanked them, James thanked them, and he rushed off with the flowers to find an appropriate vase. Kai told me to break a leg and insisted that I join them for dinner after the show. I tried to back out, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’d made reservations at Ferme for ten-thirty.

  Kai said that he never ate anything that had had a mother. We were dining by flickering candlelight on the sidewalk. I’d finished my braised lamb shank, Phoebe her coq au vin, and Kai his crêpe Christina. Kai had offered his culinary observation just out of the blue, and I was inexcusably pleased that he would never get to taste fois gras in his life. Phoebe said, “Let’s not get started, sweetie.” No fois gras, no pork bellies, no escargot, no caviar, no Bel
on oysters, no sea urchin roe, no crawfish, no stone crabs at Joe’s.

  Kai told me how much he enjoyed all three plays, how distinctly American he thought they were, and how impressed he was with my performances, which was kind of him to say. The waiter took our dessert orders. Kai and Phoebe decided they’d split a crème brûlée. I said I’d drink my dessert and ordered a cognac. Phoebe rubbed Kai’s neck and stared at me while she did. Kai said the guy who played T-Bone’s friend Euly could use a spinal adjustment. I heard what sounded like a car backfiring. Kai said, “Holy shit!” The blast was followed by the shattering of glass. I turned and saw a shirtless man in a Panama hat firing a pistol into a closed-down fitness center. Shot after shot. Flash after flash. Kai said, “He’s trying to kill the StairMaster.” Why weren’t we crouched behind our table or running away? A man eating at the next table shook his head and went back to his meal. The waitstaff from the restaurant joined us on the sidewalk, and some of them took photographs with their cell phones. We heard sirens. I saw Kanaracus, the Falafel King, his jacket draped over his shoulders, standing on the corner, watching the show. When the shooter was out of bullets, he dropped his pistol, put his hands behind his head, and knelt on the sidewalk. A squad car squealed to a stop, and a cop got out brandishing his own pistol, which he aimed at the kneeler’s head. One of the waiters said, “Thank god for the police.” The cop slammed the shooter’s face into the asphalt.

  When the excitement died down, our waiter, Fletcher, arrived with dessert and three spoons. He said, “No charge for the entertainment!” and bowed. I had a feeling all waiters and waitresses were adopting table names. How many Crispins, Fletchers, and Rhiannons can there be? And all of them in food services?

  Kai bent over the dessert, closed his eyes, and inhaled. He said, “Has Phoebe told you that we’re thinking about moving?”

  “She hasn’t.”

  Phoebe tasted her crème brûlée.

  Kai said, “Time for a change.”

  “Out to Banyan?”

  “Arizona.”

  I looked at Phoebe, who looked at Kai. Kai smiled and patted Phoebe’s arm. “I’ve been offered a position with a notable healing institute in Sedona.”

  “You’d leave paradise for the desert? You know what that dry air does to your skin?”

  Kai said, “When I moved here you could sit down in the middle of Neptune Drive and not have to move for hours.”

  I said, “Nosebleeds, flyaway hair—”

  “There used to be trees full of roseate spoonbills in Eden Lake Park. Now everything’s paved from Homestead to Jupiter.”

  “When?”

  “Well, I’ve got to clear the decks here, of course, but I’d like to see us out there by the start of summer. Right, sweetheart?”

  Phoebe wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “Phoebe,” I said, “are you excited?”

  “I really can’t get my head around the idea yet.”

  I was up early after a fitful sleep, interrupted by the same annoying dream over and over again, in which I’m onstage and dumbstruck. I can’t remember my line, and the audience is shuffling their feet and murmuring to one another, and Hiroshi has fainted in a tidy heap, and the actors are furious, and I can see my fifth-grade nun, Sister Cerritus, in the front row, and she’s smiling and nodding her head and fingering her gigantic rosary beads, and I know the line is something about ducks, about clearing the ducks, but I can’t remember it for the life of me.

  I put Django in the steel bowl on the kitchen scale. He’d doubled in size to five ounces, but he was still all adorable eyes and extravagant ears. I knew I’d regret this decision one day, but I put Django on the kitchen table where he could watch me surf the Web for all I could learn about Sedona, Arizona. He opened his mouth but no meow came out. That’s how grateful he was. He sat on the keyboard and then pressed command. I put his bowl on the table, and the food kept him busy while I worked. I don’t know why I thought I had any control over Phoebe’s life or why I thought she would always be close by. Sedona had once been called Red Rock. There are 11,220 residents, many metaphysical shops, and several spiritual vortices.

  I found an old linen postcard of the Alhambra on eBay. The hotel looked prim and respectable. The grass was trimmed and monochromatically green, the sky a powdery blue. There were two red tulip chairs set on the lawn beneath an inflorescent coconut palm. An American flag rippled in a light breeze from the flagpole. I entered my bid.

  I put Django on the floor, poured a cup of coffee, and went out to get the paper to see what Zack Dolan had to say about the show. Red looked up from the paper when he heard the screen door slam and said, “Congratulations, Olivier!” I handed him his coffee and sat in the extra chair.

  Red told me, “Dolan called the evening ‘professional, thoughtful, provocative.’ He cites the ‘spunky production and the solid, energetic cast.’” Red smoothed the paper and cleared his throat. “ ‘Wylie Melville does most of the heavy lifting as Davy in A Man Walks into a Marriage, a play I found entirely satisfying and at times exhilarating.’ ” Red looked up from the paper and smiled. “Bravo!”

  “Well, that makes my week.” Red handed me the paper and I read the whole review.

  Red said, “Euly shouldn’t slouch like he does.”

  I said, “He’s feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

  11

  Cerise let herself in the house and dropped her keys in the empty Our Lady of Lourdes holy water font on the wall by the door. I poured her a coffee with cream and three sugars. I introduced her to Django. She asked me how a little cat like him could get up on such a tall table. I lifted Django and took the napkin out of his mouth. I put him on the floor and rolled his little spongy soccer ball across the room. He bounded after it and slid into the wall. Cerise and I sat. She apologized for Vladimir’s loutish behavior at Starbucks. He’d been upset ever since his friend shot his wife and himself.

  “The lawyer?” I said.

  “You know Kouzmanoff?”

  “I read about him. Were he and Vladimir pals?”

  “Vladimir did some work for Kouzmanoff.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “He doesn’t talk to me about his work.”

  “And how have you been?”

  Cerise told me that she’d been restless and confused lately, more so than usual. I wondered out loud if her meds might need some readjustment.

  She said, “Sometimes my tongue feels like a worm in my mouth.”

  I said, “You need to tell them that at the clinic, Cerise.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise me.”

  “My faith is all I have, Mr. Wylie.” She told me that Ellery had refused to see her.

  I said, “He’s grieving. Maybe he needs to be alone for a bit. He’ll come around. He’s been through hell.”

  “Do you know what that does to a mother?”

  My car wouldn’t start. I turned the key, and click! Nothing. I flipped the hood release, got out of the car, and opened the hood. I didn’t know what I was looking at except that I knew the big cube with the cables clamped to it was the battery. It looked fine. I shook it a little. I got back in the car and turned the key. Nope! I counted to fifteen and asked Saint Jude for some assistance. I pumped the gas pedal and tried it again. I seemed to remember my dad doing that when I was a kid. Nothing. Could it be the choke? Is there a choke in here somewhere? Click! Red leaned in the window and said, “Your battery’s dead.”

  “I’ll call Triple A.”

  “There’s an AutoMen right up on Main. We’ll take the battery out—” Red could see my eyes glaze over. “How did you ever live this long?” He shook his head. “I’ll take it out. We’ll bring it to AutoMen, get a new one, pop it in, and you’re good to go.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve got tools, right?”

  “Let’s look in the garage.”

  Red said, “Everything under the hood of this Scion is ten millimeters—a beauti
ful design. All I need is one ten-millimeter wrench.” And I had one. Who knew? Red took out the battery, aired up the tires on my bike, put the battery in the basket, and sent me on my way. “Give the man this baby; he’ll hand you the correct replacement. I’ll be right here finishing my coffee.”

  When I got back, Red took the battery and gave me back the seven-year warranty. “You’re going to lose this, aren’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  He dropped the battery onto its seat. “These cars today come with maintenance-free batteries, and yours was, what, three years old? So I’m thinking, unless you left the lights on, and I saw that you didn’t, then someone may have deliberately drained your battery.”

  “The car’s always locked. They wouldn’t be able to release the hood.”

  “Unless they had a code cutter.” Red explained how keys could be made.

  “Who has code cutters?”

  “Car thieves and cops.” He attached the cables to the battery and tightened the nuts. “Car thieves don’t drain batteries.”

  “I can understand why,” I said. “If you need the bike, it’s yours.”

  “Thanks, but I like walking. Maybe in an emergency.”

  “The garage door is always open.”

  “Start locking it.”

  Dermid Reardon wore a blue linen suit and a white silk shirt, open at the collar. He told me he was an architect who designed retail spaces for stores in malls and also for some freestanding independent bookstores. He was originally from Boston. He was wearing thin argyle socks and sleek brown loafers. Dermid sat rather stiffly on the couch and adjusted his elegant designer glasses. He said, “All my life I’ve known that I was supposed to have one leg.”