The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Forget I ever said it.”

  “Said what?”

  8

  benita

  WEDNESDAY

  On Wednesday morning, Benita called the bookstore and asked to speak to Simon. “Benita Alvarez,” she said. “I’d like to come in and talk to you about the job.”

  “You think yes?”

  “I think probably, though I’d like to talk details.”

  “Come in anytime.”

  She hung up and heaved a deep breath. She had been prepared for him to say he hadn’t really meant it, it was all some kind of misunderstanding. Or he might have said he’d thought better of it since. Though, why would he? She was good at her job, she’d just never considered cashing in on it before. Cashing in had come way down the list after children and groceries and the gas bill.

  Well. There were still details, like living, moving around, getting from here to there. And getting Sasquatch shipped. She’d paid the kennel for two weeks in advance, cash, and she’d used a phony name in order not to create a trail. She wanted to disappear from New Mexico, leaving no clues. And no doubt Mr. DeGreco could tell her where to look for an apartment. A furnished apartment.

  Her ruminations were interrupted by the phone ringing, and she answered, “Yes,” wondering what the hell, no one knew she was there, except, as it turned out, someone who introduced himself as Chad Riley, who was with the FBI and who had been detailed to assist her for the next several days.

  “The envoys—that’s what we’re calling them, ma’am—tell us they’d very much appreciate meeting with you again. So far, except for you, all the people they’ve met are men, and they feel women may have a viewpoint that…we…ah, males may not have.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m busy this morning, Mr. Riley. How about later today?”

  “Actually, we thought this evening. We’re planning a kind of dinner meeting. They assure us they can eat our food.”

  “The president?”

  “No, he’s making a speech tonight, one he couldn’t get out of, but his wife is coming.”

  “And they really want me? Not somebody like…oh, Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan or…?”

  “They want you.”

  “…Alice Walker?” she suggested desperately. She didn’t want to be part of this. Surely her part of this was over now!

  “You.”

  “All right.” She sighed. “Will you send somebody for me?”

  “We’ll pick you up at your hotel, at seven.”

  She was not a feminist. Why would they want her to give the female point of view? God, if she’d been a feminist, she’d have killed Bert long ago. She’d have run off with the children, gone somewhere else, or at least asked Goose for a raise.

  Goose. How was she going to tell Goose? If she gave notice now, that would be almost four weeks, and that was enough. Maybe she’d say she received a job offer on the West Coast, and she’d decided to move to be nearer the children.

  By nine-thirty, she was at the bookstore door. Five minutes later she was ensconced in Simon’s office, coffee poured, danish provided, discussing where she might live in Washington.

  “Actually,” he said, looking at the ceiling and scratching his neck idly, “there’s an empty apartment upstairs. It’s rather rundown, but it’s large. At one time, it was loft space, an artist’s studio. When we bought the building we thought the artist would stay. He, however, decided to pass his declining years in Mexico. Or maybe it was Honduras. Somewhere vivid and warm. At any rate, he left a couple of years ago, and we’ve been unable to find a tenant who is…acceptable to us.”

  “Meaning?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Meaning clean, sober, and responsible,” he said, giving her look for look. “We’d like someone to live in it, because it helps building security. If the alarm goes off, you hear it, you call the police. I’m not saying the alarm will go off, it never has yet, but one never knows. People don’t seem to rob bookstores much, more’s the pity for them.”

  “Could I see it?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “Yes, right now.”

  The corridor outside his office ended at an exterior door, and they stepped out into the staff parking lot, with labeled parking slots along two sides.

  “The other lot’s for customers,” he said. “It’s closer to the front door.”

  They walked along the building toward the side street, past two cars parked against the building to a door with a three-step concrete stoop. One of Simon’s office windows, the door they’d come out of, the door they faced, and two little windows stacked above it were the only openings in three stories of solid brick, a taller red half to the left, a shorter yellow half to the right. Simon unlocked the metal door, displaying a square hallway with an elevator to the right.

  “That leads into the stockroom,” said Simon, indicating a door to the left. “We use the elevator to carry dolly loads of books to the second floor. The doors to the stockroom and the parking lot are always locked, but you’d have keys.”

  Simon heaved the folding grille aside and they stepped into the elevator, waiting while the grille latched lethargically, with loud complaint. Simon pushed button three and the cage creaked upward, moaning.

  “It likes to pretend it’s on its last legs, but it’s actually completely safe. It gets inspected every year.”

  The grille let them see the second-floor landing, with its small window and single door, and then the third floor, identical. The window only pretended to light the space, and Benita thought it unlikely anyone ever washed it, certainly not from outside.

  They went through the door opposite the elevator onto the top landing of an enclosed stairs descending along the outside wall.

  “Firestairs,” said Simon. “They come out behind the rest rooms on the second floor and go on down into the stockroom, where there’s an emergency exit to the street.”

  The door to the right opened on a room about forty by fifty-five or sixty, smelling of hot dust, with tall, dirty windows extending almost corner to corner over the side street. Four steel columns supported an I beam and a high, ornamental tin ceiling hung with cobwebs.

  A U-shaped kitchen took up the corner nearest the elevator, and ended at the line of columns. Next to it was an enclosed room about the same size.

  “The bathroom,” said Simon. “The artist who lived here put some screens and free-standing cabinets between the columns and used the area behind them as his bedroom. He also had some good-looking drapes all along that front wall, but he took everything interesting with him. The blinds are still here, and they’re fairly new.”

  Fairly new and supposed to be white, as were the walls. The blinds would wash, but the walls were unlikely to come clean. There was plenty of room, but no closet, anywhere. A couch and chair stood near the front windows, protected by plastic sheeting. A sheet-covered boxspring and mattress along with a stepladder and a bedframe, in parts, stood against the back wall under a row of metal, wireglass windows, their bottom edges about five feet from the floor. Benita pulled the ladder out and climbed up a couple of steps to look through the windows. The bottom of the windows were barely above the flat roof of the adjacent building.

  The place certainly looked break-in proof! But talk about bleak!

  “There’s a lot of room here,” she said without enthusiasm.

  He looked worried. “About twenty-three hundred square feet.”

  “The bookstore looks longer than this.”

  He nodded. “This is the third floor of half the bookstore. Maybe you noticed from the parking lot? The store is actually two buildings, side by side, built at different times. We started with the one next door and bought this one when it became available. This building has higher ceilings, so the floors don’t line up. The ground floor is eighteen inches higher, the second floor is three feet. We only joined the first two floors. The third floor of the other building isn’t connected to this one at all. The only access to that space is by stairs from the s
treet.”

  “Is it rented?”

  “Not at the moment, no. If all goes well, eventually we’ll probably use all of it, and this space, too, but that’s no time soon.”

  She moved out into the middle of the room and turned around, staring at the walls. “How much would you charge for this, and what would you do by way of cleaning it up?”

  “Well, any tenant would need a closet, so we’d build one, and we’d paint the place and have the kitchen appliances checked. We’d have it professionally cleaned, windows and all. It’s nowhere near fully furnished, so I’ll knock a hundred a month off what I was going to ask. Say, four hundred dollars a month, and that includes all utilities. There’d be no way to separate out heat and water and electricity for this floor, anyhow.”

  Almost five thousand a year. Out of thirty thousand. A seventh. Not more than she should pay for living space, according to all the budgeting books she’d read. And here, by herself, presumably she would be able to keep all her own paycheck. She wouldn’t need a car to get to work. Chances were, she wouldn’t need one at all. That would be a savings!

  “You’ll have air-conditioning,” he said, enticingly. “You’ll use our Dumpster down in the alley for your trash, and there’s a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink.”

  She wandered into the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, then went into the bathroom. No frills. White-tiled walls, tub and shower, vanity, toilet, plus a two-foot-by-three-foot corner space with nothing in it where one would expect a linen closet. She returned to the main room, separating the slats of the blinds to look down on the traffic. Not much. The side street was quiet, though cars went by regularly down at the corner. The building across the street was only two stories high, and she could look across its roof to a golden dome. “Is that the Capitol?”

  “We’re only a few blocks from the Mall,” he said, lifting the shade to peer in the same direction. “I’d forgotten you can see the Capitol from here. I haven’t actually been up here in two years.”

  “Dog,” she said, almost desperately, waiting for the knife to fall. Surely it couldn’t all be right, just like this, right off the bat? Surely it couldn’t be possible. If it had been possible, someone would have done it, right? “I have a dog.”

  “Sure, bring the dog. You’ll be even safer with a dog. I hope it’s a big one. What’s his name?”

  “Sasquatch. He’s a kind of Briard mix. Black and brown, with medium long hair that hangs over his eyes, with a big, deep bark.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “He’s used to a yard, but…”

  “Actually, you can let him run on the roofs. They’re different levels, but they’re connected by stairs, and there’s even a kind of arbor up there that the artist put in. They’re both flat gravel roofs with a parapet around the edges, and the elevator goes up there because that’s where the air conditioners are. You’d have to poop scoop, of course, but…”

  “May I see?”

  They went up to look at the roof, as described, flat except for occasional vent pipes and the housing for the elevator and air-conditioning equipment. Between the housing for the air conditioner and the stacks from the kitchen and bathroom was the “arbor” Simon had spoken of, a rustic pergola at the top of wooden steps leading to the lower roof, with a huge pot at one side.

  “The guy had vines planted in the pot. Some kind of ivy, I think. There’s a condensation pan to one side of the air conditioner, and he siphoned water from the pan into the pot, and the vines grew up over the top for shade. Nobody kept the tubes clean after he left, so they stopped up and the vines died. He had patio furniture up here, too. With an umbrella.”

  In size, the roof was the equivalent of a small yard, which was all Sasquatch had at home.

  “If you’ll build a closet back in that far corner and pay to install a washer–dryer, I’ll take it,” she said. “If it isn’t dependent upon my working for you.”

  He frowned. “Are you thinking of working for someone else?”

  She shook her head. “No. But if you decide I’m not good enough, I don’t want to be out on the street.”

  “How about ninety days’ notice from either party,” he said. “Though I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that.”

  She took a deep breath. “It seems almost fated, and I’d be a fool not to jump at it.”

  “Where do you want the washer–dryer?”

  “Put it in the space at the end of the bathroom. One of those stacked sets. They’re a little over two feet square, not big enough for a large load but okay for one person. You’ve already got a drain and the water pipes right there.”

  “Do you have furniture you want to move in?”

  She started to tell him she wasn’t going to move anything, then caught herself. Her arrangements should remain her own business. The Albuquerque house was in foreclosure. The furniture was all old, well worn. There was nothing there she cared about except a few little things that had belonged to Mami and Abuelita.

  “Furniture?” he said again, softly.

  “Nothing else right now,” she said in a firm, no nonsense voice. “I’ll make do with what’s here for the time being. Later I can supplement.”

  “Fine. I’ll call the carpenter, the painters and plumbers first, then the cleaning agency to come clean it up when they’re finished. You make a list of what you’ll need. I can advance some salary if—”

  “That’s thoughtful of you, Simon, but I have money, thank you. A little…inheritance from an old friend of my mother’s.”

  She stayed upstairs, making a list: linens and towels, blankets and pillows, dishes, kitchen stuff. If she made one stop at a kitchen store for little stuff and bought everything else out of a catalog, they’d deliver it. Like from Pennys. Or Wards. It wouldn’t be high style, but a sheet was a sheet and a mixing bowl was a mixing bowl, for heaven’s sake. Get the basics, worry about how it looked later on.

  Back in Simon’s office, she borrowed his phone book, found the nearest catalog store and went there. Two hours concentration and several thousand more of the ET money gone, she had ordered everything she needed, plus some bookcases, on sale, minor assembly required, tall enough to make a partition separating the bedroom area. With the shelves facing out, she could put sheetrock on the backs. It would help the place look less empty as well as providing a little privacy.

  She bought lunch at a little side street restaurant, meantime glancing at a newspaper someone had left in the booth.

  MASSACRE IN CENTRAL AFRICA

  TRIBAL CONFLICT RENEWED

  RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR THREATENS U.N. WALKOUT

  SERB WAR CRIME TRIAL IN JEOPARDY

  RENEWED VIOLENCE IN ISRAEL

  PALESTINIANS VOW “NEW HOLOCAUST”

  SENATOR URGES IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT

  MORSE SAYS “UNFIT TO SERVE”

  SCIENTISTS DETECT “DISAPPEARING” ASTEROIDS

  OBJECTS VANISHED, SAY ASTRONOMERS

  SAUDI WOMAN TO BE EXECUTED FOR DRIVING CAR

  REBEL PRINCESS SENTENCED TO STONING

  ELEVEN DISAPPEAR IN NORTH WOODS

  LUMBERMEN ALLEGE ECO-TERRORISM

  It seemed the world was going on as usual. After lunch, she walked to the Smithsonian and spent two hours seeing this and that, until her feet were too sore to walk any further. She took a cab back to the hotel, had a hot bath and crawled into bed, feeling much more tired than the morning’s activities warranted. After a little nap, she’d get ready to meet the two aliens again. She wondered very much what they would look like this time.

  9

  benita

  WEDNESDAY EVENING

  Benita was in the hotel lobby, her coat over her arm, when Mr. Chad Riley arrived and introduced himself.

  “How did you know it was me?” she asked, surprised.

  “General Wallace gave me a description, ma’am. Let me help you with your coat.” He held it for her. “The general’s waiting in the car.”

  “You’re very
prompt,” the general greeted her when she got into the seat beside him. On the other side of a glass partition, Mr. Riley seated himself beside a driver, who evidently knew where they were going. They slid away, the streets suddenly made of satin, either that or they were in a low-flying plane of some kind. Not a bump or a ripple, like floating!

  “What kind of car is this?” she asked, enchanted.

  “A very, very expensive one,” the general said with a grunt. “The kind they keep for visiting dignitaries. No, don’t tell me. You’re not a dignitary.”

  “Well, I’m not!”

  “Anyone the envoys ask for is automatically a dignitary, otherwise I wouldn’t be in on this.”

  “I guess I’m flattered. What are they looking like now?”

  “Who? The envoys?” He shook his head. “I’ve only seen them on that device. I wasn’t there when they met with the president. No one was but a couple of Secret Service men. He called a meeting of the Cabinet plus a few other people right afterward, and he invited me to be there, to explain about the cube. He says I have a reputation for outspoken veracity which will be badly needed. I guess I owe that to the fact I never had to be elected to anything! Tell the truth and shame the devil, as my ma used to say.”

  “He explained about the cube? About me?”

  “He didn’t use your name, neither did I, we just said a constituent brought it to a congressman, and we’ve sworn your congressman to silence, for whatever good that’ll do. The cube took us out into space again, and it showed them giving the cube to you, only it wasn’t your face. In any case, everyone saw something slightly different.”

  She giggled, finding this surprisingly funny, and he gave her a reproachful look.

  “Somehow, I can’t find the humor in it. Anyhow, tonight we’re having a catered supper at a safe house. Chad, up there in the front seat, is FBI, and they’re handling security.”

  “The…envoys don’t want to appear in public?”