"You make me blush."
I was secretly pleased to be called a genius—who wouldn't be? Yes, being called a genius gives you a feeling of savoir faire.
I kept thinking about Mrs. Donovan in Cleveland, and I thought about the fact that Porrocks wouldn't need anything from home tomorrow. The surgery would take hours, and then she'd be doped up. If she'd been run over deliberately, then this thing was escalating, whatever the hell this thing was. Why waste time?
I buried my lips in Audrey's soft curls and kissed the top of her head. Holding her close, I said, "I have an idea. You know how I said I was looking into the background of all this?"
She nodded into my arm. I could feel that she was tense, all right, and I didn't understand why. Maybe something about Porrocks's place made her remember some old pain.
"Well," I said, "I want to go and talk to somebody out of town, and sooner is better than later, I think."
She looked up. "Who?"
"Audrey, honey, it's just too—I mean, I'm embarrassed even to go into it. I might be being just a stupe here. I'll tell you all about it when I come back. Now I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the plan. I promised Porrocks I'd look after the house. And given recent events, leaving the place vacant overnight, even just for one night, would be a bad idea. The trip I want to do might just be a one-nighter, but I don't know for sure. One thing might lead to another, and I could be away for a few days."
I felt her relax; she sort of sank into my arm; she knew what I was going to ask now, and she felt good about it. She really wanted to help.
"I want to hit the road early tomorrow. Would you look after this house while I'm gone? If so, you'd be doing me—and Porrocks—a tremendous favor. You'd have to sleep here alone at night, but during the day I'm sure you could come and go, and things'd be safe enough. If you get scared at night you could call my friend Lou. She'd be glad to come over and hang out with you." Would she ever.
Audrey smiled and sat up.
I said, "I don't know whether any of this would interfere with your—work or whatever. Your life."
She said nothing.
"You're a very private person, Audrey Knox," I said.
Her smile grew broader. "So," she said, "you'll leave the key with me and take off in the morning?"
"If you're up for it."
"Count me in. I'll treat the place like my own."
Considering the tidiness of her apartment, that was a good promise.
"But," she said, "what if Porrocks—"
"Porrocks is never going to know about this. I'll be back in a day or two. Even if there's more for me to learn and I have to go off again, I'll come back just to reassure her. I might have to get Lou to cover for us, you know, which she would do. It'll be all right."
You just can't worry yourself to death over logistics. This was a serious investigation. Last night I'd dreamed about Drooly Rick and Young Brenda. They'd come over to my flat to play three-handed euchre with me, and somehow we all decided to go into business together importing penny candy from Argentina. Drooly Rick's clothes were dripping wet. Then we were at the old Tiger Stadium, the Tigers were playing the Oakland A's, and the three of us were trying to talk the announcer George Kell into letting us into the press box. My dreams never make any sense. But I feared I'd have more visits from Drooly Rick's restless ghost if I didn't act on what I knew.
"What about Todd?"
"I'm taking him with me."
Either Porrocks was in danger from another person, or I was in danger from Porrocks (not that she was in shape to act against me herself now), or possibly both. That last possibility made my brain hurt. "Hell," I muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Our evening was lovely enough, but it didn't include sex, to my disappointment. I found myself deeply turned on by Audrey Knox, and although I'd vowed to myself to cool it with her, I found the prospect of being away from her for a couple of days disquieting. I tried to steer us in the intimacy direction, but she lolled on the cushions and said, "Sometimes I find it more exciting just to look at each other."
"Oh," I said. I'd never heard that exact version of no before.
----
I rose early, packed my gym bag with a change of clothes, placed Todd in his travel case on the Caprice's passenger seat, added a bag of supplies for him, and kissed Audrey Knox intensely. "Thank you," I said. "Together we'll get to the bottom of this."
"I know we will," she said. "I can't wait to see you again."
"I hate to leave you." She looked so cute I felt like pinching her cheek.
"Well, you'd better get going."
Chapter 15
The Erie Shores Care Center squatted in the middle of a long block on a dreary avenue miles from the lake. Institutional style from the fifties here: two flat brick wings connected by a parabolic concrete entrance. But it also appeared as if someone had tried to make it look like a bowling alley or a motel: Swaths of artificial green grass lay uninvitingly between the parking area and the frostbitten flower beds next to the entrance, and silver metal starburst decorations splayed themselves at intervals along the brick facings.
In general, Cleveland is a nice enough Midwestern town, rooted as most of them are in industry. The same water molecules that tumble along the Detroit River eventually cruise past Cleveland's lakefront 170 miles away. Like Detroit, Cleveland saw a lot of European immigration, a lot of Poles, Germans, and Swedes in the white communities, while the blacks made their way to factory jobs from Dixie. Cleveland has never been accused of being overly hip, although it does have its own polka sound, the Cleveland style, which includes banjo and sometimes makes you think of blues. That style is looked down on by the harshest devotees of the other major style, the Chicago, which relies on accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and a fast tempo. Because the Industrial Age is essentially over in America, you could say metropolitan Cleveland looks old, you could say it looks tired, and to be sure, you'll find civic projects that look pathetic, their hearts missing. You'll find kids skipping school and shoplifting spray paint; you'll find the usual derelicts arguing in the weeds beneath the viaducts. You'll find sooty train tracks.
But the city hugs the shores of pleasant Lake Erie, and there's something to be said for the clean, cold air that blows in from the north. There's a working port and factories still, an extraordinary art museum, and a famous symphony. Plus, the place has trees. In the city and the suburbs and the countryside you'll find lovely tall good trees—maples and oaks, ashes and locusts, pines and spruces. The high-storied greenery gives you the secure feeling that you're on the planet and not surrounded by every goddamn thing synthetic.
All this makes for a population that's frank and more factory-tough than most. Sure, wussy types are always around, but the feeling in the air here is, I work hard all day until the whistle blows. Then I go home and shovel snow or cut the grass.
Cleveland's an OK place.
The Caprice, I'm sad to say, was severely challenged by the drive. The engine ran rougher and rougher, and I had a hard time starting it after a rest stop. The battery seemed all right; I thought the starter must be going, since eventually the engine did catch. There's a sprocket thing in a starter, and sometimes the teeth break off. You have to keep cranking it until a remaining tooth catches, and you start. Plus, the engine took a full quart of oil after just 105 miles. "Not good, not good," I muttered to Todd.
I was wearing a white oxford-cloth blouse, my best blue jeans, and my Weejuns, an outfit I'd selected for its working-class neutrality. Now I put on the baseball cap Todd's veterinarian had once given me, a navy twill job with WESTRICK ANIMAL CLINIC in white letters. It looked sharp and professional. Plus I pinned to my white blouse a nameplate I'd found in the street with ROBERTA KLOTZAK stamped on it.
The drive had taken three and a half hours including a rest stop for gas and doughnuts; it was just one o'clock now, and lunchtime at the care center should be winding down.
"Come on, Todd."
Cradling him in my left arm, I presented myself at the care center's front desk. "Good afternoon," I said to the woman who looked up. She wore a pink smock and had fluffy auburn bangs and a pleasant aspect. I invested my voice with enthusiasm and good cheer. "I'm Roberta Klotzak from Westrick Veterinary," big smile, "and this is Todd. We're here for the Pet Therapy Walkabout!"
The woman, whose own nameplate said EVELYN, smiled. In her smile was the desire to relate to me and Todd, to welcome us, but she was clearly feeling a measure of confusion. "The Pet Therapy Walkabout?"
"Yes!" Something bumped my hip, and I turned to see a 400-year-old man trying to shove his walker between me and a supply cart parked just behind me.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I said, with a wink to Evelyn. "Let's get you a clear path here!" I stepped out of his way. He glared at me, then saw Todd. He stopped, and a misty look came into his eyes.
"Todd, say hello to this good-looking fellow."
Todd glanced at me, then rested his head on my wrist.
The man remained where he was, all urgency gone from his journey. He gazed at Todd. I held my breath; Evelyn rose from her chair to witness this tender moment.
The man's lips twitched. "Rabbit," he said. "Good eating. Haven't had rabbit in years." He smiled and moved on.
I turned back to Evelyn, whose face had fallen only slightly.
"He's the cutest thing," she said in an effort to counteract the man's insensitivity. "Todd, pay no attention," she added in a pretend-pouty voice.
I maintained friendliness while Evelyn said she'd check with the boss about the Pet Therapy Walkabout.
Needless to say, Pet Therapy Walkabout was news to the care center's administrator, Jennifer, too. We decided that Shawndra at the clinic had made a mistake and sent me to the wrong nursing home.
As we talked, shrill alarm sounds went off periodically and disconcertingly, indicating that inmates were trying to get out of their wheelchairs or beds. Or falling out.
"But you're aware," I said to Jennifer, "of the new state mandate on pet therapy, right?"
"Well, I—"
"The governor just signed it, so it's not actually in implementation phase yet. But from what I've been told, you're going to be seeing a lot more rabbits coming through here. When the board saw all the data on elderly peoples' heart rates, their cholesterol levels, and so on, they were like, man, we've gotta get a program going. You know?"
Jennifer asked with caring intensity, "Is there something specifically beneficial about rabbits? I mean, we have the dog people in here quite a bit, and we do the plant protocol."
I'd noticed an array of fussy-looking houseplants next to the nurses' station. "Yes, rabbits," I asserted. "The main thing with rabbits is they help older people's sense of balance and their—their respiratory enzymes. The enzyme levels of the test group elderly absolutely were in the toilet before the experiment, but you should have seen them afterward. And nobody can explain the balance thing, but there it is. They just stopped falling."
"Wow," Jennifer said, "it almost doesn't sound—"
"But look, since I'm here, why don't I just go ahead and do a Walkabout? I'll check with the clinic later. It's so nice here, I might as well stay a little while and show you how one works!"
"Well, all right, Roberta."
"Fantastic!" And Jennifer, Todd, and I moved down the corridor and into rooms, introducing people to Todd. The aides went wild for him, and the residents in general seemed amused.
In a dayroom we came upon a row of three women sitting in wheelchairs watching television. I strode in, saying, "Ladies! Let's turn off that mush and make a new friend!"
They swiveled their heads to watch me unplug the TV. "Thank you," one said in a tired voice.
"This is Todd, and he'd like to know your names," I began. We all exchanged names—none of the three were named Helen—and after careful evaluation I put Todd in the lap of the calmest-looking one. Her whole face glowed with joy as Todd hunkered across her bony thighs.
"You can pet him," I urged.
She sank her gnarled fingers into his fur and looked up at me.
"Don't you feel ten years younger?" I asked. "I think he likes you."
Jennifer was about to say something when her belt-mounted pager vibrated.
"Ooh!" she said. "Excuse me!"
I kept going by myself. The place was a typical nursing home, clean enough, yet there was that depressing end-of-the-road atmosphere that no quantity of plants, disinfectant, or rabbits can erase. Fortunately, there were only about fifty inmates, and people's first names were on plates next to their doors.
Helen B. Donovan shared a room with a corpse-like individual who neither spoke nor stirred from bed the whole time I was in the room. Mrs. Donovan herself sat in a wheelchair, looking out the window at the parking lot. Todd was a wonderful calling card. I introduced us and asked if it was all right if we sat with her.
"What a hell of a day this has been," she said. "Sit right down."
Mrs. Donovan's face was the sunken-apple type, worn and sweet. She had one of those old-lady potbellies and wore a polyester dress with vertical color bars that made her stomach look like a convex TV test screen. Todd seemed to focus on the magenta strip over her appendix area.
I sat in the side chair and scooted it a little closer so she could pet Todd. He was being phenomenally patient with this whole show. Meeting strangers never did bother him, but this was a lot at once.
He was with me more or less by default because I didn't want to leave him in Detroit. I couldn't leave him alone in the cold car very long either, and he was so usefully appealing. People focused on him and not so much on me and my intentions.
"Well, Mrs. Donovan, I'm just a visitor to this place, just passing through. You know how it is."
"Yes. Nice bunny you've got there. Is it one of those seeing-eye bunnies?"
"He hasn't been specifically trained for that, but he's pretty smart."
Her face searched mine for some purpose, which seemed a good sign. It behooved me to get a grasp of how with-it she was before asking anything mission-critical.
"Have you had some difficulties today, Helen?"
"It's been four days since I've taken a dump!"
"Oh, my."
"And my pain is getting worse."
"I would imagine so."
"I mean this pain." She stopped petting Todd and pointed to her legs. "I've got arthritis really bad and I can't walk."
Mrs. Donovan's legs appeared to be swollen, and her feet were encased in velcro-strapped boot-style slippers. She looked bizarrely ready for action in them. She wore a wedding set on her left hand and a pair of bifocals in pink plastic frames on her nose. Her hair was long, white, and loose, and it flowed around her shoulders like Buffalo Bill's in the pictures you see of him later in life.
"I'm very sorry to hear that," I said. "Do they—"
"They tell me I'm addicted to my pain and to my pain medication! How do you like that?!"
"What nonsense. Don't they take good care of you here?"
"Not very. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've pushed that button and all they did was laugh."
I looked at her.
"They laugh," she insisted. "I can hear them clear down the hall."
"That's just terrible."
"Well, it's not so damn terrible, actually. You get to feeling sorry for yourself when you get in a place like this. Nobody feels sorrier for me than I do for myself, I guarantee you."
"Is there anything I could do for you right now?"
"Yeah, run down to the corner and bring me back a pack of Benson & Hedges and some little cupcakes and a bottle of Asti Spumante and a comic book and a little football I can throw around here. You think I'm kidding? What's so funny?"
"Well," I said, "I could go and get you those things, but of course smoking's against the rules—drinking, too, for all I know."
"I don't want to smoke them, I want to smell them. I want to hold one in my hand
and act like I'm smoking. As for the booze, well, hell, if they gave us each a pint of gin a day in this place, things'd go much smoother—much smoother."
"No doubt. Well, in a little while I'll go out to the store for you. Doesn't the center have things for you to do to get your mind off things, like you know, group activities or something?"
She brightened slightly. "There was a …" She searched for a word. "I'd call it a party, but it wasn't really a party. Now you see how I'm losing it."
"A gathering?"
"A gathering. I got the tangerine."
"Oh, really?"
She looked at me searchingly. "Goddamn it. This is what happens."
I said, "Did you all play a game or something, and the prize was a tangerine? Was that it?"
"She gave me the tangerine to play. Goddamn it."
"The tangerine to play."
"There was another lady who only got two sticks to hit, and she wanted to shake the tangerine, so I gave it to her. I didn't even want it anymore."
"Oh, the tambourine! You shook the tambourine. You went to a musical gathering."
"Yes! It was the goddamn tambourine! Thank you."
"Well, I bet that was a lot of fun."
"Oh, we had fun up the yinyang," she said grimly.
"Myself, I play the mandolin."
Mrs. Donovan said nothing.
"The nurses and helpers here all look quite nice," I ventured.
"Most of them are all right, I guess, when they're not lounging around on their asses eating gourmet sandwiches and laughing at all the people sitting in their rooms pushing their buttons."
"Say, do you have a favorite one?"
"Oh, yes."
"What's her name? Or his name," I added for the sake of political correctness, despite the fact that every employee I'd seen so far was female.
"Hmm, that's a good question."
I waited.
"It might be Susan."
"Susan?"
"I can't say for sure. She might be a Susan."
"Well," I said in a jolly tone, "that's a safe thing to say!" I noticed a framed photograph on her windowsill. "May I look at this?"
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