The Scared Stiff

by Donald E. Westlake

  The cemetery, Campo Santo Lúgubre, was eight miles north of town, off the main road, in a hillier drier area where it was easier to dig and things didn’t rot quite so rapidly as down by the town and the river. Our long cortege drove toward it at a stately funereal pace not because we were a funeral procession but because we were following a timber truck loaded far beyond capacity with huge mahogany logs, teetering far above the slat sides of the truck body. The driver was lucky the vehicle would move at all under that weight, and when he got to some of the hills farther north, it seemed to me, he would come to a dead stop.

  Speaking of dead stops, here’s the cemetery, with a wrought-iron archway entrance featuring the name of the place spelled out in spidery letters. Carlos and Maria had been chatting cheerfully together on the way out from town, gossiping about the other mourners, but now they fell silent as we passed under this grim arch.

  It wasn’t a cheerful place. Most of the graves were sunken; many of the stones leaned this way and that in exhaustion; most of it was weedy and scraggly. The occasional well-tended grave, with fresh flowers and gleaming stone and carefully weeded neat rectangle of lawn, was somehow even more depressing than the rest, because it said that someone who’s been left behind by a loved one comes out here all the time, with nothing better to do than turn a grave into a garden.

  It was an old graveyard, Sabanon being a very old town, settled before 1700. The gravel roadway meandered past graves ancient and modern, and our slow conga line followed the hearse deeper and deeper in. Dark green jungle surrounded us, and just when I had begun to think we would never get wherever we were going and would become a loop, a circle following itself, out ahead I saw something bright yellow and metallic, and I knew we were almost there.

  Yes. A backhoe, standing beside the new open hole in the ground. Once, gravediggers would stand at that spot, leaning on their shovels as in Shakespeare’s day, but today it’s the backhoe, with one fat guy in a dirty white T-shirt, a red bandanna around his neck, leaning against the side of his machine.

  Everybody stopped. Señor Ortiz’s men were quickly out, encouraging the cars behind us to come up along the grass to our left, so everybody could get nearer the grave, which was just off the road to the right. I sat there watching it all, until Maria leaned forward to tap my shoulder and murmur, “Sorry, Ernesto, but the chauffeur opens the door.”

  “Oh! Of course, sorry.”

  The other chauffeurs were already out and doing their duty, and now I popped out of the Buick and opened the rear door on my side, so Maria could step out first, followed by Carlos. Cars were passing right next to us, being hustled along by Señor Ortiz’s busy and efficient men.

  Maria and Carlos walked around me and headed along the road toward the new grave, where the priest now stood, holding his black book, with purple cinctures (for funerals) over his white surplice over his black cassock. He had to be hot.

  The other chauffeurs, after unloading their cargoes, had gotten back behind their wheels, so I did the same. They kept their engines running, though it seemed to me a fast getaway was not in the cards here, so I did too.

  I hate to have to admit this, but even your own funeral can get boring after a while. I was seeing it from a distance, but it looked exactly like a funeral. A bunch of people in dark clothes stood in a horseshoe shape, facing a hole in the ground. The priest spoke, though with the windows closed I couldn’t hear what he was saying. And, of course, there was no one from my family present.

  We’d agreed on that ahead of time, that one of the many reasons for a fast burial was so she could assure my parents by telephone it would be impossible to get here in time; we didn’t want our scam to louse things up for them more than absolutely necessary. They’d find out the truth once it was all over. But that meant I was rather unrepresented at my own funeral.

  And here came Arturo, walking briskly, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, matches prominent in his hand, obviously looking for a place where it wouldn’t be irreverent to smoke. After he’d passed the Jag in front of me, everybody else now behind him, he signaled me to open my window, so I did. As he walked by, he tossed something onto my lap, and I buttoned the window closed again.

  It was a small white envelope, containing two objects: a slender rectangular card of the sort hotels use as keys, and a note scrawled on a torn-off piece of lined paper, which read Inter-Nación 2217 7 P.M.

  Inter-Nación was the hotel by the airport, outside San Cristobal; 7 P.M. must mean tonight, since Lola would be flying to New York tomorrow.

  I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was Arturo, strolling amid the parked cars, trailing cigarette smoke. Ahead, the crowd had started shifting from foot to foot. I caught a glimpse of my casket being lowered, bearing somebody else’s scam to his final resting place. The man with the red bandanna climbed up into the seat of his backhoe.

  A few minutes later, as the mourners straggled back to their cars, at least one chauffeur, as he leaped out to open the rear door for his passengers, was grinning from ear to ear.

  18

  There was no one there. It’s true I was three minutes early, but there was still no one there. Room 2217 of the Hotel Inter-Nación was dim and cool and completely empty.

  I’d told Maria and Carlos about the message from Arturo and asked if I could borrow a vehicle to keep the appointment. I hoped, of course, the vehicle would be the Buick.

  Carlos, sounding almost avuncular, told me there was no problem, he’d loan me a vehicle, but it turned out the vehicle he had in mind was anything but a nice air-conditioned Buick. It was a scooter, an Italian Vespa, a motorized kitchen chair with a shield stuck on the front. The word vespa in Italian means wasp, and that’s exactly what the thing sounded like, nasty and nasal and snarling.

  So, having driven Carlos and Maria home to Rancio, I’d changed from chauffeur back to peon, accepted the Vespa with many expressions of gratitude, and rode my mobile kitchen chair among the trucks back down to San Cristobal, through town, and out to the Inter-Nación.

  Room 2217 sounds as though it should be on the twenty-second floor, but in fact the Inter-Nación is only three stories high, a squat building across the road from the airport. They’d stuck an extra 2 in front of the room numbers to make the place sound more impressive. So I went diagonally across the lobby without attracting attention from the staff, ignored the elevator, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The card key produced a small green light above the doorknob, the door opened, and I entered an empty room.

  She hadn’t been here. The closet was empty, the bed untouched. I went to look out the window, but this room didn’t face the road and the airport, it faced the jungle. As I stood gazing out at the greens, I heard clicking sounds from the door and turned with a smile of welcome. But then I heard voices. She was with somebody else.

  It had to be the bellboy. She’d have all her luggage with her for tomorrow morning’s flight. And the bellboy shouldn’t see a man in the widow’s room, especially a man who just might be identifiable later on as her dead husband. As the door to the hall opened, I made a dash for the bathroom, sliding in just as the two Spanish-speaking voices entered. Yes, Lola and a young male. She was directing the placement of the luggage, and he was explaining the wonders of the room.

  And his voice was coming this way. Quickly I stepped into the tub, behind the half-drawn shower curtain. If he were to come all the way to the tub to demonstrate the faucets, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  But then the lights came on in the bathroom and I saw the mirror. The wall facing the door was all mirror, and in it I could see the doorway, where the bellboy stood, a short young guy in a red uniform jacket, hand on the light switch. Beyond him, back in the main room, was Lola.

  If I could see them, they could see me. Except that the bellboy was calling Lola’s attention to other things and wasn’t looking toward the mirror. Lola was; I saw her eyes widen with surprise, then amusement. She said something, drawing the bellboy away, and as h
e left the doorway she came forward to switch off the light.

  It took her another couple of minutes to get rid of him. At last I heard the outer door snick shut, and as soon as it did I stepped out of the tub and into the other room, where Lola in her traveling clothes sat on the bed among her suitcases, laughing. Looking at me, she said, “Speedy Gonzales, I presume.”

  God, she was beautiful. I never want to be away from her, not for a second. “Oh, no,” I said, walking toward her. “Not speedy. This is going to be very, very slow.”

  •

  Early in the morning, before I snuck out of the Inter-Nación to climb back aboard my Vespa, we had a conversation that we’d had before and was the basis of our life together.

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  And she said, “Of course you will, you’re the net.”

  “And you’re the net,” I said.

  “You know I am.”

  We smiled at each other. I said, “We’re out there alone, nobody to be sure of in the whole world except you and me. I’m your net and you’re my net. The only net we’ve got.”

  “The only net we need, Barry,” she said.

  19

  Time dragged after my funeral and Lola’s departure. All at once, I had nothing to do. I trailed after Carlos to his truck place a few times, but I sure didn’t fit in there, and Carlos wasn’t what you’d call encouraging. At the house was Maria, self-sufficient, at work in her studio or reading or swimming, obviously feeling no need to find ways to keep her house guest amused. I could watch television or swim, but mostly what I did was wait.

  And, of course, watch Maria. And finally to wonder, What was her view of me? We were alone together in the house most of the time. She seemed amused by me, and friendly, but I couldn’t tell whether or not that amusement was linked to any level of sexual interest. Was there an offer in her half-mocking smile? I was certainly not going to take her up on any offer, if it indeed was there, but was it?

  Of course I wouldn’t respond. If I didn’t have Lola to restrain me, and I did, the memory of Carlos delivering that Sunday morning beating would keep me in check all by itself. Still, without a word being said, without even a glance that was no more than ambiguous, I found myself feeling somehow less of a man for not having taken Maria up on… on what?

  Watching her swim, sometimes, the powerful legs scissoring, the form-fitting black bathing suit, the long sleek body, the concentration in those eyes, I found myself drifting into unexpected shoals of thought. Was this somehow time out? If I were no longer Barry Lee, but not yet Felicio Tobón de Lozano, did neither Barry’s vows nor Felicio’s filial duty come into play? Keeping one eye out for Carlos, could Ernesto Lopez take a little taste of the sweetness this household offered?

  I began to avoid the pool, if Maria was in it. I was beginning to avoid my own lecherous brain.

  •

  Saturday, the eighth day of my afterlife, the three of us were having lunch out by the pool when Maria said to me, “Arturo phoned; he’s coming up today. I think he’s heard from Lola.”

  “Oh, good!” I said, and felt myself smile all over. Just to hear Lola’s name helped. And it kept those other impulses at bay as well.

  Finished with me, Maria turned to Carlos. “I’m going to Miami on Monday.”

  Carlos glowered. “Who with?”

  Maria seemed amused by the question. “By myself, sweetheart,” she said.

  Carlos is a jealous guy? That surprised me and might have worried me. I’m here alone with his wife every day and he never seems to think about it, but maybe I’ve been wrong about that. A good thing he couldn’t read my mind. I watched him more carefully as he said, “Friedrich gonna meet you there?”

  “He can’t this time,” Maria said, easy and unaffected, as though Carlos weren’t showing jealousy at all. “He’s sending me to a woman with a gallery in Palm Beach. I think Palm Beach is too… bourgeois for me, but Friedrich says this woman has excellent contacts in New York.”

  Carlos said, “When you comin’ back?”

  “Wednesday. Unless I go see Friedrich on the way back. I’ll phone you, darling.” Smiling, she said, “You won’t be lonely, you’ll have Ernesto here.”

  He grunted at that and went back to his lunch.

  She said, “My plane’s at eleven-twenty. Can you take me?”

  “The chauffeur’ll take you,” Carlos said.

  “Oh, good,” Maria said, and smiled at me.

  The chauffeur? Listen, I’m not really the chauffeur. But before I could figure out what if anything to say, Arturo bounded out from the house, a Heineken in his hand. “¡Hola!” he cried, and everybody greeted everybody, even Carlos lightening up a little. Arturo dragged a chair over to join us and grinned at me. “How you doin’, hermano?”

  “Oh, going along,” I said. “Helping out where I can.”

  Arturo turned his happy smile on Carlos. “That right? Felicio being useful?”

  “Ernesto,” Maria said.

  “He’s a good driver,” Carlos said.

  I said, “I’ve got my own chauffeur suit.”

  “A whole new career,” Arturo said, happy for me.

  I said, “You heard from Lola.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said.

  Maria said, “Carlos and I are finished. You sit here and get your messages.”

  “Thanks, Maria,” I said.

  They went away, and I said, “What did she say, Arturo?”

  “Well, she couldn’t say much, you know. On the telephone and all.”

  “She could say something.”

  “Yeah, but you know,” he said, “she had to talk like you was really dead, so what I had to do was — uh, waddaya say?”

  “Translate,” I suggested.

  “No. Get at the meaning. You know?”

  We both thought about it. “Interpret,” I suggested.

  “That’s it,” he said, and slapped his knee. “I had to interpret what she says, so when she says, ‘I love Barry so much, and I wish he was still around so we could be together and I could tell him how much I love him,’ I interpret that, you see, that it means I should say, ‘She loves you and misses you and wishes you could be together.’”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “I told her that,” Arturo assured me. “I told her, ‘Wherever he is, Lola, I’m sure Barry feels the exact same way.”

  “Thank you, Arturo. Did she say anything about the insurance?”

  “She give all the stuff to the insurance man, and it don’t look like a problem. It looks like a week or two, and then they send the check.”

  “That’s great. It’s time for me to get my passport.”

  “Sure. When?”

  “I gotta drive Maria to the plane Monday,” I said, “so I’ll be right there in San Cristobal, dressed up in my chauffeur suit, with the tie and all. How about then?”

  “Easy,” he said.

  I grinned at him. “Every day in every way, Arturo,” I said, “I’m getting less and less dead.”

  20

  Monday, after lunch, I put on my chauffeur suit and drove Maria to the airport. She sat in back, explaining it. looked better that way, and the fact that she felt the need to offer the explanation took the sting out of it.

  But it also confirmed the realization I’d come to after the cool way she’d dealt with Carlos’s show of jealousy at lunch. There was no invitation for me in that woman. She was self-contained to a remarkable degree. She’d brought Carlos into her life, for whatever reason, but she mostly inhabited her world by herself. I needn’t feel I was letting an opportunity slide; there was nothing there.

  So as we drove I spent more attention on the beautiful day outside than on the beautiful woman behind me, and when I thought about beautiful women at all, it was mostly Lola. How close we were to being together again.

  We were a quarter hour out of Rancio, amid the usual traffic, when Maria said, “You’re very quiet today, Ernesto.”

  I looked at her in
the rearview mirror, and her ironic smile was aimed at the back of my head. “Well,” I said, “I am a deaf mute.”

  “Even for a deaf mute,” she said, “you’re being very quiet. I believe you miss Lola.”

  “A whole lot,” I said.

  She nodded. “You know, when you first came to stay, I wondered if you were going to be difficult. You understand what I’m saying.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “My response was all prepared,” she told me, and met my eyes in the mirror, and smiled again. “I was going to be flattered but distant.”

  “And just a little contemptuous,” I said.

  The smile became a laugh. “Just a very little,” she agreed. “It would have been amusing for both of us. Poor Ernesto, you’re a faithful husband.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “There are very few faithful husbands in this part of the world,” she said. “It is not a trait that is particularly valued.”

  “I think that’s true everywhere,” I said. “But Lola and me… it isn’t that I’m being faithful to her. It’s that I don’t have any other way to live. To go do something else would be like breaking a bone.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and switched to look at the back of my head again, speculatively. “It seems like a contradiction, but it isn’t,” she decided. “You aren’t the faithful type, actually, you’re a rogue.”

  “Thank you — I think,” I said.

  “Oh, I know you like being a rogue,” she assured me. “What the English call a chancer. You’re unfaithful to the entire world, so why are you faithful to your wife?”

  “Maybe that’s why,” I said, and met her eyes in the mirror. “Maybe I need one little island in a sea of untrustworthy water. And so does Lola.”