They shook hands. Enrique Estefan’s grip was firm, although his hand was hot, dry, leathery, padded with too little flesh, almost withered, all knuckles and metacarpals and phalanges. It was almost like exchanging greetings with a skeleton.
“Come on in the kitchen,” Ricky said.
Harry followed him across the polished-oak floor. Ricky shuffled, never entirely lifting either foot.
The short hallway was illumined only by the light spilling in from the kitchen at the end and by a votive candle flickering in a ruby glass. The candle was part of a shrine to the Holy Mother that was set up on a narrow table against one wall. Behind it was a mirror in a silver-leafed frame. Reflections of the small flame glimmered in the silver leaf and danced in the looking glass.
“How’ve you been, Ricky?”
“Pretty good. You?”
“I’ve had better days,” Harry admitted.
Although he was Harry’s height, Ricky seemed several inches shorter because he leaned forward as if progressing against a wind, his back rounded, the sharp lines of his shoulder blades poking up prominently against his pale-yellow shirt. From behind, his neck looked scrawny. The back of his skull appeared as fragile as that of an infant.
The kitchen was bigger than expected in a bungalow and a lot cheerier than the hallway: Mexican-tile floor, knotty-pine cabinetry, a large window looking onto a spacious backyard. A Kenny G number was on the radio. The air was heavy with the rich aroma of coffee.
“Like a cup?” Ricky asked.
“If it’s not any trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Just made a fresh pot.”
While Ricky got a cup and saucer from one of the cabinets and poured coffee, Harry studied him. He was worried by what he saw.
Ricky’s face was too thin, drawn with deeply carved lines at the corners of his eyes and framing his mouth. His skin sagged as if it had lost nearly all elasticity. His eyes were rheumy. Maybe it was only a backsplash of color from his shirt, but his white hair had an unhealthy yellow tint, and both his face and the whites of his eyes exhibited a hint of jaundice.
He had lost more weight. His clothes hung loosely on him. His belt was cinched to the last hole, and the seat of his pants drooped like an empty sack.
Enrique Estefan was an old man. He was only thirty-six, one year younger than Harry, but he was an old man just the same.
2
Much of the time, the blind woman lived not merely in darkness but in another world quite apart from the one into which she had been born. Sometimes that inner realm was a kingdom of brightest fantasy with pink and amber castles, palaces of jade, luxury high-rise apartments, Bel Air estates with vast verdant lawns. In these settings she was the queen and ultimate ruler — or a famous actress, fashion model, acclaimed novelist, ballerina. Her adventures were exciting, romantic, inspiring. At other times, however, it was an evil empire, all shadowy dungeons, dank and dripping catacombs full of decomposing corpses, blasted landscapes as gray and bleak as the craters of the moon, populated by monstrous and malevolent creatures, where she was always on the run, hiding and afraid, neither powerful nor famous, often cold and naked.
Occasionally her interior world lacked concreteness, was only a domain of colors and sounds and aromas, without form or texture, and she drifted through it, wondering and amazed. Often there was music — Elton John, Three Dog Night, Nilsson, Marvin Gaye, Jim Croce, the voices of her time — and the colors swirled and exploded to accompany the songs, a light show so dazzling that the real world could never produce its equal.
Even during one of those amorphous phases, the magic country within her head could darken and become a fearful place. The colors grew clotted and somber; the music discordant, ominous. She felt that she was being swept away by an icy and turbulent river, choking on its bitter waters, struggling for breath but finding none, then breaking the surface and gasping in lungsful of sour air, frantic, weeping, praying for delivery to a warm dry shore.
Once in a while, as now, she surfaced from the false worlds within her and became aware of the reality in which she actually existed. Muffled voices in adjacent rooms and hallways. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes. The pine scent of disinfectant, medicinal aromas, sometimes (but not now) the pungent odor of urine. She was swaddled in crisp, clean sheets, cool against her fevered flesh. When she disentangled her right hand from the bedding and reached out blindly, she found the cold steel safety railing on the side of her hospital bed.
At first she was preoccupied by the need to identify a strange sound. She did not try to rise up, but held fast to the railing and was perfectly still, listening intently to what initially seemed to be the roar of a great crowd in a far arena. No. Not a crowd. Fire. The chuckling-whispering-hissing of an all-consuming blaze. Her heart began to pound, but at last she recognized the fire for what it was: its opposite, the quenching downpour of a major storm.
She relaxed slightly — but then a rustle arose nearby, and she froze again, wary. “Who’s there?” she asked, and was surprised that her speech was thick and slurred.
“Ah, Jennifer, you’re with us.”
Jennifer. My name is Jennifer.
The voice had been that of a woman. She sounded past middle-age, professional but caring.
Jennifer almost recognized the voice, knew she had heard it before, but she was not calmed.
“Who are you?” she demanded, disconcerted that she was unable to rid herself of the slur.
“It’s Margaret, dear.”
The tread of rubber-soled shoes, approaching.
Jennifer cringed, half expecting a blow but not sure why.
A hand took hold of her right wrist, and Jennifer flinched.
“Easy, dear. I only want to take your pulse.”
Jennifer relented and listened to the rain.
After a while, Margaret let go of her wrist. “Fast but nice and regular.”
Memory slowly seeped back into Jennifer. “You’re Margaret?”
“That’s right.”
“The day nurse.”
“Yes, dear.”
“So it’s morning?”
“Almost three o’clock in the afternoon. I go off-duty in an hour. Then Angelina will take care of you.”
“Why am I always so confused when I first… wake up?”
“Don’t worry about it, dear. There’s nothing you can do to change it. Is your mouth dry? Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, please.”
“Orange juice, Pepsi, Sprite?”
“Juice would be nice.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Footsteps receding. A door opening. Left open. Above the sound of the rain, busy noises from elsewhere in the building, other people on other errands.
Jennifer tried to shift to a more comfortable position in the bed, whereupon she rediscovered not merely the extent of her weakness but the fact that she was paralyzed on her left side. She could not move her left leg or even wiggle her toes. She had no feeling in her left hand or arm.
A deep and terrible dread filled her. She felt helpless and abandoned. It seemed a matter of the utmost urgency that she recall how she had gotten in this condition and into this place.
She lifted her right arm. Although she realized that it must be thin and frail, it felt heavy.
With her right hand, she touched her chin, her mouth. Dry, rough lips. They had once been otherwise. Men had kissed her.
A memory glimmered in the darkness of her mind: a sweet kiss, murmured endearments. It was but a fragment of a recollection, without detail, leading nowhere.
She touched her right cheek, her nose. When she explored the left side of her face, she could feel it with her fingertips, but her cheek itself did not register her touch. The muscles in that side of her face felt… twisted.
After a brief hesitation, she slid her hand to her eyes. She traced their contours with her fingertips, and what she discovered caused her hand to tremble.
Abruptly she remembered not
only how she had wound up in this place but everything else, her life back to childhood all in a flash, far more than she wanted to remember, more than she could bear.
She snatched her hand away from her eyes and made a thin, awful sound of grief. She felt crushed under the weight of memory.
Margaret returned, shoes squeaking softly.
The glass clinked against the nightstand when she put it down.
“I’ll just raise the bed so you’ll be able to drink.”
The motor hummed, and the head of the bed began to lift, forcing Jennifer into a sitting position.
When the bed stopped moving, Margaret said, “What’s wrong, dear? Why, I’d think you were trying to cry… if you could.”
“Does he still come?” Jennifer asked shakily.
“Of course, he does. At least twice a week. You were even alert on one of his visits a few days ago. Don’t you remember?”
“No. I… I…”
“He’s very faithful.”
Jennifer’s heart was racing. A pressure swelled across her chest. Her throat was so tight with fear that she had trouble speaking: “I don’t… don’t…”
“What’s the matter, Jenny?”
“… don’t want him here!”
“Oh, now, you don’t mean that.”
“Keep him out of here.”
“He’s so devoted.”
“No. He’s… he’s…”
“At least twice a week, and he sits with you for a couple of hours, whether you’re with us or wrapped up inside yourself.”
Jennifer shuddered at the thought of him in the room, by the bed, when she was not aware of her surroundings.
She reached out blindly, found Margaret’s arm, squeezed it as tightly as she could. “He’s not like you or me,” she said urgently.
“Jenny, you’re upsetting yourself.”
“He’s different.”
Margaret put her hand on Jennifer’s, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Now, I want you to stop this, Jenny.”
“He’s inhuman.”
“You don’t mean that. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“He’s a monster.”
“Poor baby. Relax, honey.” A hand touched Jennifer’s forehead, began to smooth away the furrows, brush the hair back. “Don’t get yourself excited. Everything’ll be all right. You’re going to be fine, baby. Just settle down, easy now, relax, you’re safe here, we love you here, we’ll take good care of you….”
After more of that, Jennifer grew calmer — but no less afraid.
The aroma of oranges made her mouth water. While Margaret held the glass, Jennifer drank through a straw. Her mouth didn’t work quite right. Occasionally she had minor difficulty swallowing, but the juice was cold and delicious.
When she emptied the glass, she let the nurse blot her mouth with a paper napkin.
She listened to the soothing fall of the rain, hoping that it would settle her nerves. It did not.
“Should I turn the radio on?” Margaret asked.
“No, thank you.”
“I could read to you if you’d like. Poetry. You always enjoy listening to poetry.”
“That would be nice.”
Margaret drew a chair to the side of the bed and sat in it. As she sought a certain passage in a book, the turning of the pages was a crisp and pleasant sound.
“Margaret?” Jennifer said before the woman could begin to read.
“Yes?”
“When he comes to visit…”
“What is it, dear?”
“You’ll stay in the room with us, won’t you?”
“If that’s what you want, of course.”
“Good.”
“Now, how about a little Emily Dickinson?”
“Margaret?”
“Hmmmmm?”
“When he comes to visit and I’m… lost inside myself… you never let me alone with him, do you?”
Margaret was silent, and Jennifer could almost see the woman’s disapproving frown.
“Do you?” she insisted.
“No, dear. I never do.”
Jennifer knew the nurse was lying.
“Please, Margaret. You seem like a kind person. Please.”
“Dear, really, he loves you. He comes so faithfully because he loves you. You’re in no danger from your Bryan, none at all.”
She shivered at the mention of the name. “I know you think I’m mentally disturbed… confused….”
“A little Emily Dickinson will help.”
“I am confused about a lot of things,” Jennifer said, dismayed to hear her voice growing rapidly weaker, “but not about this. I’m not the least bit confused about this.”
In a voice too full of artifice to convey the powerful, hidden sinewiness of Dickinson, the nurse began to read: “That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love….”
3
Half of the large table in Ricky Estefan’s spacious kitchen was covered with a dropcloth on which were arranged the small-scale power tools he used to craft silver jewelry: a hand-held drill, engraving instrument, emery wheel, buffer, and less easily identifiable equipment. Bottles of fluids and cans of mysterious compounds were neatly arranged to one side, as were small paintbrushes, white cotton cloths, and steel-wool pads.
He had been at work on two pieces when Harry interrupted: a strikingly detailed scarab brooch and a massive belt buckle covered with Indian symbols, maybe Navajo or Hopi. His second career.
His forge and mold-making equipment were in the garage. But when he worked on the finishing details of his jewelry, he sometimes liked to sit by the kitchen window, where he could enjoy a view of his rose garden.
Outside, even in the dreary gray deluge, the plentiful blooms were radiant — yellow and red and coral, some as big as grapefruits.
Harry sat at the uncluttered part of the table with his coffee, while Ricky shuffled to the other side and put his cup and saucer down among the cans, bottles, and tools. He lowered himself into his chair as stiffly as an octogenarian with severe arthritis.
Three years ago, Ricky Estefan had been a cop, one of the best, Harry’s partner. He’d been a good-looking guy, too, with a full head of hair, not yellow-white as it was now, but thick and black.
His life had changed when he had unwittingly walked into the middle of a robbery at a convenience store. The strung-out gunman had a crack habit for which he needed financing, and maybe he smelled cop the moment Ricky stepped through the door or maybe he was in the mood to waste anyone who even inadvertently delayed the transfer of the money from the cash register to his pockets. Whichever the case, he fired four times at Ricky, missing him once, hitting him once in the left thigh and twice in the abdomen.
“How’s the jewelry business?” Harry asked.
“Pretty good. I sell everything I make, get more orders for custom belt buckles than I can fill.”
Ricky sipped his coffee and savored it before swallowing. Coffee was not on his approved diet. If he drank much, it played hell with his stomach — or what was left of his stomach.
Getting gutshot is easy; surviving is a bitch. He was lucky that the perp’s weapon was only a.22 pistol, unlucky that it was fired at close range. For beginners, Ricky lost his spleen, part of his liver, and a small section of his large intestine. Although his surgeons took every precaution to keep the abdominal cavity clean, the slugs spread fecal matter, and Ricky quickly developed acute, diffuse, traumatic peritonitis. Barely survived it. Gas gangrene set in, antibiotics wouldn’t stop it, and he underwent additional surgery in which he lost his gallbladder and a portion of his stomach. Then a blood infection. Temperature somewhere near that on the sunward surface of Mercury. Peritonitis again, too, and the removal of another piece of the colon. Through it all he had maintained an amazingly upbeat mood and, in the end, felt blessed that he had retained enough of his gastrointestinal system to be spared the indignity of having to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
He had been off-dut
y when he’d walked into that store, armed but expecting no trouble. He had promised Anita, his wife, to pick up a quart of milk and tub of soft margarine on his way home from work.
The gunman had never come to trial. The distraction provided by Ricky had allowed the store owner — Mr. Wo Tai Han — to pick up a shotgun which he kept behind the counter. He’d taken off the back of the perp’s head with a blast from that 12-gauge.
Of course, this being the last decade of the millennium, that had not been the end of it. The mother and father of the gunman sued Mr. Han for depriving them of the affection, companionship, and financial support of their deceased son, and never mind that a crack addict was incapable of providing any of those things.
Harry drank some coffee. It was good and strong. “You hear from Mr. Han lately?”
“Yeah. He’s real confident about winning on appeal.”
Harry shook his head. “Never can tell what a jury will do these days.”
Ricky smiled tightly. “Yeah. I figure I’m lucky I didn’t get sued, too.”
He hadn’t been lucky in much else. At the time of the shooting, he and Anita had been married only eight months. She stayed with him another year, until he was on his feet, but when she realized he was going to be an old man for the rest of his days, she called it quits. She was twenty-six. She had a life to live. Besides, these days, the clause of the matrimony vows that mentioned “in sickness and in health, till death do us part” was widely regarded as not binding until the end of a lengthy trial period of, say, a decade, sort of like not being vested in a pension plan until you had worked with the company for five years. For the past two years, Ricky had been alone.
It must be Kenny G Day. Another of his tunes was on the radio. This one was less melodic than the first. It made Harry edgy. Maybe any song would have made him edgy just then.
“What’s wrong?” Ricky asked.
“How’d you know something’s wrong?”
“You’d never in a million years go visiting friends for no reason during work hours. You always give the taxpayer his money’s worth.”
“Am I really that rigid?”
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