The Night People

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Not just yet!”

  “What?”

  “I want you to stay a bit, talk to me.”

  She was reminded of that day last year when she’d been home in bed. “Are you sick?”

  “Only unemployed. I lost my job last month. It’s sort of lonely being unemployed. I’d find it interesting to talk with a burglar. Maybe I can pick up a few pointers.”

  She moved a step closer. “Are you going to call the police?”

  “I’d have done that already if I was going to.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose you would have.”

  She sat down in a chair facing him.

  “Tell me what it’s like breaking into apartments. Is it exciting? Can you actually make money at it?”

  “It’s like nothing else in the world,” she said.

  He smiled again and suddenly she knew that this was her real second chance, now, with this man whose name she didn’t even know.

  And maybe this time it wouldn’t end the same way.

  Three Weeks in a Spanish Town

  “THREE WEEKS IN A Spanish town!” Edna had exclaimed when she saw the little classified ad in the back of the travel magazine. “Doesn’t that sound romantic?”

  To her husband Arthur it had sounded downright primitive, especially after they wrote for details and received back a letter written in bad English explaining that the town in question was in a remote section of the country more than a hundred miles from Madrid or any other large city. “What’ll I do there for three weeks?” he groaned.

  “Relax—that’s what!” By this time Edna Calkins had her heart set on the trip and nothing would dissuade her. “Get away from all the New York bustle and forget about the office for once.”

  “We do that every summer in the Hamptons.”

  “Arthur, in the Hamptons you see all the lawyers from the firm. We sit around drinking and discussing the business you left behind in the city. I want to do something different this summer.”

  “Well,” he said, knowing he was beaten as soundly as any opposing counsel had ever beaten him in court, “I’ll admit their prices are reasonable for three weeks. I doubt if we could find anyplace else in Europe as inexpensive.”

  “Then we can go?”

  “Three weeks,” Arthur Calkins mused. “That’s a long time. The place probably doesn’t even have a tennis court.”

  “Oh, damn!”

  “All right, all right! We’ll go!”

  It was a hot July afternoon when they arrived in Latigo, a quiet little town tucked away in a corner of the country where the local bus stopped only twice a week. Edna could see that Arthur was already regretting the trip as their rented car came to a stop before the only official-looking building on the main street.

  “It’s siesta time,” he grumbled. “They’re probably all asleep.”

  “No—there’s one!”

  The man who appeared in the doorway was wearing a wrinkled white coat that didn’t button over his protruding stomach. His black moustache was flecked with grey and his eyes were tired. Perhaps, Edna thought, he had been sleeping, after all.

  “Buenos dias,” he greeted them, and then immediately switched to English. “You are driving through on a tour of our countryside?”

  “No,” Edna informed him, leaning her head out the car window. “We’ve come to stay.”

  “For three weeks,” Arthur added.

  “Ah! You must be the Americans Mama Lopez is expecting. I am José Friega, the mayor of Latigo.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Edna responded, holding her hand out to shake his. “This is my husband, Arthur Calkins. I’m Edna.”

  Mayor Friega bent to get a good look at Arthur. “You are a fine strong-looking man. You exercise, no?”

  “I jog a bit.”

  “Ah, well. Here in July it is too hot to jog. You get sunstroke.”

  “Which way to Mama Lopez?” Edna asked a bit impatiently.

  “Ah! Straight down the street to that gasoline station, then turn right. It is the fifth house.”

  “Which side of the street?”

  He smiled apologetically. “There are only houses on one side. We are not a large town.”

  And in truth it wasn’t. The gas station, when they passed it, had only one pump and there was no attendant in sight. The road was narrow and rutted and, as Mayor Friega had said, there were houses on one side only. The other side was mostly barren, though there was one round fenced-in structure that could have been a ballpark.

  “Fifth house,” Arthur said. “Here it is.”

  The house itself was quite nice, Edna was pleased to see. It was the best on the street, probably the best in the town—pink-painted stucco, with flowers growing in the front yard. She’d seen houses like it in Los Angeles, but had never imagined one halfway around the world in Spain. “Isn’t it lovely, Arthur?” she said.

  “Yeah, just like home.” He got the bags out of the trunk while Edna went up to the door.

  It opened before she could knock and a slim dark-haired woman greeted her. “Welcome to my house. I am Mama Lopez.”

  “Oh! I’m Edna Calkins. I guess you’re expecting us. That’s Arthur with the bags.”

  “Come right in. My home is your home, for the length of your stay.”

  Arthur had to admit grudgingly that their room was nice, with a lovely view of the mountains. After a delicious dinner served by Mama Lopez they learned a little about her and about the town. Her husband had died long ago, during the Civil War, when most of the young people left Latigo for good. She had stayed on because she was expecting a child, a girl who was now a woman of thirty-nine, and lived in Madrid.

  “The children nowadays,” Mama Lopez complained. “They live together without marriage, they have no children. They have no religion, even! It is not like the old days.”

  “Do you have a church here?” Edna asked, recalling that she had not seen one as they drove into town.

  Mama Lopez shook her head. “It was bombed during the war. Many people took it as a sign that God had given up on Latigo. That was when many left. But I stayed, and Mayor Friega, and some others.”

  “We met Senor Friega. How long has he been mayor?” Arthur asked.

  “Who knows? No one bothers with elections here any more. He serves as long as the people do not tire of him.”

  “It would seem a younger, more progressive mayor might breathe some new life into the town. You attracted us. You could bring in many more tourists if you had facilities for them.”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I am an old woman, Senor. You tell the mayor this. Do not tell Mama Lopez.”

  Later that night, as he and Edna lay in bed, Arthur wondered about this odd woman who was their hostess. “Do you think she dyes her hair?” he asked.

  “What for, out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “She must be about sixty if she has a thirty-nine-year-old daughter. I can’t believe her hair hasn’t started turning grey.”

  Edna turned over in bed. “People lead a simpler life here, Arthur.”

  “I guess so,” he agreed.

  The following morning Mayor Friega himself arrived to show them around the town. Their first stop was across the streets, at the circular structure Edna had taken for a ball field.

  “What is it?” she asked as they strolled out into the open space surrounded by a low grandstand.

  “A bullring?” Arthur ventured.

  Mayor Friega nodded sadly. “Once, long ago, there were bullfights here on Sunday afternoons, as there are throughout Spain. But then the people left and the matadors stopped coming. No one will perform for a town of fifty-eight people.”

  “Fifty-eight? That’s your population?”

  The mayor nodded. “It was sixty until last month, when the Rozeris brothers were arrested in Saragossa. Now they’re away for a year.”

  “What did they do?” Edna asked.

  “A drunken brawl. Someone was knifed. They’re good boys though. T
hey should be back in a year.”

  He drove them down the town’s meager streets, pointing out the place where the church had once stood, the site where a railroad station was to have been built, the corner where the twice-weekly bus stopped. After a time Arthur asked, “Aren’t there any side trips we can take away from here?”

  “Certainly, Senor. There is a fiesta next week in a neighboring town. And we have one here ourselves on the last weekend of your stay.”

  “A fiesta for fifty-eight people?”

  The mayor shrugged. “A small remembrance of the old days.”

  He introduced them to virtually every resident of Latigo that day, including Doctor Manuela, the physician, and a deeply tanned young woman named Rita who worked at the local store.

  “Funny,” Edna remarked to Arthur later, “she doesn’t look Spanish.”

  “Who, dear?”

  “That woman Rita at the general store.”

  “I don’t know how you could tell behind that tan.”

  “She almost looks American.”

  Arthur shrugged. “Maybe she is, though she didn’t say more than a couple of words.”

  They journeyed to a neighboring town the next day, and welcomed the brief change of scene. The countryside seemed greener and lusher away from Latigo. Edna would never admit it to Arthur but she was beginning to regret their decision to spend three weeks in this out-of-the-way corner of the world.

  “This is such a religious country,” Arthur remarked. “Isn’t it odd there’s no priest in Latigo?”

  Edna found herself defending the town once more, against her better judgment. “You heard what happened to the church. A priest wouldn’t live here without a church. They go to Mass in the next town on Sundays. I asked Mama Lopez.”

  “Yeah, I suppose it’s like the bullfights. You can’t build a church for just fifty-eight people.”

  In the days that followed, they spent most of their time just relaxing. That was what they’d come for, after all. Mama Lopez encouraged Arthur to putter around in her garden, and Edna busied herself with a thick new novel she’d brought from home. One day during the second week when they’d had all the relaxing they could stand, they took the long drive into Madrid for a few hours.

  It was toward the end of that second week, when Edna had offered to do the shopping for Mama Lopez, that she struck up a conversation with the woman named Rita. After a few comments about the weather, which never changed, Edna said, “You know, you talk a bit like an American.”

  The woman smiled. “I am an American. I thought you knew. Rita Quinn, from St. Paul. Don’t let the suntan fool you. It’s hard to live in Latigo without getting one.”

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “Living. Relaxing. I came here two years ago for a vacation with my husband. He was killed in an accident, and I just decided to stay.”

  “Don’t you have any family back home?”

  “No children. And no one I really care about. Latigo isn’t such a bad place to spend your life.”

  “I’m finding it a bit boring after the first couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, there are things to do. They’re wonderful people, really. Mayor Friega treats me like his own daughter.”

  Dr. Manuela came in then and picked up a loaf of bread. “Good day, Mrs. Calkins. Are you enjoying your vacation?”

  “Yes, very much. The weather is so perfect.”

  “It never changes,” he said. “Not at this time of year.” He paid Rita for the bread. “I hope your husband is well?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “I only ask because you are alone. Sometimes visitors are affected by the water.”

  “There’s been no problem so far.”

  “Good! If one should develop, just call me. I’ll have him back on his feet in no time.”

  It was odd, Edna thought, walking back to Mama Lopez’s house. Odd that the doctor expected some illness to befall Arthur and not her. Perhaps she just looked healthier—though even the mayor had commented on her husband’s good physical condition the day they arrived.

  That evening they sat outside drinking beer and looking at the stars, and Edna felt at peace with herself for the first time in days. Perhaps Rita was right. Perhaps one could come to love this place after a while.

  Mama Lopez had told Arthur she would make him a suit of clothes as a farewell gift, which was certainly an unexpected kindness. He’d grumbled about it privately, expecting an ill-fitting white suit like the mayor’s, but he allowed himself to be measured for it. Edna watched it all and decided that even Arthur was beginning to like the people of Latigo.

  When she saw Mayor Friega driving by the following afternoon she waved to him. He pulled over to the side of the road and called out, “You’re remembering our fiesta this weekend? It is the high point of the year in Latigo.”

  “I’m remembering. It’s hard to believe we’ll be going back home next week. Once I adjusted to the tempo of life here, the days just flew by.”

  He nodded understandingly. “There is always some adjustment necessary, wherever one lives.”

  On Saturday morning Edna awoke to find the town’s main street festooned with gaily colored streamers. People were out and about earlier than usual, and the few shops that were usually open on Saturday had closed. “Isn’t it nice the fiesta is on our last weekend?” she remarked to Arthur.

  He was doing push-ups on the bedroom floor. “I suppose so. It almost seems as if they planned it for us.”

  “We’ve had all this for practically nothing!”

  “I wouldn’t call the airfare nothing.”

  “No, but I mean the rest of it. You’ve got to admit there’s no place on earth we could have stayed for three weeks as cheaply as this. And you’re getting a suit besides!”

  “We haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Grumble, grumble! That’s all you do any more. Remember how it was when we were first married?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. “I guess I can make it through a few more days.”

  “Admit it’s not as bad as you expected. Go on, admit it.”

  He smiled for the first time in days. “All right. Anything to keep you happy.”

  She glanced out the window. “There’s Rita Quinn. We really should spend some time with her this last weekend.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, simply because she’s a fellow American. I told you she lost her husband over here in an accident.”

  “What sort of accident?”

  “She didn’t say. An auto accident, I suppose.”

  “I’ll admit she’s pretty cute.”

  “Arthur!”

  “Well, I can look, can’t I?”

  They spent all that day at the fiesta, eating and drinking and even dancing a bit. Every one of the town’s residents had turned out for it, except Mama Lopez, who told them she had just a little more work to finish on Arthur’s suit.

  It was early evening, on their way back home, when Arthur first complained of stomach pains. Edna remembered Dr. Manuela’s warning. “The water can be bad here,” she said.

  “We’ve both been drinking it for two weeks.”

  “But all the dancing and everything—”

  “Damn! It’s awful!”

  As soon as they reached Mama Lopez’s house Edna called Dr. Manuela on the town’s primitive telephone system. He came at once, carrying his familiar black bag. “I was lucky to catch you at home,” she said. “I thought you’d be at the fiesta with everyone else.”

  He shook some pills into his hand. “There are always sick calls on fiesta night. Here, these will fix him up, but he needs a good solid night’s sleep. Mama Lopez—do you have a spare room where he could sleep?”

  “Certainly!”

  “But … is it that serious, Doctor?” Edna asked anxiously.

  “It’s not serious at all,” he assured her. “But we take no chances.”

  Arthur was put to bed in a room down the hall
, and he was asleep before Edna left him. She didn’t much like it, but Dr. Manuela seemed to know what he was doing.

  As Edna pulled the shade in her own room before retiring, she glanced out to see a large black van passing the house slowly. It was closed, with no markings, and she wondered where it had come from. She had never seen such a van in Latigo before. Someone from the next town, she supposed, who’d driven over for the fiesta.

  It was strange sleeping alone, but she dropped off quickly. When she awakened she was startled at having slept so soundly. Her watch showed it was after nine.

  When she came out of the bathroom she saw that Arthur’s room was empty. Mama Lopez was just going in to make the bed. “Your husband was up earlier,” she explained. “He is feeling better, but he went to Dr. Manuela for some further medication.”

  “I see,” Edna said, but it puzzled her.

  Before she had a chance to think about it, Mayor Friega arrived. In honor of the fiesta he was wearing a white suit that fit him somewhat better and he’d even managed to button it across his stomach. “I come to join you for breakfast,” he announced, “and then I will personally escort you to the afternoon’s festivities.”

  “I’m sure Arthur will be back by then.”

  “I have just seen him at Manuela’s. He is resting there and says he will join us later.”

  “I should go to him.”

  “No, no. He is fine.”

  Edna peered out the front window and saw the black van parked in the lot across the street. Two young men stood nearby, as if guarding it.

  She went in and sat down to breakfast with Mama Lopez and the mayor.

  It was shortly after noon when she walked across the street between the two of them and joined the others in the grandstand. “Why have we come here?” she asked Mama Lopez.

  “For the final event of the fiesta weekend.”

  Suddenly Rita Quinn, the American, was at her side. It was as if they were her bodyguards, protecting her. She stared down at the ring in the center of the low grandstands and was surprised to see Dr. Manuela stride out to the middle of the ring and speak rapidly in Spanish, as if introducing someone.

  Then she saw Arthur.