When the Sun Goes Down

by Gwynne Forster

  “Right now she’s on a case at Maryland General. I’ll call her and see what she says.”

  “My patient is going home tomorrow,” Frieda told Mirna. “Poor man is lucky to be alive, but he gon’ be fine now. I took good care of him.”

  Two days later, Frieda Davis walked into Gunther Farrell’s house, a move that would change her life and the life of everyone around her.

  The first things he noticed about Frieda Davis were her good looks, her elegant stature, and her air of professionalism. “What strain do you have, Mr. Farrell? Treatment varies according to the type you got.”

  “Viral.”

  “Then I guess the doctor told you that patience will be your best medicine. Would you please give me your doctor’s name and phone number?” He gave them to her. “We have to work out a routine that you’ll be comfortable with.”

  Gunther didn’t like being confined to the house, not to speak of his bed, but Frieda made it as pleasant as possible, making a joke of his usually elevated temperature and of her various daily ministrations.

  “What man you know has a gorgeous woman washing his face and making his bed when all he has to do is smile and turn over, huh?”

  “The trouble with you is that you’re never serious. I want to get out of this bed.”

  “When I talk with the doctor tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him you’re beginning to get on your own nerves. Okay?”

  He couldn’t help laughing. “If you don’t let me out of this bed, I’ll get on your nerves.”

  “I’ll ask the doctor if you can read your e-mail for half an hour tomorrow morning, but if I notice you worrying or looking stressed, we won’t do that again. And don’t think you can hide it from me. Where’s your laptop?”

  He told her.

  Standing by Gunther’s bed, Frieda phoned his doctor. “That’s the gist of it, Doctor,” she said after relating Gunther’s condition and attitude. “What do you think?” She made notes while she listened. “All right. One half hour. Thank you, Doctor.”

  “The doctor said you could read your e-mail for a half hour, but he wants you to rest. He suggested that if you’re bored, you might play some simple computer games.”

  She left the room and returned with a BedLounge. “Mirna bought this for you yesterday. You can sit up, but we’ll use this.”

  He looked at it. “Let’s see how it works. Mirna would make somebody a great mom. I get the benefit of her mothering instinct.” He said it jokingly, because he didn’t especially like being mothered. He got up, nearly fell due to his weakened condition, and dropped himself on the bed. He managed to sit in the chairlike BedLounge, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “I guess he likes it,” Frieda told Mirna later. “The minute he got into it, he closed his eyes and went fast asleep. I tell you what. You off on Thursday afternoons. I don’t need to be off, but I’ll get a psychological lift if I can be away for four or five hours on Wednesday afternoons. You wear a mask when you’re with him and wash your hands with Purell. Viral pneumonia is dangerous.”

  “Not to worry,” Mirna said. “I’ll look after him. He a good man.”

  “You telling me. Some woman must be crazy letting that man run loose.”

  “Yeah. If I had ten fewer years on me, I’d go for him in a second.”

  “Oh, come on,” Frieda said. “That man is thirty-four years old, and you kicking fifty.”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t stupid, and a smart fortysomething woman could lead that horse to water and get him to drink.”

  Laughter poured out of Frieda. “Honey, your screws coming loose. That is funny, but I don’t think anybody could make that man dance to their tune. That guy’s a born choreographer.”

  “Thank God, that ain’t crossed my mind. I love my job. The pay is good and the work is light. When I look at Gunther Farrell, I don’t see man. I see boss,” Mirna said.

  Frieda rolled her big, sparkling eyes. “You and me, too. Good jobs are hard to get, but you can find a dozen penises in every block, and half of them ain’t no good.”

  “You telling me,” Mirna said. “And when they good, what they hanging on ain’t worth spit. Been there and done that, and I’m a lot happier cooking and cleaning.”

  “I hope the doctor will let him sit up longer each day,” Frieda said. “He needs to be getting some energy. The man can hardly stand up. But I exercise his arms and legs twice every day.”

  “What kind of medicine is he getting?”

  “Some vitamins. There isn’t a special medicine; his type of pneumonia doesn’t respond to antibiotics. The treatment is bed rest and fluids. But he’s improving. It’s just slow. His temperature doesn’t rise above one hundred now, and that’s a blessing. I put cold, damp towels on his face and neck. He don’t want me to bathe him, but I put a plastic sheet under him, do most of it, and let him do the rest. We get along fine.”

  Frieda had been with Gunther three weeks when Edgar paid Gunther a visit. “Who’re you?” he asked Frieda.

  “I could ask you the same,” she shot back. “You resemble Mr. Farrell, but only in looks, ’cause you sure don’t have his good manners and upbringing.”

  “Hmm. So the lady’s got a mouth.” He started up the stairs.

  “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you—that is, unless you want to expose yourself to viral pneumonia.”

  He walked back down the stairs. “You mean he’s sick? Little brother is finally flat on his back? Well.” He lifted an African soapstone carving from a corner table. “This is mine, so I’m taking it.”

  Frieda walked past him so that she was between him and the foyer. “Over my dead body, pal. And don’t try any rough stuff, because I can throw a man twice your size, which ain’t much.” She called Mirna. “This man wants to make off with this sculpture, but if he tries to get past me, I’ll have him flat on his back.”

  Mirna walked over to Edgar and put her hands on her hips. “Put that back. Now I know why Mr. G told me not to ever let you in this apartment when I was here by myself. You a thief, and I’ll call the cops and let ’em deposit your behind in the clinker. Shame on you.”

  “It’s mine, but since I can’t handle two Amazons, I’ll get it from brother dear.”

  “Could you really have taken him down?” Mirna asked Frieda after Edgar left.

  “Don’t make jokes. What you think I am? It didn’t hurt to have him believe it, though, did it?”

  They looked up and saw Gunther on the stairs. “Where did Edgar go, and what did he want?” Mirna recapped the scene for him. “I see. I hate to say it, Frieda, but he isn’t a nice person, and he could be dangerous if he was desperate for money. Be careful.” They watched while he plodded back up the steps and headed to his room.

  Gunther took a seat in the overstuffed chair that Frieda had moved to his room. His luck in getting her to see him through his illness was as remarkable as his success in hiring Mirna for his housekeeper. His cell phone rang, and when he saw Edgar’s number in the caller ID screen, he answered.

  “Hello, Edgar. What’s up?”

  “Man, I didn’t know you’d been sick. Who was that doll who claims she’s strong as an Amazon?”

  “You mean Ms. Davis threatened you? That’s a good laugh. Did you think she was foolish enough to let you walk off with my Shona sculpture? I’ve told them about you now, so don’t try it again. Any news about the will?”

  “Naah. Carson said he searched Father’s little cubicle at the library but didn’t find anything. The man’s looked everywhere. I don’t know why Father would do such a mean thing. I’ll be over tomorrow morning to see how you are. See you.” Before he could respond, he heard the click of the receiver.

  After a twenty-minute visit with Gunther the next morning, Edgar sauntered down the stairs and stopped in front of Frieda. “You must be something hot. Your boss is nuts about you.”

  Frieda narrowed her left eye. She didn’t believe ninety-nine percent of what any man said to her. Glen Treadwell gave her
a lesson for all time, and he was truly a master. “Stuff it, pal,” she said. “Men are born liars.”

  “You’re making a mistake. He spent the entire time telling me about your virtues. I got tired of hearing it. You know men fall for their nurses.”

  “And I know men are liars, too.”

  Edgar left and Frieda went up to Gunther’s room to exercise his legs. She prided herself in the fact that no patient in her care had developed atrophy or bedsores. She massaged his back, applied lotion all over his body, shaved him—though he swore he could do it—and trimmed his hair.

  “You must be the reason why nurses are called angels,” he said when she handed him his laptop and told him he could use it for two hours.

  “We’re as human as other people, Mr. Farrell. Some of us care about our patients and take pride in our work. The doctor said you may come downstairs for your meals, and if you have no temperature today or tomorrow, you may begin taking showers. But if you jump back into the rat race, you may get a setback. So please be careful.”

  “Thanks, Frieda. Would you believe that in the last three days, working one hour a day, I developed a computer game that’s really good? It came together in no time, and it’s going to be a big hit. I’m going to market this one to a big company. If it works, I’ll be fixed for a long time.” He leaned forward as excitement flashed through him. “It’s about three devilish little boys and a wonderful nurse who gets them out of scrape after scrape. In a sense, you were my inspiration.”

  “Well, sir, if I h-helped in any w-way,” she sputtered, “I’m gr-grateful.”

  “You certainly have, and I’m the one who’s grateful,” Gunther said.

  Later that day, Frieda sat in her room thinking first of Edgar’s having said Gunther was nuts about her, then musing over Gunther’s remarks that she was the inspiration for the game he created. “I don’t want to be a fool led by a fool,” she said aloud, “but what if Edgar was telling the truth?” In the future, she’d pay careful attention. Hmm. Did Gunther have a girlfriend?

  “You know, it’s strange that no women have called or come to see Mr. Farrell since he’s been sick, none but his sister, I mean,” Frieda said to Mirna during their afternoon tea and chat time. “That man is definitely not gay.”

  “Quit fishing, Frieda. If he was gay, he wouldn’t tell me,” Mirna said. “There was a woman who called here occasionally when I first came. Sometimes he’d take her call, but most of the time he wouldn’t. I figured he was breaking up with her. But like I said, I likes my job, so I minds my own business. And people who do that usually don’t create problems for theyselves.”

  Wasn’t it strange that Mirna would give her that lecture? Frieda mused as she prepared to give Gunther his four-o’clock regime of medicine and vitamins. She’d been through a lot and suffered a lot to get where she was, and she’d done it without help from anybody. Shortly after turning seventeen, she’d run from her adoptive parents’ home to avoid more of her adoptive father’s sexual depravity. She’d gotten a bus from the little hamlet of Bixby, North Carolina, to Baltimore, Maryland. Working at night and trying to finish high school in a strange, big city had been difficult, but she’d made it, and she was more proud of that than of getting her LPN.

  She hadn’t been a saint, and she’d done things that she later regretted. Because she blamed her birth mother for her adoptive father’s brutality, she hunted the woman like a posse after cattle thieves until she’d finally identified her; then she found her and did what she could to destroy her birth mother’s marriage. In the meantime, she’d seduced Glen Treadwell, the woman’s beloved stepson, and done it for meanness. But in the end, she’d paid bitterly, because she fell hard for the man and there was no future in it for either of them.

  Frieda reasoned that a good-looking man like Gunther Farrell could have his pick of women. So why weren’t there any around him? He wasn’t gay, because he’d had an erection the first time she massaged his back. He had tried to hide it, but she saw it. She hadn’t paid much attention to it, because it had happened with any number of her male patients. But if he was interested in her, as Edgar said, her life could change for the better.

  “I promised the good Lord that if I could get over Glen, I wouldn’t do anything else underhanded,” she reminded herself aloud when she returned to her room. “So I’m gon’ encourage Mr. Farrell if I get the chance, but I’m not gon’ try that sexy stuff. It could backfire, and this is a real good job.”

  While Frieda considered the possibility of making a change in Gunther’s life, Carson was beginning to realize that he wanted more from Shirley than he’d let himself believe. He walked out of the researchers’ cubicle section in Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, shaking his head. Leon Farrell had been comparing certain properties of wood and aluminum, obviously in the interest of his work on robots, but nothing personal of the man remained in his little cubicle. What next? He stopped at a nearby coffee shop, ordered a cup of coffee, and tried to think. Not in his personal quarters at home, the man’s safe-deposit boxes, his workplace, or the garage. So where else could he look? He didn’t remember ever being despondent, not even when his wife had let him down, but he was bordering on it. If something didn’t go right soon, he’d start banging his head against a wall.

  He took out his cell phone and called Shirley. “Hi. This is Carson. Where are you, and when are you getting back in the States?” He knew he’d surprised her. “Friday morning? What’s your address?” She told him. “Do you mind if I visit you Friday afternoon?”

  She said she didn’t mind at all. So he hung up and called his travel agent. He didn’t fool himself with the idea that he wanted to see Shirley for information about the will. He’d called her because he needed her, and he was not in the habit of lying to himself. A feeling of contentment pervaded him. For the coming weekend, at least, he wouldn’t have that sense of aloneness, feeling as if he were a dry leaf at the mercy of the wind, as if nobody cared. It was his fault, he knew, because he didn’t take the time to cement friendships. Work and his ambitions for his agency came first. But he paid for it. Oh, how he paid!

  In the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, he strode past the luggage carousel without looking in its direction and headed for the taxi stand. “Carson!” He heard it a second time, realized that someone could be calling him, and stopped. A soft hand on his arm got his attention, and he whirled around.

  “Wh—Shirley!” he said, certain that he gaped at her. “It didn’t occur to me that you’d meet me. What a nice welcome!”

  She slipped her hand into his and matched his stride. “We’re going to the garage. It’s this way. Did you have a comfortable flight?”

  “I guess so. I slept most of the way. I awoke when the plane touched the ground.”

  “Then you didn’t eat lunch?”

  “No, but if you miss an airline meal, you aren’t out of anything.”

  He didn’t think he’d ever been a passenger in a car driven by a woman, unless the driver was a cabbie, and it interested him that she sat in the vehicle with the kind of authority that he admired. “I think you like to drive,” he said as she sped along South Federal Avenue.

  “I like the freedom I feel when I drive in light traffic. That’s when I have to be careful not to speed. How long will you stay?” She switched from impersonal to personal so quickly that he was momentarily speechless.

  “I’d like to stay until Sunday afternoon, unless you have other plans. I reserved a room at The Ritz-Carlton for two nights. I don’t think it’s too far from you. Am I right?”

  “It isn’t too far.” She parked in front of what looked like an upscale town house. “Here we are.”

  “How nice!” He saw the FOR SALE sign. “Are you buying or selling?”

  “Selling. If I don’t get back to Ellicott City soon, Edgar and Gunther will kill each other.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She nodded as she fished in her handbag for the door keys. “
Edgar has always been jealous of Gunther, though I don’t know why, and now he’s angry because Gunther won’t lend him any more money. If we loaned—actually, gave is a better word—Edgar money every time he asked for it, Gunther and I would be broke.”

  “I don’t suppose you know what he does with it. He doesn’t appear to be on drugs.”

  “I don’t think so, either. I think he gambles. He’s always wanted something for nothing, into all kinds of deals.”

  “He may have gambling debts, and that can be dangerous.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  They entered the house, and he liked it. “This place is lovely. It expresses you perfectly, from the high ceilings and huge picture windows to the tasteful furniture and lovely warm colors.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” she said. “I hate to leave it. Why don’t I give you something to eat. Then we’ll check you into your hotel and go for a swim. Would you like that, or do you have other plans?”

  She looked at him so hopefully, seemingly open to his own ideas, and he realized that she wanted to please him, but she wasn’t sure of him or of his motive for visiting her.

  “I’ll take the food. Mind if I remove this jacket? It’s linen, but even skin is hot down here.”

  Her laughter removed the tension. “Of course you can take it off. Want to come with me to the kitchen, or would you rather look around?”

  He followed her to the kitchen and admired the granite countertops, stainless-steel refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, freezer, and sink, and the walls of yellow brick. “You’ve got great taste, Shirley. Say, don’t move that to the dining room. Why can’t I eat right here?”

  She gave him a crabmeat salad, deviled eggs, sliced tomatoes, homemade cheese biscuits, and lemonade. “Aren’t you joining me?”

  “Maybe I’ll eat a biscuit. I love biscuits.” She sat at the table across from him.

  “I can see why. These biscuits are fabulous. Who made them?”