Gecko (21 page)

He stared at her with clenched fists. It was true, he needed someone. Not her though, not a child, and not a girl. He had friends he could call. He looked up at the phone.

“
Don’t even think about it,” she said.

He remained silent, caught in her deep brown eyes.

“
You’re thinking you can call someone. Well, you’re wrong. The police have already talked to everyone you know. Probably the press, too. I can see your friends on CNN, ‘He was such a quiet man. Friendly, always said hello. He’s the last man in the world you would think would ever do such a thing. It must be because of the war. Come to think of it he always was a little strange. His wife leaving him like that must have pushed him over.’ You call someone like that, they’ll go for the fame and the glory. They’ll turn you in. We’re all you have, me and my dad.” It was her turn to look up at the phone.

She was right and he knew it and even if she wasn’t, he didn’t want to involve his friends. They had families, kids. The last thing they needed was a call from him. “Okay,” he said, “call your father.”

She scooted next to him, pulled the phone off the counter, started pushing the buttons.

“
You remember the number?”

“
Yeah, I’m good with phone numbers. Tell me once and I have it for life. Go figure. It’s ringing.”

She asked for her father’s room and frowned. After a few seconds she hung up.

“
They said he left during the night without giving them notice, but since he paid by credit card, it was okay. Now what?” She didn’t seem as confident as she’d been only a few seconds ago.

“
Get a laundry bag and stuff a few day’s supply of clothes into it,” he said. “Then we’ll see.”

He watched as she made her way through the clothes. It took her almost an hour and she went through every article of clothing, both the dry cleaning and the laundry, before she found two pair of Calvin Klein Jeans, two blouses, two men’s tee shirts, white, size small. She refused to use somebody else’s underwear. “I’ll buy some when I get some shoes,” she said, and he thought about that pair of shoes in the bathroom. He bent over and rubbed his feet, he never wanted to put them on again.

“
Okay, again I ask, now what?” She tossed her bag next to his and returned to her position next to him, behind the counter.

“
I need shoes too,” he said.

“
And we need food. And a car would be nice.”

“
Yeah, breakfast would be good, but there’s nothing we can do about food till tonight.”

“
You mean we’re going to wait here all day? In the cleaners?” she said.

“
It’s 10:00 and it feels like a sauna in here,” he said, starting to sweat. “It’ll probably reach into the nineties today. Our feet would burn up on the pavement, and even if we had shoes, we still couldn’t leave before dark, because we’d get picked up before we got out of town. We can’t leave till tonight.”

“
Then what?”

“
I don’t know. I haven’t planned farther than going out the back door after dark.”

“
Great.”

“
That voice in your head, is it still there?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“
Donna, are you there?” His thought went unanswered. “Are you there?” he asked again and again there was no answer.

“
No, she seems to be gone.”

“
Oh.”

“
I was starting to get used to her.” He leaned against the counter. “I think I’m going to miss her.”

“
That’s natural. Now you have to deal with your problems yourself.” She was wringing her hands in her tee shirt.

“
You don’t believe me?” He looked at her and laughed. “You think I’m hearing voices?” He bored into her eyes, looking for a sign and finding none. “Well, I can’t blame you. If I were you, I wouldn’t believe me either. Anyway it’s a moot point, she’s gone.” The sound of his knees creaking filled the silent room as he got up.

“
I’m going to the bathroom.” He went into the small bathroom, urinated, flushed, looked in the mirror, splashed water on his face. His reflection told him he needed a shave. He hated the way his beard was starting to come in gray. Turning away from his own bloodshot eyes, he left the bathroom.

“
I’m going to check the office and see if there is anything we can use. Should have done it earlier.”

He went into the office adjacent to the bathroom. There was a small wooden desk, scratched and covered with papers, an electronic calculator, a matching chair and nothing else. He sat at the desk. The papers were last week’s receipts, apparently the proprietor used the shoe box method of accounting, gather all the receipts, make a pile, throw them in a shoebox and figure it out later. The top two desk drawers filled the shoe box function.

He found a personal phone book in the bottom drawer. It appeared to list the names, addresses and phone numbers of the cleaner’s patrons. He also found blank paper, pencils and extra rolls of paper tape for the calculator. And in the back, behind the calculator tape, a forty-five automatic.

“
Are you a welcome sight,” he said. Then he remembered the guns in the trunk of the rented Ford. If the police find those they’ll get real excited, he thought. They’ll call in reinforcements and tear this town apart looking for me. They’ll do that anyway, once they connect the rental car to Edna.

He picked up the gun, checked the clip and found it full. Eight in the clip, one in the chamber, the safety off. A loaded cannon, ready for action, tucked away in the back of a drawer. A gun out of reach didn’t need the safety off. If you’re going to take the chance of killing yourself with a weapon ready to fire, he thought, it should at least be accessible in an emergency. People didn’t make sense.

He put the gun back. No point in telling Glenna about it. He would get it later. He pushed himself away from the desk, picked up the phone book, leafed through it a second time, then dropped it on the desk amid the pile of receipts and left the office.

“
Find anything?” she asked.

“
Just a phone book with his customer’s names.”

“
Nothing else?”

“
No.” He sat down next to her. “I’m going to try and sleep before it gets too hot.” It was a long time since he had to force himself to sleep in adverse conditions, but he still knew how. He closed his eyes and took himself back to the bad days of the POW camp. He drifted off to sleep before he had time to set up the Monopoly board, leaving Glenna alone, meditating in front of an imaginary candle.

He woke in a hot sweat at noon. Glenna was asleep on a pile of clothes. It was good that she was able to sleep, he thought, because they would probably be up all night. He closed his eyes, sleep took a little longer, he almost made it to Park Place, he didn’t get to pass Go.

He opened his eyes again at 2:30.

“
I’m glad you’re awake.” She was in a half lotus now, but as he stirred, she straightened her right leg in front of herself and touched her head to her knee and held the position for over a minute. She repeated the exercise with her left leg, then went back into the half lotus. “I can handle being by myself. I’ve had practice, but I prefer people. Maybe I just haven’t had the life experience to spend prolonged periods in meditation. I can do it, but I don’t enjoy it as much as conversation.”

They talked, getting to know each other for the next six hours.

She told him about her old boyfriends, not too many, her girlfriends, some now married with children. How she had been a cheerleader in high school her junior and senior years. What it was like to be homecoming queen. How devastated she was when she brought home that one B in third semester Spanish, shattering her 4.0 grade point average. The difficulties of being both class president in her senior year and head cheerleader.

He told her about the war, the POW camp, the VA hospital, the Marine Corps. What it was like to get the medal of honor. What it was like to make his first million. How he loved real estate with a passion. It was a way of making a lot of money without hurting anyone. When he bought a property, he made the seller and his family happy and when he sold something, he made the buyer and his family happy. Until two months ago he had the perfect life. Then his wife met Kohler.

She confessed that her high school career hadn’t been all that stellar. She’d never gotten over being the homecoming queen who hadn’t gone to the prom. No one asked her. She was stiff on a date. She knew that. She didn’t like petting in the back seat. She didn’t like being pawed. She was working on it. She was getting better. She was going to be okay.

He told her about Roma and how he fell in love with her and how she moved to Miami. How he was heartbroken and married Julia. He thought he was in love with her, but now he had to admit, maybe he married her on the rebound.

“
I have an idea,” she said. It was 8:30. The sun had been down for about an hour and a half. “Why don’t we get the cleaner’s phone book and call the customers. If someone answers we hang up. If we don’t get an answer, we know they’re not home.” She had a satisfied smile on her face.

“
I’ll get the book.” He pushed himself off the floor, picked up his laundry bag and headed for the office. “I’m going to change out of these shorts, while I’m at it.” Once in the office he closed the door, took off the shorts and put on a pair of the faded Levi’s. Then he opened the bottom drawer, took out the gun, dropped it in his bag. He picked up the phone book as she opened the door.

“
Did you get the gun?” she asked.

“
How did you know?”

“
I checked the office while you were asleep.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me?”

“
I wanted to see how you would handle it. You didn’t want me to know about the gun? I like that. You were trying to protect me from the harsh reality of the situation. Not very smart, but I like it. Please don’t do it again. We should trust each other.” She went to the desk. “Do you want to call or should I?”

“
You can do it,” he said.

She sat down and started pushing buttons, calling numbers in the book at random. It took ten calls before she was blessed with no answer.

“
Here we are,” she said. “Mary Mckinna. 13 Church Street. Great, look at this.” She showed him the phone book. Under the address were the words, Next to the Cemetery.

“
I was afraid that even if we found someone not at home, we wouldn’t be able to find the house. Guess I worried in vain. We should have no trouble finding a cemetery in a town this size.”

“
No,” she echoed, “no trouble at all.”

“
Let’s go,” he said.

“
I’ll get my gear.” She went back to their place behind the counter, picked up her laundry bag. “You know,” she said, “I’m going to miss this place. I feel like I’ve entered a new stage in my life.” Then she walked to the back door, opened it and they stepped out into the hot night.

Five minutes later they found it.

“
The Rio Dulce Cemetery,” he read off the sign.

“
Think there was a river here?” she whispered.

“
Must have been.”

“
Where’s the house?”

“
You don’t have to whisper, nobody can hear us.”

“
What about them?” She pointed into the cemetery.

Chapter Thirteen

“
It has to be that white house over there.” Jim pointed through the cemetery.

“
Let’s go.” Glenna started walking down the street.

“
Where are you going?”

“
Around. Church Street must dead end into the cemetery. We’ll go around the block.”

“
Car coming.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her into the graveyard. They huddled behind a hedge while the car passed.

“
It’s the police,” she whispered. The black and white cruiser rolled on by without stopping. “I didn’t tell you something,” she said, lying next to him. They were sandwiched between the hedge, shielding themselves from the street and a row of tombstones.

“
What?”

“
I felt something crawl across my foot last night. Just before I went to sleep.”

“
So?”

“
It might have been a gecko.”

“
You think?”

“
Could have been, have you seen any?”

“
Yes, in my room at the motel and at the mini market on the other side of the Interstate.”

“
Well, I’ve been seeing them, too. I shook one off my foot just before you-know-what came creeping out from under my father’s car. You think there’s a connection?”

“
I hope not, but maybe.”

“
There are no geckos in California. They live in the tropics,” she said.

“
I know that.”

“
Just making conversation.” She desperately wanted to believe there was no connection. She was sorry she brought it up. Sorry she even thought about it. This wasn’t the place to think about slimy things with big teeth that creep in the night.

“
We’ll cut across the cemetery. It’s safer than the street,” he said.

He took her by the hand, led her through the sea of tombstones, toward the white house. She felt the strength in his hand as she shivered. The clouds let through enough light to cast opaque shadows from the gravestones.