Home Fires (39 page)

She sipped the soda until the door closed behind him, then held the glass up to the light, which hurt almost as much as nodding. There was no color, but he might have put vodka in it, or gin.

Hoping for vodka, she finished it and carried it out to the kitchen. There would be more soda somewhere, and vodka, too.

Dishes in the cabinet and dirty dishes in the sink. Ice in the little refrigerator, but no vodka and no soda. Come on! It’s just a fucking two-room apartment.

There was vodka in the other room, next to the tele—vodka, but no soda. She poured what was left in the bottle over the ice in her glass, and carried the bottle back to the kitchen; there she ran it through the disposer, where it crashed, clicked, and growled.

No soda. She sipped the neat vodka. It burned her throat, and she turned the tap. There was pressure for a change, but the water smelled like sewage.

She threw the whole mess down the drain.

Army water on Johanna had smelled like chlorine; but once she had found a little trickling creek there, and the water had been cold and clean and good, better than any bottled water.

The screen buzzed. Automatically, she blacked the camera and flicked on the picture. Buckhurst’s face appeared in the screen, big, black, and scowling. “Ms. Blue? Is this you?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going to turn the camera on. You got me out of bed.”

“Sorry, Ms. Blue. Mr. Tooley, he done gone, so I think you be up, too. Man here say he got a package for you. Say you don’t know him, only you know the man sent him. I say what his name, only he won’t tell. His name Smeedy. He show me his card. Got his name on it an’ say he a musician.”

“Did he say what was in the package?”

“No, ma’am. Say he don’t know.”

“Put him on, please.”

Buckhurst turned away, and a familiar face appeared on the screen. “I’d like to come up, Ms. Blue. All I have to do is hand you this.” The package that he presented for her inspection could easily have been a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. “I’m told it belongs to you.”

“I was up late last night,” she told him, “and I’m sure I must look like hell. It’s twenty-nine eighty-nine, and the door’ll be open. Come in and sit down. I’ll be in the bathroom splashing stinking water and combing my hair. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

Softly: “I can just leave your package and go, honey.”

“Don’t you dare!” Raising her voice, she added, “Let him in, Buckhurst. He’s okay.”

*   *   *

She had carried a bottle of cologne into the bathroom, and smelled like a flower garden when she came out. He was sitting in Tooley’s big vinyl-covered chair, with the package on his lap.

She smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”

“No thanks?” His eyes—the bright blue eyes she had inherited—twinkled. “I risked prison for you. I deserve a kiss.”

“You didn’t. But you’ll get one anyway.” She bent, and her lips brushed his.

“Since I’m no longer your father, I can ask you for a date.”

She straightened up. “You can, and I might go. Is it a good show?”

“How about a picnic?”

“You’re serious?”

“Entirely serious, honey.”

“I’d offer you a drink if it wasn’t so early. Would you like me to make coffee?”

He shook his head. “We need to talk to you, honey.”

“We?”

“I thought I’d bring my wife.”

She sat on the couch, one long leg drawn up. “You two think I’m getting fat.”

He shook his head again.

“Do you know about her? That’s not really Vanessa.”

“Depends on what you mean by really.”

“Well, I am getting fat. Fat and soft. See, I know all about it, so Mother doesn’t have to make those cream-cheese-and-watercress sandwiches.”

He said nothing.

“Fat and soft, and I’ve been drinking too much. I know that, too. What else is there?”

“Now it’s my turn to change the subject. Do you want to open this box? Check it over?”

“No, I don’t. How much is she costing you? How much a hundred-day, or how much a year? However you’re paying.”

He grinned, displaying teeth more regular than she remembered. “Your mother ought to have taught you that it’s impolite to ask how much things cost.”

She started to say,
I don’t consider her a thing
, when she realized she did. She substituted, “There are times when I’ve got to make exceptions. How much, and when will you get tired of paying?”

“She’s cost me quite a bit so far. Dresses and shoes and jewelry, none of them cheap.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

“Then nothing.” He was no longer grinning. “You’re asking about Reanimation?”

She nodded.

“Nothing. That file is closed, and Reanimation gets to stay in business. They were greatly relieved.”

“I don’t even know whose body it was. Skip knew, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“That was probably wise.”

“So you’re not going to tell me either?”

“At the picnic, perhaps. It will be up to my wife. What would you do if you knew the name?”

“Damned if I know. Find her family, I guess, and tell them what happened.”

“They think she’s dead, and they’re right. She was suicidal, honey. That’s why she did it, why she went to work for Reanimation. This is what she was hoping for.”

Chelle rose and went into the bathroom. When she came out, her eyes were dry once more and the lean, white-haired man who was no longer her father had gone.

*   *   *

She had gotten dressed slowly, thinking of breakfast. As a civilian, she had always hated going into restaurants alone. Now she was a civilian again. She could make her own breakfast—SoySunRise, milk, and coffee or tea—or go out.

Find a restaurant and go into it alone.

The street was filled with sunshine and clogged with patient trucks, hulking yellow buses, gliding bicycles, and hunchbacked cars. She flipped a mental coin and turned to her left, a slender, hard-faced blonde taller than most men. After two blocks of shops, she was about to stop someone and ask about a good place to eat when she saw the cheerful red-and-white sign: Carrera’s Café. The café was plainly open and serving, though not now (Chelle glanced at her watch) terribly busy. She went in and took a booth.

She had finished ordering by the time the lost woman came in. The lost woman looked at her and looked again; Chelle looked back and—after a second or two—waved. “Sit down.”

“I … Really, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not.” Chelle kept her voice low. “There’s nobody seating people, and you don’t want to sit alone. So you sit here with me. Solves both problems.”

The lost woman nodded gratefully. “My name’s Martha Ott.”

“Pleased to meet you, Martha,” Chelle said, and held out her hand.

The lost woman accepted it doubtfully, held it a moment, and released it.

“What would you like for breakfast? I’m having ham and pancakes.”

“Oh, I’ve already eaten breakfast.” The lost woman tittered. “That was hours ago! I just—just wanted a place…”

“Where you could sit down,” Chelle added helpfully.

“Y-yes. And have some tea.”

“And toast? I like toast myself, when I’m not having pancakes.”

“Oh! So do I, ever so much! Cinnamon toast.”

Chelle waved at a waitress. “Martha wants tea and cinnamon toast. Put it on my bill.”

“I don’t know about the cinnamon toast,” the waitress told her. “It’s not on the menu.”

Chelle leveled a finger at her. “Any jerk can make cinnamon toast—it takes about five seconds. You tell your fucking cook we want cinnamon toast, and we want it fast. Now get going!”

The lost woman tittered and the waitress scampered.

“You and me,” Chelle said, “are going to help each other out. You’re going to tell me your troubles, and I’m going to sympathize with you. Then I’m going to tell you mine, and you’re going to sympathize with me. By that time we ought to be through eating, and we’ll both feel a whole lot better.”

“Do you know,” the lost woman said, “you remind me of somebody I went to school with. That’s why I was looking at you.”

Chelle grinned. “She was shot up, too, I guess.”

“Shot up?”

“You ought to see my scars.”

“She—she wasn’t shot. She was captain of the fencing team. Just wonderful at sports, you know. I wasn’t, and I envied her, oh, terribly!”

“Maybe she envied you, too.”

The lost woman cocked her head thoughtfully. “I, well, I really don’t think she did.”

Chelle’s phone played. Telling the lost woman to wait a moment she answered it. “I’m in this place right now. Why don’t you join us when you can get away?”

She listened for half a minute, then said, “Carrera’s. Carrera’s Café. It seems to be pretty cheap and pretty good.”

She listened again. “Okay. Love you! Bye.”

As she shut her phone, the lost woman said, “Your contracto?”

“Not yet. Just a boyfriend. He’s been trying to find me a job, and he’s got something he wants to talk about.”

The lost woman looked stricken. “I suppose I ought to leave.”

“Hell, no. I want you to meet him. Besides it’ll be a while before he shows up, and I need somebody to talk to. What’s troubling you?”

“I—I’m lost, that’s the main thing.…”

“Where are you trying to get to?”

“I know where I am, it’s just that I don’t know what to do.”

While Chelle was nodding sympathetically and sipping her coffee, the waitress arrived with tea, ham, pancakes, and a cruet of syrup. “The cook won’t make you cinnamon toast,” the waitress told them. “He says it’s not on the menu, so he won’t cook it.”

Chelle rose. “I’ll talk to him.”

Another waitress, emerging with a tray from an arch at the back of the café, betrayed the location of the kitchen. A sweating fat man was flipping burgers there while a much smaller man with the furtive manner of the oppressed loaded a dishwasher.

Chelle approached the fat man. “What’s your name?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I was hoping we could be polite about this.” Chelle stepped nearer and her voice hardened. “That’s what I was hoping, but I can play it any way you want, buster. I can have you down on that floor yelling for mercy in less time than it takes a rat to shit.”

“Lady…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Chelle’s left hand gripped her blouse and tore it. “I’ll have you down there, and I’ll start screaming. I’ll say you tried to bite my tits, and by God I’ll have you locked up in an hour. I’ll sign every complaint the cops shove at me, understand? And I’ll cry my eyes out at your trial, and you’ll do ten fuckin’ years easy. Get the picture?”

The cook looked as if he were about to spit, threw his arms up in a gesture that sent his spatula flying, and fell at her feet.

“That was just a sample.” She bent over him, almost whispering. “Make us cinnamon toast, buster. Make it good, and make a lot of it, or I start yelling. Only I mess you up a whole lot more first.”

He groaned.

“Which is it? Cinnamon toast or jail?”

*   *   *

Grinning, Chelle returned to her booth.

“Goodness!” The lost woman’s eyes were wide. “What happened to you?”

“My shirt?” Chelle glanced down at the tear. “Oh, the cook did that. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think I’ve got a pin…” The lost woman snapped open her purse.

“It’s okay.” Chelle cut a piece of ham and forked it into her mouth. “Tell me about being lost.”

The lost woman did, and at some length, while finding a small safety pin and pinning Chelle’s blouse to her own satisfaction.

“Your kids don’t need you anymore and your contracto never did,” Chelle summed up for her as a heaped platter of cinnamon toast arrived. “You need to be needed. Maybe we all do. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I … Well, I just feel so helpless. And I feel like I ought to die.”

“Do you know about the soldiers in the hospitals?”

The lost woman shook her head.

“If the docs can patch you up in a hundred-day or so, they keep you up there, on whatever crazy planet it is. But the long-term cases get shipped back here. Some of them won’t be well for years. Some won’t ever be, not unless the doctors figure out something new.”

The lost woman’s nod was hesitant and small, but it was unmistakably a nod.

“You said you had two boys. What’re their names?”

“Jack and Jeff … That’s what we call them, I mean. Their real names are Jeffrey and—”

“Doesn’t matter. Jack’s older?”

The lost woman nodded, positively this time. “By two years. We spaced them like that.”

“Okay, let’s suppose Jack went into space. Say that he enlisted at twenty. Jeff was eighteen. Jack’s off fighting for a couple of years, his time. When he comes back, it’s been more than twenty. His folks are dead, and his kid brother’s pushing forty and lives in the EU. Get the picture? Jack’s in some hospital hooked to a bunch of machines, and nobody gives a damn. You’re your Jack’s mother. How about if you go to some of those hospitals and be my Jack’s mother? I’m not going to tell you you’ll get your reward in heaven or any of that shit, because I don’t know. But one day pretty soon you’ll get your reward from my Jack’s eyes.”