Little Children (28 page)

Richard had to fight off a persistent sense of unreality as he and Carla made small talk while looking over their menus. It hardly seemed possible that this was actually happening, that he was having lunch with the woman who had presided over his fantasy life for more than a year, a woman whose thong he’d been carrying around in his briefcase for most of the summer. And yet here she was, sitting right across from him, cursing softly to herself as she tried to wipe a salsa stain off her silk blouse with a damp napkin.

“I’m such a slob,” she said. “I should wear one of those yellow rain slickers when I eat in public.”

“I’m the same way,” said Richard. “I find these spots on my ties sometimes, I don’t have a goddam clue how they got there.”

She gave up and tossed the napkin on the table.

“My dry cleaner’s gonna yell at me. He’s this old Chinese guy, always giving me a hard time when I bring him something with a stain on it.
Why you do that? You not careful! Why you so messy?
He’s worse than my mother.”

Richard felt a foolish smile spreading across his face.

“What?” she said, a bit defensively. “I got something in my teeth?”

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you how weird this is for me. Like I’m out with the queen of England.”

“I’ve seen pictures of the queen. I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment.”

“You’re a lot prettier,” he assured her.

“I know, I know,” she said, as if she’d had this conversation a hundred times, “but she gives better head.”

Richard let out a guffaw that drew the attention of his fellow diners.

“You’re too much,” he told her.

Carla shrugged, her open hands held at shoulder level as if to say,
I can’t help myself
. But then her face turned serious, as if she’d suddenly remembered why they were here.

“So you have a business proposition for me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a proposition at this point,” he said. “I just want to brainstorm a little. About the mail-order panties.”

“Oh, wait,” she said. “Hold that thought. Before I forget.”

Carla lifted a bulky tote bag onto the table, dirty white canvas with a blue PBS logo on the side. The sight of it surprised him.

“You give money to public television?”

She shook her head, an expression of distaste flickering across her face.

“It’s a freebie. My ex-husband used to work at the station. I must have a dozen of these things.”

“Your first husband?”

“My only.”

“But the web site says you’re married.”

“It’s easier that way. Keeps some of the weirdos away.” Carla smiled sadly. “Dave tried to be supportive when I started the business, but it got to him after a while. He didn’t want to share me.”

Richard nodded thoughtfully.

“You’d have to be a pretty evolved human being,” he said.

Carla seemed pleased by this insight. She withdrew a pale yellow folder from her bag and passed it across the table.

“This is for you. A little memento.”

The folder was made of stiff, high-quality paper. On the front cover, a decent amateur calligrapher had printed the words,
Beachfest 2001: “Thanks” for the Memories.
Richard opened it to find a five-by-seven print of the team picture taken on Saturday afternoon, along with the inscription,
To Richard, One of my
biggest
fans. With love and kisses, Carla (aka., “Slutty Kay”).

In the picture, everyone was naked, but Richard thought that was a bit misleading. For most of the day, the Beachfest was just innocent fun, no more scandalous than your average company picnic. Carla and her seven fans wore bathing suits and T-shirts as they whiled away the afternoon drinking beer, playing beach volleyball, tossing a Frisbee, and even engaging in a hilarious round of three-legged races. Richard took some time to get acquainted with his colleagues, most of whom he recognized from photos on the web site. Aside from himself, the only newbie was Claude, a French-Canadian schoolteacher with a thick accent and a scar from open-heart surgery running down the center of his chest.

“They’re a nice bunch of guys,” Richard commented.

“I know,” said Carla. “I feel really lucky to know them.”

The other part of the festivities didn’t begin until much later in the day, after Walter fired up the grill for the evening barbecue. Carla went for a quick dip in the ocean—they were on a beautiful crescent of beach, a secluded cove north of La Jolla that Richard wouldn’t have been able to find on his own in a million years—and when she came back to shore she unsnapped her bikini top without fanfare and tossed it to Marcus, the twenty-eight-year-old software designer who was the youngest member of her entourage. As if that were the agreed-upon signal, the men of the Fan Club began pulling their shirts over their heads and stepping out of their swim trunks. Richard didn’t hesitate to join them. This was why he had come, after all. To be a part of this community, a tiny vanguard who had moved beyond shame and hypocrisy, at least for one day of the year.

For a long time after the clothes came off, nothing else happened. Walter kept watching the grill; Richard kept tossing the Frisbee in a triangular formation with Claude and Roberto, the only black man among them (he was a retired army master sergeant); and Marcus continued debating theology with Fred, a middle-aged Lutheran minister whose wife believed he was on some sort of spiritual retreat.

“And I am!” Fred had insisted, when reporting this fact to Richard. “Just not according to my wife’s cramped definition of the phrase.”

At some point, though, the Frisbee floated over Richard’s head, and when he turned to chase it he saw Carla kneeling by the grill, her head bobbing back and forth against Walter’s crotch. As if he’d been taken by surprise, Walter was still clutching the spatula, pressing the flat part of it against the top of Carla’s shoulder. Marcus was squatting nearby, recording the action with his high-resolution digital camera, the many impressive features of which he had explained to Richard in great detail earlier in the afternoon, almost like he was making a sales pitch.

“Don’t let the burgers burn!” shouted Earl—he was the old guy, a retired trucker from Nebraska—inspiring widespread laughter from the onlookers.

When Carla was finished with Walter, she took care of Claude, Earl, and Fred in short order. And then it was Richard’s turn. It felt like a dream as she knelt before him, the Pacific glinting a majestic purple and gold in front of him, the tantalizing smell of grilled meat mixing with the salty ocean air. It was almost as if he’d stepped inside his computer, into one of those images that had burned themselves into his brain, making him permanently unfit for normal life.

“Thank you,” he whispered, after she had planted a friendly kiss on his knee.

“No,” she said, looking up with the sweet, earnest expression he had memorized a long time ago. “Thank
you
.”

After they’d eaten, everyone lined up for the picture Richard was looking at now. Seven men in a row, of varying heights, weights, body types, ages, and skin colors, each of them grinning at the camera as if competing to see who could look the happiest. Claude, Marcus, Walter, Roberto, Richard, Earl, and Fred. In front of them, Carla on one knee, her arms spread wide, as if she were trying to embrace the world.

“Wow,” said Richard. “That was a great day.”

“It sure was,” said Carla. “Now tell me about the panties.”

Bertha’s jaw kept flapping all the way home from the hospital, telling Ronnie not to feel bad, that his mother had gone to a better place, that she no longer had to suffer the aches and pains of lonely old age in a town where everybody hated her.

“Nobody
hated her
,” he said, breaking his vow to just sit quietly the whole way home, not to utter a single word to the toxic old bitch. It was bad enough that he had to breathe the same air as her, that his own sister wouldn’t even offer him a ride home in her minivan
on the day their mother died
, like he was going to foul the seats just by touching his ass to them, like he’d leave an invisible slime of sex offender germs on the surfaces her kids had to touch on the way to school every day.
Well, fuck her
. One day she’d wake up and her precious fucking Mercury Villager would just be a smoking hulk in her driveway.

Oh, gee, Sis, sorry to hear it. Too bad you weren’t sleeping in it
.

The thing that really pissed him off was that she hadn’t even hugged him good-bye. She thought about it for a second, he saw it, saw her move toward him and then suddenly draw back, as if realizing what she’d been about to do. She patted him on the shoulder instead, patted him the way you’d pat an ugly dog, standing as far away as you could, looking away so you wouldn’t have to smell its rotten breath.

“She was an old woman,” Bertha said, shooting him an accusatory sidelong glance. “She had no business fighting off intruders in the middle of the night. No business at all.”

“I have a broken arm,” Ronnie reminded her, shifting on the seat to show her his cast. “There was nothing I could do.”

Bertha shook her head, and Ronnie couldn’t help marveling at how pickled she looked, even after a day spent in the hospital. You could almost see the fumes rising off her skin, like she was a sponge soaked in cheap wine.

“She seemed so strong this morning.” Bertha dabbed a Kleenex at her eyes. “She was awake and alert, her vital signs were good. And then God called her.”

Ronnie shut his eyes and pretended his ears were clogged with melted wax. He reminded himself that he’d never have to spend another minute with Bertha in his life, never have to arrange his schedule around her daily visits.

Everything would turn out okay, he was pretty sure of it. His mother had set things up so that he could remain in the house for as long as he wanted. If he and Carol decided to sell it someday, they would split the proceeds, just like they would split the money in her bank account and the CDs and the annuities. The way he figured it, he’d have at least a year before he needed to worry about money, even if he went ahead and splurged on a new computer like he planned. A guy in prison had told him about some web sites he was interested in checking out.

“They’re from Amsterdam,” he’d said. “Those fucking Dutch people are
sick
, man.”

It was amazing to think about, a computer of his own and no one to bother him. He could just surf the web all day, look at whatever he wanted.

The cab pulled up in front of his house. He reached for his wallet, but Bertha told him his money was no good, not today.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “I promised your mother I’d keep an eye on you.”

Yeah, right
, Ronnie thought,
you and the Gallo Brothers
.

“Oh wait,” she said. “I almost forgot.”

Bertha reached into her purse and handed him a folded sheet of paper that had been ripped from a spiral notebook.

“Your mother wrote it this morning. She wanted me to give it to you.”

“What do you mean, she wrote it?”

“She wrote it,” Bertha insisted. “I held the pen between her fingers and the nurse held the clipboard. But she did all the letters. She fell asleep right afterward. And then she had the hemorrhage.”

Ronnie stuck the paper into his shirt pocket and slipped out of the cab, glad not to have to look at Bertha’s nasty face for a second longer.

“See you at the wake,” she called out, as the cab pulled away from the curb.

Inside the house, Ronnie unfolded the note. The letters were big and sloppy but he could tell the handwriting from a single glance. His eyes filled with tears as he read the brief message, a mother’s final plea to her wayward son.

Please
, she begged him.
Please be a good boy.

As much as she hated to admit it, Mary Ann was rattled. Isabelle had gone to sleep according to plan, under the covers by seven, asleep by quarter after, but Troy had rebelled, pitching a kicking and screaming fit on the living room floor, the likes of which she’d never seen before.

“I’m not tired!” he shrieked. “Get that through your stupid head!”