Mrs. Million (18 page)

“You know very well what I’m doing.”

“Pardon me?”

“You and your foul-mouthed friend.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you have confused me with another.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes, well, in any event, I have your husband here. Would you like to speak with him?”

Barbaraannette nodded, then said, “Yes.”

“A moment, please.” Muffled conversation came over the wire, then a voice she had not heard in six years.

“Hey there, Barbie doll.”

Her body went prickly, as if touched by ten thousand pins.

Hilde flicked a raisin at Art, hitting him on the cheek. She said, “You better get busy, Arthur. It’s him.”

Art turned his attention from Barbaraannette, whose face had gone pale, to her raisin-flicking mother. A second raisin hit him, this one right on the nose. Hilde’s eyes had narrowed. She pointed a finger at her daughter and said, “Look at her!”

Barbaraannette, her eyes focused on a far horizon, said, “Bobby?” She listened and swallowed. “Are you all right?” Some color, a blotchy pink, remained on her throat.

Hilde put a raisin in her mouth, chewed, and said, “She’s like a car.”

Art said, “What?” He was watching Barbaraannette, and not sure he had correctly heard Hilde’s words.

Barbaraannette said, “Uh-huh. But where have you been?” She listened. “You’re right, we can talk about it all later. But are you really okay? That man you’re with, are you, is he making you say these things?” Her brow wrinkled. “Oh, uh-huh…do you know a woman named Phlox?”

Hilde reached over and poked a fingernail into Art’s ribs. “Like a
fast
car,” she said.

Art shifted his chair away from Hilde, trying to focus on Barbaraannette.

“I see. She just gave you a ride? Bobby? Hello? Oh! Yes.” The color was rising; her cheeks now held a trace of pink. “Yes? Tomorrow? That would be fine. I’ll have to go to the bank. All right. Okay then. Yes, Cold Rock Savings & Loan, on First Street. All right then. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone, blinked and reacquainted herself with her surroundings. “Excuse me,” she said, and abruptly left the kitchen.

Art stood up to follow her, but Hilde grabbed his arm.

“Give her a minute, Arthur. Can’t you see she’s ashamed?”

“I thought you said she was like a car.”

“You young people are so literal.”

Art shrugged and sat down.

Hilde said, “I like Porsches. What do you drive?”

Art shook his head, bewildered. “A Plymouth?”

Hilde laughed. “You know what you ought to be driving, don’t you? You ought to be driving Barbaraannette.”

The water was blue. Who had ever thought it might be a good idea to make toilet bowl water blue? Why not green, or lilac? Or yellow, for that matter, which seemed more natural. Or clear. Why not leave it clear? Why did she put those things in the toilet tank, anyway? Because her mother had?

Barbaraannette, kneeling before the porcelain bowl, waited for herself to spew. She knew there was something in there that had to come out, she just hoped it wasn’t her liver or a kidney or some other vital organ.

The tile floor was hard on her knees and her head hurt. She closed her eyes and imagined the tangled mass inside her. It would be green and ragged and dry, made of stale beer and coffee and lottery tickets and six years of mourning and confusion. The thought of such a conglomeration erupting from her body was terrifying, but the thought of it remaining within her was worse. She opened her eyes onto the still blue pool.

Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock a man would bring her husband home, and she would give him a check for one million dollars.

And then what?

She could stick a finger down her throat, but that scared her, too. The blue pool had begun to look too much like an eye. Barbaraannette closed the toilet lid and sat down upon it and observed the shape of the floor tiles imprinted on her knees. Maybe it wasn’t nausea she was feeling, but disgust. She was paying a million dollars to get Bobby back. At the moment, she would pay twice that for him to never have existed.

Did she even want to see him? They had not been all that happy together, she and Bobby. In fact, except for the sex and the dancing, it had been pretty lousy. On the other hand, there had been the sex and the dancing. On the
other
hand, there had been Bobby’s chronic lack of employment, his expensive taste in clothing, and the fact that he had never washed a dish or dropped a toilet lid in his life. On yet another hand, there was the overwhelming fact that when Bobby left her, Barbaraannette had discovered a huge, gaping hole in her heart. It may be that the hole had been there all along, but until Bobby disappeared it hadn’t bothered her so much. So what was it she wanted? Did she want Bobby, or just a load of clean fill?

Barbaraannette massaged her knees in an effort to eliminate the marks left by the tiles. This kind of thinking would get her nowhere. She had put her foot in it and what was done was done and that was all there was to it. Besides, she had guests.

“Did you know that raisins are made out of dried grapes?” Hilde asked.

“Really?” said Art.

“There’s a song about grapes.” She began to hum a tune, and as she hummed her face relaxed, the small muscles that kept her flesh close to the jaw seemed to lose tension, and her cheeks slid down a good half inch to form jowls. Art could not identify the tune at first, but after a few bars he recognized “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A song about grapes? Art smiled, but he was having some trouble. Hilde was amusing, but much more than that she was sad and frightening. The old Hilde, who had been one of the bank’s more flamboyant customers, had by no means disappeared, but there was not as much of her in this body as before. Little flashes, like when she’d flicked the raisins at him, that was pure Hilde, but this humming, jowly woman was somebody else. He lifted his coffee cup, which was empty, and pretended to drink. Another thirty seconds, he decided, and he would go find Barbaraannette, make sure she was okay.

He was up to twenty-five when Barbaraannette breezed back into the kitchen, all smiley and chipper. “So then,” she said, “I’ll drop by the bank first thing in the morning, and we’ll sign all those papers, all righty?” She picked up her mother’s raisin bowl, now empty, and put it in the sink. “Would you like more coffee?”

Art said, “No thank you. Uh, Barbaraannette? That was Bobby, wasn’t it?”

Barbaraannette nodded, still with the smile, and took his cup and saucer.

“And?” he persisted.

“And I don’t need the cash. The man said a certified check would be fine. He’s bringing Bobby to your bank at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Is that okay?”

Art nodded guardedly. “Was this the man who threatened you?”

Barbaraannette’s smile lost a few watts. “I don’t know.” She brightened. “But everything is okay. I talked to Bobby and he sounds fine. He said that this man talked him into coming home, so I guess I have to pay the reward.”

“What about the woman?”

“Bobby said she just gave him a ride.”

“Where is Bobby now?”

“I don’t know.”

Art could see that she was struggling to maintain a cheerful demeanor. She was still holding his cup and saucer, her fingers white with pressure. He gathered his papers and fitted them into his briefcase. “I had better get going,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“That will be nice,” said Barbaraannette.

J
ON GLAVS COULD DRINK
a bowling alley—ten Budweiser longnecks—every night of the week without feeling hungover in the morning. It was a matter of pride with him. He would drink his first one immediately upon arriving home from the dealership and would build his triangle of empties on the coffee table in front of the TV one bottle at a time. If he sold a car that day he would top it off with a shot of bourbon, which would give him a mild headache the next morning, but it was worth it. If he sold two cars, which didn’t happen that often, he’d continue to drink shots until he fell asleep. Those made for some rough mornings, but fortunately he didn’t have that many two-car days.

Once or twice a week he would go out with his buddies or, rarely, on a date, but most nights he simply sat at home and drank beer and that was okay with him. He was only thirty-three years old, renting this little house on Walnut Street, and could still get into a pair of thirty-six-inch-waist Levi’s. Gallons of Rogaine and some judicious combing had reversed his hair loss, and of course he always had a sharp car to drive. This week he was driving a red Mustang. A lot of women thought he was good looking. Plenty of time to get serious about marriage and career and health and all that crap.

He cracked his number seven beer and thumbed the remote until he came across a rerun of
The Simpsons.
Jon liked to watch Homer Simpson. What a loser.

The doorbell rang. What the hell? He turned off the TV sound and went to answer it, beer in hand, curious to see who would be calling on him so late. Maybe it was some gorgeous large-breasted long-haired woman asking directions. You never knew. He swung the door open.

“Hey there, Jon boy!” A broad-bellied, long-armed guy in a Vikings stocking cap. The guy needed a shave. Jon smiled uncertainly. He recognized the man, remembered selling him a truck a couple months back. No, not a truck, a van. He looked past the man, saw the very vehicle parked at the curb. A six-year-old Econoline, maroon, high mileage. He’d been glad to get it off the lot.

“You remember me, don’t you?”

Jon remembered that he’d got thirty-five hundred for the van, but he couldn’t remember the guy’s name.

Jon said, “Ah, how’s that Econoline running?”

“Fine, fine. You mind if I come in a minute?”

Jon frowned. “What for?”

“I wanted to talk to you about a car,” the man said.

“It’s not exactly business hours.”

“You like easy money, don’t you?”

Jon thought for a moment, but only one response suggested itself. “Sure,” he said. “Who doesn’t?”

The trip odometer read three point one miles. Three point one miles from Barbaraannette’s house to his house, almost five kilometers, a distance he could run in under sixteen minutes. Art got out of his car and went inside and called Nathan Nagler at home and told him that he had just written a one-million-dollar loan to Barbaraannette Quinn. Nagler was pleased. He told Art that he had done a fine job, and invited him to dinner next Sunday. Art, who had sampled Mrs. Nagler’s cooking on one previous occasion, accepted with feigned enthusiasm. To decline the rare invitation would have been an unthinkable slight. Art could only hope that Mrs. Nagler didn’t make another attempt at moussaka.

“And bring the little woman,” Nagler added.

“Uh, Maria and I aren’t together anymore,” Art said.

“Of course! Of course! Ahem, well, whatever you like then. Bring a date! Come alone! Whatever!”

Nagler’s words stayed in Art’s ears for several minutes after their conversation had ended.
Come alone! Whatever!

He reheated his leftover pizza in the microwave, then ate it while standing over the sink. Texturally, it reminded him of Mrs. Nagler’s moussaka. He was not feeling very good, and the pizza was sure to make things worse, but he continued to tear and chew until the three remaining slices were gone and his stomach was in full battle mode and his thoughts settled into a Möbius strip of self-loathing and uncertainty. His face tingled at the precise points where Hilde’s raisins had struck. There could be no doubt. He was a cowardly fool, a mild-mannered number-cruncher who was destined to “come alone” for the rest of his sorry life. He had been waiting forever for a chance at Barbaraannette, but the moment had never felt right. Right? Would a guy like Bobby Quinn wait for the right moment? Now that he thought about it, there had been a lot of opportunities for him, but he’d seized up, had let those moments pass. Hilde said that Barbaraannette was like a car—a weird way to look at it but maybe she had something. All he needed was a key. Or he could hotwire her. No. That
was
too weird. Barbaraannette was not a machine. She was a person. What he had to do was to show her who he really was—show her that he was a good and worthy and interesting man—and then tell her how he felt about her. If he could do those two things, then Barbaraannette could decide what she wanted to do about it.

He turned on the tap, held his greasy hands under the stream of warm water. If only she hadn’t won the lottery.

There I go again, he thought, turning off the faucet. What had he been doing before Barbaraannette had won the lottery? Nothing. Sitting and waiting for his divorce to feel real, thinking about Barbaraannette, thinking about calling her up, imagining running into her at the market but doing nothing to make it happen. If not for the lottery he might never have spoken to her at all. No, if he wanted Barbaraannette, he would have to ask for her. Now. He looked at his watch. Four minutes before midnight. Maybe it could wait till tomorrow. At the bank. She would be at the bank at nine, and that was when he would make his move. He was not sure exactly what he was going to say or do, but he would come up with something. He had nine hours to think about it.

It would have been a lot easier, Bobby thought, to move the body upstairs first, and then wrap it in plastic. But André had been worried about bloodstains, so they had used six garbage bags and the rest of the duct tape to encase Jayjay in a plastic cocoon.

“I seem to be unable to get a grip,” André said as he lost hold of his end of Jayjay.

Bobby, who was halfway down the steps holding Jayjay’s ankles, let go and backed out of the way. The body slid back down to the bottom.

André sat down on the top step. “Oh, dear,” he said.

“Maybe we could tie a rope to him and haul him up,” Bobby suggested.

“I have no rope,” André sighed.

This is no good, Bobby thought as he looked down at the plastic-wrapped shape. Was there really a dead body in there? This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d left Tucson. One day he’s selling cowboy boots and the next thing he knows he’s partnered up with a murdering antique-collecting professor who, Bobby suspected, was more than a little crazy. Helping the guy get rid of a body. Not that he had any choice. If he went along with the plan he would get half the reward money. André had explained: “You need not worry about my giving it to you. If I refuse to pay your share, you will report me to the police and I will be charged with kidnapping and murder. And I will trust you because by helping me dispose of Jayjay you will become as culpable as I. Also, without me to turn you in, there will be no reward. It is quite simple. It is in both our best interests for us to present ourselves to your wife with neither accusation nor recrimination.”