CATALINA AND JESSIE AND CHARLIE

She stares at the four photographs Jessie has laid out on the coffee table. Her intense blue eyes shift from one picture to another and back again.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Jessie says. “I mean, really, señora, a century apart and they look like twins, don’t they? I thought you’d get a real kick out of it.”

“Yes. The similarity is very hard to believe,” Catalina says. “You say this young woman is an actress and these pictures came from a movie?”

“Yes, ma’am, some silly thing on DVD. Something about nurses or some such. I dropped in on some friends and they were watching it and I only saw the last part. I told the fellow who owned it that I just couldn’t believe the likeness between one of the girls in the movie and a distant cousin of mine and how I wished I had a picture of the actress, and he was good enough to offer to make some prints off the video for me. I specifically asked that one of those prints be this swimming pool one because the minute I saw it I remembered this picture of you and Aunt Sandra in the tank. I thought you’d want to see for yourself just how incredibly alike they look and . . . I don’t know. I just thought it would tickle you.”

“What is her name, this actress?”

“Oh, God, you’re gonna laugh. Kitty Quick. An acting name, of course. Who knows what her real name is.”

Catalina looks up from the photos. “And who is the friend who made the pictures for you?”

Only now does it occur to Jessie that in her eagerness to surprise and delight Aunt Cat she’s neglected her own common sense. How could she not have anticipated that Catalina might ask for specific details about the source of the prints, and that if she did, there would be no way to keep them from her? Lying is out of the question. She can sometimes shade the truth a wee bit with her, as she’s done so far with the Kitty pictures, but only once, years ago, has she ever told her an outright lie, and Catalina easily recognized it as such.

“You’re blushing, my dear, and the cat seems to have stolen your tongue. Why?”

Jessie tells her everything. That she and Rayo walked in on Charlie and Frank and Rudy watching a pornographic movie in the Doghouse office last night. That she’d been stunned by the Kitty girl’s resemblance to Sandra and was sure Catalina would be, too. That Charlie had called on an expert technician to make the two stills—and no, she did not tell Charlie why she wanted them, nor has she spoken of them to anyone else, not even to Rayo Luna, not yet. She concludes with an admission that she is totally embarrassed about confessing to her, the person she most respects in the whole world, that she and Rayo viewed a porn movie with an uncle and two male cousins.

Catalina laughs. “My dear Jessica,” she says, “why on earth should you be embarrassed? Am I of such frail sensibilities? Can you possibly have forgotten the things I’ve told you about my own escapades with males from the time I was a girl? Things that I have confessed to you in such shameless detail? Of course, I’ll be dead before anyone reads the book, but have I seemed to you to be terribly concerned about what anyone will think of me after reading it? For you to believe I would be offended because you and Rayo watched a sex movie in the company of males, well, don’t you see the silliness of that notion?”

“When you put it that way, ma’am, yes, I do.”

They both laugh, and Catalina reaches out and pats her hand. “Thank you for the pictures, querida. They’re very interesting. But I must ask you something more. This actress, this Kitty person, does she have a voice a little deeper than most women?”

Jessie stares at her. “Well, yes . . . yes, ma’am, she does. Why—? Oh, God, don’t tell me Aunt Sandra had a deep voice.”

Catalina smiles. “An astonishing coincidence, no? Another astonishing coincidence, I should say.”

“Yes, ma’am, it most certainly is.”

“I would like to hear her voice. Where is this video now?”

“I guess in Charlie’s office. It’s where the tech made the stills.”

Catalina takes out her phone and asks the title of the video and makes a face when Jessie tells her.

“He’ll know I told you,” Jessie says.

Do not fret, daughter, Catalina says in Spanish. She scrolls through her phone contacts to the Doghouse number and taps on it.

Charlie answers. “My esteemed Tía Catalina. I nearly swooned at seeing your name gracing my phone screen. How wonderful to receive a call from you. It’s been far too—”

“Cease the foolishness, Charles. You have in your possession a DVD entitled The Love Tutors. I would like to see it. Have someone bring it to me right away.”

“The Love Tutors,” Charlie says. He clears his throat. “I hardly know what to say, señora. Why would, ah . . . how do you even know about such a . . . an entertainment?”

“That is no one’s concern but my own. Nor why I want to see it. I need only to know that you’ll send it to me at once or I will contact Harry McElroy and have him give you a call.”

“That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” Charlie says. He’s baffled by her demand and he needs a moment to ponder things. “Just hold on a second while I make sure I still have it. Sometimes a tech will take a DVD home to make a copy for himself. I don’t want to say yes and then find out it’s not here.”

“Do not trifle with me, Charles.”

“No trifling intended, señora. Won’t take a minute. Hold on.”

His thoughts speed. This is Jessie’s doing. That’s why she wanted those frames. To show to the old woman. He can’t think of any reason she’d want to do that, but how else would the Cat have come to know about the video? But why would she want to see it? Christ, who the hell knows the why of anything with that unkillable crone. He’d love nothing better than to hang up on her without another word and then not answer any more calls she might make, which would really piss her off. But either he gives her the disc or his father will order him to do it and be irked at having to be involved. Harry Mack has many times told him that no battle of wills with Catalina can be won. Well, whatever that ancient grimalkin and Jessie are up to, it can’t be anything major or they’d need his help. The hell with the old bone bag. But Jessie’s got some things to explain.

“It’s here, señora,” he tells her. “I’ll send it right away.”

“I want it in my hands within thirty minutes,” she says.

Twenty-three minutes later, there is tinkling from the little array of chimes mounted on the wall next to the front door. Jessie answers the door and greets Ricardo, one of Charlie’s runners, who doffs his cap and says, Good evening, miss, and hands her the encased disc, wrapped in newspaper and sealed with tape.

Catalina dismisses the maids and instructs them not to come into the living room during the rest of the evening. She permits Jessie to operate the DVD player, and because her interest is strictly in Kitty Quick, she agrees with Jessie’s suggestion of fast-forwarding past any scene that does not include Kitty. They thereby run through the movie in less than twenty minutes, Jessie feeling keenly uncomfortable the whole while about watching such a thing in the company of her great-great-grandaunt, never mind that Catalina is totally enrapt in each of Kitty’s scenes.

At the video’s conclusion, Catalina excuses herself and goes into the bathroom. When she returns, her face has been freshly washed and her eyes are mildly red. She remains standing as she tells Jessie that the girl looks exactly as Sandi looked the very last time she saw her. Then she smiles weakly and adds, “Except, of course, Sandi was wearing clothes. She was not yet seventeen, and I don’t believe this one is, either. And her voice . . . it is the same as Sandra’s. The very same. It is very hard to believe.”

“She doesn’t look anywhere near legal age,” Jessie says. “Neither does the blonde, for that matter. But hey, I knew a girl in college who in her senior year looked like she should be in junior high. With some, you never know.”

Catalina opens her arms to her and they hug.

“Thank you, my dear girl. Now go home and rest.”

“You rest, too, Aunt Cat. It’s been a tough night.”

“Yes, I will.”

She sees Jessie to the door and waits there until she’s in the Jeep and leaves, then shuts the door and locks it. Then goes back to the sofa and the photos on the coffee table. She mulls them for some time before at last going to bed.

She sleeps later than usual the next morning. Then has a light breakfast. Then once more studies the pictures of Sandra and the Kitty girl and resumes her deliberations of the night before.

It is late afternoon when she phones Harry McElroy.