“HOW DID YOU FIND me?”
“It’s a long story, Punkin. You think you could shift that elbow a bit? You’re digging it into my ribs.”
“I can’t move.”
“Me neither. This is awful uncomfortable. How long you think he’s gonna leave us here?”
“I don’t know. Why the hell did you cuff yourself to me?”
“It was all I could think of. I figured he wouldn’t shoot me if I was attached to you.”
“He’s got a damn key.”
“Like I said, I had to think fast. I didn’t have time to think good.” Phlox focused on her breathing for a few seconds. The air in the trunk was getting thick. “Sooner or later he’s got to let us out, right?”
“I saw him kill this guy,” Bobby said.
Phlox said nothing, considering the implications.
Bobby said, “He beat a guy to death with a club in his basement.”
“I saw the blood. I was afraid it was yours.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.
Phlox said, “No offense, Pook, but this is one funky trunk you been living in. Is all that smell you?”
“It’s not just me,” he said. “The dead guy was in here, too.”
Phlox took several shallow breaths. “Thanks for telling me that, Puddin. If I could kick you I would.”
She would smile and nod at the advertisements, bring her cigarette to her lips and take a tiny sip of smoke, inhale, let it trickle brown from her lips, the ashtray near her elbow mounded high with butts. André stood in the doorway, the barrel of the gun pressing into his groin. He had almost shot the woman and maybe he should have.
His mother lifted her coffee mug, moistened her lips. She sipped her cigarette and smiled at a Burger King ad. Now that the sun had set, the house felt brighter inside. The smoke and dust seemed to melt away. It was a better place at night. Even the shabby old furniture took on a comfortable glow. André found himself wishing that he could stay.
His mother rotated her head and smiled at him. He imagined that she had read his thoughts and was inviting him to stay. He smiled back; she returned her eyes to the TV. Back in Cold Rock he had grown used to thinking of her as an old woman, but she was not really that old. She had given birth to him at the age of seventeen. He watched her extinguish her cigarette by drilling it deep into the overflowing pile of butts, pushing it below the surface with the tip of her little finger. When all of this was over he would hire a maid for her, a woman to come in and empty the ashtrays and clean the top of the refrigerator and make her fresh coffee. He wished he could stay with her tonight, but it was not safe. The woman had found him, which meant that others might also show up.
He had to keep moving.
He said, “Mother?”
“Yes dear?”
“The Reinke place, you said it’s vacant?”
“Yes, dear. It’s state property now. Up for sale, I believe. They’ll auction it off. I just hope they don’t sell it to someone doesn’t belong here.”
André smiled, thinking that the only people who really belonged in Diamond Bluff were already here.
The Reinke place was south of town, a mile off the highway on a twisting road that led up the bluff. A notice on the front door proclaimed the property to be under the jurisdiction of the State of Wisconsin. A second notice stated that the property would be auctioned on May 14. The house was dark. André drove around the house to the barn where, according to his mother, the Reinke boys had been caught manufacturing amphetamines. The doors were locked, still sealed with police tape. He pulled the car up to the doors until he felt the front bumper make contact, then kept going. The hasp gave way with a ripping sound. He backed up, got out, and pulled the doors open. The headlights lit up a pair of old electric stoves, some stockpots, a few wooden chairs, and a folding table. The barn otherwise appeared to be empty. André backed the car inside and closed the doors. He tried a light switch by the door. A single bulb hanging from the rafters came on, producing a ragged sphere of yellow light that turned the walls from black to umber. Good enough—he had feared that the electricity would be disconnected. André turned off the headlights, pulled the revolver from his waistband, and opened the trunk.
The first thing he saw was the woman’s eyes, staring at him with such ferocity that he took a startled step back, raising the gun to ward off the intense emotion. The moment the gun came into her line of sight, her face changed. She became afraid. André relaxed.
“Are you sorry now?” he asked.
She said nothing. Bobby, half underneath her with his face against the spare tire, said something André could not quite hear.
“What did he say?”
The woman licked her lips. “He wants to get out.”
André gestured with the gun. “Get out then.”
“Don’t shoot us.”
“I will not shoot you.”
Hampered by the handcuffs, it took them a while to climb out, and once they did they had to stand in an odd position. Bobby’s arms were taped to his sides, and the woman’s right hand was shackled to his right wrist. Only one of them could easily face him at a time and they ended up facing each other with their heads turned toward him like a pair of bedraggled, confused tango, dancers.
“I will not shoot you if you cooperate,” he said. “Now please tell me who you are and what you were doing.”
“People call me Phlox.”
André took a moment to process that. He asked, “As in the flower, or gatherings of fowl?”
“The flower, Andrew.”
“My name is not Andrew. You must call me Adam. Adam Grappelli.” It would help him get used to his new name.
“Adam Grappelli,” Phlox repeated.
“Yes. Now, would you please tell me why you are here?”
“You brought me here!”
“I mean to say, what were you doing? How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t so hard. You made a lot of phone calls to your mother.”
André said, “Ah!” This business of being a wanted criminal was more complex than he had thought. “Are you a policewoman?”
“No.”
“Then what is your involvement?”
“Bobby’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh? I understood him to be married.”
Bobby said, “I’m married, but it’s to Barbaraannette.”
André said, “I see.”
“It’s sort of complicated,” Bobby said.
“Relationships between people often are,” said André. Keeping the gun pointed in their general direction, he dragged one of the wooden chairs to a point directly beneath the light bulb and sat down. “It is this very complexity which lends meaning to the lives of those who care to embrace it. For instance, you and I are now involved in an extraordinarily complex social interaction.”
Bobby said, “No shit.”
“In the end, I will have a new name and a new home in Italy, and you will perhaps be back with your wife.” He regarded Phlox with a frown. “As for you, my dear, I cannot say. It is quite interesting, this little adventure we are having, is it not?”
Phlox said, “It’s less interesting in that trunk than you maybe think.”
André inclined his head, not conceding her point, but acknowledging its theoretical validity. “The social dynamic is not always clear to the individuals involved. In fact, many famous relationships were not entirely appreciated by those who were involved in them and, in fact, were frequently denied altogether. The affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart, for instance.” André crossed his legs and rested the revolver on his lap.
“In fact, I have studied many such relationships in great depth, using analytical tools developed by Saussure and Levi-Strauss to shed new light on certain literary alliances.” He chuckled, because he always chuckled when making this joke in class. “Or rather, certain dalliances.” He smiled, waiting for an appreciative laugh from his audience, but the shackled couple stared back at him, as uncomprehending as any pair of sophomores. André shrugged, taking it in his stride. Clearly, he had his work cut out for him.
When she closed the door behind her the echo of its slam persisted. Barbaraannette shrugged off her windbreaker, dropped it on the side chair by the front door. A faint voice in her head said, “Hang up your clothes, dear,” but Barbaraannette chose to ignore it. Her body ached from the collision with Art and the house had never felt so empty. She was empty, too. She needed something. Another piece of nicotine gum? Her stomach churned at the remembered flavor. She needed something else. She raised a hand to her mouth. Was that his smell? She touched her fingers to her lips, sensing molecules of Art, letting her thoughts float free for a moment.
Abruptly, her reflections became concrete. What did he expect her to do? She was a married woman, only hours from being reunited with her husband. Why was he doing this now? For years the man doesn’t say boo and now, at the most inconvenient imaginable time, he steps into her life.
Time to get serious, Barbaraannette decided. She took a pint of chocolate Haagen-Dazs from the freezer and put an Aretha Franklin album on the stereo. Bobby had never liked Aretha. What kind of music did Art like? She pushed the thought aside and listened to Aretha bemoan and celebrate the men in her life. All the no good heartbreakers and Dr. Feelgoods, two sides of the same cursed coin. She would get through this thing. The money was not important. The money was nothing. She had done the one incredibly stupid thing and she had done it on television and it was going to cost her a few lousy bills but what of it? She had plenty more. Even with the loan payments she would have plenty of money coming in every year. She could still make sure that Hilde was taken care of, and she could help Toagie keep up her house payments. She could travel or stay put or get a job or do nothing. She could support a man. She could have a child.
Barbaraannette set the ice cream aside. Aretha was howling in joy or pain—Barbaraannette had lost track. She let her head fall back, stared up at the ceiling and watched it blur as her eyes filled with tears, thinking about what might have been. How long had it been since she had permitted herself to think about having a child? Was she thinking about it now, or was she only thinking about thinking about it? The album side ended, leaving only a faint hum from the speakers. Barbaraannette closed her eyes, squeezing out the tears. She remained still, letting her thoughts skitter over the surfaces. In time, she found a comfortable place. She turned off the stereo, put the ice cream away, and rinsed the coffee cup in the sink. She hung up her windbreaker. She brushed her teeth and changed into her nightgown and got into bed and turned out the light and within minutes she was asleep because that was what she had decided to do.