EIGHT

Miss Zula wasn’t ever a beauty and she is still wearing dresses she must have bought in 1963, but she is dignified and distinguished. By all accounts she is an excellent teacher. I cannot speak to her stories, as I have never read one.

Your name: Corrine Stillwater (Mrs. Howard). If you would like to talk to me, you may find me at home, looking after my family. I am also chairlady of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.

I’ve made some resolutions,” Angie told Rivera the next morning. “First, I’m not hiding out in this house anymore.”

Rivera pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Well, good. You’ve got to see about Tony. I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”

“I’ll corner him and get some answers,” Angie said. And then: “Who is it?”

River scowled at her. “Harriet Darling, of course. Harriet Darling with the husband who should just die.” Rivera had perfected Harriet’s accent and mannerisms in record short time. She sent Angie a sideways glance. “I warned you.”

“How far has it gone?”

“You’ll have to ask him that,” Rivera said. “But you’d best go up and catch him right now. Take coffee with you.”

Except Tony wasn’t in his room, which was pleasantly rumpled and strewn with rolls of film and camera lenses, odd papers, and pieces of clothing. If Tony Russo wasn’t in his own bed at seven in the morning, he was in somebody else’s. Angie just hoped it wasn’t Harriet Darling’s.

The rest of the day turned out to be just as frustrating. The office Angie had been assigned in the English department turned out to be without working air-conditioning or telephone—though she remembered both things being there when she had first looked in, over a week ago—and there was no sign of the computer she had been promised. The office was empty of everything but two straight-backed chairs and an old metal desk that looked distinctly out of place against the walnut wainscoting. The top of the desk was covered with something sticky, and all the drawers were firmly locked. With the first glimmerings of a serious headache already making themselves felt, Angie went to find Patty-Cake Walker.

She was barricaded behind a highly polished oak desk the size of a small pool table, the great overturned bowl of lacquered hair unruffled by the breeze from the air-conditioning duct, which might have come off a jet plane.

“Now look who’s here,” Patty-Cake said with a stiff smile. “Dr. Grant isn’t in quite yet, and neither is Rob.”

Angie managed to look surprised. “That works out just fine, because I wasn’t looking for either of them,” she said. “But I do have a few questions for you.”

“You shy thing.” Patty-Cake tilted her head and produced what Angie thought was meant to be a teasing expression. “You and Dr. Grant used to know each other up there in New York, and you never said a word.”

“Because,” Angie said evenly, “it was a long time ago.” It was never good to hold back anger, her father would say, and here was the proof: her headache ratcheted up a notch.

“Five years a long time?” Patty-Cake wagged her head from side to side. “I guess I’m getting old.”

“I guess you are.”

The silence between them sparked. Angie cursed herself roundly, took a deep breath, and managed a smile she hoped might be interpreted as conciliatory.

She said, “There’s no telephone in my office, and the air-conditioning is either turned off or broken.” Then she evoked all the magical phrases due any keeper of the keys: Don’t want to be a bother and If it isn’t too much trouble and I would be thankful if. She ended with the computer, and decided to leave the locked desk drawers for the next battle.

Patty-Cake tapped a finger on her desk, her smile very white, and bone brittle. “There was a fan in that office. Now, what do you suppose could have happened to it? Maybe the janitor took it off to be rewired. I’ll have to look into that, just as soon as I can.”

Angie said, “And the phone?”

Patty-Cake had already half turned away. “I’ll put in a work order. In the meantime, you’ve got one of those cute little cell phones, don’t you?”

Later, listening to Angie’s reconstruction of this first, lost skirmish in what promised to be a long and messy war, Rivera shook her head. “Run for the hills.”

“Do you think this is about—”

“John? Most definitely. You practically forced him to tell Caroline about you—”

“You think?”

“Well, of course he did. What choice did he have after Patty-Cake walked in on you? And then Caroline told her sisters, and the Rose girls got on the drums—there was high drama down at Fat Quarters, let me tell you—and now Patty-Cake sees you as a threat to her bid for campus domination by means of her niece’s marriage.”

They were sitting on the grass in the golden light of the early evening. Angie, who had skipped lunch and was making up for it with a second beer, was finding it hard to worry about much at all.

Angie pressed the cold beer bottle to her cheek. “It was perfectly innocent.”

Rivera made a grand gesture, one long hand revolving through the air in a corkscrew motion. “Angeline, my love. Two points. First, where you and John Grant are concerned, nothing is innocent. Anybody who sees you standing next to each other knows that. And second, Patty-Cake might be many things, but she’s got a good nose. Watch yourself. Unless you want to call in the big guns.”

“John?”

Rivera, whose mother was administrative assistant to the mayor of Hoboken, shook her head with great solemnity. “Rob,” she said. “It’ll be Rob who writes her job evaluations. Of course, that would be a declaration of war, and you’d end up on the sisterhood’s ten-most-loathed list. You’ll have to sign an affidavit to get a paper clip in any and every office across the country.”

Angie considered. “Do you think administrative assistants take courses in military tactics?”

“That’s classified,” Rivera said. “Though my guess is that it’s administrative assistants who teach those courses.”

“The sisterhood,” Angie said, burping softly.

“The source of all real power,” Rivera agreed.

“Now what?”

Rivera rolled over on her stomach and waved her bare feet in the air. “Well, first you’ve got to put your requests in writing. Of course she’ll ignore the first memo and misplace the second one. The third time you copy it to Rob, and then she’ll start to move. Slowly, of course.”

“I could go buy a fan,” Angie said thoughtfully. “And I do have a cell phone. If it weren’t for the computer I could just steer clear of her.”

“You’re forgetting about the copy machine.”

Angie began to giggle, partly because beer on an empty stomach made her head buzz and partly because of the absurdity of the situation. Then she remembered Tony, who still hadn’t showed his face, and the fact that Rivera hadn’t seen him, either, all day long.

“What if Tony doesn’t come home again tonight?”

“Then I go looking for him tomorrow,” Rivera said. “And I make him understand the error of his ways.”

“We never should have come down here,” Angie said, putting an arm across her face.

“I’m glad you did,” said a familiar voice.

Caroline Rose had come up behind them. She was wearing a pink linen sleeveless blouse, white jeans, and a friendly smile.

“Well, hello there,” Rivera said. “You look like a strawberry parfait, pink and white.” To Angie she said, “I forgot to say, we’re going out for dinner. You want to come along? We can get Caroline to advise us on how to handle—”

“I’m not feeling very good,” Angie said, quite truthfully; suddenly she wished she had never picked up the second bottle of beer.

“Who needs handling?” Caroline asked, looking vaguely interested.

“Your aunt Patty-Cake,” said Rivera, ignoring the threatening look Angie threw her. “She’s making things difficult for Angie in the office.”

Caroline’s cheeks turned the same color as her blouse “Oh, dear,” she said, her soft voice taking on a bit of an edge. “The copy machine?”

“And the telephone and the air-conditioning,” said Rivera.

“Really—” began Angie, but Caroline cut her off.

“I was afraid that might happen,” she said. “Never you mind, Angie. I’ll take care of it first thing tomorrow.”

There were many things Angie might have said, but to carry this conversation any further might mean that it would swing back toward the subject of John Grant, something she wanted to avoid. Angie caught Rivera’s eye and sent a small, silent, prayerful message, which Rivera caught like the experienced ballplayer she was.

“I’m hungry,” she said, getting up from the ground and brushing grass off her rear. “Let’s go, Pinkie.”

“You sure you won’t come along?” Caroline asked Angie, hesitating.

“You two go on without me.” She tried for a pitiful expression, but feared that she was no better than Caroline at hiding her relief.

 

At eight the next morning Angie found Rob Grant setting up a laptop computer in her office. Over his shoulder he said, “Caroline called me last night and filled me in. She talked to Patty-Cake, too, so you don’t have to worry about a counterstrike.”

There was a standing fan by the windows and a smaller one on the desk, right next to a telephone.

“Telephone is working,” he said, following her gaze. “Computer, too. Your Internet log-in information and your PIN code for the copy machine are in the top drawer. Which is open. And the physical plant people should be here later today to look at the air-conditioning. The fans will help until they sort it out.””

Angie put her bag on the desktop. “That was kind of Caroline,” she said. “And it’s good of you, too. Thanks.”

“Nothing to it,” Rob said. “Any other tall orders this morning?”

“Yes,” Angie said. “You can find Tony for me. He hasn’t come back to the house for two nights.”

“Tony is in the editing suite,” Rob said. “He was there when I got in.”

“You are a whiz at this stuff,” Angie said. “Excuse me while I go dismember him, would you?”

“Angie?”

She turned back at the door. He was looking at her as if she had broken out in an unusual rash, one he had never seen before. Then he moved his shoulders in a small, tight shrug, and shook his head.

“I just wanted to say that John is going to be away for the next week.”

“Okay,” Angie said slowly. “And?”

“Thought you might want to know,” Rob said. He stood up and worked his shoulders again.

Angie started to turn away again when he said, “Caroline isn’t going, though.”

She paused for a moment, one hand on the door, and then stepped backward into the room. When she turned around, Rob was looking at her with great seriousness.

“What are you trying to say?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know anything more than what I just told you. John is going to New York to work in the archives for a week, and Caroline is staying here. No other change in plans that I know of.”

“None of this,” Angie said, trying to get hold of her temper and not quite succeeding, “is any of my business.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” Rob said, unflustered. He glanced out the window.

Angie thought of what it would mean to challenge that maybe: the discussion that would follow, the history that would be dredged up, again.

“Pardon me,” Angie said. “I had better go find Tony before he disappears.”

“Too late,” said Rob. “There he goes.”

“Oh, shit.” Angie flopped down in the desk chair. “This week isn’t starting well.”

“Relax a little,” Rob said, touching her shoulder as he went to the door. “This is the South, darlin’. Things don’t move so fast down here.”

 

Contrary to expectations after such a questionable start, the week went very well. It may have had something to do with the fact that John was away or that Patty-Cake had been brought to heel, but mostly Angie was thankful to Miss Zula, who took a liking to Tony Russo, and laid claim to him and his time.

Hoboken and Manhattan were crowded with women who had tried and failed to tie Tony down, but Miss Zula had some advantages. The first was her age; the second was the fact that while she appreciated his dry and usually sarcastic humor, she would not be distracted by it.

It was Tony Miss Zula called in the evenings to discuss how much time she was willing to spend with them the next day, and to what end. As a result, Tony’s nighttime wanderings slowed down, which was a relief to Angie, but gave Rivera the idea that Miss Zula was orchestrating Harriet Darling’s social life behind the scenes.

If that was true, Angie could only be thankful. For the first time since the fax machine had whirred to life those few weeks ago, she began to relax and remember why she liked what she did.

They began to shoot for short periods, going with Miss Zula to the university library, to pick up shoes she had left to be reheeled, into the garden while she pulled weeds and set out chipped saucers full of beer for slugs, to her office when she had appointments. The people who came to see her ranged from the university president to the sixteen-year-old son of an old friend who was unsure about whether he wanted to go to college or become an electrician.

Miss Zula’s mornings were spent writing, so Angie used this time to begin her work in the town, where everybody knew the Bragg sisters and had some story about them or the family that—Angie was told with great seriousness—certainly had to be included in the documentary, if that Tony Russo fellow wanted to come by with his cameras. In a matter of days she filled two notebooks with names and anecdotes and newspaper clippings pressed on her by the helpful citizens of Ogilvie. She had a growing collection of bad snapshots of Miss Zula with well-known faces, among them Coretta Scott King, Bobby Kennedy, and a dozen different men and women who had Nobels, Faulkners, and Pulitzers to their names.

It would take another two weeks at least until she started hearing the stories that interested her most, the things people weren’t likely to say to a stranger but might tell a friendly young woman who came around a second or third time to take ice tea on the porch. But it was a start, and a good one.

Angie spent a lot of time organizing her notes and writing lists of things to look up at the town library, which had a better collection of local history books than the university holdings. There were people she needed to seek out, and questions for Miss Zula or, more and more often as the week went on, for Caroline, who was just as helpful as Miss Zula had claimed she would be.

They saw a lot of Caroline. She stayed near when they filmed, suggested people to talk to, and made herself particularly valuable by providing introductions that otherwise would have been impossible. She did all of this quietly and competently, and nothing seemed to ruffle her except being brought into the center of attention.

Angie found herself liking Caroline, which surprised her and unsettled her, too. The only thing more surprising was the fact that Tony didn’t seem to like her very much.

“You know the old saying,” he told Angie one evening after Caroline had spent the afternoon with them. “‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’”

Rivera reached across the table and smacked him on the back of the head with the flat of her hand.

“Hey!” He scowled and scooted his chair out of her range.

“Give the woman a break,” Rivera said. “Maybe she’s just glad to get away from those sisters of hers. Paint samples and dish patterns and flower arrangements—feh.” She flicked her fingers.

Tony rubbed the back of his head. “Christ, Rivera, you got mitts on you like a quarterback.”

Angie was bothered by Tony’s tone and expression, and so she asked outright. “Why don’t you like Caroline?”

“That’s obvious,” Rivera said. “Harriet Darling. Caroline got between Tony and her sister.”

His head came up slowly and he gave Rivera a hard look. Then he got up from the table, patted his shirt pocket to locate his cigarettes, and walked out of the kitchen.

“Well, hell,” Rivera put back her head and examined the ceiling. “Guess I pushed too hard.”

“I’d say so.”

Angie yawned. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t go get himself shot by Tab Darling in order to prove a point.”

“I wonder what Caroline said to Harriet. That would have been an interesting scene.”

“Maybe it was Miss Zula,” Angie said. “In which case it really would have been worth shooting.”

“Oh, that’s a picture,” Rivera said. “Miss Zula telling Harriet Darling to keep it in her pants.” She gave an uncharacteristic giggle and then pressed her hands to her eyes in a gesture that struck Angie as sad.

“Hey,” she said. She resisted the urge to get up. “What is it?”

Rivera shook her head, shook it again more forcefully, and then forced a smile. “All work and no play.”

Tony came through the screen door trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Just what I was thinking,” he said. “Come on, Rivera, let’s go to down to the Hound Dog.”

Rivera brightened. “That’s the first good suggestion you’ve made today. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“And if we don’t, we can comfort each other,” Tony said.

There were many things to like about Tony, but at the moment the two most important were quite clear to Angie: he never held a grudge against a friend, and second, he loved Rivera with a cheerfully unrequited passion that was content with wordplay and celibacy.

She got up and hugged him, her arms around his middle. “I might take you up on that someday, you know,” she said into his chest.

“Anytime, honey.” Tony winked at Angie over Rivera’s dark head. “Just say the word.”

 

With the house to herself Angie found that she was unexpectedly lonely. After a short hesitation she called her parents, bracing herself for impact as she punched in the numbers.

She said, “Is that Tommy Apples?”

“Ang! What the hell! I was just telling your ma, she’s disappeared into a swamp someplace. It’s been a month since you called.”

“It’s been less than a week, Dad.”

“And the mail we forwarded to you came back undeliverable, ‘No such person.’”

“It did?” Angie lowered herself into the rocker on the porch to watch the fireflies bumbling around the garden. “Did Ma have the right address?”

“Sure she did, she got it off the sheet you left. What kind of nutty place are they running down there, mail can’t even find you?”

“I’ll look into it,” Angie said, thinking of her mail cubby in the English department, that rectangle that had been empty every day since she got here, and then of Patty-Cake Walker and her smile. No counterstrike, indeed.

Her father was saying: “So, your aunt Bambina wants to know if you met that Jesse Jackson yet. She’s always had a thing for that man, you know. Like a girl with a crush on a priest.”

In the background there was a snort of dissent, and then the phone was dropped and picked up again.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Fran Mangiamele. “So, have you?”

“What? Met Jesse Jackson? He lives in Chicago, Ma.”

“What do I care about Jesse Jackson? I’m asking you”—her mother paused dramatically—“about John.” And then, into the silence: “John Grant.”

“I know who you mean,” Angie said.

“Well?”

“I told you already, Ma. He’s here, he’s getting married, end of story.”

“What’s she saying?” boomed her father.

“For Christ’s sake, Tommy, go get on the extension.”

“I like this phone better. What’d she say?”

“She says he’s marrying somebody else.” To Angie, her mother said: “It’s a solid thing, this engagement?”

“Ma,” Angie said wearily, “you want me to break up his relationship?”

“It’s not the worst idea,” said Fran. “It’s how I got your father, you know. He was going to marry Loretta D’Oro. You remember? We used to call her Goldy, she came in for breakfast every day until her husband took a heart attack and she quit working the counter at the Korean grocery. Your father was going to marry her, until I made him think different.”

“That’s not true!” shouted Tommy Apples. “Never!”

“Oh, it’s true. You ask Bambina, she’ll tell you.”

The phone changed hands abruptly, and her father said, “You paying toll charges to hash over old gossip, or do you want to tell us something interesting? What’s the old lady like, anyway?”

“Wait,” yelled Fran. “I’ll get on the extension.”

 

A half hour later, Angie put down the telephone and felt it ring, immediately, under her hand.

“Ma, what?” she said.

There was a long pause, and then Caroline Rose’s soft voice said, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Oh,” said Angie. “Sorry, I thought you were my mother. No, you’re not interrupting.”

There was a small, uncomfortable silence while Angie realized that she had never spoken to Caroline on the phone before. Then: “Can I help you with something, or did you want to talk to Rivera? Because,” she went on, almost babbling, “she’s not here just now.”

Caroline cleared her throat. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m happy to talk to you.”

Angie bit her lip and wondered if southern custom required that she respond in kind, but then Caroline had launched into what sounded like a rehearsed speech.

“Miss Zula asked me to call. Tomorrow afternoon she’s going to Savannah to see an old friend. Miss Zula has told you about Miss Anabel?”

“Her high school teacher,” Angie said. “Yes.”

It turned out, as Caroline had called to say, that Miss Zula went to Savannah once a month to visit Miss Anabel, always by train, and this time she was inviting Tied to the Tracks to come along. If all went well and Miss Anabel didn’t change her mind, Tony would be allowed to film and they could interview the old lady.

“One more thing, while we’re on the phone,” Caroline said, and Angie’s heart lurched into her throat.

“I have been meaning to apologize to you about my aunt Patty-Cake’s behavior. She is sometimes a little too protective.”

“She has no cause to be,” Angie said. “I’m no threat to anybody.”

Caroline said, “Of course you’re not. But you’re very pretty and successful and sure of yourself, and you and John—” She paused. “Patty-Cake does have a suspicious nature, but I don’t. I wanted you to know that.”

“Well, good,” Angie said, and wondered why she was vaguely offended instead of relieved.

Later, unable to sleep, she came back down to the kitchen and began to make notes for the next day’s shooting. She was agitated and couldn’t say why, except that Caroline Rose didn’t have a suspicious nature, and thought she was pretty. Which made no sense at all; none of that should matter. What mattered was tomorrow, and the work she needed to do to get ready.

A moth bumped softly against the window screen, and from down the block came a very satisfied postcoital tomcat screech. Angie listened to the scratch of her pen on paper, and contemplated Miss Zula’s devious mind.

 

In the morning Angie found Tony in the kitchen when she came downstairs. He was trying to get the filter into the coffeemaker, one eye screwed shut. The other, red-rimmed, jerked fitfully. She took the filter out of his hand and shooed him away.

“I take it you’re just coming in,” Angie said. “Where’s Rivera?”

“She got lucky,” Tony said. “Really lucky. Luckier than me, at any rate.”

“Looking for love in all the wrong places?”

“Oh, I got some,” Tony said, yawning. “You know that blond woman with the chipped tooth who checks out at the Piggly Wiggly? DeeDee.”

“I do,” Angie said with great seriousness. “I do know DeeDee.”

“Well.” He slumped into a chair and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood up. “My Piggly Wiggly days are over.”

“What was it this time?” Angie asked.

Tony put back his head to study the ceiling. “Day-of-the-week thongs.”

She considered for a moment, and then decided that Tony needed no coddling. “This from a man who owns not one but two pairs of Home-of-the-Whopper boxer shorts. No good ever came from looking into a woman’s underwear drawer, you mope.”

Tony’s mouth twitched. He yawned again, loudly, but he was smiling. “Time for bed. We aren’t shooting anything important, are we?”

“I’m afraid we are,” Angie said. “We’re getting on a train for Savannah at exactly a quarter to one this afternoon, with Miss Zula. To go visit a retired high school teacher. If you’ve got to sleep you’d best get to it, and I’d forget the coffee.”

Tony groaned, heaved himself out of his chair, and headed for the stairs. Over his shoulder he said, “You’ve got a cruel streak, Mangiamele. Someday it will come back to bite you on the ass. Someday very soon.”

 

When Rivera had neither showed her face nor answered her cell phone by eleven, Angie roused Tony out of bed and pointed him toward the shower. Then she stood outside the door and shouted questions at him.

It turned out he remembered very little about the woman Rivera had left the bar with: dark-haired, lots of makeup, nervous laugh. “Your average closeted lesbian,” he said when he came out of the bathroom with a towel around his middle, water running down his face and chest. “Or at least she was last night. Today, who knows?”

He leaned over to look at his face in the oval mirror over the dresser, pulled down an eyelid with a thumb. “Christ,” he said balefully. “No wonder I can’t get laid.”

“Didn’t get her name?” Angie asked again, in desperation.

“Meg,” he said patiently, rubbing his bristled cheeks. “But I don’t know her last name. We can do this without Rivera, you know.”

Outside, the first rumbling of a storm echoed in the distance.

“Of course we can,” Angie said. “No problem at all.”