I was in my apartment when Stephanie called. She said, “You know how you’re always making fun of me for being so rich? You said if the cook ever went on strike Mother couldn’t find her way to the kitchen. Well guess what? The cook took the day off and Mother didn’t know where the pantry was. I swear.”
She was laughing.
“I’m sorry we had such a rotten time the other night.”
“Oh, Eli. You were just being Eli. I forgive you. There’ll be other nights.”
“How about tonight?”
“I can’t. I’ve got to run. Bye.”
She hung up.
I called back.
“You have a date?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you’re seeing somebody.”
“No I’m not seeing anybody. I’m going out. All right, I’m seeing that girl you fired.”
“SONJA?”
“There, I knew it,” she said.
“SONJA?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“SONJA?”
“I don’t want to argue about this, Eli.”
“How did this happen?”
“She called. She wants her job back and she wants me to talk to you.”
“That’s not it at all. She wants to kill you, Stephanie.”
She laughed. “Eli, you’re being dramatic again.”
“Stephanie, this girl is dangerous. There really ARE people like that, and I don’t mean WILD.”
“You can’t stop me. You’re being foolish. We’re only going out for coffee, for gosh sakes. Girl talk.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I love you. Goodbye.”
* * *
I PEELED RUBBER to catch her before she left. If no cop spotted you, Cincinnati was a fine place to speed because, here, even the pedestrians waited for the light to turn green before crossing, no matter how late the night, how remote the neighborhood – people froze at the corner and waited for the light to change, first because the police gave tickets for jaywalking, and second, the German influence. You did as ordered. You behaved. You were a Cincinnatian.
Stephanie’s car was in the drive.
Her mother answered the door, as always offering absolutely no expression, a remarkable feat of acting. You couldn’t even call her STONEFACED because even stones have expressions. Look closely. I knew it was an act because I knew how lively she could get when the RIGHT people were around. More than lively.
GUSHY! I had even seen her and her husband drunk once, and what a show that had been, so embarrassing that Stephanie felt compelled to apologize every day for a month, me saying it was forgotten, which it was, because if I were to remember it, that scene where her mother came into the den slobbering and teetering like that and asking if I knew any dirty jokes – if I were to remember that I’d have to reconstruct my entire image of the Eaton family, all of Hyde Park and all of High Society included, and I wasn’t in the mood to undertake such a thing.
“Stephanie is out, Eli.”
“Oh.”
“She just left.”
“Do you know where?”
“No I don’t.”
A symptom of rich homes. Nobody knew where anybody was. Rich homes were like corporations.
I was glad she wasn’t asking if there was anything wrong, but she might have asked SOMETHING, to establish some sort of – rapport? Was I really mashed potatoes in her eyes? Stephanie, laughing that high laugh, had once told me her mother thought me CHARMING. She also considered me a PHASE her daughter was going through.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
I lingered by the door. To her it must have been loitering.
“I’d invite you in,” she said, “but I’m cutting roses.”
She was cutting roses.
I walked back to the car, drove off searching for her, her and that fruitcake Sonja. Why was Stephanie wasting her time with such a lowlife? It made sense because Stephanie, despite her highfalutin ways, considered nothing and nobody beneath her. I drove to the address Sonja had given on her application. Price Hill. A man in his early thirties, quite tall and very thin, came to the door. He said he was related to Sonja Frick all right. He was her brother.
“Sometimes I’m her husband,” he said with a smile. Most of his teeth were missing. He spoke Kentucky drawl.
She didn’t live here anymore. “Gone back home…I guess.”
Home was Covington.
Did he know where she was this minute?
“You from that parole board?”
I told him who I was. He told me who he was. Wayne. He laughed. “Yeah, she’s told me all about you.”
“Do you know where she is right now?”
“Nobody knows where she is right now,” he joked. “Know what I mean?”
Did he know if she was out with Stephanie?
“I heard her mention the name. No love lost there, right?”
“Right.”
“She’s really got it in for the girl. You know Sonja. She can get mean. Did she do something to her?”
“That’s what I’m trying to stop.”
“Well you better git on your horse, Mister. Sonja’s all business.”
He gave me the address in Covington, but he wasn’t sure if she was still in the same house.
I asked him about Sonja’s clairvoyance.
“Yeah, she sees the future all right, and if it don’t fit, she makes it fit. You know about Dad.”
“Did she…”
“What’s your guess?”
“I don’t know. What’s yours?”
“She hated Dad. Dad had a bad AURA, she said. She said the same thing about that girl…”
“Stephanie.”
“Said she had a bad aura. She sees auras, you know. I don’t think she meant to kill Dad. Just his aura. If it means anything to you, that’s probably what she has in mind for this…”
“Stephanie.”
“She just wants to break her aura.”
I felt like a stand-up comedian. Everything I said cracked him up. He couldn’t stop laughing.
I said, “Do you consider your sister…”
“Sometimes my wife…”
He said it – Maw Wauf.
“…dangerous?”
“Fuckin’ A.”