A Stranger in My Grave (12 page)

To cushion the shock, he opened another bottle of beer while Muriel pushed the suitcase back under the bed.

“There,” she said with satisfaction, and made a gesture of wip­ing her hands, like a doctor who has just stitched up an especially bad wound. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Things are not that simple.”

“They're not as complicated as you make out, Stan Fielding. If they were, we might as well all go jump in the ocean. Say, how about that? Why don't we go down to the beach and sit in the sand and watch the people? That always gives you a laugh, Stan, watching people.”

“Not today. I don't feel like it.”

“You just going to stay here and brood?”

“A little brooding may be exactly what I need. Maybe I haven't brooded enough in my lifetime. Whenever I became depressed, I simply packed up and moved on. I ran away, just as I ran away from Daisy. I shouldn't have done that, Muriel. I shouldn't have done it.”

“Stop crying over spilled milk,” she said harshly. “Every drunk I've ever known, that's their trouble. Bawling over things they done and then having to get tanked up to forget they done them and then going ahead and doing them all over again.”

“Well,” he said, blinking, “you're quite a psychologist, Muriel. That's an interesting theory.”

“Nobody needs a fancy degree to figure it, just eyes and ears like I've got. And like you've got, too, if you'd use them.” She came over to him, rather shyly, and put her hands on his shoul­ders. “Come on, Stan. Let's go to the beach and watch the peo­ple. How about trying to find that place where everybody's building up their muscles? We could take a bus.”

“No, Muriel. I'm sorry. I have other things to do.”

“Like what?”

“I'm going back to San Félice to see Daisy.”

She didn't speak for a minute. She just backed away from him and sat down on the bed, looking bewildered. “What do you want to do that for, Stan?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Why don't you take me along? I could see you didn't get into any trouble like you did last time over that waitress.”

When he returned to Los Angeles on Monday night, he'd told her all about his encounter with Nita and Nita's husband in the bar. To diminish the importance of the incident, in his own mind and hers, he'd made quite a funny story of it, and they'd both had a good laugh. But Muriel's laughter hadn't been too genuine: sup­pose the girl's husband had been bigger and meaner? Suppose, and it often happened this way, that the girl Nita had suddenly decided to take her husband's side against Stan? Suppose no one had called the police? Suppose . . . “Stan,” she said, “take me along to look out for you.”

“No.”

“Oh, I wouldn't ask you to introduce me to Daisy, if that's what you're thinking. I wouldn't dream of asking such a thing, her being so high class and everything. I could keep out of sight, Stan. I just want to be there to look out for you, see?”

“We haven't the money for bus fare.”

“I could borrow some. The old lady in the apartment across the hall—I know she's got some hidden away. And she likes me, Stan; she says I look exactly like her younger sister that got put away last year. I don't think she'd mind lending me a little money on account of the resemblance, just enough for bus fare. How about it, Stan?”

“No. Stay away from the old lady. She's poison.”

“All right, then, maybe we could hitchhike?”

He gathered from her hesitance and tone that she had never done any hitchhiking, and the thought of it scared her almost as much as the thought of his going to San Félice without her and getting into trouble. “No, Muriel, hitchhiking isn't for ladies.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “You just don't want me along, that's it. You're afraid I might interfere if you decided to pick up some cheap waitress in a—”

“I didn't pick up anyone.” Fielding's tone was all the sharper and more positive because he was lying. He'd gone deliberately into the café with the idea of finding the girl, but no one sus­pected this (except Muriel, who suspected everything), least of all the girl herself. Nothing had worked out as he planned, because the husband had walked in before he had a chance to ask her any questions or even to find out for sure if it was the right girl. “I was trying to protect a young woman who was being assaulted.”

“How come you can protect everyone but yourself? The whole damn world you can protect, except Stan Fielding, who needs it worse than—”

“Now, Muriel, don't go on.” He went over to the bed and sat down beside her. “Put your head on my shoulder, that's my girl. Now listen. I have a certain matter to take care of in San Félice. I won't be away long, no later than tomorrow night if things go well.”

“What things? And why shouldn't they?”

“Daisy and Jim might be away for the weekend or something like that. In that case I won't be back until Monday night. But don't worry about me. In spite of your low opinion of my pow­ers of self-protection, I can take care of myself.”

“Sure you can. When you're sober.”

“I intend to stay sober.” No matter how many hundreds of times he had said this in his life, he still managed to put so much conviction into it that he believed himself. “This time, not one drink. Unless, of course, it would look conspicuous if I refused, and then I would take one—I repeat, one—and nurse it along.”

She pressed her head hard against his shoulder as if she were trying to imprint on him by sheer force an image of herself which would go along with him on the trip, as her substitute, to protect him while he was protecting everyone else.

“Stan.”

“Yes, my love.”

“Don't get tanked up.”

“I said I wouldn't, didn't I? No drinks, except maybe one to avoid looking conspicuous.”

“Like for instance?”

“Suppose Daisy invites me to the house and opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” With her head against his shoulder she couldn't see the sudden grimness of his face. “What's there to celebrate, Stan?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Then why should she open the bottle of champagne?”

“She won't.”

“Then why did you say—”

“Please be quiet, Muriel.”

“But—”

“There'll be no celebration, no champagne. I was just dream­ing for a minute, see? People dream, even people like me, who should know better.”

“There's no harm in a little dreaming now and then,” Muriel said softly, stroking the back of his neck. “Say, you need a hair­cut, Stan. Could we spare the money for a haircut?”

“No.”

“Well, wait right there while I go get my sewing scissors. Out on the ranch I always cut my kids' hair, there being nobody else to do it.” She stood up, smoothing her dress down over her hips. “There was never any complaints either, once I got a little practiced.”

“No, Muriel. Please—”

“It'll only take a minute. You want to look presentable, don't you, if you're going to that fancy house of hers? Remember that letter she wrote telling you her change of address? She described the whole house. It sounded just like a palace. You wouldn't want to go to a place like that needing a haircut, would you?”

“I don't care.”

“You're always saying you don't care when you do.” Muriel went out to the kitchen and returned with the sewing scissors. She said as she began trimming his hair, “You might meet up with your ex, think of that.”

“Why should I?”

“There's nothing worse than meeting up with your ex when you're not looking your best. Hold your chin down a little.”

“I don't intend to see my former wife.”

“You might see her by accident on the street.”

“Then I'd look the other way and cross the street.”

She had been waiting and wanting to hear this. She exhaled suddenly and noisily, as if she'd been holding her breath until she was reassured. “You'd
really
look the other way?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her, Stan. Is she pretty?”

“I'd prefer not to discuss it.”

“You never ever talk about her—move your head a bit to the right—the way other men talk about their exes. What harm would it do if you told me a little about her, like is she pretty?”

“What good would it do?”

“Then at least I'd know. Chin down.”

Chin down, he stared at his belt buckle. “And would you
like
to know she's pretty?”

“Well, no. I mean, it would be nicer if she wasn't.”

“She's not,” Fielding said. “Does that satisfy you?”

“No.”

“All right, she's ugly as sin. Fat, pimply, cross-eyed, bow-legged, pigeon-toed—”

“Now you're kidding me, Stan.”

“I'd be kidding you even more,” he said soberly, “if I told you she looked pretty to me.”

“She must have once, or you wouldn't have married her.”

“I was seventeen. All the girls looked good in those days.” It wasn't true. He couldn't even remember any of the other girls, only Ada, delicate and pink and fluffy like a cloud at sunset. He had intended, in his youth and strength, to spend the rest of his life looking after her; instead, she had spent hers doing it for him. He didn't know, even now, at what point or for what reason their roles had been reversed.

“Some of them still look good to you.” Muriel put down the sewing scissors. “You know what I bet? I bet that waitress of yours is nothing but a chippy.”

“She's a married woman with six children.”

“A husband and six kids don't make you an angel.”

“Stop worrying, will you, Muriel? I'm not going up to San Félice to get involved with a waitress or my ex-wife. I'm going up solely to see Daisy.”

“You had a chance to see her last Monday,” Muriel said anx­iously. “Why don't you just phone her long distance or write her a letter? Then you could go and see her some other time, when you're sure she's at home.”

“I want to see her now, today.”

“Why so all of a sudden?”

“I have reasons.”

“Does it have something to do with Daisy's old letters you were reading?”

“Not a thing.” He hadn't told her about the new letter, the one that had been sent special delivery to the warehouse where he worked and which was now hidden in his wallet, folded and refolded to the size of a postage stamp. This last letter wasn't like the others he kept in the suitcase. It contained no money, no news, no polite inquiries about his health or statements about her own:
Dear Father: I would be very much obliged if you'd let me know at once whether the name Carlos Theodore Camilla means anything to you. Please call collect, Robles 24663. Love, Daisy.
Fielding would have liked to pretend that the brief, brusque, almost unfriendly note had never reached him, but he realized he couldn't. He'd signed for it at the warehouse, and there would be a record of the signature at the post office. How had she got hold of the name and address of the warehouse? From Pinata, obviously, although Fielding couldn't remember telling Pinata about his job—he'd been feeling bad that day, fuzzy around the edges, not sure where one thing ended and another began. Or maybe Pinata had found out in some other way; he was a detective as well as a bail bonds­man. A detective….

God Almighty,
he thought suddenly.
Maybe she's hired him. But why? And what did it have to do with Camilla?

“You look awful flushed, Stan, like maybe you've got a fever coming on.”

“Stop making a pest of yourself, will you? I have to get ready.”

While he washed and shaved in the bathroom they shared with the old lady across the hall, Muriel laid out fresh underwear for him and a clean shirt and the new blue-striped tie Pinata had lent him earlier in the week. He had told Muriel he bought the tie after seeing it in a store window, and she had believed him because it seemed too slight a thing to lie about. She hadn't known him long enough yet to realize that this secrecy about very trivial matters was as much a part of his nature as his devastating frankness about some of the important and serious ones. There had been no real need, for instance, for him to have recounted the details of the episode involving Nita and her husband and the jail and Pinata. Yet he had told her all about it, leaving out only the small detail of the tie he'd borrowed from Pinata.

When he returned from the bathroom and saw that this tie was the one she'd picked out for him to wear, he put it back in the bureau drawer.

“I like that one,” Muriel protested. “It goes with your eyes.”