Unknown Man #89

“Feel you don’t need me, can handle this yourself.”

“Well, I don’t see how I could do that.”

“I don’t either,” Mr. Perez said, “but you still might be considering it, thinking maybe she knows about the stock, heard the name of it one time.”

“She hasn’t even claimed his body.”

“I mean, if you were to bring it up, poke at her memory a little bit. If you’ve got something like that in mind,” Mr. Perez said, “I’d suggest you forget it. After all the work and effort I go to compiling a list, it wouldn’t be fair of you to steal one of my names, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Ryan said. He hadn’t even thought of the possibility before.

“It not only wouldn’t be fair, it would be poor judgment on your part. If you understand me.”

“I’m working for you,” Ryan said. “I’m not interested in your business. I don’t know anything about stock, I wouldn’t know how to go about anything like this.”

“It is tricky,” Mr. Perez said. “You’d be much happier in what you’re doing.”

“No, I’m not for getting into anything over my head,” Ryan said. But why hadn’t he at least thought of it? “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’m not going to,” Mr. Perez said. “I’m not going to worry one bit.”

“You want to give me a few more days, then? See if I can find her?”

“Yeah, you may as well. I’ve dug up the names of a couple more lost souls that might live in the area, so you keep at what you’re doing,” Mr. Perez said. “I’ll be here waiting.”

And watching. He didn’t say it, but that’s what Ryan felt. Mr. Perez on one side. Virgil Royal somewhere on the other. While he stood in the middle with Denise Leary, playing games.

Monday evening Ryan drove to Rochester to pick up Denise. She was living in a colonial complex of red-brick apartment buildings. He didn’t go in. She came out when he buzzed, and they went to a meeting at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal in Drayton Plains.

At the table Denise told about a new experience she’d discovered and was enjoying. Eating breakfast in the morning. Cereal, eggs, toast, the whole thing. Unbelievable. Instead of throwing up and having a few glasses of wine and trying to remember what had happened the night before. She told them today was her first day on a new job, checkout girl at a supermarket. She was amazed how friendly and willing to talk most people were. She said she had a strange feeling, as though four or five years had been taken out of her life and she was starting over. Each day was new and interesting, whether anything interesting happened or not. She said, “God, I sound like Little Mary Sunshine, don’t I? But I can’t help it, it’s how I feel. I hope I don’t get used to it or find out it’s a phase you go through.” She looked at Ryan across the table from her. “I like feeling good. I like being excited again about little things and wondering what’s going to happen next, without being afraid.”

Outside, after the meeting, Ryan said, “Aren’t you a little tired of Uncle Ben’s? It’s so bright in there.”

“I’m tired of drinking coffee more than anything,” Denise said. “Is that all right to say?”

“What we should do, go to a nice dim lounge with a cocktail piano. Order Shirley Temples on the rocks.”

“Or go back to my house,” Denise said. “If you like red pop or tea.”

“I’d even drink coffee at your place,” Ryan said.

Tunafish wished he knew what the fuck the man was doing. One night he goes to the hospital. Look at this, Virgil. Next two nights he goes to church, different churches. Saturday night, nothing. He doesn’t even go out. Then on Sunday he doesn’t go to church, he goes to a building says local 614. Monday night he goes to church again.

Tunafish wrote it down in the notebook he’d show to Virgil. Time to move. He gave the man a good lead and followed his taillights east toward Rochester.

There were killer whales in Puget Sound and a sperm chasing a school of salmon in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Ryan could make out the shapes, dark shadows in the misty blue. The specks of silver and yellow must be the salmon.

“They’re both oils,” Denise said, “from memory. Not very good, either. I mean the technique or the memory. I’ve got to loosen up more, I’m stiff.”

“You like whales, huh?”

“I love whales.”

Ryan hadn’t thought much about whales, but he said, “I can see where they’d be good to paint.”

“During one summer I trailed a herd of gray whales from Vancouver Island down the coast to Ensenada, in Baja. I must’ve made a hundred and fifty sketches.”

“You still have them?”

“No. Some are at home, if my mother kept them. The rest were lost, thrown away.” She was staring at the two unframed canvases propped against the wall. “These are the first things I’ve done in about three years.”

She moved away now, going into the kitchen that was separated from the living room by a bar-high counter with two stools. She called it part of the hot-setup contemporary decor. The place, she’d found out, was full of young swingies who turned their hi-fis up in the evening and invited each other in for cocktails and sangrнa at their studio bars. She had gone to one party and sipped coffee and the swingies had lost interest. It had been fun watching, though, she said. Like amateur night.

Ryan looked around the room again before going over to the counter. The place was freshly painted white and didn’t feel lived in. There wasn’t any worn-out furniture, things that had been handed down or bought at garage sales. There was beige carpeting and an Indian-looking rug. There were no curtains: a limp plant hung in the window. What dominated the room was a drawing board tilted up, with a straight chair, and a table littered with tubes of paint and brushes, a few ceramic pots, coffee mugs, and a full ashtray. There was an aluminum floor lamp that looked new, and a pair of director’s chairs with bright-yellow canvas. Most of the wall area was bare and stark white except for a number of black-and-white sketches of whales above the drawing board, stuck to the wall with pieces of masking tape. There were the two blue-looking finished canvases and a word, Kujira, painted on the wall in thin, flowing black letters that seemed more a delicate design than a word. Ryan didn’t know what to say when they came in and Denise turned on the floor lamp and he stood looking around. He said, “Did you do all this?” He studied the oils, not knowing what they were until she told him whales. The design on the wall, Kujira, was the Japanese word for whale, and the technique, the flowing, stiff-armed brushstrokes of ink, was called sumi. Denise said she was thinking about doing No More Bullshit in sumi. Ryan said it was a nice place. Clean. Denise said it was funny, she never thought of a place that way, being clean or dirty.

Leaning on the counter, he watched her as she put a kettle on to boil and dropped tea bags into blue ceramic cups.

“You mentioned, I think it was at that Saint Joseph meeting, you almost went home. Where’s that, your home?” He had to think before he spoke and not refer to anything about her he had learned on his own.

“Bad Axe,” Denise said. “You know where it is?”

“Everybody knows where Bad Axe is. Why didn’t you go there?” He was interested. He was also groping, looking for a way to ease into telling her what was going on. Relieve his own mind without disturbing hers. Maybe if they got talking about real feelings and were honest with each other…

“I almost did,” Denise said, “I guess, wanting to feel protected. But when I’m home, I’m not ever really me, I’m somebody or whatever my mother expects me to be. You know what I mean? I have to pretend I’m still her little girl and, oh gee, is it nice to be home, it’s so good to see you, Mom, and all that shit. I love her, I really do, but I can’t be honest with her and tell her how I feel. She wouldn’t understand. She’s full of shoulds and shouldn’ts and she’s not going to change now. So I thought, why get into all that? I’ve got enough of a problem getting myself straight without worrying about offending good old Mom. In her own way, she’s as unreal and fucked-up as I am. But she doesn’t know it and that makes a difference.”

Denise looked at him as she turned and placed the mugs of tea on the counter. “That’s a habit I’m going to have to break.”

“What is?”

“Talking dirty. I always said ‘fuck’ a lot when I was drinking.”

“It’s okay as long as you smile.”

“The past year, I don’t remember having much to smile about.” She looked at him again. “Does that sound