“I’ll help any way I can.”
“It must’ve been worse than rough.”
She nodded, barely moving.
“You should’ve called me,” I said. “I’m in the book.”
She put her eyes on mine and left them there. “Yes. Maybe I should have.” She bent down to stub out her cigarette in a little ceramic ashtray one of the kids made in school. She was wearing tight jeans and a clinging brown top that was cut just above the beltline and open-toed strap sandals with a medium heel. When she bent over, the top pulled up to show tanned skin and the ridge of her spine. A good looking woman. She picked up the drink, drained half the glass, and took a deep breath. It was a lot of booze. “What was all that crap you gave Ellen about yoga and karate and Vietnam?”
“You guys tell each other everything?”
“Friends havta stick together.” You could hear the booze in her voice. “You look too young for Vietnam.”
“I looked old when I got back.”
She smiled. You could see the booze in her smile, too. “Peter Pan. You told Ellen you wanted to be Peter Pan.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“That’s crap. Stay a little boy forever.”
“It’s not age. Childhood, maybe. All the good things are in childhood. Innocence. Loyalty. Truth. You’re eighteen years old. You’re sitting in a rice paddy. Most guys give it up. I decided eighteen was too young to be old. I work at maintaining myself.”
“So at thirty-five, you’re still eighteen.”
“Fourteen. Fourteen’s my ideal age.”
The left corner of her mouth ticked. “Stan,” she said, face soft. “Stan gave it up. But he doesn’t have Vietnam to blame it on.”
“There are different kinds of war.”
“Of course.”
I didn’t say anything. She was thinking. When she finished, she said, “How’d you get a name like Elvis? You were born before anyone knew who Elvis Presley was.”
“My name was Phillip James Cole until I was six years old. Then my mother saw The King in concert. She changed my name to Elvis the next afternoon.”
“Legally?”
“Legally.”
“Oh, God. And you’ve never changed it back?”
“It’s what she named me.”
Janet Simon shook her head, putting her eyes back on mine. With her face relaxed and the booze taking the edge off, she seemed stronger. Sexier. She crossed her ankles and rocked. She took more of the drink. “Have you ever been shot?”
“I caught some frag in the war.”
“Did it hurt?”
“At first it feels like you’ve been slapped, then it starts to burn and the muscle tightens up. With me, it wasn’t too bad so I could take it. Other guys who had it worse, it was worse.”
“So it probably hurt Mort.”
“If the head shot was first, he didn’t feel a thing. If not, he hurt a lot.”
She nodded, then put the glass back on the mantel. It was empty except for the ice. “If Ellen asks, please don’t tell her that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I forgot. Sensitive and caring.”
“ ‘Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy.’ The Blue Fairy said that. In Pinocchio. ”
She looked at me a very long time, then her eyes got red and she turned toward the window. Past her, I could see three little girls walking north down the middle of the street, one of them skipping. They were laughing, but we were too far away to hear them. The house was quiet. “Ellen’s never home before four,” she whispered.
It was five minutes until three.
“Did you hear me?” Still facing the window.
“Yes.”
Janet Simon began to shiver, then tremble, then cry. I went over to her and let her sob into me like Ellen Lang had done. This time I got an erection. I tried to ease away but she pressed against me. Then her head came up and her mouth found me and that was that.
She squeezed hard and bruised my lips with her teeth and bit me. She was as lithe and strong as she looked. I lifted her away from the hearth and the big window and put her on the floor. She pulled off her clothes while I closed and locked the door. Her body was lean and firm and tan with smallish breasts and definition to her abdominals with nice ribs.
She came twice before I did. She bit my shoulders and scratched me and said “Yes” a lot. When it ended we lay on our backs, wet and breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. She got up without a word, picked up her clothes, and disappeared down the hall. After a moment I heard water running.
I dressed and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I went back out to the living room, Janet Simon was there. “Well,” she said.
“Well,” I said.
The phone rang. While Janet answered it, I took a peek out the big window. No light green Subaru. No Ellen Lang. No boys on bicycles or little girls in the middle of the street. Everything was on this side of the door.
Janet hung up and said, “That was the girls. They’re still at school. Ellen never picked them up.”
My watch showed three twenty-two.
“What time does school let out?”
“Two forty-five.” She looked uneasy. “The girls want me to go get them.”
“Can you drive?”
She gave me a small tight smile without a lot of humor in it. “I’ve been sobered.”
I nodded. “I’ll stay here for Ellen.”
“What do I say to them about Mort?”
“Don’t say anything. We wait for their mother for that.”
“But she didn’t pick them up.”
“She’s got a lot on her mind.”
We stood there for a while, neither moving toward the other. Then Janet nodded and left. I went back to the chair and drank my water. Then I got up and went back to the big window and watched the drive. Ellen Lang didn’t turn in.
11
Janet Simon was back with the two girls in less than forty minutes. The older one came in first, sullen and red-eyed, and went straight back to her room, slamming her door. Janet and the younger one came in together. Janet gave a little shake of her head, meaning that she hadn’t told them anything. She said, “Did Ellen call?”
“Nope.”
The younger one dropped her books on the long table they have in the entry, then ran past me to the TV, turned it on, and sat on the floor about two feet from the screen. 3-2-1 Contact was starting. It was the episode about directions and map-making. I’d seen it before. “My name’s Elvis. What’s yours?”
“Carrie.”
She inched closer to the set. I guess I was making too much noise.
