Up in Honey's Room

“I’ll think of something.”

She opened the car door. “I ask only one favor,” Vera said. “Make sure, please, I’m not in the fucking line of fire.”

“You have the Luger, just in case?”

“In my bag.”

Thirty

It was in Vera’s mind she’d forgot to do something, one item on Bo’s list of instructions. She had her handbag, holding it under her arm, martini in her other hand. She had come out of the kitchen to stand by the dining table at this end of the sitting room, Honey still in the kitchen making drinks.

Honey had put on a record, American Negro music, a little-girl voice asking wasn’t she good to some guy.

Vera could sing it to Bo. Baby, ain’t I good to you?

Letting him do this, and Bo saying what was three more after Odessa? Now four.

Coming in she saw Carl immediately and thought, Ah, Bo will be happy; though the sight of Carl, unexpected, caused her stomach to turn and gave her an uneasy feeling and she wanted Bo to come in and see Carl and shoot him before saying a word. Get rid of the Hot Kid quick or he’ll put a notch on his gun to represent Bo-Carl in a Spitfire with German crosses on the fuselage, Bo flying an ME-109 or a Focke-Wulf and if Bo didn’t shoot him please right away before Carl says what he said each time, If I have to pull my gun... Once Bo shoots him he can say what he wants if he can keep it short. Get the other three together in front of the bookcase. It would be in newspapers tomorrow, late, in the newspaper wherever they were and in all the newspapers in America because one of the “Four Murdered in Detroit Apartment ” was a German prisoner of war. What was he doing there? Were these people spies? Who killed them? Or were they executed? By then she and Bo could be in Texas. She was counting on Carl having gas stamps and expense money. Sorry, Carl, it’s the war. The fucking war. Honey might have a few stamps. They’d look in her desk-there against the wall opposite the sofa and the bookcase. Bo would stand by the desk. Come in and take his position.

Wait. What did Bo say was crucial?

And thought of what she’d forgot to do because she didn’t write it down and look at the words.

Unlock the door.

Carl and Jurgen were talking about rodeoing.

Carl thought Jurgen was the right size to ride bulls, though on the high end, as most big-money bull riders tended to be small guys, five six, a hundred and a quarter. You’d think a long-legged rider’d fit the bull better. Carl said he never stayed the eight seconds on a bull any time he tried the amateur circuit on weekends when he was eighteen. He switched over to saddle broncs, couldn’t stay on ’em either and went to college two and a half years and joined the marshals.

Jurgen said he knew he could ride bulls and be good at it. Know why? Because when his family returned to Germany after living here, it was 1935, they stopped in Spain and went to bullfights, good ones in Madrid and different towns and he wanted to be a matador de toros. He said he would cape bulls in a way that was both cold and serene, feet planted in the sand, taking the bull’s charge and then killing the bull in the manner of Joselito, the stylist, perhaps a show-off, dead at twenty-five, but one of the great matadors of Spain. You would have worshipped him, Jurgen said to Carl.

But Jurgen didn’t become a matador and kill bulls. He said now, he becomes a bull rider and the bulls will know, the way they know bull love, he never tormented bulls with a cape or ever killed one of them. He said the ones he rides will be grateful and take it easy on him.

Carl said he thought it sounded more like bull shit than bull lore. He told Jurgen if the bulls don’t twist hard you don’t make points riding ’em.

Honey brought them each a martini, Carl switching over because Jurgen’s silver bullet looked so good in the delicate glass. Honey stayed with them. Jurgen was saying how he devoured Hemingway’s book, talking about the one on the shelf here, because he loved the idea of Spain at that time, not because Germany was behind Franco. Jurgen was for the Loyalists, like Robert Jordan whose job in the book was to blow up a bridge. Carl said he read most of For Whom the Bell Tolls at his dad’s house and thought of it as a western, up in the mountains riding horses. They could be in Mexico. Jurgen said he started reading Zane Grey at the camp, speaking of westerns.

Carl said, “‘When you call me that, smile’? I didn’t care much for Zane Grey.”

Walter stepped over to them. He said, “You don’t think Roosevelt’s death was, well, curious, coming as it did?”

Carl said, “Jesus Christ, Walter, go sit down, will you?”

Honey said, “We don’t accept your theory, Walter, whatever it is,” and said, “I tried Zane Grey once, I thought he was awfully old-timey the way he wrote.”

Carl said, “His books don’t sound like he had any fun writing them. But you see ads, you can buy every book Zane Grey wrote and fill up a whole shelf. For people who don’t know any better.”

Honey said, “What’s Vera doing?”

Carl and Jurgen looked over to watch her open the apartment door, look out in the hall and close it again.

Honey called to her, “Vera . . . ?”

She came over to them with her Persian lamb handbag and held up her martini to Honey. “Notice I’m sipping now, having quenched my thirst.”

Honey said, “What were you doing just now?”

“I must be hearing things. I would swear someone was at the door.”

Carl said, “We expecting somebody else?”

“Not that I know of,” Honey said.

“No, no, I was mistaken,” Vera said, “there’s no one else.”

It was the way she kept looking toward the door, fidgety now, taking quick little sips of her drink, Carl would bet all the expense money he had in his billfold, $124, Bohunk was about to walk in.

Vera would look toward the door.

So would Carl, over his shoulder.

Honey saying, “Why’re we standing when we can sit down? I’ll put on another record. How about Sinatra?”

Vera finished her martini, placed the glass on a bookshelf and glanced toward the door.

Carl did too, turning his head.

He watched the door come open a little at a time until there was Bo in a gray sweater and skirt holding his machine gun, Carl turning to Vera as she said to him, “Do you like Frank Sinatra?”

“I like the one playing. You know what it is?”

“‘Oh Look at Me Now,’” Vera said. “How do you see what’s about to happen?”

“That’s a skirt Bo’s wearing?”

“I said to him please, not tonight.”

“He might’ve left off the makeup. What I’m wondering,” Carl said, “if that’s a war souvenir he wants to show us. It isn’t, will you tell him to lay it on the floor?”

Honey said, “She isn’t his mother.”

“Thank you,” Vera said. “I’m a guest here. You can tell him if you want.”

Bo, coming toward this end of the room along the opposite wall, stopped at the bedroom hallway to glance in.

“They’re all here,” Vera said to him.