with that pink-rimmed look so often seen on redheads. She had a trim figure beneath her white-and-gray uniform: lean waist and high, small, protruding breasts-a teenage figure. Her hair was medium-length and combed back, arranged in a sort of bun on top of her head and held there with a blue ribbon tied in a large bow. The flared bow resembled an exotic butterfly that had found a suitable flower. There were errant, fiery wisps of hair curling in front of her ears. She looked to Carver as if she ought to be wearing pigtails and orthodontic braces and marching in the junior high school band. The plastic name plaque on the desk read “Birdie Reeves.”
She glanced up from the magazine she’d been reading and noticed Carver. She blinked once, slowly, as if there were sand beneath her eyelids and they hurt. Then she smiled. Her teeth were even but protruded; that only added to her Becky Thatcher look. She was so much the opposite of classic beauty that she made you see her own brand of beauty in her blazing youth.
She stood up behind the counter, though it was hardly noticeable, and said, “Can I help you?” There was a lilt to her voice, maybe a midwestern drawl.
“I’m looking for Kearny Williams,” Carver said.
Birdie’s smile kept splitting her features, causing the flesh at the corners of her eyes to crinkle in a parody of crow’s feet. People like her never really appeared old; they simply faded and reminded other people that time was passing. “Uh-hm, we got a Mr. Williams here. You a relative?”
“Friend of a friend. My name’s Fred Carver. Tell Mr. Williams I knew Sam Cusanelli.”
Birdie’s blue eyes widened and her sadness absorbed her smile. “Shame about Mr. Cusanelli,” she said. “He was a nice man. I’d say that about most any of the residents, I guess, but it really was true of Mr. Cusanelli. How well did you know him?”
“Very well, when he was younger.”
She was smiling again, waiting for Carver to say more. He didn’t.
“I see,” she said. A man and a woman wearing white uniforms bustled past, discussing something earnestly, oblivious of where they were. The man mumbled, “… a drop in the white cell count,” and the woman nodded thoughtfully. The old woman in the chair lolled her head and tried to lift a hand to wave but was ignored.
Birdie said, “Well, I s’pose it’s okay.” She pointed; her thin arm was freckled and dusted with reddish down. “Go on through that door and down the hall, then turn left and you’ll come to Mr. Williams’s room. I’m sure he’s there; he’s most always there.” She consulted a chart on a clipboard. “Room number’s one.”
“Easy to remember,” Carver said.
“Not for Mr. Williams sometimes.”
Carver said thanks and left her to return to her magazine. It had to do with heavy-metal rock stars. There was a glossy cover illustration of an insanely grinning thirtyish man dressed as an English schoolboy and aiming his elaborate guitar like a rifle. Birdie seemed enthralled by the magazine’s contents. Her lips moved soundlessly as she read.
A teenager with an MTV mind as a receptionist in an old-folks’ home. Well, why not? The place needed a fresh bloom in the midst of all the faded petals.
As Carver made his way cautiously over the slick tiled floor toward the wide door Birdie had pointed out, the door swung toward him and a heavyset woman wearing a uniform like the receptionist’s wheeled a very old man in a chrome wheelchair into the lobby. Like the woman in the rocking chair, he was held firmly in place by a knotted sheet around his midsection. His head wobbled and a gleaming thread of saliva dangled from his chin, catching the light. Carver quickly looked away; here was the future for each generation’s survivors. It was something nobody of any age liked to think about, but it was there like cold, black reality on every life’s horizon.
He pushed open the swinging door with the tip of his cane and went through. Walked down the hall as Birdie had directed and made a left turn. He had to limp only a few feet before he came to a pastel blue door with a gold numeral 1 painted on it. Again using the cane, he knocked.
“… on in,” called a voice from the other side.
Carver rotated the knob and entered a small, sunny room furnished with a bed, a limed oak dresser, and a tiny color TV that was tuned soundlessly to a morning game show. A pretty blond woman on the screen spun an oversized roulette wheel, closed her eyes, and crossed the fingers of both hands. In front of the TV was a brown vinyl chair in which sat a broad, muscular man with wide, squared features. Moving with a difficulty and stiffness that revealed his advanced age, he stood up and turned to face Carver. He had a sacklike stomach paunch, and his throat was scarred and withered from a recent operation. His thick gray hair was precisely and severely parted, as if he’d spent a great deal of time getting it just right, maybe using scientific instruments.
“I’m a friend of Alfonso Desoto,” Carver said, leaning on his cane and extending his hand. “Name’s Fred Carver.”
Kearny had eyes like faded blue marbles. It took a moment for a light to shine in them. “Desoto? Sam’s nephew?”
“Right.”
A dry, powerful hand gripped Carver’s up to the wrist and pumped it almost out of the socket. The old guy was glad to see him. Maybe glad to see anybody. “I’m Kearny Williams.”
“I know.” Carver retracted his arm; his shoulder was sore. “I came here to see you about Sam Cusanelli.”
Kearny motioned for him to take the chair. When Carver declined, he said, “Guess you know Sam’s dead. Went three days ago.”
“Desoto told me.”
Kearny slumped down again in the brown vinyl chair. “Gotta get my weight off these legs after a while. It’s pure shit, growin’ old. Outlivin’ your body. It gets you down, knowin’ your good years are behind you. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, Carver.”
The last sounded like a command. “I won’t,” Carver assured him. “When’s Sam Cusanelli’s funeral?”
Kearny shook his large head. Light from the window shot silver flecks through his hair. His clothes were neat and clean: loose-fitting jeans with creases ironed into them, a short-sleeved gray sport shirt with an out-of-style wide, wide collar. His shoes were black brogans, work shoes, but they were waxed shiny enough to gleam with reflected images. Carver wondered why he kept so well groomed when he was probably shut away in his room most of every day. “Sam was put in the ground this morning,” Kearny said. “Didn’t believe in long wakes for himself or anybody else. Told me he’d been grieving in this place long enough anyway.”
“He could have left here, couldn’t he?”
“He did leave here.”
“I mean some other way.”
Kearny snorted and looked angry. “Where would he have gone? It was his family in Saint Louis shoved him in here outta sight. That Desoto offered to put him up, but Sam chose not to be a burden. That’s us here at Sunhaven, Carver, don’t wanna burden the young and living.” He added ironically, “As if them and us was all one species.”
Carver was surprised Desoto had made such an offer. He lived in a small condo in Orlando. Red carpet, black furniture. A year’s salary in stereo equipment throbbing out the damned Latin music he seemed to crave listening to, sometimes in his bedroom with all the mirrors, sometimes with someone. No place for a seventy-six-year-old uncle. A lot of old people would think Desoto’s wardrobe alone was a sin.
Of course, Carver hadn’t known Uncle Sam and Desoto had. Maybe it would have worked. Casanova and Moses.
Kearny could read minds. “That Desoto, he’s a handsome young buck. Got him an eye for the women, right?”
“That’s him,” Carver said. An eye and anything else he can bring into play.
Kearny grinned and shook his head. “I envy him. He better get it while he can. Everything he can. Life’s here and then it’s gone. More precious than gold, but nobody knows it till it’s too late. Use every damn second of it, you hear me?”
The voice of command again. “Hear you,” Carver said. He sat down on the bed.
“How’d you get the bum leg?”
“I was a cop,” Carver said. “A holdup man shot me in the knee.”
“Desoto’s a cop in Orlando. That where you know him from?”
“Yeah. We been friends for years.”
