“Dad …”
Fletch felt a cool breeze. It made him shiver. “It does sound as if he’s having a considerable run of bad luck. Did he break one of his own mirrors, do you suppose?”
“What Shana said is correct. There is reason for me to be here. I think this guy is going to get killed.”
“What about you? Are you being careful?”
“Oh, yes. No one suspects me. I’ve got a job as pool ornament.”
“As what?”
“I take care of all the sports stuff, pools, tennis courts, gym. I’m being paid more than I’m worth.”
“That’s good.”
“But I’m too far removed. I’ve only seen Radliegh twice. We haven’t met. I can’t protect him. I can’t find out what’s really going on.”
“What have you found out so far?”
“He’s built a paradise here in Georgia for himself, family, employees. They’re safe, secure, have everything in the world they could want.”
“Sounds nice.”
“They’re spoiled, at least his kids are, more than I ever believed possible.”
“Of course.”
“They hate him.”
“Sure.”
“More than hate. Resent him. Resent his existence.”
“You think one of his kids is trying to do the old man in?”
“On the other hand,” Jack said, “Doctor Radliegh appears to demand total control over everybody, where, how they live, what they’re doing, saying, thinking, every minute, even what they eat and drink. I was told I had six minutes to drive from the estate’s front and only gate to the car compound to have my car locked up.”
“Your car? You have a car? Of your own?”
“I bought one. In Virginia.”
“What is it?”
“A Miata. A used Miata.”
“Phew. Global Cable News must have overpaid you, too. I’ll have a word with Alex Blair about that. Affects my dividends, don’t you know.”
“I believe Shana was right. Somebody is trying to knock off Chester Radliegh.”
“Shana is the girl who is going to marry young Chester?”
Jack hesitated. “I’m not sure she’s going to marry him.”
“Oh? Has the vision of you arriving in your two-seater chariot rediverted her heart?”
“I think she’s misread at least one thing here.”
“I think I’m putting two-point-three and two-point-three together—”
“—and coming up with five, I hope? Right. Would you think of coming here to Vindemia?”
“Ain’t been invited.”
“You have to admit these are too many coincidences.”
“There are a lot.”
“And you are more a peer of Chester Radliegh.”
“Little ol’ me? A peer of the man who invented the perfect mirror? You think I invented the raspberry maybe?”
“Come on, Dad. I’m just a kid.” Come on, Dad. I’m just a kid. There was that cool breeze again. Fletch shivered. “What do I know?”
“Your mother comes first.” Fletch felt noble in the saying.
“I’m trying to prevent a murder here and I don’t think there’s a whole lot of time.”
“I’m just not sure,” Fletch said. “We’ll just have to see how things work out.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Wish Mama mal apetite.”
Fletch said, “Don’t break any mirrors.”
•
“Fletch?” It was later in the evening. Crystal and Fletch, sleepy now, were still keeping each other company in the parking lot of the Besame Motel. They heard a dance band playing from somewhere in the motel. They weren’t dancing. “What’s the difference between fat people and slim people?”
Fletch said, “Fat people have more weight?”
“Answer me seriously. It doesn’t really have anything to do with big bones. My bones aren’t big. Or glands. Surgery could fix that.”
“Genetic proclivities?”
“No one in my family I ever heard of was fat. Not like me.”
Fletch said, “I think it may have something to do with what one puts in one’s mouth. Do you suppose?”
“I know that. But why do you put what you put in your mouth and I put what I put in my mouth?”
“I’m not comfortable feeling full of food. I guess you are.”
“I see that. You hate having all this food and greasy bags around the van, don’t you? Every time you open food parcels you’ve gotten for me, you sort of wrinkle your nose.”
“I do?”
“You do. You wrinkle your nose and look away. Why does food that looks good to me repel you?”
“Habits, I guess. Just what we’re used to.”
“It’s more than that.”
“I once heard a famous professor of nutrition at Northwestern say something about people having to set or reset something like a food thermostat in their heads.”
“What does that mean?”
Fletch said, “You become more accurately aware of what food you need to get along and only consume that much, no more. You eat high-energy food, the food that creates its own energy causing you to use it up, burn it off, with activity. You don’t eat food that weighs more than the energy it produces. Something like that.” The throbbing engine of an eighteen wheeler at the back of the parking lot was keeping time with the dance band. “I don’t know. Why ask me?”
“I’ve asked enough experts.”
“Paying for advice doesn’t guarantee much.”
“Fletch? Am I mentally ill?”
“Crystal, you’re one of the brightest, most logical people I’ve known.”
“Then why am I the way I am? What’s logical about the way I eat? What sense does it make?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, what do slim people know that fat people don’t?”
“I think slim people do know something.”
“Please tell me what.”
“I think slim people define hunger differently. I think slim people know that much of what you think of as hunger they realize is a food hangover. Have you ever noticed that when you eat more than usual you feel hunger pangs sooner?”
“Oh, yes. All the time.”
“I think when you eat more than usual the body produces more than usual gastric juices, or something, and when they get done working on the food that is in the stomach, they send a signal to the brain saying they’re ready for more food to work on. I think maybe fat people see that as a hunger pang. Slim people feel the same thing but know they’re not hungry because they know they’ve eaten more than they need already.”
“Hunger I feel is not real?”
“No. It’s false. You just believe it’s real.”
“I’m not really hungry?”
“You can’t be.”
“Have you read this somewhere?”
“No. Just many times I’ve had to ignore hunger and discovered that the first hunger pangs aren’t real. They
