those risks?”
“So someone else’s friend or lover can do the worrying, you mean?” I wasn’t angry, only very lonely. “It will happen inevitably, Lotty. I won’t be able to jump through hoops or climb up ropes forever. Someone else will have to take over. But it won’t be the police. Not when I have to fight them every inch of the way to look into arson and they still won’t do it. Or when their only answer to my near death is to accuse me-”
I broke off. Maybe Cerise and Elena had seen who set fire to the Indiana Arms and were going after him. Or her. Or them. Still, if that was so, it could be the arsonist was disposing of her by his favorite means. And maybe assumed she’d confided in me so I had to go too? And-but had they murdered Cerise? The police said it was an overdose, pure and simple.
“I know I shouldn’t be losing my temper with you. It’s only my fear of losing you, that’s all,” Lotty said.
“I know,” I said wearily. “But it just puts that much more pressure on me, Lotty. Some days I have to fight a hundred people just to be able to do my job. When you’re the hundred and first I feel like all I want to do is lie down and die.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “So to help you I have to support you doing things that are a torment to me? I’ll have to think about that one, Victoria… One thing I don’t support, though. That you dedicate your life to your aunt. Mez mentioned that part of your conversation to me. I suggested that if you were a man, he would never even have raised the topic with you except to ask if you had a wife to do the job.”
“What did he say?”
“What could he say? He hemmed and said he still thought it was a good idea. But there’s a limit to how much of yourself you have to immolate for people, Victoria. You almost killed yourself for Elena. You don’t have to sacrifice your mind as well.”
“Okay, Doctor,” I muttered. I blinked back tears-I was so weak that one little sentence of support made me feel like crying.
“You’re exhausted,” she said curtly. “You’re in bed? Good. Get some sleep. Good night.”
When she hung up I switched my phone over to the answering service. I fumbled around with the switch in the dark to turn off the bell. When my thick ungainly hands had managed that I finally fell into a deep clear sleep.
29
Heavy Flowers
When I woke up on Saturday it was past nine-thirty. I’d slept more than thirteen hours and for the first time in a week I felt rested for my time in bed. I let myself come to slowly, not wanting to bring on black spots by jerking my head.
In the bathroom I unwrapped my hands. The palms had turned an orangey-yellow. I flinched in nausea-their swollen discoloration made a sickening wake-up call. When I gently pushed the blood blisters lining my hands like railroad tracks, they seemed to be healing. I tried to remember that injuries always look their worst when they’re on the mend, but the squishy mass still made my stomach turn. I also wasn’t sure I could wrap them back up again myself. The hospital had given me a salve and some dressing but hadn’t included a manual on how to apply them with my teeth.
Still, if I kept my hands on the edge of the tub, I could take a proper bath. I turned on the water, threw in some milk bath, and toddled off to the kitchen to make coffee. Since I could use only my fingertips to handle the kettle, it was a slow and tiresome experience. By the time I had a cup poured the bath was close to overflowing. I climbed in carefully, holding the coffee in my fingers. When I sank down cross-legged and great wave swept over the side of the tub but my hands stayed dry.
I lay soaking until the water became tepid, thinking of nothing at first, then going back to my painful headwork of the previous night. I still couldn’t understand why Cerise’s death had terrified Elena into flight, unless someone had pumped Cerise full of heroin and left her to die. I couldn’t move on that idea, though. I didn’t have any evidence-it was just the only explanation that I could come up with. And how had Elena known? She’d found it out in the twenty-four hours between my visit to her and her panicky exit in the middle of the night. While she was lying mute behind a protective barricade of doctors and nurses I didn’t have any way of finding out. I’d have to drop it for now.
What I could do was take a look at Alma Mejicana. I put the coffee cup on the windowsill and looked at my palms again, grimacing. Tomorrow would be the ideal time to slide into their offices, but I didn’t think I’d be much more healed by then than I was this morning.
I soaped down and pulled myself cautiously from the tub. Drying off presented more difficulties. It’s only when you can’t use them that you realize how much you need your hands. The third time I dropped the towel I left it on the floor and climbed back into bed to finish drying.
The front doorbell rang just as I was trying to hoist jeans over my still-damp rump. I’d forgotten Robin was coming. I slid my arms through a zip-up jacket and managed to have it closed by the time he got to the third-floor landing.
“Vic! Good to see you in one piece.” He looked me over critically. “You don’t seem nearly as battered as I figured from the news reports. How you feeling?”
“Better than I did a few days ago. My head’s clear, that’s the main thing.”
He held out a bunch of late-summer flowers picked from his own tiny, carefully tended plot. I got him to carry them into the kitchen and fill a pitcher for me. Something about the bright gold daisies on the table suddenly gave me an enormous appetite. I wanted pancakes, eggs, bacon, a whole farmer’s breakfast.
Even though he’d eaten several hours ago, Robin obligingly agreed to go to the corner diner with me. He even overcame his own nausea to dress my hands for me. I thought with my palms padded I could manage a bra, but the hooks still were too much for me. It was one thing to get my hands dressed, another to need help with a bra. I put on an outsize sweatshirt and headed downstairs without one.
Mr. Contreras and the dog were coming in the front door as we left. He looked Robin over with critical jealousy. Peppy jumped up on me and started licking my face. I played with her ears and introduced the two of them to Robin.
“Where you off to, doll?”
“Breakfast. I haven’t had a proper meal since Monday night.”
“I told you yesterday you was looking peaked. The princess and me would have brought you breakfast if you’d asked, saved you a trip out. I only didn’t come up because I figured you was still asleep.”
“I need the exercise,” I said. “Robin here will make sure I don’t overdo it.”
“Well, you call me if you need help. You be sure and give him my number, doll. You pass out or something in the restaurant, I don’t want to see it in the papers first.”
I gave him my solemn word that he would have the honor of providing me smelling salts if needed. He scowled at us but went on inside with Peppy.
“Who is he?” Robin demanded when we were out of earshot. “Your grandfather?”
“He’s just my downstairs neighbor. He’s retired and I’m his hobby.”
“Why’s he so rattled about you going out to eat?”
“It’s not breakfast-it’s breakfast with you. If he was twenty years younger, he’d be beating up any guy who came visiting me. It’s tiresome, but he’s essentially so good-hearted I can’t bring myself to punch him down.”
The four blocks to the Belmont Diner wore me out. I’ve been through convalescence before. I know the early part is slow and then your strength comes back pretty fast, but it still was frustrating. I had to work to get the tension in my stomach to subside.
Most of the waitresses at the diner know me-I probably catch at least one meal a week there and sometimes more. They’d all read about my misadventures and crowded around the table to find out how I was doing and who the talent I’d come in with was. Barbara, whose section I was in, shooed the others away when they started offering juice and rolls. When I ordered a cheese omelet, potatoes, bacon, toast, and a side of fruit with yogurt, she shook her head.
“You’re not going to eat all that, Vic-it’s twice what you get when you’ve just run five miles.”
