The Drawing of the Three

2

Detta Walker had absolutely no interest in the Movement and much more modest digs. She lived in the loft of a peeling Greenwich Village apartment building. Odetta didn't know about the loft and Detta didn't know about the penthouse and the only one left who suspected something was not quite right was Andrew Feeny, the chauffeur. He had begun working for Odetta's father when Odetta was fourteen and Detta Walker hardly existed at all.

Sometimes Odetta disappeared. These disappearances might be a matter of hours or of days. Last summer she had disappeared for three weeks and Andrew had been ready to call the police when Odetta called him one evening and asked him to bring the car around at ten the next day?she planned to do some shopping, she said.

It trembled on his lips to cry out Miz Holmes! Where haveyou been? But he had asked this before and had received only puzzled stares? truly puzzled stares, he was sure?in return. Right here, she would say. Why, right here, Andrew?you've been driving me two or three places every day, haven't you? You aren't starting to go a little mushy in the head, are you? Then she would laugh and if she was feeling especially good (as she often seemed to feel after her disappearances), she would pinch his cheek.

'Very good, Miz Holmes,' he had said. 'Ten it is.'

That scary time she had been gone for three weeks, Andrew had put down the phone, closed his eyes, and said a quick prayer to the Blessed Virgin for Miz Holmes's safe return. Then he had rung Howard, the doorman at her building.

'What time did she come in?'

'Just about twenty minutes ago,' Howard said.

'Who brought her?'

'Dunno. You know how it is. Different car every time. Sometimes they park around the block and I don't see em at all, don't even know she's back until I hear the buzzer and look out and see it's her.' Howard paused, then added: 'She's got one hell of a bruise on her cheek.'

Howard had been right. It sure had been one hell of a bruise, and now it was getting better. Andrew didn't like to think what it might have looked like when it was fresh. Miz Holmes appeared promptly at ten the next morning, wearing a silk sundress with spaghetti-thin straps (this had been late July), and by then the bruise had started to yellow. She had made only a perfunctory effort to cover it with make-up, as if knowing that too much effort to cover it would only draw further attention to it.

'How did you get that, Miz Holmes?' he asked.

She laughed merrily. 'You know me, Andrew?clumsy as ever. My hand slipped on the grab-handle while I was getting out of the tub yesterday?I was in a hurry to catch the national news. I fell and banged the side of my face.' She gauged his face. 'You're getting ready to start blithering about doctors and examinations, aren't you? Don't bother answering; after all these years I can read you like a book. I won't go, so you needn't bother asking. I'm just as fine as paint. Onward, Andrew! I intend to buy half of Saks', all of Gimbels, and eat everything at Four Seasons in between.'

'Yes, Miz Holmes,' he had said, and smiled. It was a forced smile, and forcing it was not easy. That bruise wasn't a day old; it was a week old, at least … and he knew better, anyway, didn't he? He had called her every night at seven o'clock for the last week, because if there was one time when you could catch Miz Holmes in her place, it was when the Huntley-Brinkley Report came on. A regular junkie for her news was Miz Holmes. He had done it every night, that was, except last night. Then he had gone over and wheedled the passkey from Howard. A conviction had been growing on him steadily that she had had just the sort of accident she had described … only instead of getting a bruise or a broken bone, she had died, died alone, and was lying up there dead right now. He had let himself in, heart thumping, feeling like a cat in a dark room criss-crossed with piano wires. Only there had been nothing to be nervous about. There was a butter-dish on the kitchen counter, and although the butter had been covered it had been out long enough to be growing a good crop of mould. He got there at ten minutes of seven and had left by five after. In the course of his quick examination of the apartment, he had glanced into the bathroom. The tub had been dry, the towels neatly?even austerely?arrayed, the room's many grab-handles polished to a bright steel gleam that was unspotted with water.

He knew the accident she had described had not happened.

But Andrew had not believed she was lying, either. She had believed what she had told him.

He looked in the rear-view mirror again and saw her rubbing her temples lightly with the tips of her fingers. He didn't like it. He had seen her do that too many times before one of her disappearances.

3

Andrew left the motor running so she could have the benefit of the heater, then went around to the trunk. He looked at her two suitcases with another wince. They looked as if petulant men with small minds and large bodies had kicked them relentlessly back and forth, damaging the bags in a way they did not quite dare damage Miz Holmes herself?the way they might have damaged him, for instance, if he had been there. It wasn't just that she was a woman; she was a nigger, an uppity northern nigger messing where she had no business messing, and they probably figured a woman like that deserved just what she got. Thing was, she was also a rich nigger. Thing was, she was almost as well-known to the American public as Medgar Evers or Martin Luther King. Thing was, she'd gotten her rich nigger face on the cover of Time magazine and it was a little harder to get away with sticking someone like that in the 'toolies and then saying What? No sir, boss, we sho dint see nobody looked like that down here, did we, boys? Thing was, it was a little harder to work yourself up to hurting a woman who was the only heir to Holmes Dental Industries when there were twelve Holmes plants in the sunny South, one of them just one county over from Oxford Town, Oxford Town.

So they'd done to her suitcases what they didn't dare do to her.

He looked at these mute indications of her stay in Oxford Town with shame and fury and love, emotions as mute as the scars on the luggage that had gone away looking smart and had come back looking dumb and thumped. He looked, temporarily unable to move, and his breath puffed out on the frosty air.

Howard was coming out to help, but Andrew paused a moment longer before grasping the handles of the cases. Whoare you, Miz Holmes? Who are you really? Where do you go sometimes, and what do you do that seems so bad that you have to make up a false history of the missing hours or days even to yourself? And he thought something else in the moment before Howard arrived, something weirdly apt: Where's the rest of you?

You want to quit thinking like that. If anyone around here was going to do any thinking like that it would be Miz Holmes, but she doesn't and so you don't need to, either.

Andrew lifted the bags out of the trunk and handed them to Howard, who asked in a low voice: 'Is she all right?'

'I think so,' Andrew replied, also pitching his voice low. 'Just tired is all. Tired all the way down to her roots.'

Howard nodded, took the battered suitcases, and started back inside. He paused only long enough to tip his cap to Odetta Holmes?who was almost invisible behind the smoked glass windows?in a soft and respectful salute.

When he was gone, Andrew took out the collapsed stainless steel scaffolding at the bottom of the trunk