“You good with that, sir?”
“Fine, sure, we’re good here, officer. A little glitch, nothing more.”
When Sweeney smiled, the tension seemed to evaporate. Three or four people clapped. “OK, then—” The deputy looked to the crowd. “But everybody needs to remember something. Normal is the only thing that flies these days at Southwest Florida International.”
He turned away and stepped through the crowd. People were taking a last look before turning back to the carousel.
“That was well done.” Larson watched the cop and now faced Rivera. “I mean it,” he said. “I want you to take the money and the card. I like what I just saw. I want you to call me.”
“I worked for your mother,” Rivera said. “I went to the memorial service.”
Again dabbing his cheek, Larson blinked. “I couldn’t get down,” he said. “She would’ve understood, it was impossible to get away.” Slowly he put the handkerchief back in his hip pocket. “Wait now…” He snapped his fingers. “Help me out here. Hand-something, a service… How’s it go?”
“James Rivera, All Hands on Deck.”
“Rivera. God, yes, All Hands on Deck.” Larson put out his hand, and Rivera shook it. “Someone was supposed to touch base with you, I don’t know if they did. It was good knowing mother had someone down here, when we weren’t available. No, I mean it,” Larson said, still shaking. “Thanks for seeing to things down here.”
They stopped, and Larson put his hands on his hips. He looked at Brenda, Sweeney, and back to Rivera. “I had this bag stolen at Kennedy, this spi— this Hispanic guy took it and a whole jitney of luggage. Between the plane and baggage claim, you believe that? Nothing valuable, just some cuff links from my wife. It was the sentimental value. Maybe you can understand. It stuck with me.”
“Yes, I can,” Rivera said.
“Terrific.” With unconcealed irritation, Larson now glanced at Brenda, then looked at Pat Sweeney. He stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings, compadre?” Sweeney said something in Spanish. “What’s that?”
“It has to do with you and your mother.”
Larson held Sweeney’s gaze several seconds, then he turned away. Brenda watched him cross the lobby, and glass doors scissored open. A car was waiting, a Lexus.
Donegal Golf and Country Club
12:40 p.m.
Wrapped in one of his son’s oversized terry cloth robes, an old man sat in the sun.
He was next to the swimming pool, seated on the hard metal chair that never tipped over. The pool’s high screened cage formed an outdoor room that faced Donegal’s fourteenth fairway. Outside the cage, groomed clusters of crotons and sea grape bordered the fourteenth’s broad swath of Bermuda grass.
The man studied the plants. They were strange to him, not like landscaping back home in Michigan. Adjusting his big wraparound sunglasses, he wondered why it was he now lived in Naples year-round.
Clapping came from somewhere, but he saw no golfers. When they passed in golf carts and waved, he was supposed to wave back. You played too, the man thought. What happened? To focus his memory, he looked up through the screened cage at puffy clouds. They were high and white, the sky intensely blue. He heard more clapping and now realized it came from a TV inside. When he looked back down, the clouds above were perfectly mirrored in his son’s big swimming pool.
“Hey honey! Get out here and see this!”
With difficulty he pushed up, got his walker and started for the house. His wife painted and she should see the clouds. Concentrating on his feet, he reached the open door wall and looked in. A broad expanse of gray slate spread across the cool interior. He took off the sunglasses and put them in the robe’s pocket. Overhead, a mobile made of steel dolphins turned slowly under the vaulted ceiling.
“Hey honey!”
“Yo, Chester!” At the far end, a white-clad attendant was standing in the entrance hall. “What’s the haps?”
“Where’s my wife?”
He was eating something, holding the bowl to his mouth. “Not here,” the attendant said.
Ice cream. Those who took care of Chester Ivy ate lots of it. The ones who sat in the bathroom when he showered, who cooked his meals, and gave him medicine. This one watched TV all day.
“When’s she coming back?” he called. “I want to show her something she should paint.”
“It’ll have to keep. Want some frozen yogurt?”
“I want her. Now.”
Still eating, the attendant disappeared. They came and went. Served meals, took him to the clinic. At night it was nurses, during the day young men. This one had weird tattoos. His eyes were deep-set and seemed to look out on their own, hair cut very short. Just like the haircuts they gave you in basic training. At Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. 1943. With great clarity the old man now remembered standing in line with other recruits, waiting in his underwear.
“Here we go—”
He glanced up and saw the attendant again at the far end of the big room. A whirring and clicking came from the floor. It was heading toward him, bouncing over the big room’s stone slabs. “Comin’ at you, Chet. Heads up.”
The man’s thin face broke into a grin as a radio-controlled car whipped past. He gripped his walker and turned to watch the car shoot out onto the deck.
“Works for you every time,” the attendant called. “Chester loves his Lamborghini.”
The toy stopped abruptly. “Let me do it, give me the remote.”
“OK, but on one condition.”
Halted, the red car looked like an exotic bug sunning itself on the white deck. This attendant always made you agree to something before he turned over the controls. Eat, take medicine, sit on the can.
“Hear that?” A buzzer sounded as the model car shot forward and raced along the pool deck. “That’s the oven timer.” The car veered and shot down the pool’s border. It turned abruptly, sailed off and hit the water with a slap.
“No!” The old man shook his head in protest. Floating a moment, the toy began to
