back.
And Teo was out the door in nothing flat. He did remember to kiss her good-bye. She didn’t think he’d missed a day since they got together. But if ever anyone was going through the motions, he was then. Again, Louise tried to think she was seeing things that weren’t there, or it was nothing but her hormones running wild (which they were, and would be), or-anything. Again, she had trouble believing it.
Mr. Nobashi greeted her at Ramen Central with, “You better today?”
“I sure hope so,” Louise answered. “Thanks again for giving me some time off yesterday. It helped a lot.”
“Good,” he said gruffly, and went back into his inner office. Which was a good thing, because not thirty seconds later Louise yawned almost wide enough to make the top of her head fall off.
Wondering how she’d ever make it till half past five, she sat down and started messing around with the inventory spreadsheets. She wondered what would happen if she just entered numbers at random. Would ramen-scarfers all over the country start pining for their favorite flavors, or else find themselves swamped with them? Would she get fired and find herself unemployed as well as knocked up? Or would nobody notice or care?
Mr. Nobashi bawled for coffee. Then he bawled for sweet rolls. Then he hollered for sweet rolls and coffee. Hopping up to bring him goodies every so often kept Louise from sacking out at her desk. Nice to think Mr. Nobashi was good for something.
When she carried in the sweet rolls and coffee, he was just getting off the phone after a conversation with headquarters in Hiroshima. “Weather very bad in Japan,” he said. “Very cold. Hiroshima is warm. Like Los Angeles warm, only sticky. They have snow there, thirty centimeters snow.” He paused. “A foot, you say.”
“Wow! That’s a lot of snow,” she said. It hadn’t snowed here, but it was the rainiest winter she remembered.
“Only get worse, too. Supervolcano number-one bad,” Mr. Nobashi said. She couldn’t very well argue with that.
Patty came by her desk to yak for a bit. After a little while, she asked, “You feelin’ okay, sweetie?”
“I’ll live,” Louise said, as dryly as if she were Colin.
“Well, okay. You seem a little peaked, that’s all.” Patty was gossip-hungry. She’d have something to gab about when Louise’s belly started swelling. For now, though, Louise didn’t feel like sharing the news. Patty eventuay went away.
Somehow, Louise staggered through the day. She was fixing dinner when Teo came in. He was bright and cheerful-in a superficial way. He talked about how his day at the exercise studio had gone. He told a dumb joke he’d heard. He didn’t say word one about the elephant in the room.
After dinner, Louise tried to bring it up. Teo changed the subject. He hardly even seemed to have heard her. If he kept on doing that, Louise knew she would get mad at him. If she’d had a little more energy, she might have got mad then and there. Or she might not have. He’d built up a lot of capital with her. A couple of days of acting like a jerk-even if it was about something important-didn’t come close to burning through it.
She wondered if making love would help. But, even though she did everything except send up a flare, he didn’t take the hint. He just went to sleep, earlier than usual. Disappointed, so did she. Disappointed or not, she zoned out as if knocked over the head. She’d always thought you slept a lot while you were pregnant because you sure as hell wouldn’t afterwards.
He was gone the next morning before she got up. That was funny; they usually woke up together. Maybe he’d told her why the night before, but she was too sleepy to recall. The condo felt strange with her fixing breakfast alone.
Another day at the ramen mill. She survived it. She didn’t doze off or do anything to give Patty more ideas than she had already. It was raining again when she went out at half past five. On the way home, somebody rear-ended the VW in the lane next to hers. No one got hurt, but neither car would be going anywhere without making a body shop happy.
When she walked into the condo, her first thought was that a burglar had hit it. Then she realized the only stuff missing was Teo’s. Favorite chair. Clothes. DVDs. CDs. Computer. TV. Gone.
A note lay on the bed. I am sorry, Louise read, but I am not made to be a father. If you can make the payments, keep the place. I won’t give you no trouble about it. It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? But nothing lasts forever.
He’d scribbled a signature under the last four words. No forwarding address. She could try his cell, but what were the odds he’d answer? She tore the note into little pieces before she started to cry.
XX
“Been a while since the Strangler did anybody,” Gabe Sanchez remarked. “Not since the supervolcano went. Maybe he was at Yellowstone when it blew.”
“Too much to hope for,” Colin said. All the same, he imagined the son of a bitch watching Old Faithful when everything for miles around fell down onto the magma. Yes, he knew that was ridiculous. The area around Old Faithful had been off-limits for months before the big eruption. All the same… “Less than he deserves, too, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. Lethal injection!” Gabe snorted contempt. “If we ever do drop on him, here’s hoping some of the big, muscle-bound studs at San Quentin get some action with him. Let him find out about some of what he gave the old ladies.”
“That’d be nice,” Colin agreed. Before he could go on, his phone rang. He picked it up. “Lieutenant Ferguson.”
“Hello, Colin.” His former wife had been calling this number since before either of them had a cell phone. No doubt she did it now from force of habit.
“What’s up, Louise?” he asked. Whatever if was, it wasn’t good. She sounded as if she’d just watched a cement mixer run over her puppy.
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone,” she said. “Could you pick me up here at the ramen office for lunch?”
“Okay.” He tried to hide his astonishment. Since she left him, she’d made a point of not wanting to see him. “What time?… Twelve straight up? All right, I’ll be there… Yes, of course I know where it is. ’Bye.”
“Your ex?” Gabe knew the variations on this theme, too-probably better than Colin did. His kids were young enough to live with their mother most of the time, so he had to keep dealing with her. However painful it was, Colin’s break was clean. Or it had been, till now.
“Yeah, that was her. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what yet, but I’ll find out at lunch,” Colin said.
“Lucky you.” Sanchez rolled his eyes. “What’ll you do to help?”
“Damfino.” Colin shook his head. “Have to see what it is first. I don’t aim to buy a pig in a poke. Things aren’t the way they were right after she trotted out the door.”
“Nope. You found somebody else.” Gabe didn’t sound-very-jealous. He’d dated a double handful of women since his breakup. Nothing lasted long.
“Uh-huh. If she thinks she can walk back in the same way she walked out…” Colin shook his head again. If Louise had wanted to do that a few months after she left, chances were he would have dumped Kelly to get his old life back. Now? The train had rolled on.
He thought it had, anyhow.
“Luck,” Gabe told him.
“Thanks a lot.” For the rest of the morning, Colin went through the motions at his desk. He went through the emotions inside his head. When the time came, he drove north up Hesperus Avenue to Braxton Bragg, then hung a right to the ramen place. He shook his head when he turned in to the lot. He hadn’t remembered how heavily fortified the perimeter was. One more sign of San Atanasio’s changes-not for the better.
Louise came out at twelve on the dot, a couple of minutes after he got there. She looked the way she always looked-which is to say, she looked good to him. But no, not quite the way she always looked: she was pale
