accessible in an emergency. People didn’t make sense.
He put the gun back. No point in telling Glenna about it. He would get it later. He pushed himself away from the desk, picked up the phone book, leafed through it a second time, then dropped it on the desk amid the pile of receipts and left the office.
“ Find anything?” she asked.
“ Just a phone book with his customer’s names.”
“ Nothing else?”
“ No.” He sat down next to her. “I’m going to try and sleep before it gets too hot.” It was a long time since he had to force himself to sleep in adverse conditions, but he still knew how. He closed his eyes and took himself back to the bad days of the POW camp. He drifted off to sleep before he had time to set up the Monopoly board, leaving Glenna alone, meditating in front of an imaginary candle.
He woke in a hot sweat at noon. Glenna was asleep on a pile of clothes. It was good that she was able to sleep, he thought, because they would probably be up all night. He closed his eyes, sleep took a little longer, he almost made it to Park Place, he didn’t get to pass Go.
He opened his eyes again at 2:30.
“ I’m glad you’re awake.” She was in a half lotus now, but as he stirred, she straightened her right leg in front of herself and touched her head to her knee and held the position for over a minute. She repeated the exercise with her left leg, then went back into the half lotus. “I can handle being by myself. I’ve had practice, but I prefer people. Maybe I just haven’t had the life experience to spend prolonged periods in meditation. I can do it, but I don’t enjoy it as much as conversation.”
They talked, getting to know each other for the next six hours.
She told him about her old boyfriends, not too many, her girlfriends, some now married with children. How she had been a cheerleader in high school her junior and senior years. What it was like to be homecoming queen. How devastated she was when she brought home that one B in third semester Spanish, shattering her 4.0 grade point average. The difficulties of being both class president in her senior year and head cheerleader.
He told her about the war, the POW camp, the VA hospital, the Marine Corps. What it was like to get the medal of honor. What it was like to make his first million. How he loved real estate with a passion. It was a way of making a lot of money without hurting anyone. When he bought a property, he made the seller and his family happy and when he sold something, he made the buyer and his family happy. Until two months ago he had the perfect life. Then his wife met Kohler.
She confessed that her high school career hadn’t been all that stellar. She’d never gotten over being the homecoming queen who hadn’t gone to the prom. No one asked her. She was stiff on a date. She knew that. She didn’t like petting in the back seat. She didn’t like being pawed. She was working on it. She was getting better. She was going to be okay.
He told her about Roma and how he fell in love with her and how she moved to Miami. How he was heartbroken and married Julia. He thought he was in love with her, but now he had to admit, maybe he married her on the rebound.
“ I have an idea,” she said. It was 8:30. The sun had been down for about an hour and a half. “Why don’t we get the cleaner’s phone book and call the customers. If someone answers we hang up. If we don’t get an answer, we know they’re not home.” She had a satisfied smile on her face.
“ I’ll get the book.” He pushed himself off the floor, picked up his laundry bag and headed for the office. “I’m going to change out of these shorts, while I’m at it.” Once in the office he closed the door, took off the shorts and put on a pair of the faded Levi’s. Then he opened the bottom drawer, took out the gun, dropped it in his bag. He picked up the phone book as she opened the door.
“ Did you get the gun?” she asked.
“ How did you know?”
“ I checked the office while you were asleep.”
“ Why didn’t you tell me?”
“ I wanted to see how you would handle it. You didn’t want me to know about the gun? I like that. You were trying to protect me from the harsh reality of the situation. Not very smart, but I like it. Please don’t do it again. We should trust each other.” She went to the desk. “Do you want to call or should I?”
“ You can do it,” he said.
She sat down and started pushing buttons, calling numbers in the book at random. It took ten calls before she was blessed with no answer.
“ Here we are,” she said. “Mary Mckinna. 13 Church Street. Great, look at this.” She showed him the phone book. Under the address were the words, Next to the Cemetery.
“ I was afraid that even if we found someone not at home, we wouldn’t be able to find the house. Guess I worried in vain. We should have no trouble finding a cemetery in a town this size.”
“ No,” she echoed, “no trouble at all.”
“ Let’s go,” he said.
“ I’ll get my gear.” She went back to their place behind the counter, picked up her laundry bag. “You know,” she said, “I’m going to miss this place. I feel like I’ve entered a new stage in my life.” Then she walked to the back door, opened it and they stepped out into the hot night.
Five minutes later they found it.
“ The Rio Dulce Cemetery,” he read off the sign.
“ Think there was a river here?” she whispered.
“ Must have been.”
“ Where’s the house?”
“ You don’t have to whisper, nobody can hear us.”
“ What about them?” She pointed into the cemetery.
Chapter Thirteen
“ It has to be that white house over there.” Jim pointed through the cemetery.
“ Let’s go.” Glenna started walking down the street.
“ Where are you going?”
“ Around. Church Street must dead end into the cemetery. We’ll go around the block.”
“ Car coming.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her into the graveyard. They huddled behind a hedge while the car passed.
“ It’s the police,” she whispered. The black and white cruiser rolled on by without stopping. “I didn’t tell you something,” she said, lying next to him. They were sandwiched between the hedge, shielding themselves from the street and a row of tombstones.
“ What?”
“ I felt something crawl across my foot last night. Just before I went to sleep.”
“ So?”
“ It might have been a gecko.”
“ You think?”
“ Could have been, have you seen any?”
“ Yes, in my room at the motel and at the mini market on the other side of the Interstate.”
“ Well, I’ve been seeing them, too. I shook one off my foot just before you-know-what came creeping out from under my father’s car. You think there’s a connection?”
“ I hope not, but maybe.”
“ There are no geckos in California. They live in the tropics,” she said.
“ I know that.”
“ Just making conversation.” She desperately wanted to believe there was no connection. She was sorry she brought it up. Sorry she even thought about it. This wasn’t the place to think about slimy things with big teeth that creep in the night.
