“Any reason you didn’t file for divorce?” I said.
“Why bother?” she said. “There was no other man I wanted to know, and Eldon was sending me his army pension. You know how it is.”
“How is it?” said Milo.
“You don’t make a move in the beginning, nothing happens. He sent the check every month, that was enough for me. Then when he started in on that killing business, I knew I was lucky he’d left. Who’d want to live with that? I mean, when I heard about that I got sick, really sick. I remember the first time. I saw it on TV. Eldon standing there—I hadn’t seen him in years and now he was on the TV. Looking older, balder but the same face, the same voice. Bragging about what he did. I thought, He’s finally gone a hundred percent crazy. The next day I was on the phone, changing my name on the Social Security and everything else I could find.”
“So you never talked to him about his new career?”
“Didn’t talk to him about anything,” she said. “Didn’t I just say that?” She shoved her plate away. Pulled more soda through the straws, let the brown liquid drop like the bubble in a carpenter’s level before it reached her lips.
“Even if it was making him real rich, how would it look if suddenly I showed up wanting more?” She touched the handle of her butter knife. “That was filthy money. I been working my whole life, doing just fine— tell me, did he get rich from the killing?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Milo.
“So what was the point?”
“He claimed he was helping people.”
“The devil claims he’s an angel. Back when I knew Eldon, he wasn’t interested in helping anyone but himself.”
“Selfish?” I said.
“You bet. Always in his own world, doing what he wanted. Which was reading, always reading.”
“Why’d you come down here, ma’am?” said Milo.
She held her hands out, as if expecting a gift. Her palms were scrubbed pale, crisscrossed by brown hatch marks. “I told you. I just thought I should—I guess I was curious.”
“About what?”
She moved back in the booth. “About Eldon. Where he lived—what had happened to him. I never could figure him out.”
“How’d the two of you meet?” I said.
She smiled. Smoothed her dress. Sucked soda up the straw. “What? Because he was a doctor and I’m some brown lady?”
“No—”
“It’s okay, I’m used to it. When we were married and I used to walk Donny in the stroller, people thought I was the maid. ‘Cause Donny’s light like Eldon—spitting image of Eldon, in fact, and Eldon still didn’t like him. Go figure. But stuff like that don’t bother me anymore, the only thing that matters is doing right for Jesus— that’s the real reason I’d never put a claim on Eldon’s killing money. Jesus would weep. And I know you’re gonna think I’m some kind of religious nut for saying this, but my faith is strong, and when you live for Jesus your soul is full of riches.”
She laughed. “Of course, a nice meal once in a while don’t hurt, right?”
“How about dessert?” said Milo.
She pretended to contemplate the offer. “If you’re having.”
He waved for the waitress, “Apple pie. Hot, a la mode. And for the lady…”
Guillerma Mate said, “As long as we’re talking pie, honey, you got any chocolate cream?”
The waitress said, “Sure,” copied down the order, turned to me. I shook my head and she left.
“Eldon didn’t believe in Jesus, that was the problem,” said Guillerma, dabbing at her lips again. “Didn’t believe in nothing. You wanna know how we met? It was just one of those things. Eldon was living at this apartment complex where my mother did the cleaning—she wasn’t legal so she couldn’t get a decent job. My dad was a hundred percent legal, had a work permit, did landscaping for Luckett Construction, they were the biggest back then. My dad got citizenship, brought my mom over from El Salvador, but she never bothered to get papers. I was born here, pure American. My friends call me Willy. Anyway, Eldon was living in the complex and I used to run into him when I was washing down the walkways or trimming the flowers. We’d talk.”