Through the open doorway I watch Marino leave. “Why did you move here, Anna?” Now I am talking in non se-quiturs.
“Here? You mean this house?” She studies me.
“Richmond. Why Richmond?”
“That is easy. Love.” She says this flatly with no trace of feeling one way or another about it.
The temperature has dropped as the night deepens, and Marino’s big, booted feet crunch through crusty snow.
“What love?” I ask her.
“A person who proved to be a waste of time.”
Marino kicks the running board to knock snow loose before climbing inside his throbbing track, engine rumbling like the bowels of a great ship, exhaust rushing out. He senses I am looking and puts on a bigger act of pretending he is unaware or doesn’t care as he pulls his door shut and shoves his behemoth into gear. Snow spits out from huge tires as he drives off. Anna shuts the front door while I stand before it, lost in a vortex of spiraling thoughts and feelings.
“We must get you settled,” she says to me, touching my arm and motioning for me to follow her.
I come to. “He’s angry with me.”
“If he were not angry about somethingor rudeI would think he is ill.”
“He’s angry at me because I almost got murdered.” I sound very tired. “Everybody’s angry with me.”
“You are exhausted.” She pauses in the entrance hallway to hear what I have to say.
“I’m supposed to apologize because someone tried to kill me?” The protests tumble out. “I asked for it? I did something wrong? So I opened my door. I wasn’t perfect, but I’m here, aren’t I? I’m alive, aren’t I? We’re all alive and well, aren’t we? Why is everybody angry with me?”
“Everybody isn’t,” Anna replies.
“Why is it my fault?”
“Do you think it is your fault?” She studies me with an expression that can only be described as radiological. Anna sees
right through to my bones.
“Of course not,” I reply. “I know it’s not my fault.” She deadbolts the door, then sets the alarm and takes me into the kitchen. I try to remember the last time I ate or what day of the week it is. Then it glimmers. Saturday. I have already asked that several times now. Twenty hours have passed since I almost died. The table is set for two, and a large pot of soup simmers on the stove. I smell baking bread and am suddenly nauseous and starved at the same time, and despite all this, a detail registers. If Anna was expecting Lucy, why isn’t the table set for three?
“When will Lucy go back to Miami?” Anna seems to read my thoughts as she lifts the lid off the pot and stirs with a long wooden spoon. “What would you like? Scotch?”
“A strong one.”
She pulls the cork out of a bottle of Glenmorangie Sherry Wood Finish single malt whisky and pours its precious rosy essence over ice in cut crystal tumblers.
“I don’t know when Lucy will go back. Have no idea, really.” I begin to fill in the blanks for her. “ATF was involved in a takedown in Miami that turned bad, very bad. There was a shooting. Lucy…”
“Yes, yes, Kay, I know that part.” Anna hands me my drink. She can sound impatient even when she is very calm. “It was all over the news. And I called you. Remember? We talked about Lucy.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I mutter.
Anna takes the chair across from me, elbows on the table, leaning into our conversation. She is an amazingly intense, fit woman, tall and firm, a Leni Riefenstahl enlightened beyond her time and undaunted by the years. Her blue warm-up suit turns her eyes the same startling shade of cornflowers, and her silver hair is pulled back in a neat pony tail held by a black velvet band. I don’t know for a fact that she had a face-lift or any other cosmetic work, but I suspect modern medicine has something to do with the way she looks. Anna could easily pass for a woman in her fifties.
“I assume Lucy came to stay with you while the incident is investigated,” she comments, “I can only imagine the red tape.”