“Frederica Virginia. Frederica Virginia Gentry. You know.”
“Is it `Gentry’? I thought you said Miles had never adopted you?”
“Oh! I’ve been Ricky Gentry as long as I can remember. But you mean my real name. It’s the same as Grandma’s … the same as my real daddy’s. Heinicke. But nobody ever calls me that.”
“They will now.” I wrote “Frederica Virginia Heinicke” and added “and to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday” while prickles ran down my spine-my original assignment might have been defective in any case.
I started to sign and then noticed our watchdog sticking her head out of the office. I glanced at my wrist, saw that we had been talking an hour; I was running out of minutes.
But I wanted it nailed down tight. “Ma’am!”
“Yes?”
“By any chance, is there a notary public around here? Or must I find one in the village?”
“I am a notary. What do you wish?”
“Oh, good! Wonderful! Do you have your seal?”
“I never go anywhere without it.”
So I signed my name under her eye and she even stretched a point (on Ricky’s assurance that she knew me and Pete’s silent testimony to my respectability as a fellow member of the fraternity of cat people) and used the long form: “-known to me personally as being said Daniel B. Davis–” When she embossed her seal through my signature and her own I sighed with relief. Just let Belle try to find a way to twist that one!
She glanced at it curiously but said nothing. I said solemnly, “Tragedies cannot be undone but this will help. The kid’s education, you know.”
She refused a fee and went back into the office. I turned back to Picky and said, “Give this to your grandmother. Tell her to take it to a branch of the Bank of America in Brawley. They’ll do everything else.” I laid it in front of her.
She did not touch it. “That’s worth a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“Quite a bit. It will be worth more.”
“I don’t want it.”
“But, Ricky, I want you to have it.”
“I don’t want it. I won’t take it.” Her eyes filled with tears and her voice got unsteady. “You’re going away forever and. . . and you don’t care about me any more.” She sniffed. “Just like when you got engaged to her. When you could just as easily bring Pete and come live with Grandma and me. I don’t want your money!”
“Picky. Listen to me, Picky. It’s too late. I couldn’t take it back now if I wanted to. It’s already yours.”
“I don’t care. I won’t ever touch it.” She reached out and stroked Pete. “Pete wouldn’t go away and leave me . . . only you’re going to make him. Now I won’t even have Pete.”
I answered unsteadily, “Picky? Rikki-tikki-tavi? You want to see Pete. . . and me again?”
I could hardly hear her. “Of course I do. But I won’t.”
“But you can.”
“Huh? How? You said you were going to take the Long Sleep thirty years, you said.”
“And I am. I have to. But, Picky, here is what you can do. Be a good girl, go live with your grandmama, go to school-and just let this money pile up. When you are twenty-one-if you still want to see us-you’ll have enough money to take the Long Sleep yourself. When you wake up I’ll be there waiting for you. Pete and I will both be waiting for you. That’s a solemn promise.”
Her expression changed but she did not smile. She thought about it quite a long time, then said, “You’ll really be there?”
“Yes. But we’ll have to make a date. If you do it, Ricky, do it just the way I tell you. You arrange it with the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company and you make sure that you take your Sleep in the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside. . . and you make very sure that they have orders to wake you up on the first day of May, 2001, exactly. I’ll be there that day, waiting for you. If you want me to be there when you first open your eyes, you’ll have to leave word for that, too, or they won’t let me farther than the waiting room-I know that sanctuary; they’re very fussy.” I took out an envelope which I had prepared before I left Denver. “You don’t have to remember this; I’ve got it all written out for you. Just save it, and on your twenty-first birthday you can make up your mind. But you can be sure that Pete and I will be there waiting for you, whether you show up or not.” I laid the prepared instructions on the stock certificate.