The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] (12 page)

She didn’t mention the dialysis or anything else about her health and neither did I.

She insisted on cooking lunch, and even though I knew she was not up to it, I also knew it would be impossible to dissuade her. As my nose had informed me, she had already roasted and peeled the
poblanos
, shredded the
quesadilla
and the
asadero
, and cooked the side dish of refried beans. I watched her beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with a hand whisk, stuff the
poblanos
with the two cheeses, dip them in the egg whites, and lower them in to the boiling lard. She turned them deftly and removed them to a paper sack to drain.

Warm plates from the oven received
chiles rellenos
and refried beans. Her own plate held only a small helping of the beans. Emilio opened two cans of Tecate and we dug in. Though she was obviously frail, Consuela joined in the conversation with enthusiasm and laughter, and we sat at the table for two hours.

I’m ashamed to admit I ate four
rellenos
and at least a plateful of beans. Emilio stayed with me bite for bite, with the result that when Consuela produced two flans from the counter, he and I groaned in unison. But of course we ate them.

I hugged Consuela and Emilio in turn, they pressed a bag of chile-roasted pecans in to my hands, and we repeated our farewells several times. It was past three when I finally pulled onto the highway.

Susannah thinks I don’t read enough frivolous books, so – in keeping with her running insistence that I’m a burglar – she lent me a mystery called
The Burglar who Studied Spinoza
. I chose that one because of an interest in Spinoza. Turns out there isn’t much about him in the book, which is probably just as well. I’m no philosopher. I tried once to read his major work,
Ethics
. It was like running through sand, but I liked one passage that says something like, “The free man wastes no time thinking about death.” I suppose Spinoza meant ‘free’ not as opposed to ‘enslaved’ but in the sense of ‘liberated from fear’.

While I was gazing at the stars in my patio, a limb from one of my cottonwoods might have fallen on my head and killed me. I don’t worry about such things. Live life correctly and well each day. That’s my motto. Actually, I’m not really the sort to adopt mottos or coats of arms, but if I had a coat of arms, that motto would be on it. Along with crossed glasses, one a champagne flute and the other a margarita tumbler.

I like to think the Sanchezes share my motto. They have not allowed Consuela’s illness to undermine their life. They live every day according to their values and they enjoy such simple pleasures as are available to them. So being with them makes me happy, not sad.

23

My previous discussion with Susannah ended with her convincing me I had nothing to lose by calling the glamorous Stella in Rio Grande Lofts. After further consideration, I decided she was wrong.

I could call as Susannah had suggested and hope the doorman would put me through even if I couldn’t give Stella’s last name. “Good morning,” I’d say, “can you please put me through to Stella?”

A polite but indifferent voice would ask, “Which Stella would that be, sir?”

“The one on the fourth floor,” I would reply, hoping that knowing her floor would legitimize my request. But the haughty doorman might ask, “Do you have her surname, sir?”

“I’m sorry,” I might reply, “I met her the other day and she asked me to call, but I don’t remember her surname.”

Might work. Saying she asked me to call might do it. A doorman could get in trouble by not putting through requested calls even if the caller didn’t know the resident’s full name.

But even if I got the call past the doorman, Stella would still have to accept it. Susannah seemed certain she would. I was less sanguine. If Stella did take the call, my troubles were just beginning.

“Hi, Hubert,” I could hear her saying, “I’m glad you called. Why don’t you pop down to the fourth floor and pick up my iron.” Or worse, “Why don’t I
bring my iron up to eleven and show you how to use it?”

I ran through a dozen imaginary conversations with both Stella and her doorman, and I didn’t like any of them. And I didn’t know how the phone system worked at Rio Grande Lofts. Maybe they could dial each other directly, and the fact that I called the doorman would alert her that I was not in the building, and the first thing she would ask is where I was calling from… and, well, you get the picture. Calling the building didn’t seem nearly so simple as Susannah and a couple of margaritas had made it sound.

So I decided to find out Stella’s apartment number. My plan to accomplish this was the very soul of simplicity. Namely, watch the fourth floor and see which door she came from in the morning.

I had no desire to spend another night in the basement of Rio Grande Lofts, so I drove the Bronco up to the keypad at 7:00 Monday morning and noticed a metal sleeve had been welded around it. You couldn’t see the numbers unless you were directly in front of the keypad. My first thought was I’d been spotted spying the numbers through my telescope, and when I punched in #2330 and nothing happened, I was sure of it.

I tried the other code I had seen, #9999, not thinking it would work, but it did, so I decided the changes didn’t mean I had been spotted. Maybe the resident with code #2330 just decided to change his code the way people sometimes change their passwords. At least that’s what my nephew Tristan tells me. I don’t have any passwords.

There was a clicking sound from the direction of the gate, then a clank, and then the gate drew back and I drove in.

I was dressed in business attire and carrying a brief case, so when a resident came through the door of the glassed-in area and I grabbed the door and let myself in, he didn’t even look back. Maybe clothes do make the man.

I elevatored up to the fourth floor, walked down the hall, and opened the door to the stairwell. Once on the stairwell side of the door, I removed metal shears, wire mesh, a screwdriver, and a clay plug from the briefcase. I pressed the clay in to the slot where the bolt goes. I worked the metal shears around the wire mesh to create a piece the width of the metal plate around the bolthole. Then I removed the two screws from the plate, put the mesh over it, and reinserted the screws through the mesh. The mesh would do triple duty, holding the clay in place, allowing it to dry, and preventing the bolt from lodging in the bolthole.

I eased the door shut and of course the bolt did not engage. Then I opened it just a sliver and watched. I saw a man emerge from number 409. I closed the door quietly. I heard the elevator doors open and close. Then I eased the door open again. Two other people exited their apartments and went to the elevator before Stella stepped out from number 404. She was stunning. I was preparing to move briskly
up
the stairs to avoid encountering her if she came towards me, but she stopped at the elevator and punched the down button.

I walked leisurely down the stairs, killing some time at the bottom to give her plenty of time to exit the building. Then I opened the door, walked through the glassed-in area, got in the Bronco, and drove up to the exit gate. Whatever magic it is that allows gates to distinguish cars from persons worked. It opened and I drove to my nephew’s apartment.

24

Tristan is not actually my nephew. He’s the grandson of my Aunt Beatrice, my mother’s sister. I think that makes Tristan my second cousin once removed. Or maybe it’s my first cousin twice removed. As an anthropologist, I should be an expert on kinship, but I’m not. I prefer physical anthropology – pots. Anyway, I call Tristan my nephew and he calls me his uncle, and that’s the way we feel about each other, so it works.

Tristan is never without his PDA, a device I believe contains his entire collection of unlistenable music, an internet connection, assorted games that simulate gruesome combat, a camera, and of course both a pager and a cell phone with voice mail. You would think he would be easy to reach at any time. You would be wrong if the time were before noon, the earliest he has been known to arise.

I stopped at Barela’s Coffee House for two chorizo and egg breakfast burritos and a large black coffee. I let myself in to his apartment with my key and held the steaming coffee under his nose. When he was close enough to consciousness to groan, I shook his shoulders.

He got back in bed, propped himself up on his pillow and began to eat the burritos. I wondered if I needed to reconsider my estimation of his hygiene.

“Are you going to wash the sheets when you finish breakfast?’

“Nah. I never wash them unless I have a girl coming over.”

It happens quite often – girls find him irresistible. He’s slightly pudgy with smooth skin and black hair that hangs down in ringlets around his neck. His large eyes have dark skin under them, so he looks like some sort of lovable animal baby. He’s also a nice person, and the girls like that, too. You may wonder, in light of his love life, how we both avoid the embarrassment of my letting myself in to his apartment and finding he is not alone. The answer is we have a very sophisticated system. The system was not worked out by Tristan, so it does not rely on lasers, electronics, or anything digital. I suggested it myself, and it is the essence of simplicity. When he’s not alone, he sticks a yellow Post-it Note on his door.

After eating both burritos, he looked in to the sack and said to the bottom of it, “Did you bring anything else?”

“Yes, a question about telephone numbers. If I have an address, is there any way to find the telephone number that goes with it?”

“There are some companies on the Internet that do that for a charge. What they’ve done is dump phone book data in to a relational data base.”

“Only if the person has a listed number.” He stepped over to his desk and hit a few keys on his computer. I gave him Stella’s address, but he came up empty.

“So there’s no way to find the number?”

“Well, there is a more complete reverse directory, but only the police, firefighters, and other authorized agencies are supposed to have it.”

Before I left, I asked Tristan if he needed money, and he said he was O.K., so I gave him a fifty. When he says he’s broke, I give him a hundred. When he says he’s fine, I don’t know what I give him because he’s always either broke or just O.K.

25

The next morning, I took a clean blue shirt from my chifferobe even though I was already wearing a clean yellow one. Then I opened for business, wadded up the blue shirt, put it on the seat of the stool behind the counter, sat down on it and started reading and waiting for customers.

This was working as easily as Susannah predicted. I told Stella I was at work, which was true, but I’d be there in twenty minutes.

I realized after getting the number that I couldn’t use Stella to get me in the building until after we met again. I mean, what could I say to her on the phone, “Meet me at the entrance so I can get past the doorman”?

But I figured once I got to know her, maybe we could walk in and out a few times and the doorman would see me as someone who was entitled to come and go. Maybe he would think I had moved in with her. More likely, I told myself, he would think I was her father.

And I didn’t need her help at this point anyway because even though #2330 no longer worked, #9999 still did.

Or so I thought. I drove up next to the keypad and punched in #9999 and nothing happened. I tried it again thinking maybe I had mis-keyed, but nothing happened again. I sat there wondering what to do.