Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (10 page)

‘He promised to meet me here at nine exactly and what is it now?’

Feely looked out of the window. ‘The roads are still pretty gelid. Maybe he’s been hampered by a snowdrift.’

‘He could have
called
me, couldn’t he? It’s not like he doesn’t have the latest state-of-the-art Sony cellphone or anything.’

‘Maybe you should try calling
him
?’

‘Are you serious? I wouldn’t demean myself. If he thinks so little of me that he can’t be bothered to meet me when he says he’s going to meet me, then I’m certainly not going to go crawling after him on my hands and knees like I care or something.’

Feely nodded, and sniffed. ‘I know what you mean. You can’t expect other people to hold you in higher estimation than the estimation in which you yourself hold yourself in.’

‘Excuse me?’

Feely found himself going hot. Although she was wearing such dull, baggy clothes, the girl was quite good-looking, if you liked overweight girls. She had a broad face, with wide-apart eyes, and very full lips. Her eyebrows were unplucked, and Feely could see that she bit her nails, but to Feely that was part of her attraction. She looked natural, unlike his sister Gloria who spent hours in front of the mirror with a pair of tweezers and ended up looking like some yuca dancer’s Thursday-night girlfriend.

Feely said, ‘What I meant was, you’re probably making the most sagacious choice. You know, by not phoning him.’

‘Oh,’ said the girl, although she didn’t seem to understand the connection between ‘phoning’ and ‘estimation.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she added, ‘Your friend’s taking his own sweet time, too.’

‘My friend? Oh, he’s not my friend. He just picked me up.’

The girl blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry or anything.’

‘You’re not. You didn’t.’

The girl sat looking at him for almost half a minute, as if she wanted to say something, but couldn’t.

‘What?’ said Feely, at last.

‘I’m sorry. You kind of threw me off balance, that’s all. I never met a guy who does what you do.’

Another long silence. Then Feely said, ‘I wish you’d illuminate me. What exactly
do
you think I do?’

‘Well, you know . . .’ The girl rolled her eyes toward Robert’s empty seat.

Feely turned toward the empty seat too, and then turned back again. ‘What—you think—? Him and me? Hey, you’ve construed that totally erroneously! I was hitch-hiking, that’s all, and Robert was the only one who had the empathy to stop for me.’

The girl stared at him. ‘I’m
so
sorry! When you said he picked you up . . . oh, I could
die
!’

‘Hey, don’t be mortified,’ said Feely. ‘It’s an easy misapprehension to come to. I mean, him and me, we’re not exactly congruous, are we? He said that I should impersonate his son, in case people might think what you just thought, but, you know, I thought, what’s all
that
about?’

The girl was so embarrassed that she cupped her hands over her face. ‘I’m so sorry. I really am. You don’t even
look
gay. Oh God, I didn’t mean it like that, either! You’re not, are you? Or
are
you?’

‘No, I’m not.’ Feely couldn’t believe the way this conversation was going. It was like trying to eat very long spaghetti and everybody’s staring at you and you never seem to get to the end of it. ‘I mean, I’m
definitely
not. I don’t have any familiarity with the guy at all, except that he used to sell these transparent rulers and he walked out on his wife.’

She took her hands away from her face. ‘And now he wants you to pretend that you’re his son?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t you think that’s
strange
?’

‘I don’t know. He said he didn’t want people to notice us, that’s all. He said we should be like ghosts.’

‘Well, I think that’s strange. I noticed the two of you as soon as you walked in the door, and I thought:
strange
.’

She paused, and then she held out her hand. ‘My name’s Serenity, by the way. Serenity Bellow.’

‘Serenity? That’s a very mellifluous name.’

‘Mellifluous? Where do you learn all these
words
?’

Feely released her hand. ‘Out of the dictionary,’ he admitted.

‘You have to be
kidding
me.’

‘Well, I didn’t learn
all
of them out of the dictionary. Some of them I found . . . you know . . .’ His eyes shifted sideways. ‘ . . . in the thesaurus.’

The girl slowly sat back, her eyes bright, her mouth wide open with surprise and delight. Feely couldn’t understand what was so funny. Where else would you learn words from, except for the dictionary, or the thesaurus? They were all there, from aardvark to zymurgy, and all you had to do was memorize them. Or was he being hopelessly obtuse? Maybe everybody else acquired their vocabulary some other way that nobody had told him about. Maybe, when you were little, your father was supposed to whisper into your ear all the words you needed to know, that’s if you had a father, and not Bruno.

‘I’m reading T.S. Eliot,’ said Serenity, holding up her book.

‘Hey. Cool.’

‘You don’t know who he is, do you?’

‘I’ve heard the name.’

‘You know all of these incredible words and you never read T.S. Eliot?’

Feely shook his head.

‘How about Ezra Pound? Did you ever read anything by Ezra Pound?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Feely.

‘What
have
you read?’

‘Well,
Moby Dick
. My English teacher Father Arcimboldo gave it to me when I was in school.’

‘What did you think of it?’

‘Actually, to tell you the truth, with
Moby Dick
I never proceeded a whole lot further than the middle of page one. Like I’d already seen it on TV with Captain Jean Luc Picard in it so I knew pretty much what was going to happen in the end, so I wasn’t exactly enthused to read the central portion.’

‘T.S. Eliot is wonderful,’ said Serenity. ‘Just listen to this.

Feely listened until she had finished. Then he said, ‘That’s very unusual. I never heard anything like that before.’

‘You like it?’

‘I think so. It’s very unusual, the way the words are joined together. It’s kind of like a different language.
Harus—
what was that? That’s a word I don’t know.’

‘
Haruspicate
. I had to look it up myself. It means when you tell the future by poking around in some animal’s intestines. That’s what they used to do in Ancient Rome. Like, if Caesar wanted to know if it was a good idea to invade Persia, the priest would cut open some sheep and stir its intestines with a stick.’

‘And that’s how they told the future? They haruspicated. That’s a great word. Haruspicate. “Want to go out tonight, dude? I don’t know. Hold on for a moment while I har-
us
-picate.”’

Serenity closed her book. ‘What’s your
name
?’ she asked him.

‘Fidelio Valoy Amado Valentin Valdes.’

‘Wow.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Most people who know me call me Feely.’

‘
Feely
. That’s cool. Where do you come from, Feely?’

‘New York City. El Barrio. I guess you’d call it Spanish Harlem.’

‘Really? So, like, what are you doing here in Canaan?’

‘I’m in transition, that’s all. And waiting for my ride to come back, wherever he’s vacated himself to.’

‘You didn’t eat your breakfast,’ said Serenity, nodding toward his untouched stack of pancakes.

‘No. My partiality was kind of extinguished.’

‘Your what was what?’

‘I was about to eat them when I saw the cook,’ said Feely, and mimed his nose-picking.

‘Oh,
gross
. I just had the eggs and Canadian bacon.
Urrghhh!
’

‘It’s probably OK. Like, the human digestive system is very resilient. I expect you could digest a considerable quantity of other people’s mucus without any deleterious effect.’

Serenity stared at him. ‘Tell me something, Feely, are you for real?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re not putting me on, are you? You use all these words, and it’s like you
nearly
know what they mean but not quite.’

Feely frowned at her. ‘I don’t think I’m exactly following you.’

‘I don’t know. I’m confused. I can’t work out if you’re serious.’ She hesitated, and then she laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to bring you down or anything.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Feely. ‘My Uncle Valentin was a singer. He was my genuine uncle, my father’s brother, nothing to do with Bruno. My genuine father walked out when I was three maybe, or maybe four. I’m not really acquainted with why or when and it was never any use asking my mother because quite frankly she doesn’t know shit from Wednesday. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my mother and hold her in reverentiality. I do. I hold her in great reverentiality. But I remember my Uncle Valentin and he was sitting halfway down the stairs smoking a little cigar and playing his guitar and I came and sat next to him, and he sang me this song. The song was all about this little mouse, and how he devoured books instead of cheese, so that he was full of words, and because he was full of words instead of cheese he became king of the mice.’

‘That’s sweet.’

‘Well, you can call it sweet if you like, but it became entrapped in my conscience. And especially when I was at school and I was bullied every day, and Father Arcimboldo told me that an accurate word is as equally impactive as a punch in the nose if not even more so. Well . . . on 111th Street, there wasn’t very much opportunity to employ accurate words in context. I learned them all, but mostly I had to keep them to myself, because the people there are totally impermeable, they’re either stoned or stupid. So if I use any incorrect nuances that’s possibly the cause of it. But now I’m out of there. I can use all the vocabulary I know.’

Serenity said, ‘You are really the most extraordinary person I ever met. Do you know that?’

‘I’m just making good my escape, that’s all.’

‘So where are you headed? I mean, eventually?’

‘I’m going north.’

‘Sure. But where? Massachusetts? New Hampshire? Don’t tell me you’re going to Canada?’

‘No particular destination. I think you have to pursue your mirage, that’s all, and I have this mirage of someplace north, someplace very hygienic, you know, where it’s too cold for people not to tell the truth.’

Serenity looked up at the clock. ‘Do you think your friend’s coming back? I don’t think he’s coming back. I think he’s just offed and left you.’

‘Well, in that case I’ll have to find another ride. To be honest with you he kind of intimidated me. He was pretty much inebriated and we nearly crashed, and then we got lost.’

‘Why don’t you come home with me?’ Serenity suggested. ‘My parents are away in San Diego for the holidays so I have the whole house to myself. You could have a bath and something to eat and you could borrow some of my brother’s old sweaters. Well, you could
have
them, if you want to. He’s working in Stamford now, for this law firm, and he’s put on so much weight. They’re never going to fit him again.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Feely. ‘I did promise Robert that I’d wait.’

‘Hey, what for? You don’t owe him anything, do you? And he sounds like a total whack-job to me.’

As if to make up his mind for him, Feely’s stomach made a loud growling noise, followed by a gurgle. He and Serenity looked at each other for a moment and then they both burst out laughing.

 

S
issy hadn’t expected Trevor to call around again so soon. She had dressed and pinned up her hair and she was sitting in the living room smoking and watching the TV news when she heard the crunching of car tires on the frozen snow in her driveway. She heaved Mr Boots off her feet, where he had been sleeping, and went over to the window.

‘Oh rats,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette in the Martha’s Vineyard ashtray and waved her arms around frantically to get rid of the smoke.

Trevor came in through the kitchen door, stamping his feet on the mat. He was dressed in a quilted jacket the color of French mustard, and a brown wool balaclava.

‘Hey, I was just passing,’ he said. ‘I had to see a client in Torrington so I thought I’d call by to see if you’d made up your mind.’

He pulled off his balaclava and his hair stuck up, just like it did when he was a little boy. Sissy had actually licked her finger to paste it down for him before she realized what she was doing.

‘Would you like tea?’ she asked him. ‘Oh—and
before
you start sniffing, I had a cigarette this morning. Just one.’

Trevor rolled up his eyes, as if she were beyond redemption. ‘The real thing is, Momma, I need to know if you’re coming to Florida or not. My friend at Globe Travel has offered me a real good price on the tickets but I have to book them by the end of today.’