Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (2 page)

 

‘
H
e loves you,’ said Sissy, holding up the Garden card. ‘No question about it, the fellow’s besotted.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Mina. ‘I’m so worried that I’m going to make a fool of myself.’

Sissy shook her head. ‘My dear, I can feel the radiance of genuine love through a foot-thick cinderblock wall. It’s my talent. It may be my
only
talent, but I’ve never been wrong yet.’

‘You make delicious cookies,’ said Mina, who had eaten five of them, and kept glancing at the remaining two, as if they were going to try to make a run for it. ‘
That’s
a talent.’

‘Store-bought. I can’t bake. Gerry used to say that my cooking timer was the smoke alarm.’

Mina sat back on the worn brown velvet couch. She was small, but her head looked too big for her body, and her hips said ‘consolation eating.’ ‘I never thought that Merritt would ever
notice
me, let alone love me.’

‘You should give yourself more credit. Look at you, you’re only thirty-one years old, you’re petite, you’re pretty. Your hair’s a mess but that won’t take much sorting.’

Mina tugged at her choppy blonde hair. ‘I saw it in
Complete Woman
.’

‘Don’t ever try to copy anything from a women’s magazine, my dear, especially hairstyles and sexual positions. The people who produce women’s magazines are only trying to make you feel inadequate. That’s their job. Would you ever buy a women’s magazine if you didn’t feel inadequate? Of course not.’

‘I’ve known Merritt ever since junior high,’ said Mina. ‘I used to see him standing by the running-track, you know. His hair was so curly and the sun used to shine in his curls, and I used to think that he was a
god
.’

‘He’s a man, Mina, just like any other. He makes mistakes, he tells lies, he scratches his ass. But for all of that, he loves you.’

‘And that’s definitely what this card means?’

Sissy handed Mina the card so that she could examine it more closely. It showed a formal garden, under a cloudless sky, where roses bloomed, and pears ripened on espaliers. In the center of this garden sat a woman in a powdered wig and a crinoline and a tight lace bodice; yet bare-breasted. Close beside her sat a young man, completely naked except for a tricorn hat. Butterflies formed a cloud around their heads.

‘Le Jardin d’Amour,’ said Sissy. ‘This card never comes up unless you’re in love, and the person you love loves you.’

Mina kept chewing at her lower lip. She seemed reluctant to believe that the cards weren’t playing a trick on her.

Suddenly she blurted out, ‘It was such a chance meeting, you know. We hadn’t seen each other in maybe ten years. But there he was, walking across the square, and I recognized him right away, even if he didn’t recognize me. If our dogs hadn’t stopped to have a sniff at each other, and their leads hadn’t gotten tangled up—well, he would have walked right past me and not even known it was me.’

‘Well, funnier things have happened.’

Mina lowered her eyes. ‘Last night he took me to dinner at Oakwood’s. He bought me strawberries and he said that I was special.’

‘He didn’t actually say, “I love you”?’

‘No,’ said Mina. ‘Not those actual words.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Sissy told her, slowly reshuffling the cards. It was early afternoon but her living room was so gloomy that she could hardly see Mina’s face; only two reflected ovals from her glasses. ‘The cards know when a man desires you, even if he won’t admit it. And when the cards know, believe me, then
I
know.’

There was a very long silence between them. Mina took out her purse and frowned into it as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do next.

After another long silence, Sissy said, ‘Twenty-five dollars should cover it, my dear.’

 

A
t last the tank was full and Howard snapped shut the filler-cap cover and went inside to pay. On his way to the counter he picked up two Reese Sticks, a snack pack of Oreos and some peanut-flavored Cookie Dough. Sylvia had him on a diet but he always craved candy to eat while he was driving to work. How was he expected to face a stressful day at the office on nothing but two cups of milkless tea and a bowl of horse food?

‘Pump number?’ asked the cashier, without taking his eyes off the television.

‘I didn’t look, I’m sorry. But I’m your only customer. Maybe you could
guess
?’

The cashier was about eighteen years old. He had a large mooselike nose and greasy brown curls and a cluster of raging red spots on his face. He was gnawing a yellow-and-blue Sunoco ballpen. With his eyes still fixed on the television, he swiped Howard’s card, tore off the paper receipt, and tossed the pen across the counter.

‘Wanna sign that?’ he said.

Howard stared at the pen and didn’t move. After more than ten seconds had elapsed, the cashier turned at last to look at him. ‘You wanna—?’ he repeated, making a signing gesture, as if Howard were retarded.

‘No,’ said Howard. ‘Not with that pen, anyhow.’

The cashier blinked at him. ‘What’s the matter, man? That one writes good.’

‘I don’t care. It’s been in your mouth and I don’t want to touch it.’

The cashier abruptly jolted his chair into the upright position. ‘You’re trying to say
what
, man? I have anthrax or something?’

‘I want a clean pen, that’s all, without any of your saliva on it.’

‘Oh, excuse
me
.’

‘Apology accepted. But if you want my John Hancock, you’ll have to find me a clean pen to write it with.’

The cashier pulled open a drawer and rummaged through an assortment of string and screwdrivers and Doublemint wrappers and cash-register rolls. Eventually he had to climb off his chair, walk to the back of the store, and come back with a new pen from the stationery display. Howard signed the check and handed the pen back.

‘Freak,’ said the cashier, boldly. He had disturbingly near-together eyes, as if he was three generations inbred.

Howard said nothing. He stowed his candy bars into the pockets of his red weatherproof squall and carefully fastened the studs.

Silence always gives you the edge
, that’s what Howard believed, especially when you’re dealing with people of limited intelligence. Make them feel that you know far more about the world than they do. That will cut the turf from under their feet, far more effectively than anything you could say to them. And silence can never be misquoted.

He pushed his way through the door and out into the wind. He had been right about the snow: it was starting to tumble across the highway thicker and faster. Halfway back to his car, he looked back. The cashier was still standing at the window, staring at him with such beady-eyed hostility that he couldn’t help smiling in private triumph.
Silence, that’s the
answer. Don’t give the bastards a chance
to talk back
.

It was then that he was hit in the right side of the forehead with a .308 bullet traveling at more than 2,500 feet per second. His brains geysered out of his brown wooly hat and he was thrown sideways and backward, hitting his left shoulder against the concrete. His legs and his right arm flew up into the air and then he lay still.

There was a very long silence. The snow prickled onto his coat, and immediately melted. His blood, made more gelid by the cold, crept along the cracks between the concrete forms, southward, and then began to slide westward.

The Explorer’s passenger door opened, and Sylvia screamed out, ‘Howard!
Howard!
’

 

F
eely had only $21.76 left which meant that his options were now limited to three.

1) Buy a bus ticket home.

2) Buy something to eat and try to hitch a ride home.

3) Save his money and stand on this corner until he froze into a municipal statue.

It was snowing so furiously that he could hardly see the other side of the street. He was sheltering under the awning of Billy Bean’s Diner in his thin brown windbreaker, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. It was 3:47 in the afternoon but it could just as well have been the middle of the night. Snow-covered automobiles rolled past like traveling igloos.

Feely was three days past his nineteenth birthday—a thin, sallow-skinned boy with the big liquid eyes of a Latin romeo, with lashes to match, and a broken nose. His curly black hair was covered by a purple knitted cap, with ear-flaps, the kind worn by Peruvian peasants. He had no travel-bag with him, only a battered green cardboard folder tucked under his arm, and no gloves.

Without him hearing it, a police car drew into the slush-filled gutter beside him. As soon as he saw it, he did a little defensive dance sideways. But the police car’s window came down and he heard a penetrating whistle.

‘Hey, you! Yes, you! Baron von Richthofen!’

Feely looked around but of course there was nobody else standing outside the diner, only him.

‘Me?’

‘C’mere, kid.’

Feely approached the squad car and bent down, shivering. He could feel the warmth pouring out of the window. In the passenger seat sat a bulky police sergeant with prickly white hair and a bright pink face like a canned ham. Next to him, the driver looked creepy and boggle-eyed and smirky, a distant cousin of the Addams family.

‘What you doing, kid?’ the sergeant demanded.

‘I was, like, reading the menu.’

‘No, you weren’t, kid. Not unless you have eyes in the back of that stupid hat.’

‘What I mean is I read it already, and I was cogitating.’

‘Cogitating, huh? You hear that, Dean? He was
cogitating
. Didn’t you know that cogitating in public is a misdemeanor here, in Danbury?’

‘No, sir, I wasn’t aware of that.’ Feely knew better than to get smart with cops.

‘Let me see some ID.’

Feely reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced his library card. The sergeant took it and turned it over and even, for some reason, sniffed it, as if it might have traces of cocaine on it.

‘This all the ID you got?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Thirteen-thirteen, East 111th Street, New York City. You’re a long way from home, kid.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

Feely’s eyes darted from side to side. The sergeant had asked him a legitimate question, no doubt about that, but he couldn’t immediately think of an answer that wouldn’t sound either insolent or weird. He was here because it was anyplace but home, but he could just as easily have taken the bus to Jersey, or upstate New York, so there was no easy response, and he didn’t want to say anything provocative like ‘serendipity.’ So he shrugged, and sniffed, and said, ‘I guess I’m chilling out, that’s all.’

‘Got any money?’ the sergeant asked him.

Feely reached into his pocket and pulled out three crumpled fives and change. The sergeant counted it with his eyes and then looked up at Feely with an expression that was part pity and part irritation.

‘Seeing how it’s Christmas, and I’m full of seasonal bonhommy, I’m going to let you go about your business. But if I see you hanging around here again, I’m going to haul you in on suspicion of being a waste of space.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And quit that cogitating.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The sergeant closed his window and the police car drove off. Feely was left on the sidewalk feeling even more isolated than ever. He wondered what Captain Lingo would have replied. ‘
A waste of space?
Space, my friend, is a limitless extent and therefore cannot
by definition
be wasted
.’ But Captain Lingo would have come out with it there and then, right to the sergeant’s ham-pink face, not when the squad car was two-and-a-half blocks away, and its brake lights were barely visible through the snow.

All the same, the sergeant had made a decision for him. He couldn’t stay out on the sidewalk without being collared, so he would have to go inside; and if he went inside, he would have to order something to eat.

 

F
eely pushed his way in through the door of Billy Bean’s Diner. It was warm inside, paneled with light-varnished oak, and the tables were covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. He sat down at a table in the corner, by the coat-rack, the most inconspicuous seat he could find, and picked up the plastic-laminated menu. The ceiling was hung with twinkling fairy-lights and a tape was playing ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town.’

A middle-aged waitress came bustling up to him. She had frizzy black hair knotted in a red gingham ribbon, and a large brown mole on her upper lip, although she must have been reasonably cute in another life. ‘How are you doing, sugar?’

‘I’m glacified.’

‘You’re what?’

Feely pointed to the menu. ‘I’ll have a cup of hot chocolate, please. And a cheeseburger.’

‘Well, I can do you Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger for seven seventy-five. That includes two quarter-pound burger patties, with cheese, bacon, tomato and beans as well as a double portion of freedom fries and unlimited relish.’

‘OK, that sounds like a shrewd choice. But can you hold the beans, please.’

She blinked at him. ‘It’s Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger, honey. It
comes
with beans.’

Feely didn’t know what to say. He had always suspected that there was a conspiracy against him—that everybody was working together to confuse him, and to make him feel that he was unhinged. But he hadn’t realized that the conspiracy had reached as far as Connecticut.