Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (7 page)

‘I can remunerate you.’

‘I said I
ordered
, kid. I didn’t say I paid.’

The woman in the hugely magnifying eyeglasses came around and poured them both a mug of coffee.

‘You traveling far today?’ she inquired. ‘They say there’s more snow on the way.’

‘Well, we’re not planning on going too far,’ said Robert.

The woman stayed where she was, staring at Feely. Feely glanced up at her a couple of times, but didn’t say anything. It was like looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

Robert said, ‘Me and my son . . . we just came up to pay our respects at my mother’s grave.’

‘Oh. Your folks came from Canaan? What’s their family name?’

‘Baker. But we’re from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, originally. We’re just passing through.’

‘Now, isn’t that something! My family on my father’s side come from Pittsfield and some of
them
were Bakers.’

Robert said, ‘Really?’

‘Maybe you know Maggie and Lavender Baker, 1243 Fenn Street. They’re my aunts.’

‘Sorry, can’t say that I do.’

‘Well, they tend to keep themselves to themselves, these days. Lavender must be eighty-six if she’s a day. But if you’re a Baker . . . who knows, we could be blood-related, you and me, and your boy here! Although I’m taking a wild guess that
his
mother didn’t come from Pittsfield!’

‘You’re right there,’ said Robert, with forced joviality. Then he added, ‘Puerto Rico.’

The woman remained by their table for a little while longer, nodding and smiling, but then the construction workers all heaved themselves out of their seats and stamped their feet and put on their coats and wanted to pay, and she had to return to the counter.

‘Jesus wept,’ said Robert.

Feely hissed, ‘Why did you have to tell her all of that?’

‘What? Who cares? None of it was true.’

‘But I thought the whole idea was not to make an impression. Ghosts, you said. Now it’s lodged in her consciousness that she encountered a father and son who had visited a grave in Pittsfield and their family name was Baker, same as hers.’

‘So? I just made the name up.’

‘She’ll recollect our appearance,’ Feely persisted. ‘She’ll recollect that you’re Caucasian and I’m Hispanic.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Feely, what choice did I have? I’m going to sit there like a dummy and say nothing at all? She’d have recollected us even more, if I’d done that.’

Feely felt trapped, almost panicky. He was convinced that no matter
what
family name Robert had invented, Baker or Jones or Ararallosa, the woman would have pretended that they were blood-related. That was how the conspirators lulled you into a sense of false security. They encouraged you to lie, and they
knew
perfectly well that you were lying, but they pretended to believe you, so that you would paint yourself into an existential corner.

The woman brought their pancakes, a tilted stack of half-a-dozen each, with dripping syrup and melted butter, and rashers of crispy bacon on the side. ‘Enjoy,’ said the woman. For some reason, Feely looked round at the cook. He was elaborately picking his nose with his little finger.

 

‘
L
isten, Feely,’ said Robert, with his mouth full. ‘If you’re not happy, I’ll leave you here, and drive on without you. No problem. It’s all the same difference to me.’

Feely toyed with his fork. ‘It’s just that I don’t understand why you want me to masquerade as your son. I’m
not
your son.’

‘There’s no mystery. I just don’t want people to remember seeing me on my own. You don’t
have
to be my son. You can be anything you like. My trainer, my accountant, so long as we’re together, as a pair. But the way you’re dressed . . . “son” just seemed the most plausible, that’s all, and even that’s stretching it. You look more like my personal goat farmer.’

‘Why don’t you want people to remember seeing you on your own?’

‘Because . . . there’s something very important that I want to do. You remember what I said about cataclysmic? I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. But I will, when the time’s right.’

Feely lifted the top pancake with his fork and then let it flop back onto the stack.

‘You’re not hungry?’ Robert asked him. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have ordered pancakes if I thought you didn’t like pancakes. I thought everybody liked pancakes.’

‘It’s not the pancakes,’ said Feely.

‘Then what? Come on, you can tell me, I’m a total stranger.’

‘It isn’t easy to verbalize it.’

‘Hey,’ smiled Robert. ‘I thought you were a walking Webster’s.’

‘I don’t . . .’ This was the most difficult admission that Feely had ever made. He looked across at the girl reading T.S. Eliot and for a split-second she caught his eye and smiled, as if she knew exactly what he was going to say.

‘I don’t know what to give credence to, any more.’

Robert wiped his mouth with his paper napkin. ‘You mean like you’ve lost your religion? Jesus Christ, Feely, plenty of people lose their religion.’

‘It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s me.’ He took a shallow breath. ‘I can’t define my existence.’

‘Ah,’ said Robert.

‘I don’t know who I am or where to go, or what to do when I get there. I thought if I headed north . . . but what happens when I can’t go any further north?’

‘You start going south again. That’s the nature of the planet. There’s no way off it, Feely.’

‘Escape velocity,’ said Feely.

Robert painstakingly scooped up the last of his syrup and sucked it off his spoon. ‘There is only one way to escape, Feely, and that is to sign up for Mars. But even if you manage to escape, you
still
won’t know who you are. Who you are is (a) your family, (b) your friends, and (c) your property.’

‘I don’t have any family,’ said Feely. ‘Well, not any more.’ He hesitated, and then he added, ‘I don’t have any friends, either.’ He laid his hand on his battered blue folder. ‘And this is my only material possession, apart from my hat.’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ said Robert. ‘You and me, we couldn’t be more different. You’re Cuban, from the city, and I’m just a white dude, from the suburbs. But we’ve both taken our seats in the same rapidly sinking lifeboat. What a pair of assholes.’ He sniffed again, and then he said, ‘What’s that, in Cuban? Assholes?’

‘I don’t know.
Zurramatos
, maybe.’

‘
Zurramatos
, I’ll remember that.’ Robert reached into his pocket and took out his business card. ‘That was me. Robert E. Touche, Divisional Sales Director, Transparent Rulers, Inc., of Danbury, Cee Tee. Well, I showed you before, didn’t I? But that was me. That was who I used to be.

‘When I was twenty-three I was going to be an architect. I was going to design houses like nobody had ever seen before. Eat your heart out, Frank Lloyd Wright. But Linda got pregnant before I could finish my studies and Linda wanted to keep the baby so we got married. It was a struggle to make a decent living and so I accepted an offer from Linda’s dad to work for a limited period for Transparent Rulers, Inc.

‘You know what we made at Transparent Rulers, Inc.?’

Feely shook his head.

‘We made transparent rulers. Also transparent set-squares, T-squares, compasses and geometric shapes. We dominated the US market in transparent freedom curves. They used to be called French curves, but you know, after the war with Iraq . . .

‘To cut a short story short, “a limited period” at Transparent Rulers, Inc., turned into a year, and then a year turned into seven years. Linda and I bought a house just outside of New Milford and we had two more children and you couldn’t have imagined a more contented family. That was me, Robert E. Touche, that was who I was. Divisional Sales Director of Transparent Rulers, Inc. Husband of Linda. Father of Toby, Jessica and Tom. Owner of 1773 Milford Lane. Weekend fisherman. Secretary of the Litchfield Historic Buildings Preservation Society.
Zurramato
-in-chief.

‘That was who I
was
, Feely. That was me.’

‘So what transpired?’ asked Feely.

‘What transpired was,
I
suddenly turned up. The real me. The me who was going to be an architect before I made Linda pregnant. The me who loved to take chances, and have a wild time. When I was marketing transparent rulers in Chicago I met a girl. Her name was Elizabeth and she was everything that Linda wasn’t. She was passionate and exciting and all of those damped-down fires in me that I thought had gone out for ever, she blew on them,
woofff
, and they burst into flame.

‘I felt ten years younger. I saw all of the opportunities that I’d missed out on, all of the chances I could have had. One night Elizabeth and I stood on top of the Hancock Building and we looked out over the city and the lake and there it was . . . the whole world, there at my feet. Glittering. Dark. Calling to me. Here I am, said the world. You can still take me. The world was like a woman with her legs apart.

‘You can guess the rest. I went home and I told Linda that I was going off with Elizabeth. I walked out on my wife, my children, my house and my job. But when I got to Chicago Elizabeth wasn’t interested in somebody who didn’t have an expense account, and she didn’t want commitment, and she certainly didn’t want me.

‘Elizabeth only wanted one-night stands, with other women’s husbands.’

‘That must have been a catastrophe,’ said Feely, trying very hard to look sympathetic.

‘Catastrophe? I kid you not. It was a bummer of the first water. I crawled back, sackcloth and ashes. But Linda wasn’t in any kind of mood to forgive me, and her dad wasn’t in any mood to give me my job back. I lost my house and most of my savings, and when I went crazy I lost visitation rights to the kids, too. In the space of seven-and-a-half months, I went from domestic bliss to Dante’s
Inferno
.’

He paused, and prodded at a strip of bacon. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s all my fault. I don’t even know, if Linda
had
taken me back, if I could have stayed with her for any length of time—children, house, job or not. I say “domestic bliss” but once Elizabeth had shown me what I
could
have done, and what I
could
have been, and what kind of woman I
could
have had . . . There was Linda, in her brushed cotton nightdresses, and her hair in rollers, and her moles. And there was Elizabeth, with her shiny black hair, and her lips like a turned-on codfish, and her full Brazilian wax.’

Feely didn’t know if he was supposed to say anything. But he could understand what Robert was trying to tell him about the same boat. In spite of the differences in their physiognomy, he and Robert were both adrift on a bottomless, ice-cold ocean, with more snow forecast. They had no oars and no compass, and the water was rushing in fast.

Robert reached across the table and took hold of Feely’s left wrist, surprisingly gently, as if he were feeling his pulse. ‘There’s something I have to do, Feely. It won’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes. I want you to wait here for me, and have another cup of coffee. Order something else to eat, if you’re hungry. I know you can renumerate me . . .’ He paused, realizing his mispronunciation. ‘. . .
remunerate
me, but I’ll pay. This is my treat, OK?’

Feely said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I can’t tell you, but I’ll be right back, I promise you. I won’t let you down.’

Feely noticed that there was a small blotch of fresh blood on Robert’s BandAid. ‘All right,’ he agreed. After all, where else could he go?

 

E
llen was worried. This was the third dose of flu that Randall had contracted in as many months. Now that the new Torrington shopping mall was nearing completion, he was working eleven hours a day, sometimes more, but she always made sure that he wrapped up warm, and that he ate plenty of fresh fruit, and that he took his multi-vitamin pills. But when he had arrived home from Torrington yesterday evening, he had been trembling and coughing and his eyes were glistening pink like an albino rabbit, so she had sent him straight up to bed.

He was still there now, dosed up with Profen Forte, too groggy even to watch daytime TV. She had called Dr Benway, but Dr Benway had told her there was a lot of it going around. ‘Bed rest, that’s the answer, my dear, but ozone, too! Throw the windows wide open!’

Ellen was worried, but she was also disappointed, because she had been planning on taking Juniper to see Santa Claus today, along with five of Juniper’s friends. She supposed she could have left Randall on his own for two or three hours, but he was sweating and shaking uncontrollably, and his temperature was over 100. What if he took a sudden turn for the worse?

Not only that, there was the Leonard thing. Her old boyfriend Leonard had unexpectedly turned up in Canaan in the last week of August, after three years in Los Angeles. Leonard had been tanned and fit, smelling of Lanvin, with shining white teeth and a Rolex watch. He had invited Ellen to lunch at the Mayflower Inn in Washington, just the two of them, for old times’ sake, and Ellen had accepted, telling Randall that she was visiting her mother. By chance, Randall’s sister had been visiting the Mayflower Inn, too, and had seen them kissing, and it had taken weeks of shouting and slamming doors before Randall had been prepared to accept that they hadn’t booked a room and slept together.

Now, whenever Ellen went out, Randall never asked her where she was going, or how long she was going to be, but he always stood in the doorway, watching her leave, with that fatalistic look on his face as if he didn’t expect to see her again. Maybe his insecurity had weakened his immune system, and that was why he kept going down with flu.