Sunderson couldn’t think of a thing to say so he pushed the end button. He sat outside again at Miss Saigon smoking two cigarettes in a row and realizing that he had been a little suspicious of Kowalski, not at the first bruised meeting in the hospital, but the second time, at his apartment. The guy lacked a certain tinge of the genuine because he didn’t speak the shorthand that detectives use with each other. His cell rang just as the waitress was bringing a variety pho that included tripe, also pork meatballs. It was Lucy.
“I’m not crying anymore darling but I’ve been thinking of our questionable night.”
“I was worried about your Kleenex budget. Look, I’m in a meeting. I’ll call you back.” He quickly turned the phone off before she could respond, wondering about the faulty aspects of memory. Why didn’t she say that the night had been rotten rather than the euphemism of “questionable”? If you’re lonely any contact is better than none.
Two hours later he had found another small temporary apartment on a hillside in Patagonia. It was a room and half, a bit tight, but there were chickens in the backyard and a couple of rabbit hutches. His parents had supplemented their protein budget with a lot of fried rabbit. On the way to Nogales to pick up his meager belongings he reluctantly passed the Wagon Wheel Saloon. It would have to wait for later.
Alfred was in the yard and told Sunderson that soon after he had left Mr. Kowalski had stopped by to fetch his precious cigarette lighter.
“Did you ID him?” Sunderson asked, alarmed.
“Well, no. I mean you guys were together an hour last night. I admit I glanced in the window and he was on the phone at the kitchen table.”
Sunderson didn’t bother telling Alfred that Kowalski was a phony. Alfred was upset that he was leaving but pleased when Sunderson told him to keep the rest of the month’s rent.
“Where are you going?”
“It would be unsafe for you to know.”
“I get it. You’re undercover?”
“Obviously not far enough.”
He packed his suitcase and papers from Mona. Nothing in the apartment looked tossed though the papers appeared in less disarray than he had left them. The Great Leader must have been poor reading for Kowalski but now he had Mona’s e-mail. He rang her up.
“Don’t respond to anyone in this area except me.”
“Okay darling but why?”
“I’m being tailed and he’ll try to find me through your e-mail.”
“That’s impossible but it sounds exciting. I have to write a paper on Emily Dickinson and she sucks.”
“No she doesn’t. She’s wonderful.” Sunderson had been fond of Emily Dickinson ever since he was a sophomore in an American literature class at Michigan State.
“That joke really worked with Marion. I did a little nude dance then I called him. I heard his cell phone hit the floor.”
“Good job.”
“Your fucking friend Carla wants me to come over for dinner. My therapist will be there. Just us three girls. Maybe they’ll try to gang bang me.”
“Don’t go. But if you do, snoop around. Keep your clothes on.”
“Of course Daddy.”
He hung up and called Melissa. She had been going to pick him up for fishing in the morning but as a precaution he didn’t want her to have his new address and told her he would meet her at Patagonia Lake. She was flirtatious on the phone, which made him suspicious though he cautioned himself about letting his paranoia ruin the fishing trip and its remote sexual possibilities. He was on the way out of the apartment and bidding good-bye to Alfred’s wife Molly who was dusting her roses for aphids when a FedEx truck pulled up. He had nearly missed the books Marion was sending.
“My second cycle of chemo isn’t working,” Molly said. “So this is good-bye.”
“I’m sorry,” Sunderson said, feeling paralyzed.
“Do you believe in the afterlife?”
“I haven’t figured it out. I guess I’m not very religious.”
“I don’t think anyone has. Someone said, I forgot who, that if nothing happens we won’t know it. I’ll miss flowers, birds, and lemonade.”
He gave her a hug and got in the car itching for a double whiskey and thinking that there wasn’t much left of her. She was made up of Tinkertoys, fragile sticks out of which you could make little buildings and bridges but not human bodies. He recalled that he and his brother Robert had found a recently dead fawn, it didn’t stink yet, and they had given it what they had thought to be a proper burial. Molly couldn’t weigh much more than the fawn that Sunderson had dropped in the shallow hole he had dug. There wasn’t much of a thunk when the fawn hit the bottom of its grave.
