Chapter Four #2
Mr. Gonzalez from Defiance. He’d called the day before to make an appointment—a first-timer for her—and had said over the phone that he wouldn’t mind at all if one of her colleagues sat in on the session.
His accent was thick but he’d spoken slowly and carefully, and Becky had suspected he was elderly.
In person, he looked eighty if he was a day, and moved slowly, but he’d driven himself there and was eager to get started.
She took his coat and led him into the parlor.
With the two of them at the spiriting table and Mr. LaGrange in the background, on the sofa, Mr. Gonzalez told Becky about how his brother, Rodrigo, had died in a highway accident last year.
Just before he died, the two of them had a terrible argument about old grievances, stupid things.
They said mean things to each other. He’d had no idea it would be their last conversation, and now he felt terrible.
He didn’t mean any of it and wanted to say he was sorry.
Could Becky find Rodrigo and let him know?
Harsh words followed by sudden death. It happened all the time.
Becky tried—to no avail, at first. Unhelpfully, after several minutes of silence from the void, she caught herself anticipating the reactions of both Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. LaGrange, should the session be a dud—much as she tried to have no ego at all when spiriting.
Then, in a flurry of presence and communication, like someone running down a hallway and shouting over the sound of their shoes, Rodrigo was there.
Soy yo! Soy yo! Sin rincores! No grudges!
He missed his brother terribly. He was okay, though.
Becky relayed that, and tears leaked out of Mr. Gonzalez’s closed eyes.
Then Rodrigo said something about mocha, and Becky relayed that, and Mr. Gonzalez looked confused for a moment, then, smiling, corrected her.
“Moco! I used to call him that. It means booger.”
He tried to hand Becky some money before leaving. She refused. As she and Mr. LaGrange stood on the porch watching Mr. Gonzalez’s Woody Wagon make its way up the street, Mr. LaGrange said, “Tell me—was it luck, or a little pre-digging around?”
The question took her aback. “Neither.”
He smiled and his little eyes shrank. “You really hold your cards close, don’t you? You live by the cardinal rule of the magician. I admire that.”
“I’m not a magician.”
“But you are! You make it seem so real! And you have such conviction!”
“Because it is real,” she said.
“I believe you!” he said. “That’s what’s so incredible!” He touched his chest, took in a breath. “May I talk to you about something quite serious now?”
“Okay,” she said.
He stepped over to the lime-green glider, brushed from it a few winter leaves, and sat down, then nodded to the space next to him. As her backside met the cold metal she thought, Please don’t make a pass at me, for it suddenly seemed like he was about to do just that.
Gently rocking the glider forward and back with his feet, he told her of his plan to put together a group of top-notch spiritualists, regressionists, healers, and soothsayers, and hold sessions in theaters around the country. An event people would pay to see. American Mystics, he wanted to call it.
Becky burst out laughing. She didn’t mean to and stopped as soon as she could. “I’m sorry. It’s just—you mean, like an act?”
“Not an act. An entertaining resource. A portable, entertaining resource, going from city to city. Managed by me, with care and precision—in a hopefully soon-to-be post-war booming economy.”
It sounded not only wrong to her, but ill-fated. “It’s hard to picture.”
“Dream with me,” he said.
“What about the compendium you’re writing? Would that be alongside this?”
“Alas, there’s no compendium.”
“Since when?”
He smiled.
It wasn’t the lie so much as his casual admittance of it that surprised her. “I just can’t see myself a part of what you’re describing.”
He said, “I have a head for business, you know. I’m quite smart! And your talent is above and beyond any I’ve encountered.”
“Ability,” she said softly. “Not talent.”
“Ability. Exactly.”
His round face was turned toward hers now. Please don’t make a pass at me, she thought again. Please don’t do something embarrassing, like put your hand on top of mine, or shift your leg over so that our knees touch.
He did both those things. But the extra glimmer in his little eyes wasn’t because of the pass, she thought; it was because of the trick he was convinced she had up her sleeve—a trick he believed people would applaud and throw money at.
A trick that didn’t exist. Holding her hand, his knee just barely touching hers, he asked her to consider his idea, at least, and because she wanted this particular interaction to be over with immediately, she said she would.
But she also stopped the glider with the toe of her shoe.
She had to retrieve her child, she said, taking her hand back. She had to get dinner started.
“Tomorrow?” he asked before she disappeared into the house. “Mrs. Ross at eleven?” And she nodded, wishing she hadn’t invited him.
—
That night, with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, Cal asked how things were going with LaMustache.
Becky had decided not to tell him about the pass; it would only confirm his grumbling about strangers coming into the house.
But she told him she was ready for Mr. LaGrange to move on.
Cal swallowed some toothpowder, hearing that.
He spit into the sink, waited for her to say more.
LaGrange was just too…fawning, Becky said.
Had she talked to her dad? Cal asked. Did she know that, when LaGrange wasn’t planted in their house, he was going around town telling people he planned to make Becky famous? She didn’t know that, she said, but she wasn’t surprised, given that he wanted her to join his traveling show.
Cal straightened up. “His what?” She explained, stressing that she had no interest in being in a show, or in traveling with Mr. LaGrange. Cal asked what happened to the book. She shook her head. “There’s no book?” he said, as if he’d been looking forward to the book. “He got handsy, didn’t he?”
“No,” she said.
“Then he’s going to get handsy. Give him an inch, I know his type.” Cal didn’t, but the stuff rolled off his tongue and felt good to say. “Does he make you uncomfortable?”
“I wouldn’t say uncomfortable.” Becky’s face, however, said otherwise.
“Why’s he still around? Why don’t you tell him to shove off?”
“I will. We said three sessions, and tomorrow’s the third. I’ll talk to him after that. I’ll take care of it,” she said.
But he heard in that what he wanted to hear: a subtle cry for help—an admittance that she would appreciate his stepping in and taking some sort of action.
But what action? He couldn’t fall asleep for wondering, went downstairs to pace the floor while he mulled the situation over.
It was late, he thought, but then the clock chimed and it was only nine-thirty.
Not everyone kept the hours of people raising a toddler.
He went over to the wall phone and dialed.
“We don’t want any,” Roman said—which was how he always answered the phone after seven p.m.
—
For a brief stretch of Cal’s life, then—a matter of hours—he stepped into a movie. That is, he became someone else, a guy in a crime caper. Later, he would wish he had been someone else.
Roman had been keeping an eye on LaGrange.
He had a buddy who worked the front desk of the Whitman who said for the past three days LaGrange had had breakfast at the restaurant across from the hotel at seven-thirty, then had come back for a bath before heading out for the day.
He was staying in the cheapest room they had, the bath down the hall.
Cal had called his father-in-law wanting to know how to approach LaGrange, what to say to him to convince him to leave. Roman saw things differently, thought the situation called for more drastic measures.
Early the next morning, they were sitting in his Cadillac, parked half a block away from the hotel. Most of the last snow had melted and the sky was clear.
“I want this to be my thing,” Cal said.
“It’ll be your thing,” Roman said. “You’ll do the main thing.”
But Cal wasn’t clear on what the main thing was, because Roman hadn’t told him. All he’d said was that they were going to make an “irrefutable” point, and to do that, they had to take LaGrange somewhere.
It all happened quickly. At seven thirty-five, LaGrange walked out of the hotel securing his homburg on his head.
He crossed the street, bought a paper at the newsstand, and entered the restaurant.
Roman told Cal to wait in the car. He and his buddy Abe Lincoln had an errand to run, he said, and left, and came back ten minutes later with a wicker suitcase he tossed into the trunk.
“LaGrange’s?” Cal asked, his eyes wide. Roman nodded.
When LaGrange emerged from the restaurant a little while later, they rolled up between him and the hotel, got out and said hello, invited him into the car by holding both his arms, and in he went.
It was disturbingly easy. Cal got into the back seat with him; Roman got behind the wheel and put the car into drive.
Cal’s limited instructions had been not to let go of LaGrange’s arm once they were in the car, to hold it tight, and Cal held it tight while LaGrange smiled and pinched his eyes and asked where they were going.
To talk, Roman said. He leaned sideways and took a hammer from the glove compartment, handed it over the seat to Cal.
When Cal asked what he was supposed to do with that, Roman said into the rearview mirror, “Don’t play dumb.
I just wanted to talk to him. You’re the one who wanted to get mean.
” He shifted his eyes over to LaGrange. “My son-in-law’s crazy. ”