Chapter 39
Betty Jackson locked the door to the ticket booth and was heading for the switches to turn off the lights for the Rialto sign when Mel, the projectionist, came down the steep steps from his projection room.
“There’s a guy still sitting in the theater,” he said, keeping a tight hold of the railing.
Mel was only a couple of years younger than she was and had recently had a hip replacement.
“I see,” said Betty. “Didn’t you call down and tell him we’re closing?”
“Yeah, but I think he’s asleep.”
They entered the theater together.
She registered that it was the black man in the red hat.
She would have shouted his name, but she didn’t know it, had never spoken to him, even though he sat there almost every day, usually staying for several hours.
Sometimes he was the only person in the whole theater.
She’d hear him talking on his phone when he was alone, like it was his office.
But this time it looked as though he’d fallen asleep, his chin slumped down on his chest and the brim of the hat shading his face.
Betty walked along the row toward him with the projectionist, who had actually offered to go first, like he was some kind of gentleman, right behind her.
The man sat with one hand resting on his thick thigh and she put her hand over his and gave it a gentle shake.
The hat fell off. Betty exclaimed loudly and backed away, into the projectionist. The man’s eyes were wide open and completely white.
Though it wasn’t that that made her jump, her own husband also sometimes slept with his eyes open and his head back.
Nor was it the open mouth with the tiny inlaid diamonds glinting in the teeth.
It was the hand. It had been as cold as marble.
—
It had been a more than usually busy afternoon at Bernie’s Bar and a very good evening.
Liza had turned down the volume slightly on Little Feat’s “Dixie Chicken” so she could hear what he was saying, the tipsy and rather forlorn-looking elderly man sitting at the bar.
He was saying he had driven to the big city from a town named Funkley, four hours’ drive to the north, to attend the NRA gathering the next day.
“Quite a change for a hayseed like me, this,” he said with a cautious smile. “Funkley’s got five inhabitants. Everyone lives alone, got their own home. It gets kind of lonely. Even though I’m the only man among them.”
“Yes, you’d probably be better off living in Minneapolis,” said Liza, signaling to another guest that she would take his order in a moment or two.
“How so?” asked the hayseed, looking at her with genuine curiosity.
“Well,” said Liza as she tried to think up a good answer, “we…er, for one thing we’ve been voted the healthiest city in the country.”
“Good for you. But you look just as lonesome as us people from Funkley.”
Liza stepped aside to pull a beer for the impatient customer as the swinging door to the back room opened and Eddie—who was to take the final two hours alone—came in.
“Anyone would think the place was popular,” he said as he looked out across the bar.
“You can handle it,” said Liza as she took the money for the beer and nodded in the direction of the hayseed. “Be nice to this guy here.”
“Always nice to everybody, that’s me,” said Eddie.
Liza went out to the back, untied her apron and put on her coat.
She had to admit that since morning, every time the bar door opened, she had looked up, half hoping to see that ugly mustard-yellow coat coming in.
Maybe he’d be back some other day. Or not.
It was okay either way. She left by the back door, onto a sidewalk that was still wet with rain.
An orange Volvo stood parked by the curb.
“You can see that coat doesn’t match the car,” she said. “Or are you color-blind?”
“A bit,” he said as he opened the passenger-side door. “Can I offer you a lift?”
She pretended to think it over.
“So?” she said as they set off down the road. “Have you found what you were looking for?”
“Perhaps,” said Bob.
“Perhaps?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, anyway you, you look…lighter.”
“Lighter?”
“As though you’ve…I don’t know. Got rid of something.”
He nodded. “Perhaps.”
“That’s a lot of perhapses there.”
He laughed. “Tell me about your day.”
She did. Talked about the guy from Funkley.
About some of the regulars. About Little Feat.
And about how Johan had learned a whole raft of new words and was now spouting them like a waterfall.
Now and then the man behind the wheel nodded.
Sometimes he laughed. At other times just grunted.
Sometimes he asked about something and seemed as though he was really interested.
It was easy to talk, so easy she had to be careful not to say too much, she thought.
But it was all fine, and she hadn’t gotten him wrong in the bar or that last time he drove her home; he understood what she was talking about, understood her simple, practical and unsentimental way of thinking about things.
Liza knew she could scare the type of man who preferred soft, cuddly women, sensitive and delicate women they could look after.
And it wasn’t as if she didn’t need someone to lean on when the going got tough, but most of all she needed someone who respected her and who she could respect in return.
Sure, she didn’t know Bob Oz well enough to know if he was a man like that, all she knew was that she liked…
well, what was it about him she did like, actually?
That behind all the bullshit he was honest, that he didn’t try to pretend to be someone or something he wasn’t.
If that was because of courage or just laziness she didn’t know, but she liked it.
She liked being around him. That was the plain truth. And hell, that was enough.
As it had the last time, the journey to her little home seemed over too quickly.
“Shotgun shack,” he said as they both peered up at the kitchen window where they saw the profile of Liza’s sister who, as Liza knew, would be deep in some romance novel.
“Is it something you look forward to?” he asked.
“Look forward to?”
“Going inside and seeing your kid sleeping there in the bed, safe and warm. That was always the high point of the day for me. It made it all worthwhile, all the grind.”
She looked at him. Hesitated.
“You think often about that?” she asked.
“Every day.”
“Would you…want to come in and see him?”
He looked at her in surprise. “You mean it?”
She nodded.
Liza unlocked the door and they went straight to the kitchen, where she introduced Bob and the sister to each other and told her to keep reading, Bob wouldn’t be staying long.
Then they made the short trip to the bedroom and opened the door.
Light fell across the little bed. Her three-year-old was wearing pale blue pajamas.
He was fast asleep, one little fist clenched with the thumb sticking up like a hitchhiker.
The Radica 20Q lay on the comforter next to him.
Liza heard Bob’s intake of breath, as though he was about to say something, but nothing came.
After a few moments they closed the door again.
“Thanks,” he said as they stood on the steps outside the front door. Liza wanted to give him a hug, but she resisted.
—
Bob looked at Liza standing there in the doorway. He wanted to give her a hug but resisted.
“Sleep well,” he said, and with a short, clumsy bow he turned and headed back toward his car.
“You know what, Bob Oz?”
He stopped and turned. “What?”
“You’re not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You’re a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”
He nodded slowly and smiled. “I’ll have to think about that one.”
And that’s what he did as he drove away, listening to “On Parole,” a sheep of a pop song in the wolf’s clothing of hard rock.
Disguise, there was something there. Not something about him but about Tomás Gomez, maybe deep down a decent, hardworking family man who dressed himself up in the clothing and rituals of a gang member, a cold-blooded killer.
Even if loneliness had driven him crazy and afflicted him with what Alice had called the rage of abandonment, could a person really undergo such a complete transformation?
And if not, why had no one exposed the sheep in wolf’s clothing?
Two hours later, as he sat on the couch in his apartment and opened his third and final beer, the thought still swirled around inside his head: who is Tomás Gomez?
—
Where is Tomás Gomez?