“Mr. Sempiterno is very insightful.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll be gone tomorrow,” I promised.
Now he seemed to be talking more to himself than to me: “I don’t want her. She’s disgusting, repellent, knocked up and bloated like a cow. Nothing to get a man’s sap rising. I don’t want anything to do with her, and I never will.”
“We’ll be gone tomorrow,” I repeated.
His attention returned to me, and his too-small mouth puckered with distaste, as if I were something he would never want to find stuck to the sole of his shoe, let alone talking to him face-to-face. “You told Henry Lolam you met the one who calls himself Kenny. No one’s seen him in years. You told Chef Shilshom you saw bears with red eyes.”
“Maybe not bears, sir. Just something.”
He swept the woods with his gaze again. Even with his hard but handsome face and steely eyes, he didn’t look as strong as before, because a tremor worked his mouth.
“You see any of them in broad daylight?”
“No, sir,” I lied.
“Night’s one thing, daylight’s a whole different ball game.” He focused on me once more. “You’re always picking at people, Thomas, always trying to get information out of them, picking and picking.”
“I’m just a curious guy, sir. I always have been.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing here is any of your damn business. Do you hear me, Thomas?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’ve abused your hospitality.”
His scowl was even more impressive than his glare. “Are you being funny?”
“No, sir. If I say so myself, when I’m actually being funny, you’d find it hard not to laugh.”
“When I say shut up, I mean shut up. Shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Until you leave tomorrow, stay in the guest tower.”
In consideration of the shotgun, I nodded.
“Stay in the tower, lock the doors, lock the windows, draw the draperies, and wait until morning.”
I nodded.
Seeing my attention on the shotgun, he realized belatedly that he needed to explain it. “Thought I might do some skeet shooting.”
He pushed past me on the flagstone path, and I started toward the tower door.
He said, “One other thing.”
Turning to him, I was happy to see that the shotgun cradled in his arm was still pointed at the ground.
“There aren’t phones in your rooms, but you’ve probably got a cell phone. I want you to understand, there’s nothing here that the police would be interested in. You understand?”
I nodded. I didn’t have a cell phone because I never needed to play video games or surf the Net, or exchange nude photos with a congressman.
“I’m well connected with the local authorities,” Wolflaw said. “Better connected than you are with your own pecker. A couple of them were former security guards here. I’ve done a lot for them. I’ve done more for them than you could ever guess, and I can assure you that they won’t take kindly to some worthless drifter bad-mouthing me. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“You suddenly a dumb mute or something?”
“I understand, sir. About the cops. Stay in the tower, lock the doors, lock the windows, draw the draperies, don’t call the cops or even the fire department if the place is burning down, but just wait until morning and then, come sunrise, keep on keepin’ on right out the front gate.”
He glared at me, his girly mouth puckered in contempt, and I figured that he might soon feel comfortable calling me Odd instead of Thomas, because he said, “You really are a shithead.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell Annamaria you said so.”
We stared at each other, plenty of animosity on his end, mere curiosity on my end, until at last he said, “Listen … I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“I’d rather you didn’t tell her. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This is crazy. Does she have me hypnotized or something? Why the hell should I c
are if you tell her or don’t tell her that I called you a shithead?”
“Then I’ll tell her.”
“Don’t,” he said at once. “I don’t care what she thinks of me, she’s nothing to me, she’s as plain as a powdered doughnut without the powder. I don’t want to do anything with a woman like her, but I’d rather you didn’t tell her about my outburst.”
“Strange, the way she affects people,” I said.
“Extremely strange.”
“I won’t tell her.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I watched him walk away through the eucalyptuses and up the vast sunlit lawn toward the main house. Even in the open, where nothing could sneak up on him, Wolflaw nervously looked left and right, and glanced back repeatedly. He was probably on guard for the mountain lion, listening for the cry of the loon, alert to the possibility that he might suddenly be confronted by the Jabberwock with eyes of flame and the frumious Bandersnatch.
Twenty
WHEN STORMY LLEWELLYN AND I WERE SIXTEEN, WE spent an evening at a carnival. In an arcade tent, we came across a fortune-telling machine the size of a phone booth, about seven feet tall. The lower three feet were enclosed, and in the glass case atop that base sat what a plaque claimed to be the mummified remains of a Gypsy woman, a dwarf who had been famous for her prognostications.
The withered, spooky figure—possibly a construct of plaster, paper, wax, and latex rather than a preserved corpse—was all tricked up in Gypsy gear. For a quarter she dispensed a small printed card in answer to your question. A quarter doesn’t seem like much to charge for a life-changing prediction, but the dead can work cheap because they don’t have to buy food or subscribe to cable TV.
A young couple who visited the machine ahead of us had asked if they would have a long and happy marriage. Although they gave Gypsy Mummy eight quarters, they never received an answer that seemed clear to them. Stormy and I heard the potential groom, Johnny, read all the answers to his girl, and although the fortune-teller’s responses were oblique, they were perfectly clear to us. One of them was this: The orchard of blighted trees produces poisonous fruit. The others were no more encouraging.