“No, ma’am. I haven’t accepted the job. I’m not your chauffeur.”
“Call me Edie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Seems that you’re driving my car, like you are a chauffeur. Of course, maybe I’m senile and imagining all this. When are you going to marry this Stormy?”
“I don’t know an exact date, ma’am. I have to die first. Wait. I’ll need to explain that. Stormy … well, she died, and we can’t ever be together in this world now, only in the next.”
“This is true? Yes, I see it is. You believe in an afterlife?”
“Yes, ma’am. Stormy believed in two afterlives. She said this world was boot camp, to test and toughen us, to prepare us for the next life of service in some great adventure. Our third and eternal life comes after that.”
“What a unique concept.”
“Not so much. You’ve heard of Purgatory, like Catholics believe. Well, maybe the next life is Purgatory—except with lots of running, jumping, chasing, and fighting with demons or something.”
“That makes sense,” she said.
Surprised by her quick acceptance, I said, “It does?”
“In eighty-six years, child, I’ve learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning. In fact, I learned that much by the time I was twenty-six, one oven-hot night in the little town of Lonely Possum.”
“Lonely Possum? I never heard of it.”
“Lonely Possum, Arizona. Not many people have heard of it. But one day, maybe soon, everyone in the world will know its name.”
The thought of Lonely Possum becoming world famous seemed to please her, because she smiled widely, dimpling both cheeks, and let out a sigh akin to those that diner patrons once made when they finished a plate of my roast-beef hash.
I said, “What happened sixty years ago, that oven-hot night in Lonely Possum?”
She winked. “Never you mind.”
“Why will everyone in the world know the name one day?”
“When you’ve been my chauffeur for a month or two, when we know each other better, I’ll share that with you.”
“I’m not your chauffeur, ma’am.”
“Call me Edie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Southbound, we topped a rise and started down a long easy hill, and in one of the northbound lanes, a California Highway Patrol car passed us. Too late, I let up on the accelerator. The officer braked, switched on his rooftop beacons, drove across the median strip, and soon fell in behind us.
Mrs. Fischer said, “He didn’t zap you with radar or anything. He doesn’t have a smidgen of proof. It’s just his word against yours.”
“But I was speeding.”
“Admit nothing, child.”
“I can’t lie to a policeman, ma’am. Well, not unless maybe he’s corrupt or a maniac or something. It’s okay to lie to evil.”
As I pulled to a stop along the side of the road, Mrs. Fischer said, “Then you better let me do all the talking.”
“I’m the driver. He’ll expect answers from me.”
“Not if you’re a deaf-mute.”
“That would be another lie. Besides, they might let a mute drive, but I’m not so sure about a deaf person.”
“So then you’re just mute. And you don’t have to lie. I’ll say you’re a mute, and then you just don’t say anything.”
Putting down the power window, watching the side mirror as the patrol car pulled in behind us, I said, “This is a bad idea.”
“Nobody’s going to the slammer, child. Unless you’re wanted by the law.”
“I’m wanted, but they don’t know my name and don’t have a photo, just a description.”
Her expression was one of dismay, but not because I was a wanted man. “Oddie, you are too truthful for your own good. I didn’t ask if you were wanted. There was no reason whatsoever to volunteer the information.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I thought you should know.”
Behind us, the driver’s door of the patrol car opened.
“Child, you said it was okay to lie to evil. Maybe I’m evil.”
“You’re not evil, ma’am.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe I’m the most evil person you’ve ever met. Maybe I’m demonic.”
“No, ma’am. I’ve met some way evil people. You’re a cream puff.”
In the side mirror, the man who got out of the patrol car looked like Hercules’ bigger brother, a guy who, at every breakfast, with his dozen eggs and pound of ham, drank a steaming mug of steroids.
Mrs. Fischer seemed miffed that I had called her a cream puff. “I’m about to lie to a policeman, child. Doesn’t that make me just a little bit evil?”
“It’s wrong,” I said, trying to soothe her hurt feelings, “it’s bad, no doubt about that, but it’s not evil.”
“You shush now,” she said, “and leave this to me.”
A moment later, the massive cop loomed at my window, blocking the morning sun as effectively as an eclipse. He bent down and looked into the car, mouth puckered in a frown and gray eyes squinted, as if the Mercedes were an aquarium and I were the strangest fish that he had ever seen.
He was a handsome bull, I’ll give him that, even though his head was as big as a butcher’s block. Those singular eyes were not the shade of ashes, not dull but bright, almost silver, steel that flensed away the skin of deception and saw the guilt beneath.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked, which I’ve heard is what they always ask, giving you the option of telling the truth and convicting yourself or lying to a cop and thereby further incriminating yourself.
I forgot that I was a mute, but before I could speak, Mrs. Fischer said, “Andy Shephorn, is that you?”
His dissecting stare cut from me to her—and softened from blade steel to velveteen rabbit. “Edie Fischer, as I live and breathe.” His smile seemed to be too full of teeth, all as large and white as piano keys. “What is it—four years?—and you don’t look a day older.”
“Because I look a decade older. How many children do you and Penny have now? Last I recall, it was five.”
“Seven,” he said, “but we intend to stop at eight.”
“Worried about your family’s carbon footprint?” she asked, and they both laughed.
Although the cop was leaning in my window, his face inches from mine, I seemed to have become invisible to him.
To Mrs. Fischer, he said, “Since the boomers didn’t bother to have enough kids to pay their Social Security for them, someone’s got to do it.”
“I’d love to see your children again—and the two new ones.”
“Come around anytime for dinner.”
“I’ll do that when this current little adventure is over.”
“Where’s Oscar—sleeping in back?”
“Dear, I’m afraid Oscar passed away four days ago.”
Tears welled in Andy Shephorn’s eyes. Proportioned to match his features, the tears seemed as large as grapes, and he was striving not to spill them.
Mrs. Fischer saw his distress and said, “Oh, dear, it wasn’t a grisly ending, not at all. Oscar and I were in a lovely restaurant. We’d had a divine dinner. He finished the last of his dessert, as good a crème brûlée as ever we’d tasted. As he put down the spoon, his eyes widened, and he said to me, ‘Oh, I think the time has come to say good-bye,’ and he slumped dead in his chair.”
Knuckling the tears out of his eyes, Shephorn said, “He was a fine man. Except for him, I’d never have met Penny.”
“He knew she was the perfect wife for you.”
I could smell the salt in his tears, I swear I could, and the spray starch in his uniform shirt, the scent of which was liberated by his body heat. The limo felt humid, a laundry on wheels.
“By the way,” Mrs. Fischer said, “this young man is my new chauffeur, Thomas.”
Officer Shephorn didn’t extend his grief-wet han
d, which was almost twice the size of one of my hands. “I’m pleased to meet you, Tom.”