“Thank you so much,” she said sweetly, in as good an imitation of Brenda on the The Closer as she could manage.
“Welcome,” he said dryly. “Good-bye . . . Olivia.”
Olivia shook her head at his having to make an effort to remember her name. Carrying her purchases, she went to the door, thinking, Well, at least he is interesting. As she pushed the door open with her shoulder, she had a thought that made her turn back. “Have you been reading the papers?” she said. “Do you know what’s been happening here?”
Now he looked surprised. “What?” he said, and then looked as though he regretted showing curiosity.
“You really ought to get a paper out of the vending machine by the door and give it a read.” She smiled and left, pleased at having had the last word.
13
Manfred was glad for absences. Kiki was gone, and Rasta was at his vet’s kennel being coddled by the staff, or so Chuy and Joe were assured when they called. Kiki had added nothing to Midnight, and she had taken away some of its harmony. He only hoped Fiji was not too upset. Diederik had told him that Kiki had been mean to Fiji in some way that Diederik didn’t specify. Manfred didn’t ask. He had enough on his plate. His hand looked better today, but it was still sore, and constant typing hadn’t helped that situation.
Manfred quit work a little early to give his hand a rest. He was propped on his elbows at the desk, looking out the front window. With a sigh, he stood and stretched and walked over to peer at Fiji’s. She had a customer. Behind him, phone lights blinked as callers were given a message that said, “We’re closed for the day. We’ll reopen tomorrow at eight a.m. Central Daylight Time. Please call back then.” Overnight, the e-mails would accumulate on his websites. Tomorrow morning, he’d start another day of prophesying and giving advice . . . and making money.
Sometimes Manfred thought there was no human problem under the sun he hadn’t encountered. Quite a few of them he heard every damn day. Cheating spouses and unfaithful boyfriends, mostly. Bosses who “had it in” for you. (Manfred often suspected those bosses had good reason. A lot of those contacts happened during business hours.)
It was dusk, and no one else had committed suicide in Midnight today.
Manfred would have been a good interview for more marginal reporters who’d swarmed the town, and he’d considered it. Being featured in the blog of “PNGirl, roaming Paranormal America, looking for news of the weird and uncanny” would probably have generated some business. But he’d thought twice. A connection with suicide would hardly do him any good.
So Manfred had remained shut in his house on Eggleston’s suicide day, curtains drawn. And the next day he’d only ventured out to get his mail and rescue the stupid dog. Today, he’d worked straight through with only a short break for lunch. He found he was tired of slaving over the telephone and the Internet, giving people advice for their unpleasant—or sometimes sad and pathetic—problems.
I think I have a curse on me. No one seems to like me.
I just got fired again. I need to know the name of the person who goes to my bosses and complains about me. I gotta stop them.
I lost my money and my house in the bad economy. Tell me what lottery number to buy.
Tomorrow, Manfred was taking part of the morning off to visit some of his favorite people: Tommy, Mamie, and Suzie, who now lived in an assisted-living center in Davy. They were all rascals; Mamie and Suzie would never have baked cookies and shown their grandchildren how to make chicken and dumplings. Tommy would have been better at teaching his kids how to bust kneecaps than how to bait a fishhook. But they were lively and entertaining company. If they all felt well enough, Manfred would take them out to lunch. He’d been doing that at least once a month since they’d been shifted from the Midnight Hotel to Safe Harbor Assisted Living and Nursing Home in Davy, which had several degrees of nursing care and was closer to a hospital, doctors’ offices, and shopping.
Manfred, who checked on them once a week either over the phone or in person, had gotten Tommy to list him as a relative. He was now Tommy’s great-nephew, in the eyes of Safe Harbor management. When that had been done, Manfred had gained the right to ask questions about Tommy’s bills.
“Paid by a corporate office,” the assistant manager of Safe Harbor had told him.
“Why?” he’d asked.
“Past service,” had been the reply.
“To whom?” he’d asked.
“To the corporation, I guess,” the accounts receivable clerk had said, shrugging. “Tommy should know. Ask him.”
And Manfred had. Not entirely to Manfred’s astonishment, Tommy refused to worry over who was taking care of his bills. Having been in a dive in Las Vegas where they’d been terrified of being robbed every day, the three old people were just grateful to be housed in a clean place, fed, and safe. Suzie, the smartest of the three, was more suspicious than Tommy or Mamie. But ultimately, Suzie was just as relieved to have found a literal safe harbor. She didn’t pursue the source of that safety as doggedly as she would have in her heyday.
On his way to Davy the next morning, three days after Price Eggleston’s death, Manfred was looking forward to seeing Tommy, Suzie, and the frail Mamie. He was in a lighthearted frame of mind.
No reporters in sight, a morning away from work, and a conversation with three former Las Vegas reprobates to anticipate: fun things. Tommy, who tended to be on the peppery side, amused Manfred; Manfred felt he’d learned a few things, too, from Tommy’s attitude about life.
Besides seeing his friends, Manfred found he was also more than a little buzzed at the possibility of encountering Estella Hardin, a nurse’s aide working at Safe Harbor while she attended junior college. He hadn’t known he had a type until he was smitten with Estella. Like Creek Lovell, Estella was short and of medium build, olive-skinned and dark-haired. Also like Creek, Estella was intelligent and had been through some hard times. When she completed junior college in May, she’d have four or five semesters at a four-year college to face before she could become a registered nurse. Manfred, who’d only taken some college-level computer courses, admired Estella’s determination and ambition.
The day became even brighter when Estella was the first person Manfred spied in the Safe Harbor lobby. Still dressed in her scrubs, she was dawdling around the check-in desk. He hoped that meant she’d been waiting for him, since he’d called Tommy the day before to tell him he was coming. Manfred signed the guest register, nodding at the pink-coated volunteer in charge of the information desk, and turned to Estella.
“Hey, how are you?” he asked, wishing he could think of something more original to open with.
“I’m good. You?” The maroon scrubs worn by the nursing staff didn’t do anything to prevent Estella’s looks from shining through. Her glossy black hair was pulled back in a ponytail (regulations) and her nails were unpolished (also regulations), but she wore a little makeup and her pants fit nicely on a figure that was not voluptuous or bony, but just right.
“I’m fine,” he said. “How are my people?”
“Well, they’ll tell you,” she said, smiling. But he could sense that under the smile lurked a worry.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s Mamie,” she said. “I don’t want to give you bad news. But she’s not flourishing.”
They’d been strolling toward the left wing where Manfred’s friends were housed. Now they stopped to face each other. “Tell me,” he said.
“I’m not a nurse yet,” Estella said. “But I’ve worked here a while now. Mamie’s getting weaker. She’s not walking much anymore, even with a cane or a walker. She’s not eating enough. I know she’s eighty-five, but this seemed to come on pretty suddenly.” She paused. “She’s losing her grasp, Manfred.”
Her grasp on life. Manfred understood. “What can I do?” he asked.
“I don’t know if there’s anythin
g specific worrying her,” Estella said. “If there is, of course taking that load off her would help. Otherwise, I think it’s going to be time for her, soon. Again, I’m not a nurse, and I may be speaking out of turn. But that’s my take, and I’d feel really bad if I didn’t tell you.”
“You think losing Mamie would be really hard on Tommy and Suzie?” he asked.
To his astonishment, Estella looked dubious. “It might,” she said. “But sometimes the very old can seem . . . surprisingly offhand about death. In fact, about any disaster happening to someone else. I think it’s because they’re so close to the end themselves, and they’ve lost so much by the time they get there.”
“My grandmother, Xylda, wasn’t that way. But she wasn’t nearly as old as Mamie,” Manfred said. He found himself smiling, despite the bad news. “Xylda was flamboyant to the end,” he said.
“What did she do?”
“She was a psychic, like me. In fact, she taught me the business.”
He was pretty sure Estella had already known what he did for a living. He could see the staff talking about him sometimes; he was a fairly unusual-looking visitor.
“How long ago did you lose her?”
Manfred had to think. “It’s been at least two years. Maybe longer.”
“I’d like to see a picture of her sometime,” Estella said.
“Totally doable. I’ll go through my photo box, Estella.” He held his breath, trying to look like he was perfectly at ease.
“My friends call me Stell.”
“Stell, are you ever free to have time off?”
“What’s that?” She laughed.
“You work. You go to school. You study.”
“I might be able to arrange a little free time,” she said, smiling back at him.
“Can we spend some of that time together? So I can show you my grandmother’s picture?”
“I think I can spare a few minutes,” she said, to his vast relief and excitement.
He put her on his contacts list, and she wrote his number on her arm with an ink pen.
“I’ll put it in my cell phone when I’m off work,” she said. “By the way, I’m traditional—in some ways. I’ll wait for you to call me.”
“Good to know the rules.” Manfred was feeling positively buoyant. He was having to struggle to keep his smile under control.
“Okay, I’m going home to get some sleep,” Stell said. With a final wave, she peeled off to vanish through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Manfred was still smiling when he knocked on Tommy’s door. “Come in, Bernardo!” Tommy called.
Tommy’s room looked like a studio apartment. It had a little kitchen area, a double bed, and a sitting area. Though the room was small, it was attractive and comfortable—if not very personal, since Tommy had arrived with only the clothes in his suitcase. In his heyday, Tommy Quick had been a leg-breaker in Las Vegas. He had had a long, varied, and colorful life. This room in this town seemed like a bland end for such a man, but Manfred had come to understand that when you reached your eighties, safety was more important than lots of other considerations.
Tommy was dressed and shaved and sitting in the strawberry-red armchair. He looked ten years older than the last time Manfred had seen him, which was saying something.
“Hey, Tommy,” Manfred said, shaking the man’s hand. Tommy still had a good grip. “How are you?”
Tommy waved his hand to show that they were going to bypass the preliminaries. “Listen,” Tommy said. “And listen good.”
Manfred sat in the other chair and listened good.
“Mamie is trying to get out at night,” the old man said.
Manfred thought, Oh, no. Please tell me she’s not . . .
“She wants to walk down the highway, get me? Walk to Midnight!” Tommy was scared and furious.
“Why does she want to go back to Midnight so bad? Has she told you?” Manfred tried to sound casual, but he didn’t fool Tommy.
“I can tell this isn’t a total surprise to you,” Tommy snarled. “We read the papers here, you know! We’re not total ignoramuses!”
“Did she say why?” Manfred was equally persistent.
“She’s gonna kill herself there, she told us.” Tommy regarded Manfred with a cold eye. “Now, you got something to tell me?”
“You know about the suicides,” Manfred said, because that much was public knowledge. “We don’t know why they’re happening, but we think there’s some weird influence going on.”
“Woo-woo stuff,” Tommy said.
Manfred nodded.
“Can you get Mamie to quit this?” Tommy asked. “Suzie and me are going nuts, getting no sleep trying to make sure she don’t get out of here. They were already talking about moving her to the nursing home wing.”
Manfred knew that for the residents, moving to the nursing home wing was the last step before the graveyard. Sometimes residents recovered from a fall and got to go back to the assisted-living wing, but that was rare. “Could she really get out? Aren’t the doors locked at night?”
“Yeah, except when one of the staff goes outside to smoke and forgets to lock up. That’s happened twice. And a few times, one of us walks out as visitors walk in, and no one notices. One of the Alzheimer’s ladies was out in the parking lot trying to break into a car! Chet Allen was halfway to his ranch before they caught him.”
“Do the nurses know what Mamie is trying to do?”
Tommy shook his head. “They just know Mamie’s getting worse. They’re talking about tying her to the bed.”
Manfred recoiled, imagining ropes or handcuffs.
Tommy noticed. “Naw, you idiot, they use these soft restraints. But we hate to see that happen to Mamie. When she gets back to being okay, it’ll embarrass her something awful.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Manfred felt totally at a loss.
“Do some mojo on her. Make her quit thinking about this.”
“I need to send for Fiji. She’s better at that kind of stuff. I’m just a two-bit psychic.”
“Well, Mr. Two-Bit, you get in there and try.” Tommy got up slowly, stiffly. He and Manfred made their way to the room next door, Mamie and Suzie’s room.
The two women were dressed and sitting in matching armchairs identical to those in Tommy’s room, and the television was turned to a game show. Mamie’s curly white hair was flattened on one side, which would have mortified her if she’d been aware of it. Suzie, whose parents had immigrated to the States from Hong Kong, was carefully combed and made up, as usual. But she looked as exhausted as Tommy.
“I like the hair, Suzie,” Manfred said, when she turned to the door. In the weeks since he’d seen her, Suzie had dyed her steel-gray hair its original black.
“Thank you,” she said. “And how are you and that pretty Estella?”
“Hey, we traded phone numbers,” he said, not at all surprised that Suzie had picked up on his admiration for the nurse’s aide.
“That’s good,” she said. “Now, let’s see if you can help Mamie, here.”
At the sound of her name, Mamie opened her pale blue eyes. She turned slowly and painfully to look at Manfred.
“Hey, honey,” she said, her voice wispy. “I didn’t hear you come in. Hey, Manfred, give me a ride back to Midnight? I need to . . . do something there.” She looked sly.
“No, Mamie,” he said. He sat on the bed closest to her and reached over to hold her thin hand. “I can’t do that. It’s not healthy for you there right now.”
“I don’t have anything to live for,” she said, tears running down the fine pale skin of her cheeks. “I’ll just go there, to the roads, where they cross, and I can put an end to this.”
“Miss Mamie, what would Tommy and Suzie do without you?”
She smiled faintly. “Oh, they’d manage, same as always
. Come on, Manfred, put me in that car of yours and let me go home with you.”
He had seldom felt more at a loss.
“I can’t. There’s stuff going on in Midnight that’s bad. We have to clear it up before you come back for a visit.”
Mamie said, “All right.” She’d suddenly lost the thread of the conversation. She glanced over at Tommy. “Tommy? Is it time for lunch yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “In an hour, honey.” But Mamie had already focused her attention on the television screen, though from her blank expression she wasn’t really engaged with what she was seeing.
Manfred tried again to think of a way he could help his friends. And he came up with nothing.
He said as much to Suzie and Tommy. “All I can do,” he said, “is ask Fiji if she’s got any ideas. And try to solve this problem in Midnight as soon as possible.”
“People just show up and . . . blam!?” Suzie shook her head.
“That’s how it’s happened,” Manfred said. “No motive, no warning.”
“Mamie never was too big on Fiji, but I don’t think she’d care anymore, long as she gets better,” Suzie said wearily.
“All right, buddy-boy,” Tommy said. “You run back to Midnight and you fix things up with Fiji. Mamie shouldn’t be suffering like this.”
Manfred signed out in the lobby, only vaguely conscious of the curious look the volunteer was giving him at his quick departure without his friends, whom he often took on an outing.
Manfred walked slowly to his car. The temperature was only in the low eighties, but he was too preoccupied to enjoy the relief from the summer’s heat. He’d never had such a jarring visit at Safe Harbor. He found himself dismayed and worried to a degree that surprised him. Until this moment, Manfred hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on his visits with Tommy, Mamie, and Suzie. He missed his grandmother; their conversation had somehow eased the loss for him, but he hadn’t even understood that. Some psychic I am, he thought.