“I’m leaving for Colorado on Friday,” Tina announced, “and I want you to come with me.”
It was such an absurd request that I laughed impatiently. “Excuse me?”
“Did she say Colorado?” Brian asked me, pointedly ignoring Tina, who pointedly ignored him right back.
We overtook a group of Denise’s high school friends, and Tina offered them one of the funeral programs. “This man is very dangerous,” she said to them as we passed. “Please keep your eye out for him.”
I looked at the stack in her hands and realized it wasn’t funeral programs she was hoarding. Tina had made a flyer using The Defendant’s mug shot. Large bold font blared the question she’d been asking since 1974: Have You Seen This Man? Tina had come to the funeral not to honor Denise but to implement her own version of a neighborhood watch. How tacky.
“What the hell is in Colorado?” Brian asked, addressing Tina for the first time.
“The prison where he escaped,” Tina said, exasperated. She didn’t have time to explain it again, especially not to him.
“The prison where who escaped?” Brian pumped my hand, hard. Hello. Answer me. “What is she talking about?”
Tina leaned close to me and said, “I’m staying at the Days Inn in Tallahassee. Practically roughing it. Come talk to me when you’re back.”
“You are clearly disturbed, and I’m going to kindly ask you to leave us alone now,” Brian said in the genteel twang that had surfaced here and there over the years when it served him, which is to say when he wanted something he wasn’t getting. Respect, namely. With his easy, loping pace and hippie hair frizzing in the humidity, he was suddenly repugnant to me. As hypocritical as a Christian lawmaker in a strip club.
“Well,” Tina said, “since you asked kindly.” She bumped my shoulder with her own. “Room two-oh-three.” With that, she did leave us alone.
Brian threw an arm around my shoulders and glued me to his side possessively. “All the crazies are out today, huh?”
I felt squeezed all over, like my skin was too tight for my body and I needed the seams let out. We were coming up on Aunt Trish helping Mrs. Andora into the limousine, and I saw my out: I ducked under Brian’s arm and reached Mrs. Andora just in time to cup the back of her head in my hand, the way cops do to suspects right before they put them into the metal cage of their cruiser, so that even if they fight the inevitable, they don’t hurt themselves.
* * *
I was putting out the second bowl of potato salad when Aunt Trish came up behind me.
“He’s ready for you, Pamela.” I turned to see she’d pressed too hard when she’d applied a fresh coat of lipstick, pruning the tangerine tip with her front two teeth.
“Remember to talk about Denise’s faith,” Aunt Trish coached me as we made our way into Denise’s childhood bedroom with the lilac walls and butterfly bedspread. A strange man was examining a piece Denise had hung in the space between the window and the chest of drawers.
“This one of Denise’s?” he asked, turning to me. He had a pencil tucked behind one ear, dark green eyes and thick black eyelashes, prominent horse teeth. His clothes were bad, his pants too short and his shirt too long. I couldn’t stop the terrible, snobbish thought from forming—he looked like he had dug his clothes out of a bin at the Salvation Army.
“That’s a weaving,” I said.
“Is that different from what Denise did?” It was the sort of soft question you ask a child, right down to the feigned wide eyes.
“Denise painted for some of her classes, but that wasn’t her real talent.”
The man slid the pencil out from behind his ear, releasing a lock of sandy brown hair. “Oh?” he said with what actually sounded like genuine interest this time. “What was that?”
“Curation. Denise had a keen eye.”
Aunt Trish averted her eyes as the man reached into the waistband of his pants and retrieved a notebook, revealing a flash of stomach, the disappearing trail of dark body hair. “Keen eye,” he repeated, balancing the notebook on his thigh so he could write it down.
“This is Carl Wallace,” Aunt Trish said, emphasizing the name the way you would an important client at a business dinner. “He’s the senior staff writer for the Tallahassee Democrat.”
Carl looked up from his notebook, blinking the hair out of his eyes. “Thank you for speaking to me, Pamela. I’m just looking for some background from the president of what I’m told is the smartest sorority on campus”—he flashed those big teeth at Aunt Trish, who was no doubt his most dogged source—“and Denise’s best friend.”