Regina's Song

by David Eddings

  “Our dad sort of pushed Erika and me into what he called ‘the professions,’ ” she replied. “He didn’t want us to grow up to be waitresses or store clerks. Erika’s at least twice as smart as I am, so she was a shoo-in for a scholarship here, but after I graduated from high school, Dad finagled a job for me in a local law office. It was the senior partner there who pulled enough strings to get me a scholarship in the pre-law here.”

  “Boy, does that sound familiar,” I noted. “My dad worked at Greenleaf Sash and Door up in Everett, and after I’d taken a few courses at the community college up there, I had whole bunches of people herding me in the direction of the university. It’s almost like a slogan sometimes—’Workers of the world unite! Send your kids to college!’ ”

  “Upward mobility,” she said. “It’s all right, I suppose, but we tend to grow away from our parents, don’t we? Erika and I don’t have too much in common with our folks anymore. Erika sprinkles her conversation with medical terms, and I’m starting to talk fluent legalese. Half the time I don’t think Mom and Dad understand what we’re saying. It’s sort of sad.”

  “At least they’re still there, Trish,” I told her. “I lost my parents in a car wreck a couple years ago.”

  “Oh, Mark!” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Things like that happen, Trish. We grow up thinking that everything in the world is permanent. It isn’t, though. Things change all the time.” Then I smiled faintly. “Aren’t we starting to poach on James’s territory? I’m supposed to talk about split infinitives, and you’re supposed to talk about tarts.”

  “That’s ‘torts,’ Mark,” she corrected me.

  “Ah,” I said. “What’s your preference, Trish? Do you like strawberry torts or raspberry torts?”

  She burst out laughing. “You’re a funny person, Mark.”

  “It’s probably a fault. Sometimes I think we take ourselves too seriously. A little laughter now and then’s probably good for us.”

  “We don’t laugh much in law school,” she said, “or in the law firm where I work either, for the matter.”

  “You’re still working for a living, then?”

  “I’m a law clerk in a big firm downtown—more finagling by my old boss in Marysville. My scholarship covers tuition and books, and my downtown job puts groceries on the table.”

  “Been there,” I said, taking another measurement. “Done that.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “Has Erika got an outside job, too?”

  “Oh, yes. She puts in a lot of hours at a medical lab—blood tests and all that. Erika’s so good with a needle that she can pull a quart or two out of you before you even know what she’s up to. It’s none of my business, but how do you make ends meet? Are you building houses on the sly, maybe?”

  I sighed. “No, Trish,” I told her. “The insurance on my folks gave me plenty of money. I can probably get by for quite a while before I have to go looking for honest work again.”

  “How many shelves do you think you’ll be able to put along that wall?” she asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “Quite a few, actually. These ten-foot ceilings give me a lot of room to play with. Of course, books come in all sizes, so there might be variations. I’ll probably have to play it by ear in each room. Your law books are fairly uniform, so your shelves should be nice and even. Mine could end up pretty higgledy-piggledy.”

  She stood up. “I’d better go get started on supper,” she said.

  “Have fun,” I told her, going back to my measurements.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As luck had it, the rain let up—briefly—on Thursday morning, so I made a quick trip to the nearest lumberyard. Working with wet boards is a real pain, so I took advantage of the break in the weather. A pickup truck would have made things a lot easier, but I didn’t have one, so I lashed the boards to the top of my car instead. It’s not the best way to transport lumber, but if you pad the top of the car, it’ll work—and it wasn’t as if the house was all that far from the lumberyard.

  When I pulled up in front of the house, there was a scruffy-looking young fellow standing on the porch ringing the bell.

  “They’re not home right now,” I called to him when I got out of my car.

  “Any idea of when they’re likely to be back?” he called.

  “It shouldn’t be too long. They were going to hit the grocery store this morning. The pantry’s running low.”

  “You live here?” he asked me, coming down off the porch.

  “Not yet, but I will be by next week. Are you looking for a room?”

  “Yeah. It’d be a long commute from Enumclaw. What’s this ‘serious’ business?” He gestured at the sign in the front window.

  “The landladies have opinions,” I told him, struggling with the knots that held the boards to the top of my car.

  “Let me give you a hand,” he offered.

  “Gladly. We’ll have to lug these boards around to the side. I’d like to get them into the basement before it starts raining again.”

  “You said something about opinions,” he said, while we were untying all my knots.

  I outlined the basic setup while he helped me off-load the lumber, ending with the no-no list: “No booze, no dope, no loud music, and no fooling around on the premises. The term they use is ‘hanky-panky.’ Their main objective is to keep the noise level down so that everybody can concentrate on study.”

  “I could probably live with that,” he told me as we carried the boards around to the outside basement door.

  “You’re a student, I take it?”

  “It wasn’t entirely my idea,” he said glumly. “I work for Boeing, and they leaned on me to go to grad school. It was too good a deal to pass up, so I’m stuck with it. They cover the tuition and pay me my regular salary to hit the books. In theory, my major’s aeronautical engineering, but I’m not supposed to talk about what I’m really working on.”

  “Top-secret stuff?”

  “Sort of, yeah—Star Wars kind of crap.”

  “I’m Mark Austin, by the way.”

  “Charlie West,” he introduced himself, and we shook hands. “Are the Erdlund girls thinking about total prohibition?” he asked then. “I usually have a few beers after work, so I probably couldn’t always pass a breathalyzer test.”

  “They don’t take it quite that far, Charlie,” I assured him. “They just don’t want us getting all lushed-up on the premises. Far as I know, we’re not talking about blue-nosed puritan morality here, just peace and quiet.”

  “I can go along with that. Do they get worked up about cooking in the rooms?”

  “It’s a room and board setup. The girls do the cooking and the laundry.”

  “What do the guys do?”

  “The heavier stuff—plumbing, carpentry, that kind of thing. That’s why we’re lugging all these boards inside: I’m building bookshelves. Right now they’re on the lookout for somebody who knows a little bit about fixing cars. They’ve been burned a few times by mechanics who specialize in making out the bills. Do you know anything about auto mechanics?”

  “I could probably build a car from the ground up, if I really wanted to. That’s my pickup out front. It doesn’t look too sharp on the outside, since I haven’t gotten around to the paint job yet, but you should see the engine. You don’t hardly ever come across a Mach-3 pickup.”

  “You’re kidding, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t swear to it. I’ve never punched it all the way out. The speedometer only goes up to 120, and I can bend the needle in about two blocks.”

  “That sort of makes you a serious candidate, Charlie. Would living in the same house with a black man give you any problems?”

  “No. A green one might make me nervous—they tell you to watch out for them. They’ve got all kinds of bad habits—mating with spruce trees, eating public buildings, worshiping sewage treatment plants, all the weird crap. What’s your major, Mark?”

&nbs
p; “English. Do you think Boeing might want to pay me to sit around reading Chaucer?”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it, but with Boeing, you can never be sure. Who’s the black guy?”

  “James—he’s in philosophy.”

  “Heavy,” Charlie said admiringly.

  “You wouldn’t want to mess with him,” I cautioned. “He’s got a George Foreman build, and he backs up the Erdlund girls by looking mean and flexing his muscles. When Trish says ‘jump,’ James tells you how high. He handled most of the evictions when the no-booze policy went into effect. You usually only have to throw a guy downstairs once to get your point across.”

  “This sounds like a real fun place to live.”

  “The girls should be back before long. I’m not sure exactly where Sylvia is—possibly over in the psych lab trying to drive all the white mice crazy.”

  “Is she another one of the Erdlund girls?”

  “No, they’re Swedes. Sylvia’s Italian—in abnormal psych.”

  “Fun group.”

  “Are you interested?”

  “You sound like a recruiting sergeant.”

  “We’ve just got one empty room left, and I’d like to get somebody in there before classes start. If it stays empty, Trish might send the rest of us out trolling for prospects. I’m a little busy for that, what with putting up all these bookshelves. Trish likes the idea so much that I’ll probably be building bookshelves in bathrooms and closets before the end of the school year. I just hope that wood screws are going to be beefy enough to hold the weight.”

  “Use lock screws,” he suggested. “They expand when you tighten them, so they’re locked in place. If you put your shelves up with those babies, they’ll outlast the house itself.”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  We were coming back around the house when the Erdlund girls pulled up out front. Trish was driving, and her car was stuttering and popping as she drove up.

  “Little problem with the timing,” Charlie noted.

  “Can you fix it?” I asked him.

  “Piece of cake.”

  The girls got out of the car and started hauling out bags of groceries.

  “Hey, babe,” I called to Trish, “this is Mr. Goodwrench, and he’s thinking about signing on.”

  “Why does everybody think he’s a comedian?” she said, rolling her eyes upward.

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “This is Charlie West. Boeing’s paying him to go to graduate school, and he tinkers with cars in his spare time.”

  “Really?”

  Charlie was looking at the tall Erdlund girls with an awed expression. “Swedish girls come by the yard, don’t they?” he muttered to me. “I bet those two could play a wicked game of basketball.”

  We went over to the car, and I introduced the girls to Charlie.

  “How did you get Boeing to pay your way?” Erika asked him.

  “It was their idea, not mine,” Charlie replied. “Boeing’s always interested in guys who might come up with ideas they can steal and patent. I’m involved in a program I’m not supposed to talk about, and if I happen to stumble across some whiz-bang new technology, Boeing’s going to own it, and they won’t even have to pay me any royalties for it.”

  “I thought the cold war was over.”

  “The old one is,” Charlie replied. “The new one’s just getting under way. The aerospace industry absolutely hates peacetime, because it cuts down the money-tree. Of course, if Boeing goes belly-up, Seattle turns into a ghost town. So everybody talks about peace, but they’re not particularly serious about it. Peace is bad for the economy. Did you want to talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs?”

  “I didn’t quite follow that,” Erika admitted.

  “Shakespeare,” I supplied. “Richard II. Charlie here seems to be a Renaissance man.”

  “But I don’t do ceilings,” Charlie added.

  I think his reference to the Sistine Chapel missed the girls.

  “Did Mark fill you in on the house rules?” Trish asked him.

  “I can live with them,” Charlie replied with an indifferent sort of shrug. “I take a beer once in a while, but it’s not my life work. Mark tells me you’ve got an empty room. Could I take a look at it?”

  “Of course,” Trish told him. “Let’s get the groceries inside first, though, Erika.”

  “I’ll give Mark a hand with the rest of his lumber,” Charlie said. “Then you can show me where to flop.”

  “Don’t let him get away, Mark,” Erika told me with a peculiar fierceness.

  “Those are a couple of spooky ladies,” Charlie said, while we carried the rest of my boards around to the side.

  “Swedish girls lean toward intensity,” I agreed.

  After we’d finished, Trish gave Charlie the tour. He only glanced briefly into the room across the hall from mine. “It’ll do,” he said almost indifferently. “I’ll go back to Enumclaw and pick up my junk. Would it be OK if I put my tools in that basement room where Mark’s got his lumber? I don’t want to leave them in my truck. Good tools fetch fancy prices in pawnshops, so I don’t want to take chances on having somebody swipe them. If it’s OK, I’ll move in on Monday.”

  “That’s fine with me, Charlie,” Trish told him.

  “Would you mind if I painted the room?” he asked then. “Pink walls aren’t my scene.”

  “It’s your room,” Trish told him. “Pick any color you like.”

  I spent the morning in the basement staining the boards, then I went to a hardware store and bought those lock screws Charlie had mentioned, came back, and started installing the shelves. It went quite a bit faster than I’d thought it would, and I was better than halfway through the job when I knocked off for the day.

  I called Miss Mary’s house when I got back to the motel, and Twink answered the phone. “Where have been, Markie?” she demanded. “I tried to call you four times today.”

  “I was building bookshelves. Are you all right?”

  “I was just lonesome, that’s all. I thought that maybe we could go to a movie or something.”

  “Is there anything showing that you’d like to see?”

  “Not really. I’d just like to get out for a while.”

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  “I was going to pop a TV dinner into the microwave.”

  “Why don’t I take you out to dinner instead?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “I’ll take a shower and change clothes. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes, OK?”

  “Anything you say, Markie.”

  I realized that I’d been neglecting Twink for the past few days. I’d been busy, of course, but that was no real excuse.

  I took her to a Chinese restaurant, and we pigged out on sweet-and-sour pork. Then we sat over tea and talked until the restaurant closed. Twinkie seemed relaxed and even quite confident. She was coming right along.

  I was certain that I’d finish up the shelves and the painting on Friday, so I’d only have one more night in the motel before I’d be able to settle into my own room.

  I got up fairly early and started painting as soon as I got to the Erdlund house. I wanted the paint to be good and dry before I moved in my furniture.

  James stuck his head in through the doorway about noon. “Baby blue,” he noted.

  “I’m just a growing boy,” I replied.

  “Sure, kid. Who’s this Charlie guy the girls are all up in the air about?”

  “He’s an aerospace engineer who works for Boeing. His hobby is cars, and that made the Erdlund girls wiggle like puppies.”

  “Is Boeing really paying him to go to school? Or is he just blowing smoke in everybody’s ears?”

  “I think he’s giving us the straight scoop. He’s a sort of slob who quotes obscure passages from Shakespeare and knows more about the Italian Renaissance than you’d expect from an engineer. He’s a sharp one, that’s for sure. He’ll be moving in on Monday, and then you can judge for yourself.”
r />   “Nobody ever offered to buy me an education.”

  “We’re in the wrong fields, James.”

  “It looks like you’re almost finished,” he observed.

  “Three more shelves on top, then it’s all done.”

  “Do you really have that many books?”

  “Not quite, but I’m giving myself room for expansion. When you major in English, your library grows like a well-watered weed. I’ll get those last few shelves installed as soon as I finish painting. I want to polish it all off before the local U-Haul place closes. I’ll rent a truck this afternoon and bag on up to Everett first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll go along,” he rumbled. “Loading furniture into a truck is a two-man job.”

  “I was sort of hoping you might make that offer,” I said, grinning at him.

  “Have you got everything up there all packed?”

  “It’s ready to roll.” Then I went back to painting.

  I finished up by midafternoon, and then I went to the U-Haul place and rented a truck.

  James and I got an early start the next morning. It was Saturday, and of course it was raining. It always rains on weekends, or had you noticed? Monday through Friday can be sunny and bright, but come Saturday, you get rain. James and I talked a bit on the way north, and James told me that he’d started at the university after his wife had died of cancer. “I needed something to distract me,” he said rather shortly. He clearly didn’t want to go into any greater detail.

  There was an awkward silence for a while as we drove past Lynnwood through the steady drizzle.

  “What got you into English, Mark?” he asked finally.

  “Dumb luck, probably.” I launched into a description of my years at the community college and my early major in “everything.”

  “You sound like a throwback to the Renaissance—Mark da Vinci, maybe, or possibly Mark Borgia.”

  “It was an interesting time, that’s for sure. Isn’t that an old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times’?”