by D R Lowrey
Following Nigel out of the office, Jack Watt rubbed his hands together as if about to place them in front of a fire. The two reached the center atrium just as Abuelita appeared in her wheelchair, perched at the top of the grand staircase. Since she had a ground floor room, Nigel had not expected such an entrance, but neither should he have been surprised. As a former burlesque star, she had a finely inflamed flair for the dramatic. At one time, so Nigel understood, a fraternal organization had formed exclusively of men who had been injured or arrested during one of her theatrical performances.
“Abuelita, I will meet you at the elevator,” shouted Nigel, hoping to discourage any further foolishness.
“Nonsense,” she cackled back, starting to extricate herself from the chair.
Standing for Abuelita was not a quick process, as it involved unbuckling her seat belt, scooching each alternate butt cheek forward one inch at a time, and then flipping herself over before straightening to a stand. She carried out this torturous process to scattered “oohs” and “ahhs” from the apprehensive crowd below, now consisting of Nigel, Jack Watt, the mystery guest, and Esmerelda. Eventually, she stood tall at the top of the stairs. It took her but a moment to realize her public was behind her. She shuffled herself around to face the gathering below. Standing in her blue satin dress as straight as her bones allowed, she looked as regal as she could hope to at this stage.
Taking in the whole picture, Nigel thought she had pulled off a minor miracle. To what end, he could not say, but in every respect she appeared a different person, which had to be a good thing.
Esmerelda put two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
“Galena?” said Jack Watt, reaching into his jacket to retrieve his photograph.
“Guy Yeena!” yelled the mystery man as if he’d just won the Guy Yeena jackpot.
Having completed her grand gesture, Nigel expected Abuelita to strap herself back in her wheelchair and zip over to the elevator. She, however, was just getting started. She shuffled on wobbly legs to the wide, swerving handrail on the left side of the staircase. She posed there for a moment, one arm resting on the surface of the smooth railing, face uplifted to display her profile. Very Bette Davis. She then faced the handrail, extended both arms skyward, and fell across it. Teetering on her belly, she began the great slide downward like a sideways Superwoman.
“Catch me,” she yelled to a crowd frantically pointing at each other.
If Abuelita had performed this stunt before, it was likely not while wearing satin. The stairway’s curvature scrubbed off a bit of velocity, but her rate of acceleration was frightening. She glided down the handrail like a brakeless tobogganist, yelling “Wheeeee!” all the way.
The railing on this staircase did not flatten gracefully at the end. No, this handrail ended with an ornamentation known as a finial. This particular finial was a round wooden sphere the size of a basketball. If the job of a finial was to discourage sliding down the handrail by sane people, then the Sandovals’ finials served no purpose.
While not stated as one of his duties, Nigel felt a responsibility to prevent, if possible, deaths from occurring on the premises. He lined himself up for the catch, not knowing if, after striking the finial, she might fling to the left, to the right, or in both directions simultaneously.
Abuelita hit the wooden ball with a thud, sending it to the floor like a bowling ball while she spun through the air in a series of horizontal cartwheels.
No prescribed way exists to field an old crone that’s been flung in such a manner. At least, not that Nigel had seen on YouTube. He braced himself, and first contact was with his head. Fortunately, the impact was cushioned by the only soft bits still in Abuelita’s possession. Nigel’s arms closed around the torqueing torso. Here, too, he was fortunate because his right arm slipped neatly around her shoulder while the left found the most secure position possible for clamping onto a transversely whirling female with extended legs. The pair twirled multiple revolutions across the floor until Nigel’s twisted legs buckled, sending the entire mass into a swirling heap at the geographic center of the atrium.
Sometime during all the sliding, catching, and spinning, Mrs. Sandoval and Stefanie had entered through the front door. The group was further enriched by Annie and her mother, who had evacuated their rooms upon hearing Abuelita’s first wail. The entire ensemble gathered around the tangled mass of humanity on the atrium floor.
“Galena?” said Jack Watt, his deflating tone embodied in a physical sense by Abuelita’s chest after her dress’s scaffolding had given out.
“Wattkins, is that you?”
Jack gazed at Abuelita, and Abuelita gazed at Jack, with him definitely getting the worst of it. Though Abuelita’s face had come through the ordeal unscathed, not so the cosmetics intended to obscure it. At some point in the gymnastics, one side of her painstaking construction work had been sheared off, sloughed off, or shattered to pieces, revealing the corrugated hide below. One of her batwing false eyelashes hung from her eyebrow, and her glistening black hair lay at the base of the stairs.
Nigel had never seen anyone belch up his own liver, but Jack Watt appeared to be on the verge.
“Yes, it is me,” he bravely admitted.
“Doesn’t look like you,” said Abuelita.
“And you…don’t look like…anyone,” said Jack Watt.
“What’s going on here?” shouted Annie, glaring at Nigel.
Startled by Annie’s voice, Nigel attempted to rise before noticing that his left arm was clenched tightly between Abuelita’s thighs. He jerked his arm away as if from a cobra while she kicked him for good measure.
The mystery man in the armadillo shoe knelt down beside Abuelita. “Guy Yeena!” he said.
She stared at him for a moment before replying, “Valdemar?”
“Valdy?” shouted Mrs. Sandoval, making her presence known for the first time.
“Laura? Laura!” said the old man, turning toward Mrs. Sandoval.
“Papa! Oh, Papa!” shouted Stefanie, collapsing on the old man.
Esmerelda joined in the group hug.
The doorbell rang.
CHAPTER SIX
Reintroductions
Nigel brushed himself off, shoved his nose into the air like a good butler, and limped to the door. “It’s you,” he said, standing opposite the rubber-faced detective who, in Nigel’s opinion, appeared more rubbery with every encounter.
“Police Detective Winjack,” he said, flashing a badge. “May I come in?”
“What for?”
“Police business.”
“I’ll let you in this time, but next time I want to see donuts,” said Nigel, waving him forth before turning to all present. “Police Detective Winjack is here, he says, on police business.”
The motley crowd—lying, kneeling, and standing—turned and stared.
The detective marched two steps in before catching sight of the loopy tableaux. He planted his feet and stood slack-jawed, like a fish seeing its first submarine. “Am I interrupting a party?”
Half said “yes,” half said “no,” and Abuelita spoke for everyone when she said, “None of your beeswax.”
“Well,” said the detective, turning to Nigel, who’d established a position to his rear thinking he would not turn that way. “What say you?”
“I am the butler, sir. I do not express opinions.”
The detective stepped to Nigel’s side. “Who are all these people? I don’t recall so many when I was here before.”
“The current residents of this household, temporary and permanent,” said Nigel, sliding away from the detective.
“I see. So you can introduce them,” said the detective, easing toward Nigel.
Introductions were part of a butler’s job, but scanning the collection of players, Nigel realized he was missing a program. Even the principals seemed surprised at who was who and what was what. Unfortunately, a butler has his duties to perform. “Here goes,” he said. “This is Mrs. Sandoval.�
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“We have met,” said the detective. “And this one I believe I also know,” he said, turning to Esmerelda. “Remind me, are these two sisters?”
“No. Esmerelda is the daughter of Abuelita,” said Nigel, nodding toward Abuelita, who was seated on the ground. Kneeling beside her, rubbing her leg, was the mysterious guest.
“And who is that man fondling Abuelita’s leg?” asked the detective.
“Why, that is…that would be…” stammered Nigel. He knew who he wasn’t. He wasn’t Abuelita’s fiancé, and yet, this man had taken charge of her leg as if he owned it. If that wasn’t fiancé-consistent behavior, Nigel didn’t know what was. And Abuelita, reacting in a perfectly fiancée-consistent way, was not kicking his face in. Her actual fiancé, Jack Watt, was nowhere to be seen.
“This man…” stammered Nigel, taking up where he left off, “is none other than…” He waited for a miracle.
“Papa!” shouted Esmerelda.
“Papa?” muttered Nigel.
“Dada!” said Stefanie.
“Ex-husband,” said Abuelita, patting the diligent hand kneading her thigh.
“My husband?” said Mrs. Sandoval.
“Got that?” said Nigel, turning to the detective.
“Just a minute. I am not quite getting this,” said the detective. “I need to understand what’s going on here.” He paced across the room, pulling back his crumpled trench coat with a hand on his waist while the other massaged his forehead. A third hand, if he’d had one, would have been stroking his chin. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “The old lady getting the leg massage is this man’s ex-wife, while you”—he pointed to Mrs. Sandoval—“are his current wife. Is that correct?”
“I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Sandoval.
“You’re not sure the old lady is his ex-wife?” said the detective.
A blue low-heeled pump emitting a contrail of mothballs and corn squeezings sailed past the detective’s head. Abuelita shouted, “I’ll show you who’s an old lady!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the detective, waggling a finger at Abuelita. “No more shoes. Now, let me rephrase the question. The shoe-thrower is the man’s ex-wife?”
“That positively is his ex-wife. But I’m not sure if I’m his current wife,” said Mrs. Sandoval.
“What? Do you have amnesia? How do you not know if you’re his wife?”
“He just showed up today after being gone for twenty years. We thought he was dead,” said Mrs. Sandoval. Then she turned and addressed the crowd around her. “Didn’t we think he was dead? Does a marriage have an expiration date? Isn’t there some kind of ‘use it or lose it’ clause? I mean, I haven’t seen the man in twenty years. Who knows where he’s been!”
“Did you file for a divorce?” asked the detective.
“Of course not. You can’t divorce a dead person.”
“Was there a death certificate?”
“No. How can there be a death certificate without a body?”
“In that case,” said the detective, “I now pronounce you still man and still wife.” He turned to the mystery guest. “You there, Mister…?”
“Valdy,” said the leg-caresser, sitting on the floor with his back against the large wooden finial ball.
“Valdy, you may stop massaging the ex-wife’s leg and get started on this one.” The detective nodded toward Mrs. Sandoval.
“Okay,” said Valdy. “Does she have a cramp too?”
“So very interesting,” said the detective, head down and hands aflutter. He circled the crowd with jerky steps, coming to a halt in front of the finial ball that had been bludgeoned off the staircase by Abuelita’s torso. “It’s interesting that a long-lost relative’s return coincides with a mysterious death on the premises.” He put a loafer-clad foot against the ball. “Interesting, indeed,” he said, resting an elbow on his up-thrust knee with the fist forming a pedestal for his chin. Having assumed the Thinker’s pose, he muttered, “Interesting,” twice more.
“You there,” the detective said to Valdy. “Tell me your story.”
Valdy, alarmed at being addressed, stood up.
Losing its backstop, the finial ball skidded out of the atrium and into something audibly breakable. The detective’s body attempted to follow the ball, crumpling into a lumpy sphere before unraveling after less than a full revolution. He came to rest in a supine position with his trench coat splayed across the floor like useless wings and his head uncomfortably close to Abuelita’s unclad foot. The disoriented detective, seeing the gnarled talon, convulsively clawed at the air with all available limbs. For anyone struggling for the image, imagine a stricken June bug with a rubbery face reacting to an approaching boot.
“You dropped this,” said Valdy, looking down at the detective while holding the man’s peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
“Place it in one of my coat pockets, please,” said the supine detective. “I will conduct my interview from this position for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. The extra time will allow my back joints to realign themselves.” He retrieved a pen and notepad from the pocket of his trench coat. “Now, tell me your complete name.”
The mysterious newcomer received the question and, before answering, looked in sequence at Mrs. Sandoval, Abuelita, Esmerelda, and Stefanie. “My name is Valdemar Guillermo Sandoval de la Huerta,” he said, creaking out the name syllable by syllable, as if it had been in storage.
This was old news, of course, having been spilt minutes earlier, but was, nevertheless, received with a round of excited squeals.
“Let me see,” said the detective, pen in hand. “That’s V, A, L, T?”
“Here,” said Mrs. Sandoval to the laid-out detective. “I’ll write the name for you.” She had no patience for an extended recitation of letters. She wanted to hear Valdemar’s story, as did the other ladies closing ranks around him.
“Thank you,” said the detective, handing over the notepad. “Now, how did you get here today?” he asked Valdemar.
“I walked.”
“You say you walked here today. You’ve been gone twenty years, and that’s your story? Surely, you didn’t spend twenty years walking here.”
“It’s a long way,” he said. “And it’s Valdy, not Shirley.”
“Okay,” said the detective, obviously perturbed by the answer but also by the women standing between him and his subject. “I’ll play this game. Where did you walk from?”
“Amazon.”
“Amazon? They have a distribution center in San Antonio, don’t they? You walked from San Antonio?”
“Brazil.”
“You walked from the Amazon in Brazil straight here and arrived today?”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t arrive today?”
“Yes, I arrived today, but I didn’t walk straight here. The first couple of years, I walked in the wrong direction.” By now, the ladies had established a regular habit of oohing and aahing at his replies. Esmerelda and Stefanie, positioned on either side of the man, kept busy with the handiwork, clutching a piece of upper extremity with one mitt while intermittently patting or rubbing with the other.
“For two years, you walked in the wrong direction?” asked the detective.
“I say two. Could have been three or four. Hard to tell. They don’t have seasons down there.”
“When did you find out you were walking in the wrong direction?”
“Chile. I came to a sign in the road that said ‘Bienvenidos – Chile.’ I had no map, but I knew that weren’t right. I’d have discovered my error sooner if Bolivia was better with their signage.”
The detective, scribbling in his notepad, appeared visibly annoyed. Perhaps because marble floors are poorly cushioned, or because his pen didn’t write upside-down, or because his upright subject was receiving massages. Whatever the reason, his questions came with increasing amounts of spittle. “Okay, let’s back this up. Why were you in the Amazon twenty years ago?”
“Forgive me
, my memory is not so clear in that time. I remember a boat and some men, and this girl in Urucurituba dancing the wamba-tamba. Nothing more comes to mind from that period until I was awakened in the jungle by the moist tongue of a jaguar against the sole of my bare foot. Once I fought off the jaguar, I noticed I had this dent in my head. See”—he pointed to the dent. “From then on, it was mostly just me walking.”
“You fought off a jaguar?” asked the detective. “With a dent in your head?”
“No, with an arapaima. I don’t know how you’d fight off a jaguar with a dent.”
“And what is an arapaima?”
“A big fish. It happened to be lying beside me at the time. When this jaguar was licking my foot, I grabbed the fish and swung it around to whomp him on the head.” The ladies, based on the volume of oohs, tightness of claspings, and frequency of pattings, took this to be an heroic act.
“And the jaguar fled?”
“No, he didn’t fled. He’s a jaguar. Lucky for me, he chose surf over turf. He grabbed the fish and ran off to eat his dinner.”
“So this fish just happened to be lying beside you in the jungle?”
“Yep. I believe this dent in my head came from that fish. If you take a look at the dent, it’s shaped like the head of an arapaima. Just how I got an arapaima-shaped dent in my head, I couldn’t say, but maybe the arapaima lying beside me had something to do with it.”
“Did you file a report with the police?”
“What police? It took years just to get out of that jungle. By then, the case would have been pretty cold, don’t you think? In my experience, police aren’t much interested in two-year-old, dent-in-the-head cases, especially when the main suspect is a fish. Tell me I’m wrong.”
The old man went on speaking haltingly, sometimes pausing with a perplexed look before continuing. He appeared to be remembering and forgetting things as he spoke. Despite the difficulties, he methodically pieced together his story.
