"And how did the two of you get here? Broom?"
He smiled. "That's good, Lillian. Sometimes I forget how witty you are."
She bent down and began picking up scattered groceries. Gracie's elderly gray tabby cat had already appropriated the half-empty bag. "Get out of there, Fred," she said. She glanced at Becenti. "I didn't see a vehicle," she said, wondering what she would have done if a Navajo Tribal Police car or some other official transportation had been sitting in the drive.
"No. No vehicle. Gracie didn't think you'd get home late, so I had young Officer Toomey drop me off. He had to testify in his first major trial today. He was scared so I came along to Santa Fe to talk him through it."
"He was probably more scared of you than he was of testifying," she said.
"He got over it," Becenti assured her. "I told him, by the way, that the absolute worst criminal-defense attorney he'd ever have to face is you."
"Oh, thank you," she said sarcastically.
"That wasn't a compliment."
She frowned. And she didn't ask him how his return to work was going. She most certainly didn't ask him where he was living.
"So – like I said – Toomey dropped me off. He has some cousins in the area and he went to see them. I'll call him when I'm done here." He offered her her slightly askew dry cleaning. "Anything else?"
"It's cold in here," she said, because she couldn't resist his invitation to make further complaint. She took the dry cleaning out of his hand and hung it on the nearest door. "I, at least, made you a fire."
"I told you I wasn't planning on being inside when you got here."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, really. The plan was, when I heard your car coming, I'd go back outside before you caught me."
"So much for that," she said dryly.
"Well, I fell asleep. That really is a comfortable chair," he said, of the overstuffed 1930s horsehair easy chair she'd gotten at a church rummage sale. Fred, deprived of his grocery bag, apparently recognized that fact himself, and he languished contentedly on the plush seat.
She turned to go into the kitchen, leaving Becenti standing. He didn't follow. In spite of her initial fright and her subsequent exasperation, in spite of her resolve as to the reason he'd instigated that Window Rock thing, she found that she very much wanted to continue this conversation – any conversation.
"So how did you get in here?" she asked over her shoulder.
"I picked the lock," he answered, coming along with her after all.
"You – a captain in the Navajo Tribal Police – stooped to breaking and entering?"
"Well, your nephew by marriage taught me how to do it," he said, giving her a truly feeble excuse. "I only 'entered.' I didn't exactly 'break.'"
"Meggie's Jack taught you to pick locks," she reiterated, more than skeptical – not at Jack's being willing to share this useful information, but at Johnny Becenti's being willing to learn such an un-Becenti-like thing.
"He did. Your lock is the first chance I've had to practice. He's going to be so proud."
She laughed in spite of herself. This is really...almost pleasant, she thought – if she ignored the awkwardness and her embarrassment. But she said, "It's a good way to get yourself shot."
"In that case I'm very grateful you were only armed with a grocery bag and your dry cleaning."
"Do you want some coffee?" she asked abruptly. She tried to sound offhand, indifferent as to whether he did or not.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation.
She glanced at him. The look held.
"Day-old vegetable soup and cheese toast?" she added, still holding his gaze in a supreme effort not to seem flustered.
"Yes," he said again.
She had to turn away from him to concentrate on what exactly such a project would entail.
"Do you want some help?" he asked, his voice much closer behind her than it should have been. She didn't turn to see where he was standing. She didn't dare.
"No – Well, you could build that fire," she said, because it was clearly not a good idea to have him in the kitchen with her after all. "The stove is in – "
"I know where it is," he said.
"The wood is – "
"I know where that is, too."
He went away. She could hear him talking to Fred. He didn't seem to have that macho disdain for cats that most men had. She'd never really understood it – particularly when, to her way of thinking, cats behaved very much the same as men did. They both had their own agendas, their own intense Don't-bother-me-I'm-on-a-quest mode, and they both got around to the person who fed and took care of them when and if it suited them – at which time they could be very affectionate. No. Not much difference at all.
But, whatever the topic of conversation, Fred seemed to appreciate the effort Becenti was making. She could hear a meow from time to time in response to his considered opinions. She smiled again, wondering if Gracie had any idea that Fred apparently spoke fluent Navajo.
She opened the refrigerator, relieved that she did indeed have enough soup left for two. And bread and cheese for the toast. She would feed him, make him coffee, carry on a little conversation – and then she would find out what the hell he was doing here. She couldn't believe that he would just show up here like this. He was behaving as if nothing had happened between them. And worse, he was behaving as if they'd known each other for years – well, they had known each other for years, but only in a Fred-the-cat-hiss-and-spit kind of way. He must be here for a reason. He'd plainly said he was planning to call young Officer Toomey when he was "done here." Whatever that was supposed to mean.
She looked out the window. It was nearly dark now and the snow was coming down harder.
Becenti, Becenti, she thought, sighing heavily. He was indeed still recovering. He looked much better than when she'd last seen him, but not yet well. He seemed tired – tired enough so that she didn't really mind that he'd shamelessly let himself into her house. She did owe him some reciprocal hospitality, she supposed.
She smiled slightly, remembering the "hogan on the other foot" remark. He was somewhat witty himself – something she hadn't known about him and would never have guessed, just as she was unable to guess his real reason for being here.
She poured the soup into a pot and set it on a burner to heat. Then she put the cheese toast into the oven. And she listened. He wasn't talking to Fred anymore. The question now was whether or not he would talk to her. She had no plans to be coy. She was just going to ask him. What are you doing here?
She couldn't get any plainer than that. And if he'd come all this way just to hurt her feelings, again, then so be it.
Becenti waited to make sure the fire had caught. He looked around the living room, marveling again at Lillian's decor. The walls were white. Everything else was desert-and sunset-toned – deep red to dark brown and every shade in between.
Assorted Native American – professionally done, he thought, looking past the huge striped sofa to a carved Zuni corn dancer and some pieces of Acoma Pueblo pottery that sat on a tall table behind it. An Ojibwa "dream catcher" hung on the far wall alongside a print of a Navajo man in a reservation hat who had wrapped himself in a bright red cloth that had a subtle suggestion of the American flag in the lower corner. The artist who had done it must have had an acute understanding of the conflict between a Navajo's need to be traditional and his fascination with the white world. Becenti thought it an appropriate selection for Lillian to have hanging in her house.
There were a few other more or less Navajo things around – a reasonably authentic pattern in some throw pillows, and a wedding vase on the large and low piece of furniture she used as a coffee table. Besides the vase, there were several candles in tall glass containers, a bowl of oranges and English walnuts, a blue Mason jar full of sea-shells and a few sprigs of dried desert flowers, and a decidedly non-Navajo red-and-white antique bank – a ringmaster holding a large hoop for something now hidden in a barrel to pop out and jum
p through.
There was a large armoire with punched tin inserts in the doors, a table with a huge round-based copper lamp, an upholstered footstool with black wrought-iron legs, stacks of picture books – Rembrandt, O'Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, Tony Hillerman. She also had a number of framed snapshots of the members of the blended Singer-Baron clan. He looked at them closely. He knew everyone – all of Lillian's mixed family on display here. Some of the events – like Meggie and Jack Begaye's wedding – he himself had attended.
He took his jacket off and hung it on a nearby doorknob to keep it from becoming a cat bed. He looked down. Several sizes and colors and patterns of rugs lay this way and that, overlapping each other, on the hardwood floor. He wondered how much it had cost Lillian to be surrounded by this studied homeyness. Or perhaps she had missed her calling. Perhaps she had done it herself. In any case, this place was a long way from a dirt-floor, log-and-mud hogan.
He found the wall between the kitchen and the living room the most interesting, because there were four large, one-over-one glass windows in it. He thought that it had once been an outside wall and that the windows had been left in to keep both rooms from being too dark. They also gave him an unobstructed view of Lillian stirring the soup. He could see her, but he would have to go out a door and through a small hallway to get to her. And if she knew he was watching, she was making a point of not looking in his direction.
He checked the stove again. The fire was burning well. Not too vigorously. No smoking backdraft. He could safely go back into the kitchen now, but he didn't. He'd had a hard time explaining to Lillian what he was doing here. Not exactly a surprise, because he would have had a hard time explaining to himself what he was doing here. Both he and Toomey – and Lillian, for that matter – knew that the two of them should have been on their way back to Window Rock long before now. It was snowing, and Becenti had no apparent business being here. Even a rookie tribal police officer could see that. But here the always-in-control Johnny Becenti stood, trying to think up a way to stay even longer.
The phone rang, but Lillian wasn't in the kitchen. He couldn't see her anyplace, but after a few more rings, she returned, now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She picked up the kitchen extension to answer, listened, then immediately held the receiver to her chest for a moment before she continued.
"Stuart, what do you want?" she said.
Because of the four windows, Becenti could hear her quite plainly – more plainly than she probably realized.
"No, I am not hiding again," she said. "No, you can't come out here. Because it's snowing, that's why. And because I have a guest. And because you and I have absolutely nothing to talk about – "
She gave a heavy sigh. "What kind of legal matter?" she said. Then, "Stuart, Santa Fe is full of lawyers – "
"Then call the office and make an appointment. Yes, I mean that. If you need legal advice and you think it has to be mine, call the office. Gracie will set you up with a convenient time – No, I'm not trying to worry you. I'm trying not to worry me. What? No. Stuart, you aren't listening. Stuart – "
She stood looking at the receiver briefly before she hung up.
She's not happyt Becenti thought, giving a loud enough sigh to draw a mild inquiry from Fred.
"Nothing, little brother," he said, reaching over to briefly stroke the cat's head. "Go back to sleep. This is nothing for you – or me – to worry about."
When he looked up, Lillian was standing in the doorway.
"It's ready," she said. "Yours, too, Fred."
But Fred preferred sleeping in the easy chair and rolled over onto his back, stretching as long as he could with both paws over his head before he curled into a furry ball again.
"It feels much better in here," Lillian said, nodding toward the stove. The stove had a glass insert in the door, and the flames were clearly visible.
She turned to go back into the kitchen, and he followed, noting as he walked behind her that this was not the Lillian he had always known. This was the other one, the blue-jeans Lillian who had invaded his hogan and his grief – not the one in the courtroom power suit. He noted, too, that he should not be paying so much attention to those jeans – or to the T-shirt. Or to the memory of her warm, firm body under his hands. He should be thinking of her as the hotshot lawyer – not that her lawyer persona had proved to be much of a deterrent to him that afternoon in Window Rock. Still, at this particular moment, it was clear to him that he needed her to be the woman who had always annoyed him.
"Is Stuart coming?" he asked, surprising her a bit. "I could hear," he added without apology.
"No. Or I don't think so. He's been very...strange lately."
"Strange?"
She shrugged. "Like he doesn't remember he's getting married."
Becenti stood for a moment, assessing the emotion her remark caused in him. It wasn't a difficult process and it didn't take long. The emotion was easily identified, even for a person given to flagrant episodes of denial the way he was.
Jealousy.
He hadn't come here to feel jealous. He had come to try to get back his harmony, and seeing her again had seemed the only way to accomplish that. Even Winston Tsosie had noticed his uneasiness after Lillian had left, not to mention Mary Skeets. Mary must have asked him twenty times a day if he was feeling all right. But worse, Winston had immediately understood which person exactly had precipitated this disharmony.
"I think you better go to Santa Fe, son," the old man had said one afternoon, obliquely wise as always.
And so Becenti had barely made it two weeks without showing up on Lillian Singer's doorstep – and breaking into her house. All in all, though, she seemed to be taking his intrusion better than he would have thought. He just needed to make sure that she hadn't misunderstood... anything. And as soon as he knew that, everything – he – would be fine.
"Johnny, are you going to sit down or not?" she said, cutting into his thoughts.
"I am," he answered, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table. He was very hungry actually, and the soup smelled wonderful. He gratefully accepted the bowlful she gave him. And the coffee. And the cheese toast.
They ate in a kind of strained silence, as if both of them were waiting for an opening to speak their minds. But with such minimal conversation, there were no opportunities forthcoming.
"Did you make this?" he asked finally, well after the second bowl.
She looked up at him. "Why?" she asked pointedly, clearly expecting a resumption of their old adversarial relationship. If he had remarked upon the soup, then surely a criticism must follow.
"Because, Lillian, if you did, I was going to say that it was good."
"Good," she repeated, still suspicious.
"Okay, then, amazing," he said, deciding he couldn't resist aggravating her after all.
"Very funny, Becenti. You're pretty outspoken for a man with no transportation and a snowstorm outside," she said, getting back to her "amazing" soup.
He smiled. And he savored the sensation.
"I like to live on the edge," he assured her.
"You must – you came here."
They stared at each other across the table. He wanted to look away but he didn't. With that one small remark she had effectively removed all the pretense, however flimsy, that his arrival had been innocent. The moment of reckoning was here. No excuses. No escape. Speak the truth, suffer the consequences. The only problem was that he suddenly didn't know what the "truth" was. The silence lengthened.
She is beautiful, he thought as he had that afternoon in the Window Rock house.
"Are you going to tell me why you're here or not?" she asked quietly.
He took a small breath, but he didn't oblige her.
"You're going to have to," she said. "Because I don't want to guess. Not that I can't. It's just that I don't know who's supposed to make the speech."
"Lillian – "
"Well, one of us has to, right? Isn't that why you came? You want to be reassured
about what happened between us – and so do I," she continued – nervously, he thought, and very un-Lillian. "We were both...vulnerable. It took us both by surprise. It didn't mean anything." She was looking into his eyes when she said it.
"Right," he agreed too quickly. "It didn't mean anything."
At that moment, he should have been feeling a great relief to get this worrisome matter into the proper perspective, to know that she hadn't misunderstood the situation at all. But somehow the sensation escaped him.
"And neither of us should concern ourselves about it," she continued. "Our paths are going to cross from time to time – professionally – and even when I come to Window Rock to see the family, there shouldn't be any awkwardness between us because of what happened the other afternoon at the house. None. It was just – " She stopped.
"Just what?" he asked when she didn't go on – because the entire explanation sounded like a song from a Broadway musical she'd been practicing in front of the bathroom mirror – or worse, like what he'd intended to say himself. "Tell me."
She abruptly got up from her chair and began to pace the room. "You know what it was."
"No, you tell me – exactly. What was it?"
She stopped pacing and turned to face him. "All right. It was to teach me a lesson. It was putting an uppity woman in her place."
He made a slight sound and shook his head, amazed that she could think such a thing. How could she possibly have jumped to that conclusion?
Because she was Lillian, because she had forgotten who and what she was, that was why. The People didn't seek that kind of revenge against each other.
"You," he said, jabbing the air in her direction, "have been living away from your own kind too long! So what is it now?" he persisted. "Am I here now because I'm still trying to get my revenge and put you in your place?"
"Aren't you?"
"No, damn it, I'm not! I'm here because I – "
He stopped, incredulous that he'd been about to say it.
"Go on," she said. "You don't have to worry about hurting my feelings."
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