Gods and Pawns (Company) Read online

  “We’d better get a new one, then,” said Tina briskly, and was off like a shot.

  “You know what your mommy’s problem is?” Maria said to Philip. “She belongs in the 1950s.”

  Philip wasn’t paying attention. He had twisted in his seat in the shopping cart and was staring at the aisle containing bath accessories. He pointed, yearning, and turned to look up at Maria.

  “What is it?” Maria asked, pushing the cart where he pointed. “You see something you want?”

  What he wanted was a package of bath pearls, ruby-red ones in the shape of hearts. When the cart was close enough he reached out and grabbed the pearls, smiling in triumph.

  “Honey, those aren’t candies,” Maria told him, wresting them out of his grip. “I know, they look sooo tasty. No—”

  Philip threw himself backward in his seat, waving his balled fists, drawing a deep breath as he wound up for a scream.

  “Sssh, shh, here! Look, we’ll buy them, okay? You can have a bath with them tonight. You just can’t eat the damn things,” said Maria, dropping them in the back of the cart. “Hey, Philip, look! We’re driving in a race car! Zoom, zoom!”

  She began to speed with him along the aisles, hoping to stave off the tantrum, pushing the cart as fast as she could go.

  “Hold on, baby! We’re coming to the first turn! Eeeeeee!”

  Philip chortled and held on to the bar, leaning into the turn.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is unbelievable! Philip Aguilar is streaking ahead!” Maria sang, panting as she pushed him along the aisle. “But! Will he handle the next turn without crashing? Eeee! Here he goes!”

  Up and down they went, Philip laughing helplessly, until they came around the end of the cosmetic aisle and a ghost stood before them.

  Maria froze, staring.

  It was the man who had been at the cemetery. His dark glasses were pushed down on his nose. He was peering over them at a makeup kit, one of several he held in his hands. He turned swiftly and met Maria’s gaze.

  She choked, unable to scream.

  Uncle Porfirio took a step toward her; then turned on his heel and was just gone. Philip, staring up at her white face, began to shriek in terror.

  When Tina found them, Maria was slumped over the cart, trying vainly to breathe and comfort Philip at the same time.

  “Oh, my God!” Tina snatched Philip from her aunt’s arms. “You’re having a heart attack!”

  “No, mi hija, I just—”

  “Please, please don’t die! We’ll get you on a diet—Somebody, please help us! My aunt—”

  “Shut up, for Christ’s sake—”

  It took an eternity to convince the store manager that she didn’t need an ambulance, that she was fine, that she’d just felt a little faint (low blood sugar, right, yes) and another eternity to get Tina and Philip calmed down. They found seats in the food court, though the combined smell of pizza, hot dogs, and churros was enough to make anyone pass out. Tina bought her a lemonade and watched tearfully as she took her medication.

  “You have to take care of yourself,” Tina insisted. “What would Philip do without his Auntie? When was the last time you had a checkup? You have to make an appointment right away!”

  “How? I just lost my medical coverage, remember?” said Maria.

  “You could go on the county, like me,” said Tina.

  “I’d rather die, thanks,” Maria retorted.

  “It’s not anything to be ashamed of!”

  Maria just looked at her sullenly. Tina pursed her lips, looked away, and tried again.

  “Okay. There are, like, biofeedback things you could do that would help. You know what your problem is? You take too much responsibility on yourself. You worry all the time. My therapist says we all need to keep in touch with our inner child. You had to take care of Grandma, and you raised me, and then you had to look after Grandpa, too, so you never really had time to be young, did you?”

  “That’s for damned sure,” Maria muttered, swirling the ice in her drink.

  “And then everything that’s happened lately, all this pressure, pressure, pressure, is just going to kill you if you don’t find some way to let it go. You have to do that. Please, Auntie.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Maria, though she was still ice-cold and shakier than she’d admit. She offered her lemonade to Philip. He pushed it away, staring up at her, much too little to look so worried.

  “Let’s go.” Maria got to her feet cautiously. “Let’s buy him a toy. He’s had a rough day.”

  They found the toy aisle and a bin of bright, cheap stuffed toys. Maria let Philip rummage through them while Tina went down to the far end of the aisle. A moment later she came back, looking determined.

  “There are a lot of teddy bears over there,” she said.

  “He’s already found one he likes,” said Maria, lifting Philip in her arms. He clutched a bright red toy parrot, chewing on its beak thoughtfully.

  “I think you should get one for yourself,” said Tina. “My therapist says symbolic gestures are really important. Let your inner child pick out the bear it wants, and then you hug him every time you feel the stress building. It’ll work, I swear.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. She followed Tina to the display of teddies. After a long, thoughtful moment she picked out the biggest one—bigger than Philip—and set it in the cart.

  “That one’s butt-ugly,” Tina complained. “Don’t you want one of the cute ones?”

  “It’s my bear, right?” said Maria. “Mr. Stress Buster.”

  Tina sighed.

  But she treated Maria to lunch at Jack-in-the-Box, where they actually went in and sat down at a table, as though it were a special occasion. Tina watched her like a hawk the whole while; and only as they pulled into the parking lot of the mental health clinic did she say, “If you start to feel faint or anything, you’ll pull over right away, won’t you?”

  “I swear,” said Maria. Tina got out of the car.

  “Philip, you make Auntie drive real careful, okay?”

  “Leave it to me, Mom,” said Maria in a bass voice.

  By the time she was halfway down Fountain, Maria had come to terms with what she had seen.

  “You know what it was, Philip? Kind of a Jungian hallucination,” she announced, looking in the mirror at Philip waving his parrot around in the back seat. “My unconscious was letting me know there’s way too much tension in my life by conjuring up an image of Uncle Porfirio, who is, like, this intense symbol of responsibility. Look what happened to him!”

  “Mamama,” said Philip.

  “You’re so right, mi hijo. I could really use a drink, you know? Probably be good for my heart, too. Bad idea, though.”

  They got to the house without incident and she carried Philip up the walk, stopping to check the mailbox.

  There was an envelope without a stamp inside. Maria pulled it out, noting stolidly the now-familiar handwriting.

  “Then there’s this psycho,” she said to Philip. “I guess I should feel flattered; he’s paying me more attention than any guy I ever dated.”

  “Blblblblbbbbbb,” said Philip.

  “I agree one hundred percent.”

  Maria let them in, set Philip in his walker, and did a quick walk-through of the house; no sign of intruders. He followed her into her bedroom, where she checked the Tupperware (still there), and rolled himself around the floor as she sat down on the bed and examined the new envelope.

  It felt light. No clippings this time? She opened it and pulled out the single sheet of paper, unfolding it carefully.

  Her heart gave another violent lurch. Almost absent-mindedly she checked for the symptoms: pain in the left arm, breathlessness, nausea…

  The image seemed to be a kind of photograph, printed directly on the paper; clearly something much more high-tech than the chattering daisy-wheel printers in use at her office. What were they calling the new ones now? Laser-jet? Were they able to do pictures as well as words? They m
ust be.

  And the picture must have been taken by someone standing outside the Kmart as Uncle Porfirio fled, probably with a video camera because of the red numbers in the bottom right-hand corner. There he was, large as life beside the coin-operated kiddie rides, turning to stare at the camera. His face was expressionless, but there was a look of murder in his black eyes. Maria wondered how the cameraman had gotten away alive.

  There was writing on the back of the picture. She turned it over.

  YOU MUST HAVE GUESSED BY NOW. WHO DID HE WORK FOR REALLY?

  NOW, THINK: WHAT OTHER INVENTION WOULD A COMPANY NEED, IF IT WANTED TO CASH IN ON HISTORY? HOW WOULD IT KNOW IN ADVANCE WHAT IT NEEDED TO SAVE?

  HOW POWERFUL WOULD IT BE, IF IT COULD OFFER IMMORTALITY TO ITS EMPLOYEES?

  I REALLY THINK IT’S TIME WE HAD A FACE-TO-FACE CHAT.

  BE SEEING YOU.

  Maria stared at the note a long time, putting the pieces together. She got out the other pages and read through them, slowly. Philip played quietly by himself until he got hungry; when he rolled up to her and made complaining noises, she rose automatically and filled the tray of his walker with apple slices and Vienna sausage. She sat at the kitchen table while he ate, studying her evidence.

  By the time she glanced up at the clock and noticed that it was time to pick up Tina, she had almost figured it all out.

  Tina was standing by the curb again, with another bagful of candles, and she was smiling.

  “I didn’t think I was that late,” said Maria, as she opened the door and got in.

  “No, my therapist was a little late, so I walked down and got these first,” said Tina. “I have a lot to pray to Mary about, right now. How’s the most wonderful little boy in the whole world?”

  Philip babbled and waved at her.

  “And look what I got for Auntie!” Tina pulled something from the bag and held it up. It was a little plastic figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, garishly painted, with a magnet in its base. “Our Lady can sit on your dashboard and keep you safe. And she glows in the dark!”

  Maria ground her teeth, but said nothing as Tina set the statue in place.

  “Can we go to Thriftymart?” Tina inquired. “My therapist gave me a new prescription and I need to get it filled.”

  “Sure,” said Maria, preparing to pull away from the curb.

  “Wait! Auntie, look, there he is!” cried Tina, pointing across the clinic’s parking lot. “See him? That’s my wonderful, handsome therapist!”

  Maria looked, and saw a man in a white coat getting into a white Mercedes. He started the car, backed out of his parking place. The name painted on the concrete bar there was DR. MILLER.

  The Mercedes passed close enough to the car for there to be no doubt. He turned and met Maria’s gaze, smiled like the Cat in the Hat and winked, just to rub it in.

  If I live through this week it’ll be a miracle, thought Maria, feeling her heart smack against her breastbone again. Out loud she said: “Dr. Miller, huh?”

  “Anthony Miller,” said Tina happily. “Tony and Tina. Won’t that be cute?”

  Maria drove to the Thriftymart on Gower, and as she drove, she felt the shakiness and the panic begin to fade. She was filling with anger. It ran like cold fire in her blood, she could almost imagine it flashing blue like lightning, and it made her feel clear-headed and powerful. Anything seemed possible.

  She pulled into the parking lot. “Give me the prescription,” she said to Tina. “I’ll get it filled. You stay here with Philip, okay?”

  “But don’t you—”

  “They have one of those free blood pressure testing machines inside. I want to check myself, after this morning.”

  “Okay,” said Tina, a little cowed by the look in her eye. She handed over the slip of paper meekly.

  Yes, the prescription was in the familiar handwriting. Maria had no idea what the drug might be. She waited patiently while the pharmacist filled it, and did indeed check her blood pressure. It was a little high. She got a bottle of generic aspirin from the shelf, and when the pharmacist gave her the bag containing her prescription, she went to the counter up front and paid for her purchases.

  Returning to the car, she got in and said: “Mi hija, I need to take another of my pills. Will you go over there to the liquor store and get me a soda? I’ll stay here with the baby.”

  “Sure,” said Tina at once, looking concerned.

  Alone in the car with Philip, Maria opened both pill bottles and swapped out their contents. He watched without comment. She was smiling at him in the mirror, telling him what a good baby he was, when Tina returned.

  “I got you a diet soda with no caffeine,” said Tina. “It’s better for you, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Maria. She gulped an aspirin, washed it down with the sickly fizzy stuff, and drove home in perfect calm.

  Evening came, black shadows and a red sky. Sirens wailed and police helicopters sped whining above the city, or hovered high, thumping the air. Far to the west a pillar of smoke rose, the only stain on the perfect sunset: someone’s car was on fire. In the pink dusk, the lights of the city flickered like a bed of green coals. Little wild parrots chattered and fought in the jacarandas, the magnolias, the carob trees. The Santa Ana was blowing hot, rustling the palm leaves.

  Once, it had brought the smell of orange blossoms to prosperous mid-westerners and would-be movie stars in innumerable clapboard cottages. Now the orange groves and cottages were gone. Chaos was rising in green creepers once more, over the crumbling plaster as bright-eyed monsters sped through the night with their speakers reverberating.

  The house on Fountain, overgrown by its garden, had a particular black velvet darkness.

  “This new medication is making me sleepy,” said Tina, and yawned as she stacked the dinner dishes in the sink.

  “Really,” said Maria, wiping applesauce from Philip’s chin.

  “What are you going to do tonight?”

  “Watch television, I guess,” Maria replied. “Why?”

  “Would you mind if Philip and I go to bed early? I can barely keep my eyes open, and it’s so hot.”

  “Go right ahead,” said Maria.

  She remained where she was at the kitchen table, listening as Tina climbed the stairs. Footsteps creaking across the floor, the clatter of Philip’s toddler gate being opened and shut. Tina’s voice high-pitched and muffled, baby-talking; the sudden blare of sound as she turned her radio on, and then the drop in volume. Various creaks and thumps. Silence, after a while, but for the faint music of an oldies station.

  Maria rose and made a pot of coffee, strong and black. She poured herself a cup.

  Sipping it, she walked through the house, checking each room, turning out lights as she went. Her parents’ bedroom at the front, cold and empty as it had been for years. Her room, full of stacked boxes and plastic bags from her apartment. The bathroom: nothing lurking behind the shower curtain. All the windows locked. Back door locked.

  Nobody in the breakfast room; nobody in the living room except the Virgin of Guadalupe on the mantel, surrounded by votive candles. When Maria turned off the light, the room was bathed in a serene pink gloom, pulsing with the candle flames.

  She finished her coffee, made her preparations, and returned to sit in the living room. She clutched the big teddy bear from Kmart. She waited, as the hours went by, watching the front door.

  When she heard him coming up the walk at last, she tensed. He was shuffling, taking careful small steps, and there was an additional tap-tap-tap that suggested…a cane?

  Maria couldn’t look away from the door.

  He was taking the stairs one step at a time. Why so slowly? Had he been injured? But he got to the door at last, and she heard the key going into the lock—so quiet, so careful. Had Tina given him a key? Click, and the door opened.

  Maria’s eyes widened. She held the bear tightly.

  The figure came across the threshold, walking a little bent over, indeed using a cane. Maria wa
ited until he was a body’s length into the room before she fired.

  The teddy bear worked admirably as a silencer, with a little flurry of kapok puffing out—her shot made not much more noise than if she’d dropped a book on the floor—but she did not hit her target. Nor did her shot go wild. It smacked neatly into the wall just where her visitor had been standing a microsecond before; and if he had been a human being, he’d have been killed.

  “Don’t shoot!” he hissed.

  Maria threw the bear aside and got to her feet. She trained the gun on him.

  “So, it’s you?” she said. “Tell me, how are things in the Land of the Dead?”

  “Put the gun down, mi hija,” said Uncle Porfirio.

  Maria lowered the gun reluctantly, staring at him. By the wavering candlelight she saw a gaunt, wrinkled old man with a mane of white hair, leaning on his cane.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I owed you an explanation,” he said, in a dry old husk of a voice. “All those years ago, I had to disappear, Maria. We were working in a joint operation with the CIA. Do you know what deep cover means?”

  “I know what bullshit means,” said Maria, and she reached out and seized a handful of his white hair. One quick tug and the wig came off, revealing the slicked black hair beneath.

  Uncle Porfirio sighed. He rose slowly from his bent stance, stood straight as a sword. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a handkerchief and wiped the wrinkles from his face, the gray from his mustache.

  “Damn,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah. Damn,” Maria replied. “What the fuck are you?”

  He gave her a severe look. “Don’t use that kind of language, mi hija. Do you want to sound like a whore?”

  She had to fight hysterical laughter.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not eleven years old anymore. Even if you haven’t aged a day, everything else has gone to hell. Me included.”

  They regarded each other a long moment.

  “You’re not screaming, anyway,” said Uncle Porfirio. “I guess that’s a good sign. How much have you figured out?”