We walked up three flights of stairs, slowly, to accommodate my guide’s short, panting breaths, and down an uncarpeted corridor. Empty glass fixtures over the doors were a reminder of the Windsor Arms’s grander days—the hall was lighted now by two naked bulbs. The desk clerk stopped at the second door from the end of the left side and unlocked it.
Whoever owned the building apparently owed Marissa Duncan a favor. Either that or hoped Marissa would provide a friendly push up the local political ladder. The window held all four panes, the floor was clean, and the narrow bed made up tidily. A white plastic chest of drawers stood in the corner. A deal table under the window completed the furnishings.
“Bathroom’s down the hall. She can lock her stuff in a chest under the bed if she’s afraid of junkies. Key comes to me when she’s not in the room. And absolutely no cooking in here. The wiring’s old. Don’t want the place going up in smoke around us.”
I agreed soberly and followed her back down the stairs. She returned to Wheel of Fortune without another look at me. Once outside I gulped in the air in great mouthfuls.
I never seem to make enough money to put more than a thousand or so into a Keogh plan every year. What was I going to live on when I got too old to hustle clients any longer? The thought of being sixty-six, alone, living in a little room with three plastic drawers to hold my clothes— a shudder swept through me, almost knocking me off balance. A woman with three children in tow yanked them past me-I was just a falling-down drunk for her children to stare at on their way home. I climbed heavily into the Chevy and headed south.
The mixture of guilt and fear the Windsor Arms stirred in me took the edge off my pleasure in the weekend. I went to the grocery Saturday morning and got fruit and yogurt for the week ahead. But when I picked out supplies for a pasta salad I was taking to an impromptu picnic that afternoon I bypassed my usual olive oil for a cheap brand— how could I spend eleven dollars on a pint of olive oil when I couldn’t scrape together enough for a third-quarter deposit into my Keogh? I even bought domestic Parmesan. Gabriella would have upbraided me sharply—but then she wouldn’t have approved of my buying pasta in a store to begin with.
I got all three morning papers and read them carefully before going over to the park. So far nobody had found any unidentified older women in the river or roaming dementedly about the streets. I had to trust that Furey, or Bobby Mallory himself, would call me if Elena had been arrested. There didn’t seem to be anything else for me to do except join my pals at Montrose Harbor and take my aggressions out on a Softball.
I couldn’t quite shake off my depression, but a game-saving catch I made in the sixth inning cheered me—I hadn’t known I could still dive for a ball and come up with it the way I did at twenty. Over Soave and grilled chicken afterwards, I couldn’t quite get into the ribald spirits of my friends. I left while the party was still in progress so as to catch the ten o’clock news.
Elena still hadn’t surfaced in a dramatic way. I finally decided she was hanging out someplace with Annie Green-sleeves and went to bed, torn between disgust with her and irritation with myself.
I’d half been hoping that the gods would blight Boots’s party with violent thundershowers, but Sunday dawned with more of the bright, merciless sunshine we’d suffered from all summer. With September drawing to a close, the days were merely warm instead of sweltering, but the Midwest was still suffering from its worst drought in fifty years.
All around the city sidewalks and roadbeds had buckled and collapsed. During the height of the heat wave sparks from the trains had ignited beams holding up the L platforms so that various stations were now closed more or less permanently. Given Chicago’s perennial cash shortfall, I didn’t expect to see those stops reopen in my lifetime.
I ran Peppy to Belmont Harbor and back, then made my way through the Sunday papers. The Sun-Times was the hardest—I’ve never figured out their organizational scheme and I had to read a lot more than I wanted about home decorating and fall festivals in Wisconsin before stumbling on the metropolitan news.
When I’d finished the Herald-Star without finding any word on Elena, it was time to shower and dress for my two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar barbecue. I knew Marissa would probably show up in silk lounging pajamas or something equally exotic, but unless Rosalyn Fuentes had changed dramatically, she would probably wear jeans. It seemed to me good fund-raising etiquette dictated not to upstage the guest of honor. Besides, I didn’t want to worry about dry-clean-only clothes at a giant picnic. I put on khaki slacks and a loose-fitting olive shirt. Neat—would camouflage food spills and above all be comfortable for an afternoon in the sun.