The Old Man(81)
On the way out of the building he stood at the apartment doors beside his, below his, and above his to listen for sounds of occupancy. He heard television sets in three, classical music in one, and an angry couple quarreling in one. There was only one apartment door where he heard nothing. As he turned to leave he heard the ping of the elevator arriving down the hall, and walked toward the doors. The woman who emerged from the elevator was short and elderly. She smiled as he passed her in the hall.
He pushed the elevator button to reopen the doors, stepped in, and then held the “door open” button. He listened until he heard an apartment door open. He waited a second, and then looked back. He saw the door of the apartment beside his swing shut. He let the elevator close and rode down to the lobby.
He made his way back to his hotel across the street by taking a circuitous route that took him behind the hotel, around a block, and through the front door of a bar. He ordered a Macallan scotch over ice, drank it, and then left through the back door near the kitchen. There was nobody following him.
When he entered their hotel room, Marie kissed him, and then pulled back to look at him. “I missed you. How did it go?”
“Good so far,” he said.
“I figured. You taste like single malt scotch.”
“Sorry,” he said, pronouncing it as a Canadian.
“No, it’s a good taste,” she said. “What time do you want to go down to dinner?”
“Give me a half hour. I just need to shower and change.”
She moved the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Maybe I’ll order one of those at dinner.”
After three visits to the apartment he still found the bits of carpet lint had not been disturbed and the only image recorded on the hidden camera was his own. He reassembled everything he had dismantled. The next day he waited for the woman who did the cleaning in the apartment once a week. After she had been in the apartment for a few minutes he entered and found her at work cleaning the windows. That satisfied him that she was who she claimed to be. He decided that he and Marie could move in to the apartment.
Two days after that, while Marie was out having her hair done, he began to refresh his Arabic.
29
By February Julian Carson was already a familiar sight in Craighead County, and particularly in Ruthie’s neighborhood in Jonesboro. He had taken a job at Arkansas State University in the Department of Chemistry and Physics ordering, issuing, and assembling various pieces of equipment for the laboratories. Ruthie had finally finished her nursing degree in January and was working in labor and delivery at St. Bernards Medical Center on East Jackson Avenue.
Julian used most of his days off to help on the family farm. He was good at maintaining and fixing tools and machinery, and winter was the time when most of that work had to be done. Ruthie had grown up on a farm outside town too, so she was used to the work, and put in some off days with him.
The wedding was scheduled for March, because all of April, May, June, and July had been spoken for by other couples, and they didn’t see much point in waiting. The church was free on March thirtieth, and so was the minister, so they took the date.
When March thirtieth came, the Reverend Donald Monday presided. He had known Ruthie since she was baptized, but the Carsons didn’t make it to church, because they made the rounds of the farmers’ markets on Sunday mornings. Julian’s father had often said, “If everybody else went to church on Sunday mornings I would too, because there wouldn’t be anybody out to buy my vegetables.”
Mr. Monday was not a strict minister, and he understood that people had to sell whatever they sold when other people were available to buy it. He was a scholarly and benevolent man.
He tended to select the biblical texts for weddings that fell on the optimistic side. He favored leading off with Genesis 2:18–24: “It’s not good for man to be alone; I will make a suitable helper for him.” In keeping with science, religion, and personal experience, that led naturally to: “Be fruitful and multiply” from Genesis 1:28.
Because he was a sincere admirer of good, strong women, the sort of woman Ruthie manifestly was, his thoughts turned to Proverbs 3:15, the virtuous wife. “She is more precious than rubies. And all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” He wound it up with John 2:1–11, the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana, where he turned water into wine and a good time was had by all.
Mrs. Finlay, the church organist, accompanied the children’s choir, which Ruthie’s cousin Ayana directed. Nearly all of the relatives and a good number of the congregation turned out for Ruthie’s wedding, because that was the sort of place the town was.
The wedding proceeded with the precision that Ruthie had hoped for. Her father was dead, so her uncle David the lawyer walked her down the aisle. Reverend Monday’s weddings tended to be smooth and practiced, without a false note or a hesitation. There were people sitting in the pews who would have caught a change in the wording the way a teenager would hear a change in a popular song’s lyrics. It had been said of Mr. Monday that he had you married and celebrating your third anniversary before you could stop to think.
All seemed to go flawlessly through the last “I do” and Mr. Monday’s “I now pronounce you.” Then the bride and groom turned to each other in a brief but tender kiss, and then completed the turn to face the congregation. Among the many happy faces in the pews there were two faces that were not smiling. They belonged to Harper and Waters, who sat near the back of the church.