The Mirror Thief(99)

Curtis doesn’t look at her. My grandparents were Jehovah’s Witnesses, he says. I never got to do all that much for Halloween.

But as he says it, he’s remembering a party he went to once in Springfield with some of the guys from Leonard Wood. Black shades. The charcoal suit he wore to his grandmother’s funeral. A piece of coiled handset cord snaking from his ear to his jacket. Damon was there too, in a regimental tailcoat and a bicorn hat, no telling where he found them. Stupid, the things we want. Stupid to want anything.

What are you gonna do now? Curtis says.

Right now? I’m gonna hit some tables. Get paid. My bankroll’s getting—

Not right now. I mean in general.

She fakes a laugh, tosses her hair. Honestly? she says. I have no idea. How ’bout you?

He smiles softly. I was hoping Damon would get me on with security at the Spectacular, he says. But that’s starting to look pretty unlikely.

You still in the Marines?

I retired in January. Got my twenty, got out.

Twenty years? she says. Christ. What did you do?

In the Corps? I was an MP. Military policeman.

No shit?

No shit.

Wow, she says. So you’re not just playing around with this detective business.

Curtis laughs, shakes his head. I didn’t really do anything like that in the Corps, he says. I was more about security. Guard duty. Stuff like that.

She’s looking at him again, sizing him up. You were a security guard for twenty years? she says.

Base security, rear-area security on the battlefield, processing prisoners of war. I did other stuff, too. But security’s what I liked.

That’s some pretty glamorous shit, Curtis.

Curtis just smiles, lets that pass. Below, the canal-cleaner has caught a bunch of red carnations; they drip over the edge of his broad flat net.

What did you like about it? Veronica says.

Curtis thinks about that. He opens his mouth a couple of times to answer, closes it again. I like getting in the way of stuff, he says after a while. I guess I just like being in the way.

She laughs, shakes her head. That’s it? she says.

Basically, yeah.

That’s bullshit.

Curtis sighs, straightens up, sighs again. Back in ’81, he says, when Reagan got shot, I was about two miles away, in high school, at football practice. They pulled us all off the field. And then they kept showing it on TV. You remember that?

I was in—let me think—third grade.

That guy Tim McCarthy, Curtis says. The Secret Service agent, the one who caught the fourth bullet. He jumped right in front of it. I remember it just blew my mind that somebody could do that.

She’s giving him a strange look. Skeptical. He can see it at the edge of his vision. He’s not sure why he’s telling her this. He keeps his eyes trained on the water.

You played football in high school? Veronica says.

I did. I was on the offensive line.

You were not.

I was. I was a guard.

You went to high school in D.C., right?

Dunbar, all four years.

She’s studying him closely. How tall are you, Curtis? she says. If you don’t mind my asking?

I don’t mind. I’m five-seven.

Five-seven. And the other kids were—

All about eleven feet tall, yeah.

That cracks her up. Okay, she says. Cool. And after you got out of the hospital? After all the gnarly physical therapy? What did you do then?

Curtis laughs too. I went to college, he says. For about a minute. Then I went into the Marine Corps.

They’re quiet for a while. She looks to the right, past the fa?ade of the Ca’ d’Oro, toward the clocktower—twenty-four-hour dial, gold zodiac loop—and the pulsing readerboard above it. She shifts her weight as she turns. Her hip comes to rest against Curtis’s leg: scrawny and sharp, fever-warm. He looks down. There’s the tattoo again, more of it this time. The two figures under the tree are a bearded old man and a young man with a sword. Two triangles are superimposed over the scene: one pointed up, one pointed down. Veronica’s skin is dark, tanning-bed tan.

You ever think about going back to school, Curtis?

That’s pretty much what my wife wants me to do.

I’ll bet she’s real excited about you being out here, isn’t she?

Yeah. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms when I left. She’s pretty upset.

Veronica’s hair is sliding off her back, across her left shoulder. She drops her head forward and the rest of it comes down. Behind her, the hotel readerboard is playing video of a juggler next to flashing blue text: A PEACOCK WITH A THOUSAND EYES!

Curtis, she says, how come you’re not wearing a wedding ring?

He takes a long breath, moves away a little.

Is that a bad question?

No, he says. It’s a good question. I’ll give you an honest answer.

She straightens up, looks at him.

When I was stationed overseas, he says, every so often I would run into these intelligence guys. Interrogators. Sometimes military, sometimes not. I never got to know any of them personally. But a few I met, they liked to talk about their work. What they did. And what I found out was, there’s a certain kind of person who’s good at that job. I got a sense of how these guys operate, how they see the world. Now, to people like you and me, a ring on my finger just says I love my wife. But to these guys, a ring on my finger says this is how you can hurt me. I always liked to think these guys were few and far between. But once you learn to spot them, what to look for, then you start seeing them all the time. Anyway, coming out here, not knowing what I was getting into, I figured that’s something I better not broadcast. That’s all.