Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) Read online

  There was very little in the car to tell Feely what kind of a man he was. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s tucked neatly into the armrest niche, beside his seat. An open ashtray crowded with cigarette butts, most of them less than a quarter smoked, as if he kept lighting them and crushing them out after two or three puffs. A photograph of two small children on a swing-set, stuck to the glove-box with yellowing Scotch tape.

  An empty Mr Pibb bottle, which kept rolling around the foot-well.

  Feely noticed that the man wore a wedding band and a heavy gold chain on his wrist, but it was obvious that he wasn’t wealthy. The Caprice was more than fifteen years old, before they brought in the curvier 1990 model. It smelled of pine air-freshener and something in the bodywork kept knocking, sometimes loud and sometimes soft, like a nagging reminder that everything gets older, and everything wears out.

  All the same, there was something about the man that Feely instinctively liked. In spite of the reckless way that he was driving, Feely felt that he was the kind of man who wouldn’t lie to you, and would never let you down. If he promised to show up, he would show up, even if he didn’t really feel like it. And he wouldn’t suddenly go berserk, and tip over the supper table with everybody’s food on it, and punch you on the bridge of the nose with his signet ring.

  ‘I didn’t personally eat yet,’ the man said, as they sped past the sign that said Cornwall Bridge. They were deep in the Litchfield Hills now, and on his right, Feely could just make out the dark serrated tree-line that followed the course of the Housatonic River. He thought it looked like the forest in fairy stories, where wolves lived.

  The man continued, ‘It didn’t occur to me that I was going to be hungry, you know, but I am. I could eat a horse. I could eat two horses, and a pig, and a side-order of ducks. I guess the adrenaline’s worn off.’

  Feely still wanted to make sure that the man understood about the beans. ‘My brother was always eating beans, before he died. That’s why I disrelish beans.’

  ‘Sure. I understand. The funniest things can put you off certain food, don’t you think? I can’t eat corned beef. I was eating some corned beef once and I found a human ear in it. Well, it probably wasn’t a human ear but it looked like a human ear. I mean I had it in my mouth and it was all squeaky and gristly like a human ear.’

  Feely nodded. ‘In the diner, the waitress kept cajoling me to eat these beans. I think she was cajoling me intentionally, you know, to make me deny my brother. Like Peter denied Our Lord.’

  ‘She kept cajoling you, huh? What a Jezebel.’

  They drove in silence for another ten minutes. The man looked over at Feely from time to time but he didn’t say anything until they passed through West Cornwall. Then he suddenly said, ‘What do you think? Do you think there’s any escape?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, sir. Escape from what?’

  ‘Escape, that’s all. Or do we have to wake up every morning, and finish what we started the day before?’

  ‘Oh, I think there’s escape, very much,’ said Feely. ‘I think that fate is always showing us ways to unburden ourselves of our problems and begin a refreshed existence.’ Just at this moment, he was supremely confident about it. After all, he still had $21.76, didn’t he? And he was still heading north.

  ‘You really believe that?’ the man asked him.

  ‘I think I have achieved it myself. Or at least, I am on the verge of achieving it.’

  The man sniffed in one nostril. ‘What are you, Puerto Rican? Dominican?’

  ‘Cuban. My grandparents came from Ciego de Avila.’

  ‘Cuban, hunh? You don’t come across too many Cubans in Connecticut. Cuban, how about that. What should I call you?’

  ‘I don’t know, whatever you choose.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me your real name, but I can’t go on calling you “you,” can I?’

  ‘Well, it’s Fidelio Valoy Amado Valentin Valdes.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘No, sir, my brother was called Jesus. For convenience most people abbreviate my name to Feely.’

  The man shook Feely’s hand. ‘Good to know you, Feely. My name’s Robert.’

  ‘It’s very gratifying to know you, sir,’ said Feely. ‘I want to reiterate my appreciation that you stopped for me. I realize that my appearance must be disreputable. I left New York with some expedition.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What expedition was that?’

  ‘By expedition I mean speed.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you meant Exiled Cubans in Search of Santa’s Workshop, something like that. I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m a little drunk.’

  The car slewed again, and its nearside wheel banged into a pothole.

  ‘Shit,’ said Robert. ‘This damned road’s all over the place. You’d think they’d have the freaking intelligence to build it straight.’

  ‘Maybe we should stop someplace,’ Feely suggested.

  ‘Stop? We have miles to go before we sleep, my good fellow. Miles to go and very necessary things to do.’

  ‘Maybe if we stopped for a while—well, maybe the snow would ease off.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but if we stopped for a while, then I’d sober up, and I always drive better when I’ve been drinking. Especially in crap like this.’

  He took the next left-hand bend on the wrong side of the road, and without warning there was a truck coming straight toward them, with about a million candlewatt of headlights blazing and its klaxon blaring in nine different keys of terror.

  Robert twisted the wheel and the Chevrolet slewed sideways, clipping the truck’s offside fender. It spun around and around, so that Feely saw a blurred carousel of snow-lights-darkness until wham they collided backward with a tree beside the road.

  The engine stopped. They sat in silence while the snow softly settled on the windshield. At last, Robert turned to Feely and said, ‘Did I ask you before if you were scared?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you did.’

  ‘What did you say? I’m not sure that I remember.’

  ‘I said I wasn’t.’

  Robert tried the ignition key and the Chevrolet’s engine whistled into life. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because God hasn’t finished punishing me yet, and until He does, He’s going to keep me good and safe. You want to lead a charmed life, kid, you stick with me.’

  He sat nodding for a while, agreeing with himself. Then he said, ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Feely.’

  ‘Feely,’ Robert repeated. He switched on the interior light and fumbled in his coat pocket. Eventually he produced a business card. It said, Transparent Rulers Inc. Robert E. Touche, Divisional Sales Director.

  ‘See that?’ he said, leaning over and breathing whiskey into Feely’s face. ‘Touche, pronounced “toosh.” But a whole lot of my customers get it wrong, you know, and they pronounce it “touchy.”’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Feely. He wondered if he ought to get out of the car and try walking. Compared to being a passenger in Robert’s car, falling into a snowdrift and dying of hypothermia seemed positively alluring.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ Robert persisted. ‘That’s fate. That is one hundred and ten percent fate. What are the chances of two people meeting in the middle of a blizzard in Connecticut, one called Feely and the other called Touchy?’

  Feely leaned away from Robert’s breath, but tried not to do it too obviously, in case Robert was offended. ‘Slender,’ he said.

  Robert stared at him as if he had never seen him before. Then he said, ‘What?’

  ‘You asked me what are the chances, and I said slender.’

  ‘Slender. Slender.’ He repeated it several times, pronouncing it ‘sur-lender.’ Then he turned back to Feely and said, ‘Are you sure you’re from Cuba? For a Cuban, you know, you talk almost perfect Martian.’

  Another Warning

  Sissy promised Trevor that she would call him no later than tomorrow afternoon. Trevor said ‘Promise, Momma?’ and Sissy said ‘Cross my heart and
hope to spontaneously combust.’ She stood on the doorstep with the snow whirling all around her and waved him goodbye.

  ‘Get inside, Momma!’ he called back at her. ‘You’ll catch your death!’

  She blew him a kiss and then she closed the door. As she returned to the living room, she jolted with shock. She thought she saw Gerry disappearing into his study, just a glimpse of him. She stopped, with one hand on her chest, and took two or three deep breaths. She didn’t see Gerry very often, but when she did it gave her that unbalanced feeling like stepping off a fairground ride and the world was still moving under her feet. But of course Gerry had died nearly three years ago, in February, on one of the darkest days that she could ever remember. The day that Gerry had died, she had had to keep the lights on from morning till night.

  Mr Boots was watching her from his basket, one ear folded awkwardly back. Mr Boots knew when there were ghosts around.

  ‘What do you think, Mister?’ she asked him. ‘Do you think I should spend Christmas in sunny St. Pete?’

  She waited, but Mr Boots said nothing; so she turned toward the study door. ‘More important, what do you think, Gerry? Do you think you’d be lonely, if I left you here, all on your own?’

  Of course there was no answer. She knew that Gerry would have encouraged her to go, if he were still alive. ‘I’ll be OK on my own, you silly woman. I can cook ten times better than you. And I can finish sorting out my stamp collection.’

  But he was dead now, and he couldn’t cook, or sort out his stamp collection, and she was worried that he might spend the winter wandering disconsolately from one chilly room to another. Worse than that—she, in Florida, would miss him so much that she couldn’t bear it. She poured herself another cup of tea, but it was cold now, and she couldn’t be bothered to brew a fresh pot.

  Trevor and Jean always took wonderful care of her. In fact they looked after her too well, which made her suspect that they didn’t really like having her at all. Not her, as she actually was. Jean bought her flowery lilac dresses to wear, with pie-crust collars, and matching cardigans, so that she looked like a granny out of a child’s picture-book. Not only that, they gave her organic food and they always made sure that she washed her hair every day and they wouldn’t let her smoke. They allowed her two glasses of red wine with her evening meal (‘the Surgeon-General says it’s good for the heart’), but vodka was a no-no. Young Jake couldn’t have a grannie who dressed like a gypsy, breathed smoke out of her nostrils, talked to dead people, and drank Stolichnaya straight up. ‘I mean, what kind of an example is that, Momma?’

  It’s probably an example of somebody who was brought up in an age when smoking and drinking weren’t dangerous, and people said exactly what they meant, whether it offended anybody or not. The good old days (although we didn’t know it at the time).

  But Trevor was Gerry’s son and she couldn’t help loving him (for all that he dressed like a feedbag) and she adored little Jake and she could just about tolerate Jean if she didn’t start talking about feng-shui or colonic irrigation. ‘It makes you feel so clean, inside and out.’ Sissy couldn’t even tell Jean that she was full of shit, because she simply wasn’t, and she had the receipts to prove it.

  Let the cards decide, Sissy decided. They can tell me if going to Florida is a wise idea. She opened up the bag that Trevor had brought with him, picked out a Cherry Mash, unwrapped it, and took a large bite. Then she went into the kitchen, opened the freezer and wrenched out the frosted bottle of Stolichnaya. She poured herself a generous glassful and took it back into the living room. She poked the fire a little, so that the logs lurched, and a shower of sparks flew up. She could hear the wind moaning across the chimney. It was going to be bitter out tonight.

  She sat down again and opened up the large cardboard box that contained the DeVane cards. It was worn at the edges, and the lid had been repaired with Scotch tape.

  ‘Pictures of the world to be . . . I beg you now to speak to me.’

  She always said these words when she took the cards out, even if she murmured them under her breath. The cards were so potent, so full of meaning, so characterful, she felt that they had to be asked for their co-operation. You had to give them respect. After all, you wouldn’t just walk into a roomful of clairvoyants and shout ‘Listen up! What’s going to happen to me tomorrow?’

  She put the rest of the Cherry Mash in her mouth and then she turned up the first five cards and laid them in a diamond shape. These were called the Ambience cards and they explained the background to what was going to happen in the near future. Two of the cards were the Drowning Men and the Faces of Mourning. She had expected this. Everything that happened in the next few days would be affected by the simultaneous arrival of the two storms.

  The other three cards showed a widow sitting in a room carpeted with hundreds of live green frogs; and a small boy on a bridge, trying to catch a skeptical-looking carp; and a blindfolded man standing amid sand dunes, his face raised toward the sun.

  The widow was Sissy herself, and the live frogs were undecided questions: which way were they all going to jump? The small boy was Trevor, trying to persuade her to go to Florida for the winter; and the message of the blindfolded man was obvious. Those who look for meaning in the sun will lose sight of everything.

  She laid out seven more cards, on top of the five. These were the Imminence cards, which told her what signs to look out for. She must be wary of a childless woman; and a boy from a tropical country; and two men sawing wood. She must be careful when the wind changed; and watch for some kind of unexpected trap. This card showed a red-breasted bird caught up in brambles, and bleeding. She must also keep her eyes open for footprints that led into a lake; and a man concealed in a brass-bound chest. This last card took the center position, which meant that it was especially significant.

  Sissy sat back and looked over the Imminence cards, tapping her fingers on the table top. It was difficult to work out exactly what they were trying to tell her, but she knew that even when they spoke in riddles, they were always very specific. She couldn’t understand why the man in the brass-bound chest was so important. Maybe it was Gerry, and he had left something hidden in a box for her to find. Maybe she was going to meet a new man, in an unexpected place.

  So far, however, there was nothing to suggest that she ought to go to Florida.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Boots?’ she asked him. Mr Boots tilted his head on one side but said nothing.

  She took a large swallow of vodka and then she turned up the two Predictor cards, laying them on top of the Imminence cards. The first Predictor was La Poupée Sans Tête, the Headless Doll. This depicted a young mother in a yellow dress trying to replace the idiotically smiling head of a little girl’s doll, while the little girl herself stood beside her, weeping. The other was La Faucille Terrible, which showed a man with a reaping-hook, trying to cut a path through overgrown weeds. The hook had slipped and he had stuck it into his own eye. On the other side of the field, another man was hysterically laughing.

  Two more bad Predictor cards. And neither of them gave her any advice about leaving New Preston to spend the winter in Florida. La Poupée Sans Tête meant that a child or children were going to be tragically orphaned; and La Faucille Terrible warned that somebody was going to be injured while performing a mundane, everyday task.

  All of the Ambience cards said that these events were going to happen here, and that she (the widow) was going to be part of them. If she were going to Florida, the Imminence cards wouldn’t have warned her about traps, and childless women, and the wind changing. This was her future, and she knew from experience that she couldn’t avoid it. One morning four years ago she had turned up Le Pêcheur Perdu, the Doomed Fisherman, which showed a man on a desolate beach, surrounded on all sides by crabs. She had known then that Gerry’s prostate cancer was going to kill him.

  Breakfast in Canaan

  Feely opened his eyes. He had never felt so cold in his life. In fact he was so cold that h
e thought he must be dead. The car windows were covered in plumes and feathers of frost, and the interior was filled with brilliant white sunlight. All that was missing was a heavenly choir.

  It was only when he tried to move that he realized he was still alive. Every joint in his body had seized up. He had wedged himself sideways in the Chevrolet’s front passenger seat, with his head resting against the window. His hat was actually frozen to the glass.

  ‘Urrghh,’ he said. He managed to sit up straight, and look around. At first he thought he must be alone, but then he heard a catarrhal snort from the Chevy’s rear seat. He peered over and saw Robert lying under several spread-out sheets of newspaper, his stubble sparkling with ice. For the first time, Feely saw that he had a large BandAid stuck to his left temple.

  Robert opened one eye. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hold up. Five after eight.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Robert, pushing the newspaper onto the floor. ‘The dreams I’ve been having.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Feely. ‘I dreamed I was back in school, and my teacher was throwing broccoli at me.’

  Robert sat up straight and rubbed the window with his sleeve, but the ice was on the outside. ‘God it’s cold. Let’s get the engine started up.’

  The rear door was stuck fast with frost, and he had to throw his whole weight against it to get it open. He eased himself into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine made a groaning noise, but at first it didn’t fire up.

  ‘Come on, you bastard,’ he snarled at it, and tried the key again. This time the engine burst into life. ‘You see?’ he told Feely. ‘You don’t have to take any crap from anything; or anyone. Your life is your own. You have inalienable rights.’

  They waited while the interior of the car warmed up and the ice gradually slid from the windows. When it did, they discovered that they were alone in the middle of a disused railroad yard. The sky was golden, and the sun sparkled on the snow.