Shakespeare's Landlord Part 4

"I'll tell you what, Norvel. You go on and tell them what you like. Either they'll believe you and fire me-in which case, the next woman they hire will be more than glad to tell them about your drinking habits-or they'll fire you, at the very least keep a closer eye on you. As I see it, Norvel, either way, you lose." My policy has always been to avoid or ignore Norvel, but today I was set on confronting him. Maybe my restraint with Carlton had worn out my quota of "nice" for the day; maybe this was just one face-to-face encounter too many. I often go for a week without talking to as many people as I'd talked to today.

Norvel struggled with his thought processes while I got the coffee apparatus a.s.sembled and perking and found a tray for the white-boxed a.s.sortment of bakery cookies that had been left on the counter.

"I'll get even with you for this, b.i.t.c.h," Norvel said, his sunken cheeks looking even more concave under the merciless fluorescent lighting.

"No, you won't," I said with absolute certainty.

Inspired by the liquor or the devil or both, Norvel made his move. He grabbed his broom with both hands and tried to jab me with it. I grabbed the stretch of handle between his hands, ducked under his arm, twisted the broom, and bent. Norvel's arm was strained over the handle. It was excruciatingly painful, as I'd learned when Marshall taught me this particular maneuver, and Norvel made a high squeak like a bat's.

Of course, the Reverend Joel McCorkindale came in the kitchen right then. Before I saw him, I could tell who it was by the scent of his aftershave, for he was fond of smelling sweet. I slid my right foot behind Norvel's leg, raised it slightly, and kicked him in the back of the knee. He folded into a gasping mess on the clean kitchen floor.

I folded my arms across my chest and turned to face the minister.

Joel McCorkindale never looks like himself on the rare occasions when I see him with his mouth shut. Now his lips were compressed with distaste as he looked down at Norvel and back up at me. I figured that when he was an adolescent, McCorkingdale had looked in the mirror and seen a totally forgettable male and then had vowed to become expert in using strength of personality and a remarkable voice to overcome his lack of physical distinction. He is of average height, weight, and unremarkable coloring. His build is average, neither very muscular nor very flabby. But he is an overwhelming man, able to fill a room with his pleasure, or calm, or conviction.

Now he filled it with irritation.

"What's going on here?" he asked, in the same marvelous voice G.o.d could have used from the burning bush-though I hoped G.o.d was above sounding peevish.

Norvel whimpered and clutched his arm. I knew he wouldn't try anything on me with his meal ticket standing there. I turned to the sink to wash my hands so I could return to arranging the cookies.

"Miss Bard!" boomed the voice.

I sighed and turned. Always, always, there was a payback time after I enjoyed myself.

People said so much they didn't need to say.

"What has happened here?" the Reverend McCorkindale asked sternly.

"Norvel got red-blooded, so I cooled him down."

This would require the least explanation, I figured.

And the minister instantly believed me, which I had figured, too. I'd seen him give me a thorough look once or twice. I'd had a strong hint he wouldn't find a man making a pa.s.s at me unbelievable.

"Norvel, is this true?"

Norvel saw the writing on the wall (so to speak) and nodded. I'd wondered if his shrewdness would overcome his anger.

"Brother Norvel, we'll have a talk later in my study, after the meeting."

Again, Norvel nodded.

"Now, let me help you up and out of here so Sister Lily can complete her work," said McCorkindale in that rich voice with its hypnotic cadence.

In a minute, I had the large kitchen to myself.

As I searched for napkins, I decided that Norvel's drinking couldn't have escaped the overly observant Pardon Albee, since he saw Norvel at the apartments, too, as well as at church here. I wondered if Pardon had threatened Norvel with exposure, as I had done. Norvel would be a natural as Pardon's murderer. As a janitor, he might even be more likely to notice my cart as it sat by the curb on Tuesdays, and thus more likely to remember it when he needed to transport something bulky.

I grew fonder and fonder of that idea, without really believing it. Norvel is disgusting, and it would please me if he was gone from the apartments next door to my house. But I didn't really think Norvel had the planning ability to dispose of Pardon's body the way it had been done. Maybe desperation had sharpened his wits.

I put a bowl of artificial sweetener and a bowl of real sugar on the coffee tray. I got out two thermal coffee carafes and poured the perked coffee into them. By the time the board members had all a.s.sembled in the small meeting room right next to the fellowship hall, the cups, saucers, small plates, napkins, coffee carafes, and cookie trays had all been arranged on the serving table in the boardroom. I had only to wait until the meeting was over, usually in an hour and a half, to clean up the food things. Then I could go to my martial arts cla.s.s.

For maybe a quarter of an hour, I straightened the kitchen. It was a good advertis.e.m.e.nt to do a little extra work and it kept me from being bored. Then I went out into the fellowship hall. The fellowship hall is about forty by twenty, and has tables set up all the way around the sides, with folding chairs pushed under them. The preschool uses the tables all week, and they get dirty, the chairs not evenly aligned, though the teachers carefully train the children to pick up after themselves. I neatened things to my satisfaction, and if I ended up close to the door where the meeting was taking place, well, I was bored. I told myself that like the things I happen to see in people's homes when I clean, the things I might happen to hear would never be told to another person.

The door to the meeting room had been left ajar to help the air circulation. This time of year, in a windowless room, the air tends to be close. Since I hadn't brought a book, this would help to amuse me till it was time to clean up.

One of the preschool teachers had mentioned evolution in her cla.s.s during the course of Dinosaur Week, I gathered after a moment. I tried hard to imagine that as being important, but I just couldn't. However, the members of the board certainly thought it was just dreadful. I began wondering what enterprising child had turned in the teacher, what message it would send that child if the adult was fired. Brother McCorkindale, as they all addressed him, was for having the teacher in for a dialogue (his term) and proceeding from there; he felt strongly that the woman, whom he described as "G.o.d-fearing and dedicated to the children," should be given a chance to explain and repent.

Board member Lacey Dean Knopp, Deedra Dean's widowed and remarried mother, felt likewise, though she said sadly that just mentioning evolution had been a bad mistake on the teacher's part. The six other board members present were all for firing the woman summarily.

"If this is typical of the people we're hiring, we need to screen our employees more carefully," said a nasal female voice.

I recognized that voice: It belonged to Jenny O'Hagen, half of a husband-and-wife Yuppie team who managed the local outlet of a nationally franchised restaurant called Bippy's. Jenny and Tom O'Hagen manage to pack their lives so full of work, appointments, church functions, and phone calling connected to the various civic organizations they join (and they join any that will have them) that they've found a perfect way to avoid free time and conversation with each other.

Jenny and Tom live in the ground-floor front apartment at the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, the one right by Pardon Albee's. Naturally, they don't have a minute to clean their own apartment, so they are clients of mine. I'm always glad when neither one is home when I'm working. But most often, whichever one has been on the night shift is just getting up when I arrive.

I hadn't known the O'Hagens belonged to SCC, much less held a position the board, but I might have figured. It was typical of the O'Hagen philosophy that childless Jenny had managed to finagle her way onto the preschool board, since the preschool is the most important one in Shakespeare and the waiting list for it is long. Jenny had probably made an appointment with Tom to conceive a child on October fifteenth, and was putting in her time on the board to ensure that infant a place in the preschool.

Since my clients were involved, I began listening with heightened attention to the heated words flying around the boardroom. Everyone got so excited, I wondered if I should have made decaf instead of regular coffee.

Finally, the board agreed to censure, not fire, the hapless young woman. I lost interest as the agenda moved to more mundane things like the church school's budget, the medical forms the children had to fill out . . . yawn. But then I was glad I hadn't drifted away to clean some more, because another name came up that I knew.

"Now I have to bring up an equally serious matter. And I want to preface it by asking you tonight, in your prayers, to remember our sister Thea Sedaka, who's under a lot of strain at home right now."

There was dead silence in the boardroom as the members (and I) waited in breathless antic.i.p.ation to find out what was happening in the Sedaka household. I felt a curious pang that something important had happened to Marshall and I was having to find out this way.

Brother McCorkindale certainly knew how to use his pauses to good effect. "Thea's husband is no longer-they have separated. Now, I'm telling you this very personal thing because I want you to take it into account when I tell you that Thea was accused by one of the mothers of one of the little girls in the preschool of slapping that child."

I sorted through the sentence to arrive at its gist. My eyebrows arched. Slapping children was a great taboo at this preschool-at any preschool, I hoped.

There was a communal gasp of dismay that I could hear clearly.

"That's much, much worse than mentioning evolution," Lacey Deene Knopp said sadly. "We just can't let that go, Joel."

"Of course not. The welfare of the children in our care has to be our prime concern," the Reverend McCorkindale said. Though he spoke as though he'd memorized a pa.s.sage from the school manual, I thought he meant it. "But I have to tell you, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, that Thea is deeply repentant of having even given the child cause to think she was slapping her."

"She denies it?" Jenny O'Hagen had thought that through before anyone else.

"What Thea says is that the child spoke back to her, not for the first time, but for the seventh or eighth time in one morning. Now, Thea knows part of her job is to endure and correct behavior like that, but since she is under such a particular strain, she lost some of her self-control and tapped the child on the cheek to get her to pay attention. Like this, is how she showed me."

Of course, I couldn't see or hear the Reverend McCorkindale's demonstration.

"Were there any witnesses?" Jenny asked.

I decided Jenny had potential as an interrogator.

"No, unfortunately, Jenny. Thea and the child were alone in the room at the time. Thea had kept the child in from recess to discuss improving her behavior."

There was a silence while presumably the board members mulled this over.

"I think we have to call her on the carpet, Joel," rumbled the voice of one of the older men on the board. "Corporal punishment is a choice for the parents, not for the teachers at this school."

I nodded.

"So you want her to keep her job?" Joel McCorkindale inquired pointedly. "We have to reach a decision; she's waiting to hear. I must remind you that Thea is a steady church-goer and she is in a very stressful situation. The parents of the little girl have said they would abide by our decision."

They practically begged McCorkindale to drive directly over to Thea's house and tell her all was forgiven-provided she didn't repeat the offense.

The minister didn't have any more bombsh.e.l.ls to drop, and the meeting was clearly winding down. I took care to be out of sight in the kitchen when the board members emerged. It crossed my mind that Joel McCorkindale would come in the kitchen to ask more about my confrontation with Norvel, but after the board members had gone, I heard his steps ascend to his office on the second floor.

As I washed the dishes and sealed the plastic bags containing the leftover cookies, I found myself wishing that I'd stayed in the kitchen during the whole meeting. I would see Marshall Sedaka in minutes, and knowing something about his private life that he himself had not chosen to tell me made me uncomfortable. I glanced down at my big waterproof watch, then hurriedly wrung out the washcloth and folded it neatly over the sink divider. It was already 6:40.

Since I had only minutes to change into my gi, I was less than pleased to see Claude Friedrich leaning against his official car, apparently waiting for me. He'd pulled the car right up to the curb in front of my house. Was that supposed to fl.u.s.ter me?

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Bard," he rumbled. His arms were crossed over his chest in a relaxed way. He was out of uniform, dressed casually in a green-and-brown-striped shirt and khakis.

"I'm in a real hurry now," I said, trying not to sound snappy, since that would imply he had succeeded in upsetting me.

"Isn't one of the advantages of a small town supposed to be the slower pace?" he asked lazily.

I stopped in my tracks. Something bad was coming.

"Shakespeare is quieter than, say, Memphis," he said.

I felt a sharp pain in my head. Though I knew it was emotional, it hurt as much as a migraine. Then I felt a wave of rage so strong that it kept me up straight.

"Don't you talk about that," I said, meaning it so much, my voice sounded strange. "Don't bring it up." "Don't bring it up."

I went into my house without looking at him again, and I thought if he knocked on the door, he would have to arrest me, since I would do my best to hurt him badly. I leaned against the door, my heart pounding in my chest. I heard his car pull away. My hands were sweating. I had to wash them over and over before I pulled off my cleaning clothes and put on my spotless white gi pants. The top and belt were already rolled up in a little bag; I would just wear a white sleeveless T-shirt to Body Time and then put on the rest of my gi. I put my hand in the bag and touched the belt, the green belt that meant more to me than anything. Then I looked at the clock and went out the kitchen door to the carport.

I pulled into the Body Time parking lot just at 7:30, the latest I'd ever been. I pushed through the gla.s.s doors and hurried through the main room, the weights room. At this hour of the evening, only a few diehards were still working with the free weights or machines. I knew them enough to nod to.

I went quickly through the door at the back of the weights room, pa.s.sing through a corridor along which doors lead to the office, the bathrooms, the ma.s.sage room, the tanning-bed room, and a storage closet. At the end of the corridor are closed double doors, and I felt a pang of dismay. If the doors were closed, cla.s.s had begun.

I turned the k.n.o.b carefully, trying to be quiet. On the threshold, I bowed, my bag tucked under my arm. When I straightened, I saw the cla.s.s was already in shiko dachi-legs spraddled, faces calm, arms crossed over their chests. A few eyes rolled in my direction. I went to one of the chairs by the wall, pulled off my shoes and socks, and faced the wall to finish putting on my gi, as was proper. I wound the obi around my waist and managed the knot in record time, then ran silently to my place in line, second. Raphael Roundtree and Janet Shook had un.o.btrusively shifted sideways to make room when they saw me enter, and I was grateful.

I bowed briefly to Marshall without meeting his eyes, then sank into position. After a few seconds of regulating my breathing, I peeked up at Marshall. He raised his dark eyebrows slightly. Marshall always makes the most of his quarter-Oriental heritage by working hard on inscrutability; his triangular face, its complexion somewhere between the pink of Caucasian and the ivory of Asian, remained calm. But the bird-wing eyebrows said volumes-surprise, disappointment, disapproval.

Shiko dachi is a position very like sitting on air, and it is painful and demanding even after long practice. The best way to get through it is to concentrate on something else, at least for me. But I was too upset to go into meditation. Instead, I scanned the line of fellow sufferers reflected in the mirror lining the opposite wall.

Newcomers are always at the end of the line. The newest man's head was bowed, his legs trembling-so probably the cla.s.s had been in position for a minute and a half or two minutes. I hadn't missed much.

After a few seconds, I began to relax. The pain required my attention and the anxiety of my encounter with the policeman began to fade. I started my meditation on the kata we would practice later. Ignoring the ache in my quadriceps, I visualized the various moves that made up geiki sei ni bon, I reminded myself of mistakes I habitually made, and I antic.i.p.ated further refining the grace and power of the kata, a series of martial arts strikes, blocks, and kicks woven together in what becomes almost a dance.

"Three minutes," said the first-in-line student, a huge black man named Raphael Roundtree. His watch was strapped to his obi.

"Another minute," said Marshall, and I could feel the dismay, though no one made a sound. "Be sure your thighs are parallel with the floor."

There was a general ripple of movement down the line as students corrected their stance. I stayed rock-still; my shiko dachi was as perfect as I could make it. My feet were the correct distance apart, pointing outward at the correct angle; my back was straight.

I emerged from my reverie for a moment to glance down the line in the mirror. The last-in-line man was in serious trouble. Though he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sweat was streaming down his face. His legs were trembling violently. With some amazement, I recognized my next-door neighbor, Carlton c.o.c.kroft, who had so generously let me know he'd seen me out walking in the night.

I shut my eyes and tried to refocus on the kata, but I was too full of surprise and conjecture.

When Raphael called, "Four minutes," it was as much relief to me as it was to the rest of the cla.s.s.

We all stood, shifting from leg to leg to shake off the pain.

"Lily! Stretches!" Marshall said, his gaze just grazing me as it swept down the line. He retreated to a corner, where he watched us all for the slightest sign of slacking.

I bowed and ran to face the rest of the cla.s.s. There were only eight that night. Janet and I were the only women, and we were much of an age, though I thought Janet might be thirty to my thirty-one. The men ranged from twenty to perhaps fifty-five.

"Kiostke!" I said sharply to bring them to attention. "Rai," I instructed, bowing to them. They bowed to me in return, Carlton only a beat behind. He was keeping a sharp eye on the man in line next to him, picking up on his cues. I wondered again why he was here. But the cla.s.s was waiting for my directions, and I extended my right leg, balancing carefully on my left. "Big toe up ... and down ..." I said. A few minutes later, I was concluding with lunges to alternating sides, my hands extended to the front for balance.

I bowed to Marshall and ran back to my place.

"Teacher's pet," hissed Raphael out of the side of his mouth. "Late, too." Raphael and I pretty much alternate leading the stretches. Raphael is a high school math teacher, so I figure karate gives him a chance to blow off steam.

"First time," I whispered defensively, and saw his teeth flash in a grin.

Marshall told us to take a short break, and after a gulp of water from the fountain in the weights room, I strolled over to Carlton. He looked overdone, rather than edible. His face was red and his hair was wet with sweat. I'd never seen him approach tousled, much less disheveled.

Raphael drifted up behind me before I could say anything to my neighbor, and I introduced them. I consider Raphael a friend, although I never see him outside of cla.s.s. Now I might get to know Carlton in the same way, after living next door to him for four years. He had apparently rethought something after our p.r.i.c.kly conversation.

"So what made you decide to come to cla.s.s, Carlton?" Raphael was asking with open curiosity. It was obvious Carlton was no workout buff.

"I keep Marshall's books," Carlton explained, which was news to me. "And I've seen Lily heading out for cla.s.s for four years now, since I bought the house next door to her. She always looks like she is happy to be going. I called Marshall today and he said to give it a shot. What comes next? I barely survived that shigga-whatever."

"Next," said Raphael, with an openly s.a.d.i.s.tic grin, "comes calisthenics."

"More?" Carlton was horrified.

I looked up at Raphael. We began laughing simultaneously.

I was still lacing up my shoes when the last cla.s.s member left. I'd deliberately dawdled so I could talk to Marshall without asking him to preselect a time, which would have upset the balance of whatever relationship we have.

"Late tonight," Marshall commented, folding his gi top carefully and putting it in his gym bag. In his white T-shirt, his arms bare, the warm ivory tinge to his skin was more apparent. Marshall's grandmother had been Chinese and his grandfather American, he'd told Raphael in my hearing one night. Aside from his skin tone and his straight black hair and dark eyes, it would be hard to tell. He is a little older than I am-about thirty-five, I figure-and only three inches taller. But he is stronger and more dangerous than anyone I've met.

"Police," I said, by way of explanation.

"What-about Pardon?" Marshall gave me his attention.

I shrugged.

"Something was bothering you tonight," he said.