She straightened up, and her face looked a little flushed. All that coffee, he thought. She said, You want to keep from being recognized, right? I have some ideas. Let me think about it, and tomorrow well see what we can do.
All right.
Do you want any more coffee? Because Ive already had more than I should.
I feel the same way.
Ill show you to your room, she said. Its a nice room. I think youll like it.
24
He followed her back home, and parked in her garage as instructed, while she left the Taurus in the driveway. Youre going to stay here for a while, shed told him over breakfast, and he said he bet she was good at getting little kids to mind
what she said. She said if she was being bossy that was just too bad. I didnt object when you saved my life, she said. So dont give me grief when I return the favor, you hear?
Yes, maam.
Thats better, she said. It sounds funny, though. Yes, maam.
Whatever you say, chère . That better?
Now when did you turn into an Orleanean?
Huh?
Calling me chère .
Thats your name, isnt it? Its not? Its what your father calls you.
Its what everybody calls everybody, she said. In New Orleans. Its French for dear . You order a poboy for lunch, the old girl who brings it is apt to call you chère .
The waitress in the place I go in New York calls everybody hon .
Same idea, she said.
But she didnt say what her name was. Nor did he ask.
He sat at the round kitchen table in one of the oak captains chairs while she played barber. His shirt was off and shed draped a bed-sheet over his shoulders. She was wearing faded jeans and a mans white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she looked a little like Rosie the Riveter in a patriotic World War II poster, only her rivet gun was the electric clippers from Walgreens.
Back in New York, Keller had gone to the same barber for almost fifteen years. The mans name was Andy and he owned his own three-chair barbershop, and once a year he flew back to São Paulo to visit his relatives. That was all Keller knew about him, along with the fact that he was a heavy user of breath mints, and he didnt suppose Andy knew very much about him, either, because his monthly visits were relatively silent affairs, and Keller almost always fell asleep in the chair and didnt wake up until Andy cleared his throat and tapped the arm of the chair.
He didnt expect to doze off now, but the next thing he knew she was telling him he could open his eyes. He did, and she steered him down the hall to the bathroom, where he looked long and hard at his reflection in the mirror. The face that gazed back at him was his face, that much was evident, but it looked very different from anything hed ever seen in a mirror before.
His hair had been shaggy and now it was short, but not crew-cut short. It was just long enough to lie flat, and shed shaped it in what had once been called an Ivy League style, or a Princeton. Add a tweed sport coat and a knit tie and a pipe and he might look almost professorial.
But she hadnt just cut his hair, he realized. His forehead was higher, and his hairline indented at the temples. Shed used the clippers to create the illusion of a decades worth of male-pattern baldness, and added a good ten years to his appearance in the process. He tried different expressions, smiling and frowning, even glaring, and the effect was interesting. It seemed to him that he looked a good deal less dangerous, less like a man who could assassinate a governor and more like the trusted assistant who wrote his speeches.
He went back to the kitchen, where she was running a vacuum cleaner. She switched it off when she saw him and he told her he felt like Rip Van Winkle. When I woke up, he said, I was ten years older. I looked like somebodys lovable old uncle.
I wasnt sure youd like it. I have some ideas about the color, too, but what Id like to do is wait a day or two so both of us can get used to it the way it is now, and then itll be easier to figure out what else to do.
That makes sense. But
But it means staying here, is that what you were going to say? Last night you talked about how tired you were of running.
Thats true.
Dont you think maybe its time to stop running, now that youve finally got a good chance? Your cars parked off the street. No one can see it, but its there whenever you need it. You can have the room upstairs for as long as you want. No one else has any use for it and youre not getting in anybodys way up there. Its no trouble at all cooking for one extra person, and if you start to feel guilty about imposing Ill let you take me out for dinner every once in a while. I bet I know a restaurant or two you might like.
I could get new ID, he said. A drivers license, even a passport. Its trickier than it used to be, theyve tightened up security in the past few years, but you can still do it. It takes time, though.
What exactly have yall got, she said, besides time?
She cleaned out the dresser and closet in his bedroom, filling two Hefty bags with clothes she swore no one had worn in twenty years. All of this should have gone to the Goodwill ages ago, she said. Youll have enough room for your things, wont you?