“Oh dear,” she moaned, her eyes welling with tears. She fanned her throat, and then quit trying to hide the obvious.
“He’s here!” she sobbed. “Billy’s in the basement. He’s been staying here for a couple of days now.” She covered her eyes and wept. “Poor Billy!” she gushed between wet hands.
McKean went to her solicitously. “Don’t be so sure we’re here to get Billy in trouble, Clara. He’s unlikely to be the murderer.”
A voice came from a back doorway. “I’m just as much to blame as Craig Showalter. I made the poison he used.”
We all turned to see Billy Seaweed standing at the top of a stairway that came from the basement. “It’s all gonna come out pretty quick,” he said. “So why hide anymore?”
He stood in the doorway with one hand braced on the jamb, an odd, faraway look on his face, seeming not to hear anyone’s exclamations of concern or questions.
“I was just tryin’ out the old man’s recipe,” he said. “Internet guys were stoked. I thought we’d test it on somebody’s dog or something. But Craig talked me into giving him some. When Erik Torvald turned up dead, I knew I was in deep shit. Show-alter poisoned Torvald so he could take over his business.”
“I figured that,” said McKean.
“Showalter was looking for a way to get out of the meth business; go legitimate.”
“If you can call it legitimate,” I said, “to kill a man for a few geoducks.”
“Lotsa money in geoducks these days.”
“Was it him who tried to kill us at the park?” asked McKean.
Billy nodded. “We was here at Aunt Clara’s the first time you guys came by. We heard what you said to Frank, so we knew you were onto us. Craig jimmied your car door and poisoned your Cokes while I was in the woods yelling at you guys. I didn’t know it till later. I was tryin’ to protect the old man, but Craig was tryin’ to get rid of you for good.”
“We were on the right track,” said McKean, “but unfortunately you were a step ahead of us.”
Billy laughed in an odd, sad way. “I’m still one step ahead.”
McKean’s dark eyebrows knit. “How’s that?”
After a long moment, Billy turned robotically and said, to no one in particular, “C’mon. I’ve got something to show you.”
Frank, McKean, and I followed him down the stairs, leaving Clara weeping in the living room. In the basement day room a TV blared a sequence from
Dancing with the Stars.
At one end of the room was a door through which a sink and toilet could be seen. Through a second we glimpsed a disheveled bed. In a corner of the day room a man appeared to be sleeping in a reclining chair facing the TV, and my pulse shot up when I realized it must be Craig Showalter. McKean went to him and pressed his fingertips to a carotid artery, then straightened and looked from Frank to Billy to me, shaking his head in the negative.
“I killed him with the poison,” said Billy, “after we got high on some red wine, so he wouldn’t feel it coming on.”
“The police are gonna wanna talk to you,” said Frank.
Billy shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t.”
I said, “I don’t see how you can stop that.”
“I do,” said Billy. “I saved enough poison for me. Gettin’ a little woozy right now.” His eyelids drooped.
McKean called for an ambulance but Billy was nearly gone when it arrived, slumped on the bed in the basement bedroom.
He was on death’s door as Kay Erwin admitted him to Seattle Public Health Hospital, and although McKean had double-checked with Janet about antiserum while we followed the ambulance, Janet only confirmed that the antiserum had been consumed completely in saving him and me. With no other source of antiserum, Billy’s death was a foregone conclusion.
* * *
Several days later, McKean and I went to find the old shaman in his lean-to. He came out to the riverbank with us and we stood listening to a bald eagle crying from a snag tree on a little island. Two more flew overhead and the first flapped off to follow them toward the mouth of the Duwamish, under the gray arch of the freeway bridge.
“That’s a fledgling,” said Henry George. “Joining Mom and Dad for his first hunt. Going fishing along Alki Beach. Maybe Billy Seaweed’s spirit is in that eagle.”
“Too bad about Billy,” lamented McKean.
“Billy’s buried now,” said George, “in the white man way. Highpoint Cemetery. Should be over there on Muddy Island, left in a canoe until the birds pick his bones clean. Then you put ’im in a cedarwood box and maybe make a totem. Billy wasn’t famous enough for a totem, I suppose.”
We stood in silent contemplation until the old man said, “Look at Muddy Island over there. White men cut it in half, shrank it, polluted it, gave it a white man’s name, Kellogg Island. Treated it just like they treated the Duwamish people. We’re a little polluted island of Indians in a white man’s world nowadays. New things like freeway bridges and Microsoft computers and Boeing airplanes and Amazon books go right over our heads.”
“I’m sorry,” said McKean.
“Oh, don’t feel sorry,” replied George. “You see, the old ways aren’t all dead yet. The river still snakes past here like A’yahos, slithering this way and that with the tide. Billy proved A’yahos’s medicine is still strong. And President Bush, he took his pen and wiped us Duwamish people off the map, but we’re still here, and now there’s a new president. A’yahos knows better than presidents. The tide will turn again.”
I
am floating between dream and wakefulness in my cozy treehouse nestled high in the canopy of a misty rain forest when he murmurs, “You’re so beautiful with your hair over your face.”
I smile and bid him a
Guten morgen
. Ulrich—I like the full feel of that German name in my mouth, the melodious lilt, and I definitely appreciate the warm masculine body, its sculpted hardness visible beneath the sheets. He stretches an arm toward me, as if about to say or do something intimate, then closes his eyes and allows his arm to drop. I snuggle up against him, savoring the musky sweet skin, on a morning so different from others. Usually I rise at dawn, slip into my greenhouse, and appraise the overnight progress of the seedlings.
If my mother were to peek in at this instant, she would draw a corner of her sari over her mouth to stifle a scream.
“Sin!” she’d say. “My twenty-five-year-old unmarried girl is living in sin!”
Fortunately, she’s half a world away in India.
And I’m not in my treehouse, but rather in the bedroom of my bungalow in Wallingford, a.k.a. the Garden District of Seattle.
Next door the Labrador retriever barks. Never before have I invited a man home on the first encounter and I’m unnerved by my daring. If my friends could see me now, they’d exclaim in disbelief,
A shy thing like you?
The silky, iris-patterned linen sheets are bunched up. He sleeps more messily than I, but for some reason I like the rumpled look. Last night’s coupling, with its wild tumbling and thrusting—I wouldn’t exactly call it lovemaking—has put me into deep communion with my body, and also taken me a bit out of my zone. My lips are dry and puffy from a surfeit of kissing.
The man beneath the blanket turns his blond head, nuzzles the pillow, regards me with his green eyes, then looks at the clock on the lamp stand. “Eight-thirty?” He throws the blanket aside and bolts from the bed. “
Ach
, I’m supposed to be at work by 7.”
An engineer by training, he works in construction, a choice he’s made to get away from “wallowing in my head.” So, he happily hammers nails all day, fixing roofs, patios, kitchens, and basements. Siegfried, his German shepherd, always goes along.
I point out the bathroom across the hallway. He scrambles in that direction, mumbling to himself in his native tongue. A sliver of sun is visible through a crack in the window draperies. I can tell from its position that the morning has passed its infancy, the galaxy has inched on to a new position, and I’ve already missed a thing or two.
I hoist myself up from my nest. My toes curl in protest at the first touch of the cold hardwood floor. I stoop to retrieve a pair of soft-soled wool slippers from under the nightstand.
Then I look for my clothes. The long-sleeved print dress I wore last evening—a tantrum of wildflowers—lies on the floor, all tangled up with my bra and panties and Ulrich’s charcoal jeans. Crossing the room, I rummage around in the closet, grab a pewter-gray bathrobe, and wrap it around me.
As I fluff the pillows, I hear the sounds of water splashing in the sink, and snatches of a German song. A peek through the draperies reveals a quick change of weather—a bruised, swollen April sky.
The jangling of the telephone startles me. Not fair, this intrusion. If it’s Kareena on the line, I’ll whisper:
Met a cool
Deutsche last night . . . We’re just out of bed. I know, I know, but
this one is . . . Look, I’ll call you back later, okay?
Tangles of long hair drown my vision; I reach for the receiver. This is what a plant must feel like when it’s uprooted.
“Palette of Color. Mitra Basu speaking, how can I help you?” Plants are my refuge, my salvation and, fortuitously, my vocation.
“Veen here.” The downturn in her voice doesn’t escape me. Vivacious and well-connected, architect by profession, Veenati is an important part of my social circle. “Have you heard from Kareena recently?”
“Not in a week or so. Why? Has something happened to her?”
“She didn’t show up for coffee this morning. I called her home. Adi said she’s missing.”
“Missing? Since when?”
“Since the night before last. I was just checking to see if she’d contacted you. I’m late for work. Let’s talk in about an hour.”
“Wait—”
Click. Veen has hung up. This is like a dreadful preview of a hyperkinetic action flick. How could Kareena be missing? She’s a people person, well respected in our community for her work with abused women. Although we’re not related, Kareena is my only “family” in this area, not to mention the closest confidante I’ve had since leaving home. A word from my youth,
shoee
, friends of the heart, hums inside me. I’m badly in need of explanation to keep my imagination from roaring out of control.
A vase of dried eucalyptus sits on the accent table. Kareena had once admired that fragrant arrangement—she adores all objects of beauty. Now she, a beautiful soul, has been reported missing. Wish I’d pressed her to take the risks of her profession more seriously. Don’t use your last name. Take a different route home every day. Always let somebody know where you are.
Ulrich is back. “Everything okay?”
“A friend is missing.” I make the statement official-sounding, while glancing at the window, and hope he won’t probe further. I’m of the opinion that intimacy has its limits. In the cold clarity of the morning, it discomfits me that I, a private person, have already shared this much with him.
Standing so close to me that I can smell the sweat of the night on his skin, he dresses hurriedly. I linger on his muscles. His large fingers fumble with the buttons of his muted blue shirt and a thin lower lip pouts when he struggles to insert a recalcitrant button in its hole. He wiggles into his jeans and throws on his herringbone jacket. Then he draws me closer with an eager expression and cups my face in his hands. I grow as still as I’ve ever been. He gives me a short warm kiss which softens my entire midsection. The hum in the air is like static electricity crackling.
Will I ever see him again? Coming from nowhere, the morbid thought slaps me on the forehead, but I recover quickly and my attention stretches back to Kareena. She could have gone somewhere for a breather from the daily battles she fights on her clients’ behalf.
“I want to stay here with you,” Ulrich says, “but…”
Modulated by his accent, the word want, or
vant
, hints at delicious possibilities for another time. I look up at his pale-skinned round face, and I really do have to look up, for he’s a good nine inches taller. I struggle with words to convey my feelings, to put a lid on my concerns about Kareena, but stay mute.
“Catch you this evening,” he murmurs.
As we walk to the doorway, our arms around each other, a yen to entice him to stay steals into my consciousness. I smother the impulse. Self-mastery is a trait I’ve inherited from my mother. (She denies herself pleasure of all sorts, refusing chai on a long train journey, and even returns bonus coupons to stores.)
Ulrich gives me one last look followed by another kiss, sustaining the connection, that of a conjurer to a captive audience. As he descends the front steps, his face turns toward my budding tulip patch—an exuberant yellow salutation to the coming spring—and he holds it in sight till the last second. Yellow is Kareena’s color and I am growing these tulips for her. She’ll shout in pleasure when she sees how gorgeous they are.
A Siamese cat from down the block watches from its customary perch atop a low brick wall as Ulrich lopes toward a steel-gray Saab parked across the street.
I shut the door, pace back to the living room, open the draperies. Ulrich’s car is gone. Feeling a nip in the air, I cinch the belt of my bathrobe. Kareena and I bought identical robes at a Nordstrom sale. Despite different sizes—hers a misses medium and mine a petite small—we’re like twins or, at least, sisters.
As I look down at my slippers, they too remind me of Kareena. A domestic violence counselor, she’d bought this pair from the boutique of a client who was a victim of spousal abuse. While I function in a universe of color, bounty, growth, and optimism, Kareena deals with “family disturbances.” Hers is a world of purple bruises, bloodshot gazes, and shattered hearts huddling in a public shelter.
I look out at the long line of windows across the street. A blue-black Volvo SUV speeds by, marring the symmetry and reminding me of Kareena’s husband Adi; a real prize, he is.
I met both Adi (short for Aditya, pronounced
Aditta
) and Kareena for the first time at a party they hosted. Before long, we began discussing where we were each from. Kareena had been raised in Mumbai and New Delhi, whereas Adi, like me, hailed from the state of West Bengal in Eastern India. Even as I greeted him, “
Parichay korte bhalo laglo
” (“How nice to meet you,” in our shared Bengali tongue), Adi’s name somehow brought to mind another word,
dhurta
: crook. The two words sort of rhyme in Bengali. That little fact I suppressed, but I couldn’t ignore the insouciance with which he flicked on his gold cigarette lighter, the jaunty angle of the Marlboro between his lips, the disdainful way he regarded the other guests.
At just over six feet, he looked as out of place in that crowded room as a skyscraper in a valley of mud huts. He obviously believed that the shadow he cast was longer than anyone else’s. He informed me in the first ten minutes that his start-up, Guha Software Services, was in the black; that his ancestors had established major manufacturing plants in India; that he’d recently purchased a deluxe beach cottage on the Olympic Peninsula. Then he walked away without even giving me a chance to say what I did for a living.
A chill has hung between us ever since. “Two strong personalities,” Kareena has maintained over the years, but there’s more to it. I don’t know if Adi has a heart, and if he does, whether Kareena is in it. His smirk says he knows I think he’s not good enough for her, but that he could care less. And, to be honest, they have interests in common. Both have an abiding love for Indian
ghazal
songs; both excel in table tennis when they can manage the time; both detest green bell pepper in any form. They make what one might call a perfect married couple—young, handsome, successful, socially adept, and with cosmopolitan panache. They look happy together, or, rather, he does. His attention to her is total, as though she’s an
objet d’art
that has cost him no small sum. He professes to be “furiously, stormily, achingly” in love with her.
Every millisecond,
I dream of you and you only,
he gushed in a birthday card I once saw pinned on a memo board in their kitchen.
Do the purplish contusions I saw on Kareena’s arm attest to Adi’s undying affection? I grit my teeth now as I did then.
Adi doesn’t answer my phone call. I think about ringing another friend, but a peek at the red-eyed digits of the mantle clock stops my hand. Better to postpone the call and shower instead. Better to gauge what actually happened before I get everybody upset.
My nerves are so scrambled that the shower is no more than a surface balm. I towel myself but don’t waste time blow-drying my shoulder-length hair.
In the mirror, my bushy eyebrows stand out against my olive skin. My nose is tiny, like an afterthought. Although I’m fit, healthy, and rosy-cheeked and my hair is long and lustrous, I’m not beautiful by either Indian or American standards. Friends say I have kind eyes. It has never occurred to me to hide the cut mark under my left eye caused by a childhood brush with a low-hanging tree branch. I don’t like to fuss with makeup.
Dressed in a blue terry knit jacket, matching pants, and sneakers, I drift into the kitchen. Breakfast consists of a tall cool glass of water from the filter tap. I slip into my greenhouse and inhale its forest fragrance. The sun sparkles through the barn-style roof and the glass-paneled walls. I hope the fear signals inside me are wrong.
The plants are screaming for moisture. I pick up a sprayer and mist the trays, dispensing life-giving moisture to the germinating seeds and fragile sprouts poking up through the soil. A honeybee hums over a seed flat.
All around me, the life force is triumphant: surely that’ll happen with Kareena too. Whatever the cause, her disappearance will be temporary, explainable, and reversible.
An hour later I call Veen. “According to Adi, Kareena was last seen with a stranger,” she says. “They were at Toute La Soirée around 11 a.m. on Friday. A waitress who’d seen them together reported so to the police. I find it odd that Adi sounded a little jealous but not terribly worried over the news about this strange man.”
I’ve been to that café many times. Kareena, who had no special fidelity to any one place, somehow took a fancy to rendezvousing there with me. Could that man have blindfolded Kareena, put a hand over her mouth, and dragged her into a car?
No, on second thought, that’s impossible. A spirited person like her couldn’t be held captive. Could she have run away with that man because of Adi’s abuse? That’s more likely. I ask Veen what the man looks like.
“Dark, average height, handsome, and well-dressed. He carried a jute bag on his shoulder.”
“Oh, a
jhola
.” In India some years back,
jholas
were the fashion among male intellectuals. My scrawny next-door neighbor, who considered himself a man of letters but was actually a film buff, toted books in his
jhola
. He could often be seen running for the bus with the hefty bag dangling from one shoulder and bumping against his hip. Tagore novels? Chekov’s story collection? Shelley’s poems? The only thing I ever saw him fishing out of the bag was a white box of colorful pastries when he thought no one was looking.
“But 11 is too early for lunch,” I say, “and Kareena never takes a mid-morning break. Why would she be there at such an hour?”
“Don’t know. And what do you make of this? I was passing by Umberto’s last night and spotted Adi with a blonde. They were drinking wine and talking.”