According to their confessions, one of the murderers had just bought a new bicycle that he had been saving up for for months, and, upon returning from the bicycle shop to Costello House with the other murderer riding his handlebars (the two were best friends, roommates, and possibly lovers), a staff member, greeting them, had said, “Nice bike.” This staff member may or may not have been abusive to the Costello House residents, may or may not have stolen items from their rooms in the past—accounts varied—but the murderer who didn’t own the bike (i.e. the one who’d been on the handlebars) convinced the murderer who did own the bike that the staff member’s having said “Nice bike” meant the staff member planned to kill them both so he (the staff member) could steal the bike. Half an hour later, the murderer who didn’t own the bike tackled the staff member over the railing of the facility’s wraparound porch, then pinned him to the lawn while the other murderer stabbed the staff member multiple times in the throat and the face with a pair of scissors.
The murder was witnessed by twenty-eight people, the vast majority Costello House residents crowded together on the wraparound porch, and many of the Herald’s stories on the murder had accompanying photos of that resident-crowded wraparound porch—the residents seated in folding or rocking chairs, or swinging on the bench swing, or leaning on the railing, most of them facing streetward and smoking—and none of the stories’ accompanying photos ever showed the porch uncrowded by residents, so I don’t know how I, while parallel parking in front of Costello House, could have been so surprised by the sight of the residents crowding its porch—it looked just like the pictures—but I was. Surprised.
Surprised, then unmanned.
I hadn’t prepared myself to see them at all, to have to get past them—through them—to get to Lisette, much less to have to think about Lisette as being one of them, which might have, being one of them, meant any number of variously unpleasant things, depending on which section of the porch I looked at. Over here in the rocking-chair area, three were asleep, two of them tremoring, a fourth muttering angrily, shaking her head. Beside them stood a group of five or six tardively dsykinesiac men, pointing their fingers and smokes in my direction and licking and sucking at their lips while they laughed—at me? at my truck? at something behind my truck? a squirrel or a bird?—and next to that group, an older woman in a flowered smock was crying drily and chewing her wrist, and next to her was another older woman in a flowered smock, who was looking at the group of laughing men through a bottle of root beer she held horizontally and twisted around in front of her eyes, as if adjusting the bottle for focus. Someone in the shadow of the eaves was making popping sounds, slapping his palm against his open mouth. Someone sitting on the stairs, looking up at the sky, stroked her own cheek and blissfully smiled. A man alone on the bench swing, clutching his underarms, appeared to be lecturing to one of his knees: “You just can’t say these kinds of things to a person. It’s wrong and it’s mean and it’s killing your soul,” he said. “You want to know who it is? Who it really is, buddy? Who it really is, buddy, who you’re saying those things to? That’s Judah Maccabee, buddy. That’s who you’re hurting.”
They weren’t all in such frightening shape. Many of them seemed, for the most part, balanced, just having a smoke, or getting fresh air, but the longer that I paid attention to the others, the more afraid I became that coming to Costello House had been a mistake, that Lisette might not be…okay, that I might not do well with her being not-okay, and though I rolled up my window, exited my truck, and headed a couple of steps toward the porch, I took a coward’s hard left in front of the stairway, then walked a few blocks, past the center of town, til I came to a Dairy Queen, next to the entrance of which hung a telephone.
* * *
—
“Non,” Sandrine answered, when the automated French voice asked her whether she’d accept the charges from “Belt Magnet 847 433 2181 that’s 847 433 2181.”
I hung up the phone. Seconds later, it rang.
“Hello?”
“Allo, Belt?”
“Sandrine?”
“Yes. I am. Wow, wow. You sound so exactly like Clyde.”
“I do?”
“No one tells you before?”
“Not til just now,” I said. “Thank you, I think?”
“Quoi?” said Sandrine. “I say, eh…I ask that, eh, you have not been told by someone else that your voice is so much like your father’s?”
“No, I understood. All I meant was: you are the first to tell me. And thank you, Sandrine.”
“Okay. Good. You are welcome. I think I am completely glad you have called. You are fine?”
“Yes.”
“I am completely glad, then,” she said. “Clyde will be so happy. He is away with my brother to look for a boat to buy. They will return in two hours. Three hours maybe. He will call you at this number?”
“No, no. I’ll call back from home. Right now, I’m at Dairy Queen.”
“Okay. And what is it?”
“It’s just—well, it’s a girl. A woman.”
“Dairy Queen is her name?”
“Oh, you meant…I’m embarrassed, now. You meant, ‘What is Dairy Queen?’ ”
“Of course. What is it?”
“It’s mostly an ice cream place.”
“It is very bad ice cream?”
“It’s okay.”
“Okay ice cream is a little bit sad, Belt, but please do not be embarrassed with me. I sometimes choose to drink Nescafé coffee. This is much more worse than okay ice cream, which is, after all, en fait, still ice cream. I cannot judge you.”
“Ha! I appreciate that. Merci beaucoups.”
“I am glad you laugh. Maybe it is okay if I ask who is the woman?”
“The woman.”
“The woman who is not Dairy Queen?” she said.
“Oh, her,” I said.
“I do not want to be a nosy person, but because you mentioned, I am interested, so. If you mind it, don’t mind it. Non. Don’t mind me. If you mind it. The question.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s fine. She’s just someone I used to know, when we were children. I mean, she’s not just someone I used to know. She’s someone who—you see, I lost track of her for many years, and—”
“A kind of Bam Naka figurine, perhaps?”
“I don’t—I hadn’t really thought of her that way…”