The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [107]
He thought she meant the instrument, which he held up proudly. “It’s a beauty.” The guitar had rosewood sides, a mahogany top, and an ebony fret board. “This guitar,” he said with affection, “belonged to my grandmother. My mother’s mother. Her family was very traditional. She wanted to play guitar but they wouldn’t let her be a professional of course. Such were the times. On her deathbed, she gave the guitar to my cousin Rita. In prison with your papa, a bastard guard smashed my guitar to pieces and so my cousin Rita gave me this one. She said, ‘You are the musician. You take it.’” He sighed sadly. “I’m not so good.”
“You’re not bad at all. And your singing? I liked it.”
As Annie put out water for Malpy, Raffy strummed the guitar softly and sang,
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still unsure…
“Shakespeare. I can’t remember any more. Just don’t have the brain for it.”
“It’s lovely.” She picked up her cell phone and dropped it in her purse, then folded her father’s flight jacket over her arm. “Ready.”
He sighed, fitting the guitar back into its case. “‘The readiness is all.’”
Chapter 32
Ace of Aces
The sun was setting and its glow lit up the lawn of Golden Days where a dozen elderly patients (gold suns embroidered on the pockets of their waffled bathrobes) sat slumped in wheelchairs on the lawn. They looked as if visitors, suddenly remembering more pressing engagements and rushing away, had abandoned them there.
The grass was neon-green; big red and purple flowers grew in bright heaps along curving concrete walks. In trees, yellow lemons and fat oranges weighed down the branches, glistening as candy drops.
On a bench beside a turn in the walk, three thin little women sat together, their skin shriveled from their bones, so small that their white-socked feet dangled loosely above the grass. The woman in the middle of this group struggled with a red tangle of knitting in her lap while the other two wound together a big twisted skein of blood-red yarn. Against their chalky hands, the red wool looked like a bouquet of roses they were fighting over. Annie set Malpy down on the grass and he ran over to them.
A black Mercedes smoothly stopped at the curb. Its black-suited driver slid out and leaned against the dark tinted window, staring at them from behind his wraparound sunglasses. He wore a phone earpiece. His large black car had a mournful air but the driver looked too stylish in his linen shirt for the funeral business. Rafael reacted in surprise, as if he knew the man.
A well-built gray-haired man in a gray silk suit slipped out of the back seat of the Mercedes. Raffy had been watching the car carefully. When he saw this man in the gray suit take off his sunglasses, he sucked in his breath loudly.
“What’s the matter?” Annie asked the Cuban.
“Nada.” But he abruptly grabbed Annie’s purse and with it raced off to the side of the Golden Days building, disappearing behind flowering bushes.
The gray-haired man bent down to re-tie his glistening shoe. Then he started up the hospital walk, passing not far from where Annie stood near the old women’s bench. He passed close enough for her to see that he had a black mole beside his mouth. Nearby, a male nurse stood smoking on the lawn. The gray-haired man approached the nurse, began asking him questions. Their conversation went on for a while. Finally the nurse nodded, pointing at the top floor of the stucco building.
At that instant a slender woman slid out of the backseat of the Mercedes and ran toward the man. Handsome, she looked to be in her forties. She wore oversized sunglasses and a loose stylish linen jacket over a short skirt; everything about her looked like bright metal—from gold bracelet to bronze-hued shoulder bag to dark-gold hair so brilliant it was like a snaky coil of copper wires. She hurried onto the lawn, sliding her arm under the man’s arm and urging him back toward their driver. The driver