The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [44]
“Ignore her, Georgette.” Annie left for the kitchen, to help Clark tape the windows.
Sam tied the hat straps under her neighbor’s chin. “I’m serious, honey. Trevor sounds like a nice guy.”
“Sam, you think Brad’s a nice guy. Even I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But this guy Trevor could be your type.”
Georgette buttoned her raincoat. “He’s my type if he’s got a combined total of at least three arms and legs and he weighs less than four times his IQ. Can he spell his last name? Has he been convicted of any capital crimes—I don’t mean just charged, but actually convicted?”
“Stay here.” Sam ran to the kitchen and returned with a big plastic bag of spicy tuna rolls and half the birthday cake, none of which Georgette wanted, but all of which she took.
Sam opened the door. “Run. It’s raining.”
“Oh really?”
“Call me when you get home!”
“Sam, I live next door!”
“Call me, Georgette! And if this gets worse—”
“I know! Go to the basement.”
Sam found Clark alone in the morning room, attaching big Xs of masking tape to the bay windows. She hugged her arms around her Now Voyager T-shirt. “Where’s Annie?”
“Still taping kitchen windows. So you hear Brad’s going to fly here? I guess he’s ready for life at twelve o’clock high again.” Brad’s repeated use of the phrase about Annie’s stress had become a family joke.
The sound of the swing on the porch banging against a window startled them. Sam ran outside to tie it to a corner post. Thunder booms rattled the house and all the lights flicked suddenly off and on.
In the darkness the telephone rang. Carrying her plate of sashimi, Annie hurried in from the kitchen to answer it, assuming it would be Brad again. Sam, Clark, and the dog Malpy squeezed around her in a circle.
It was a strange man with a soft, faintly accented voice. He asked for Annie Peregrine.
“This is Annie Goode. Who is this? Is this the Miami police?”
“Miami police? Those pingitas!” the man exclaimed. “No! This is Rafael Rook. Your papa asked me to call you. ‘Rescue or else the day is lost,’ as the Swan of Avon would put it, and in fact did. Shakespeare. Annie, your papa gravely needs your help.”
Lightning forked over the sky. Another branch from the oak tree crashed into the yard. She had trouble hearing the soft-spoken man.
“I’m sorry. Why did you say you’re calling?”
“I’m a friend of your papa’s from Miami. Pretty much his one and only in these sorrowful times.”
Rafael Rook had an odd husky young voice, like rustling straw, with a curious style, as if he’d learned to talk from old paperbacks piled into book bins and sold for a quarter. He told Annie that he was calling her from a South Beach Sam’s Club in order to urge her to hurry to St. Louis at the dying wish of her dying father, who was dying.
“From what?” she asked.
“He asked me specifically not to discuss it. A man like that! The key to happiness, Annie, is an education. I am Cubano. Well, I think of myself so. I left Havana young and fell into bad company. I never had the good fortune of college. But your father? Definitely, absolutely an education.”
“I bet.” Not noticing, she dipped her white tuna into too much wasabi and teared up when she swallowed it.
Rook said, “Jack tells me he taught you to do fractions at four years old.”
Annie admitted that this was in fact true. Her father had taught her to read and write, add and subtract, ask questions. Maybe that was why, she sarcastically allowed, she was interested in the question of whether or not he really was dying.
“Nothing’s certain, you agree?” Rook sounded as if he wanted to discuss the matter. “But brief candles, quintessence of dust, no way around it. Still, should Jack go to that undiscovered country alone? You, his only child, you’re all he’s got.” Rook paused. “And myself, if you’ll permit me, I have the honor to be his friend. Some in Miami may even tell you, who’s Jack Peregrine? Who cares if he’s dying or not? I reply, is this what life comes to, a man who lost thirty thousand dollars at Hialeah in an afternoon,