The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [104]
“Shush. Eat.” Molly reached for another plate.
As Myra Jameson predicted, Nada had become fond of Molly and Hugh. She had grown up with help in the Gold household, and she had adored many of her caretakers—Nada spent many more hours with a series of nannies than she had with her parents—but being with Molly and Hugh the last few days, sharing meals with them and stories and sometimes beating them at cards, sizing them up with her spider, she began to appreciate the dignity of their work. Their complete dedication to making one person happy. Of course, Gary Jameson wrote them checks for their trouble, but in Molly and Hugh’s world, that was almost beside the point. They lived comfortably but humbly so that another person could live in luxury. And although they described themselves as “Johnson liberals” (and at other times “confirmed socialists”), whether or not their lifelong vocations had been fair or just or equitable never entered their minds. Nada had heard Molly say it: “No chef at a fancy restaurant is better than me just because he cooks for more rich people than I do.” She and Hugh did honest work and they were extremely good at it, and a man they admired, in spite of his wealth, was happier because of them. Doing a difficult job well was the most honorable thing Molly and Hugh could imagine.
Hugh took a pair of crab cakes and, with a flourish of linen napkin, sat opposite Nada, who tried to offer him sauce from her plate. “I’m sorry. I took it all. All the—”
“Rémoulade, dear,” Molly said.
“All the rémoulade,” Nada said.
Hugh stopped her advancing fork with the palm of his hand. “My wife is an expert saucier, but I like ’em dry, the same way I like my arteries unclogged.”
Molly said, “You’ve lived long enough, Hugh. Eat some damn mayonnaise.”
They all laughed. Then just as the mirth had subsided, just in that pause after a good joke when the conversation resets, the breath that lets more serious subjects take shape, the room lurched hard to the right and Nada grabbed the table to keep herself from falling. Plate and silverware and crabmeat and rémoulade were tossed by the force of her hand and she watched them tumble to the ground in slow motion. Molly asked, “Are you all right, dear,” and Nada tried to say “I’m fine; it’s just the heat,” but the words, so clear in her head, never assembled in her throat, and soon the floor, like the deck of a ship in a storm, tossed her again, the other way this time, and she folded forward, head speeding toward the table’s beveled edge, her hands not quick enough to stop the impact.
36
AFTER A FEW HOURS Wayne woke up, sand in his mouth and in his hair and stuck to one side of his face with drool. The pain in his side and the other one in his head didn’t hurt too much if he didn’t move. The bleeding had stopped—the cut hadn’t been deep enough to penetrate the thick layer of fat and muscle around Wayne’s midsection—but his stab wound screamed at him every time he twisted. He was a long way from Chicago and broke except for a few pennies. He stood carefully and surveyed the dusty landscape in every direction until the sound of a truck directed him toward the road.
He was so far from anywhere, it was pointless even to bother walking. He sat by the side of the highway. It was hot now, but still only morning hot. By 2:00 p.m., it would be 110 degrees. Twenty minutes passed before another vehicle came in sight. Wayne stood and waved as desperately as the pain would allow, but it flew by without even a tap of the brake.
If he’d looked like hell before Rain Man and the others picked him up, he tried to imagine what he looked like now. Every inch of his shirt and pants was filthy from the inside out with clay and dirty sweat and dried blood—his own and Amoyo’s. Two days of beard had forested his face. He smelled bad. He was hungry. The blood had turned the fabric of his shirt to crust, but the black color disguised the nature of the stain. He tucked it in. He couldn’t look respectable,