listening intently, his hard blue eyes fixed on his crossed and hairless white ankles, as still as if he were cut out of ice. âBut you went out there. Even though he said not to.â
Renata said she was opening Stuartâs bookstore the first thing in the morning because Stuart had to go see their wholesaler. She got down to the jardÃn around sunrise and too easily found Scottâs car. Even if he were drunk he ought to have drifted across it. She thought something was wrong. So she forgot about the bookstore and went out there. She glimpsed a shotgun on the floor and Scott sitting in a green leather wingback chair. His face had been half shot off.
âHow long had he been dead?â
âWe donât know.â
âWas there a note or anything?â
âSigned on his sketch pad. âNo one is to blame.ââ
Atticus heard it, and heard it again. âWell, heck, I feel better already. How about you? Huh? Weâre both off the hook.â
She reached a hand toward him. âHe wasnât thinking.â
Weighed low with grief, all Atticus could manage was, âWe didnât raise him toââ And then he fell silent and held a hand to his eyes and cried.
Renata got up from the dining room table and walked around it in order to wrap her arms around him and pressher hot cheek against his hair. âWeâve been put through a lot,â she said.
Atticus held himself stiffly, then finally patted her left hand and said, âYou ought to go now. Itâs late.â
âIf itâs okay, Iâll stay here.â
âIâd like that.â
She stood up from him but petted her hand on his hard shoulder as she said, âThe funeral Mass is at noon. Youâll have to bury him in Mexico for now.â
âIâll want to get him up to our family plot in Antelope.â
âYou probably can, but it will take a little time. Stuart can help you with the government people youâll have to pay off. You can bribe your way out of practically anything here. La mordida , they call it: the bite.â
Atticus stared out at the moonshine on the sea. And then he asked, âHow about the police? Was there a police report or, you know, an investigation?â
âDonât expect much from it,â Renata said. âThe Mexican police donât get too involved in American cases unless our government instructs them to do otherwise. Which theyâre not likely to do. And thereâs no coroner; no autopsy; probably just a pro forma investigation. Mexico can be pretty casual about suicide.â
âSuicide,â Atticus said, and spoke no more. When he looked up again, he realized Renata had already gone upstairs.
Much later Atticus woke to words composed with the ticking kâ s and tâ s of Mayan speech. Getting into his greentartan robe and slippers, he walked down the steps until he could stoop and look into the candlelighted dining room. Four campesinos in white shirts and white pants were familiarly slapping poker cards onto the dining table and sipping Jamesonâs Irish whiskey from a green bottle that was being passed around. A fat man was using a nailhead to scrape tobacco out of his pipe bowl into a frail teacup while another man played a jack of hearts by pounding it down with his hand. A little man in his forties with flowing hair and a Padres baseball cap turned around in his dining room chair and solemnly peered at him, and Atticus tramped back upstairs.
Lights were on in Renataâs room and the door was halfway open. Even in high school, these were the hours Scott furiously painted, his stereo faintly playing Edith Piaf or early Bob Dylan, the hallway full of the pungence of turpentine and Marlboro cigarettes. Atticus knocked softly and heard Renata ask, â¿Quién es?â Who is it?
âMe,â he said.
âYou too, huh?â
He found her sitting up in bed in a far-too-open pink kimono, a book
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