Timothy Hallinan - The Man With No Time

“Simeon,” Eleanor said.

I rolled over and came face-to-face with a cerise bear, one of the twins' menagerie. “What time is it?” I asked. The couch was too short for me, and my legs were stiff from having slept with them drawn up.

“Eleven. I've fixed some juk. ”

“Any word?” My feet hit the floor sooner than I expected them to, jarring me all the way to my teeth.

“Shhh,” Eleanor said reprovingly. “Pansy and Julia are asleep.”

I eyed the couch, a world-class collection of lumps. “How do you sleep here?”

“You managed,” she said, smiling at me.

“But you're delicate,” I said. “The slightest wrinkle in the sheet-”

She pulled my nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, bananas. I sleep like a horse and you know it. Come and eat something.”

I got up. The floor only heaved twice beneath me. Horace was sitting at the dining-room table eating juk , rice gruel, from a bowl. He'd combed his remaining hair with water, making him look like a farmhand visiting the big city.

“Morning again,” I said. “How long has it been?”

“A little more than five hours.”

“Let's figure he was somewhere close by when we got Julia,” I said, sitting. My back cracked. “He'd just called, so we know he was near MacArthur Park at five-thirty. What's he doing now?”

“Who knows?” Horace said. In spite of the slicked-down hair, he looked much better, five years younger than he had when we left for the park. He'd gotten one child back, and his faith in Uncle Lo had been vindicated, after a fashion. “He'll call when he's ready.”

“Maybe the question is, where is he now?” Horace gave me an interested glance, and it suddenly struck me that I hadn't seen him alone with Pansy since the kids disappeared. He'd always been with Eleanor and me, consigning Pansy to other rooms. “Maybe he needs this time to get from here to somewhere else.” I looked around. “Speaking of where, where's your mother?”

“Pansy packed her off,” Eleanor said, coming into the room with a bowl in her hands. “Mom was driving her wild. Tears, accusations, nattering.” She put down the bowl, sat next to me, and pushed her fingers through my hair, combing it back. “About four yesterday afternoon she told Mom to get out of here and go home.”

I dropped the spoon into my juk. “Your mother's house,” I said.

“Sure, her house,” Horace said crankily. “Where else-”

“That's where he's going,” I said.

Eleanor sat up. “Whatever it was he wanted, he didn't find it here.” She looked at me, but she was thinking about something else. “Should we call her?” she asked Horace.

“Why?” Horace said. “He doesn't know where she lives.”

“Actually,” I said after thinking about it for a moment, “he probably does.”

“How would he?” That was Horace.

“How'd he know about the twins?” Eleanor asked him rhetorically.

“I know who told him about the twins,” I said. “Who told him everything except ancient history, in fact.”

“Who?” Eleanor had a hand on my arm.

I pointed across the room at the cross on the wall. She followed with her eyes and then gave a small gasp.

“Mrs. Summerson?”

Even in his distracted state that caught Horace's ear. “Mrs. Summerson?” he asked.

The phone rang, breaking through the silence like a dentist's drill.

“No games this time,” I said. “Just answer it.”

Horace went to the phone, blew a deep breath out through tight lips, and picked it up. “Hello?”

Eleanor's fingers tightened on my arm.

“Hello, Lo,” Horace said. He looked over at Eleanor and their eyes held. Horace nodded twice and rattled off something in Chinese. I caught “Ah-Ma,” or mother, several times, and Horace shifted his gaze to me and lifted his eyebrows. “Okay, okay,” Horace said and then listened. “Yeah, okay. Yes. Bye-bye.” He pushed down the buttons on top of the telephone and said, a little grudgingly, “Good, Simeon.”

“Mom's,” Eleanor said.

“He wants the place empty by noon. He wants it to stay empty until five this evening. He wants all Mom's stuff put out in plain sight.”

“Not just another pretty face,” Eleanor said, making circles with her fingertips on the back of my hand. She hadn't done that in years.

“Can you reach them?” I asked to mask my confusion.

“They're home right now,” Horace said, starting to push buttons.

“How do you know?”

“Uncle Lo says both cars are there.” He finished dialing and waited.

“Uncle Lo's very careful,” Eleanor said. “It's a good thing he doesn't really mean to harm us.”

“I don't know about you,” I said, hanging on to her fingers, “but I'd gladly throw him out of the helicopter for what he's done already.”

Horace started talking. He encountered some resistance, raised his voice, remembered that Pansy was asleep and lowered it again, and began to gesture with his right hand. He rolled his eyes and looked at Eleanor. “Her purse, too, right?” he asked.

“Of course,” Eleanor said. “And her wallet, and all the money in it.”

Horace returned to the fray, using his right hand to drive home points and, occasionally, to wave inarticulately in the direction of heaven. When he hung up he looked as tired as he had the first time I'd seen him that morning.

“She could tie a knot in a tree,” he said. “Nothing is simple. Should she leave her purse? Should she call the neighborhood security guard? Should she send the plumber out and hide in a closet? How do we know someone else won't come along and rob the house? Everything has to be turned inside out, held up to the light, weighed in the hand, bitten, and once all that adds up, it's time to argue about it. When I was growing up I thought everyone was like that. I thought that was how people figured things out. When I went to junior high school it took me most of the class period to answer the first question on my first multiple-choice test. I was looking for the trick, the double-cross, the sucker punch. Jesus, no wonder I've lost my hair. I failed the written part of the driver's exam four times because I was too busy searching for the hook to answer the questions. It's a miracle I can drive today.” He fell heavily into his chair.

“She's had a lot of trick questions,” Eleanor said levelly, although I knew she agreed with him absolutely.

Horace shook his head from side to side. “Oh, sure, sure. Bad luck all the way. Treachery on every hand. And after Daddy died she managed to get out of China and wind up in America years later with two grown kids and two grandkids, one of whom is a boy, and she owns property all over the place, more safety-deposit boxes than I've got dresser drawers, and she's finally got a plumber of her own. She hasn't exactly ended up like Auntie Shih, has she?”

“Okay, Horace.” Eleanor glanced at me. “Auntie Shih got her back broken during the Cultural Revolution,” she said. “Some ham-fisted farmer was helping her with self-criticism and didn't know how strong he was.”

“They're going to clear out?” I asked Horace.

“They're probably gone already,” Horace said tightly, “What the hell does he want?”

I looked at my watch and yawned. “Nothing to do till five,” I said.

Eleanor reached over and put her hand politely over my mouth. “Yes, there is.” She got up and stretched. “Clear your plates, please. I'm tired of servitude.”

“What's to do?” I asked her, knowing what she was going to say.

“Well, Uncle Lo's in Las Vegas. Let's go talk to Mrs. Summerson.”

“Yes, who is it?” she said, peering pale blue at us through glasses that were not only thick but dusty.