Page 78 of Slow Burn

Minnie looked across the room—not her room, just an apartment, she’d moved out of her room and her house five years before—and made sure the chain was still cm the door. She’d done her best with the room, scrubbed and cleaned and kept everything neat as a pin, but it just never seemed to help. It wasn’t her house, wasn’t her room.

She laid in bed and sobbed into her pillow for all the lost things, for the ice cream truck, for the jump rope, for the heavy whack of her braided hair on her back as she skipped. From down on the street she heard jungle sounds booming, all drums, no music, and remembered how her mother had always been so careful to keep the radio turned low, because the neighbors might be sleeping. Now everybody just turned their own radio up louder and louder to cover up the noise.

She felt sick, but not sick to her stomach—hot, maybe feverish. She climbed out of bed and put on a fluffy pink zip-up robe, put on her faded fraying houseshoes, walked slowly across to the kitchen. Hot tea. She’d have some hot tea and lemon and honey, and that would make her feel so much better, she just knew it would.

She put the kettle on to boil and sat down at the table, rubbing her forehead. Her skin felt like crepe paper, old and frail. She looked at her gnarled aching hands, and felt tears welling up again, useless tears, hot as the water in the kettle.

“Oh, Minnie,” she sighed, and patted her white hair back into place. She usually wore a satin cap over it at night, since she couldn’t afford to go to the beauty shop more than once a week, but she’d forgotten and now it was a wreck, curling every which way. “Don’t be such a silly billy.”

When the kettle whistled she filled up a cup and put a tea bag in it, found a plastic bottle of lemon juice and added two drops, then a thick stream of honey. Doctor said she wasn’t supposed to have honey, but on nights like this, she decided doctors weren’t always right, and anyway she didn’t have it very often.

The tea tasted just right, tart and sweet. She sat back in the rickety wood chair and looked out the window at the bright glare of downtown; they were playing with the blinking lights on that silly old ball at Reunion Tower again, she could never figure out what it was supposed to be. It looked like the world now, then it didn’t look like anything at all. She watched it for a few more minutes until her eyes started hurting, then she blinked and sipped her tea and thought about Verna Henderson, dead these eight years.

It started like indigestion, a bright burn in her stomach that got hotter and hotter and made her pant through the pain. The pain didn’t last long. She fell forward, pushing the teacup away, and was dead in less than a minute.

Her body smoldered for an hour, turning gray and black and then falling into ash. Her hands stayed untouched on the table, burnt off at mid-wrist. Her feet, still in the faded houseshoes, fell over to the right and left.

There was nothing left of the rest of her but ashes and a yellowish film of fat over the ceiling of the room.

There was a scorch mark on the table where her head had lain, and one in the seat of the wooden chair, but nothing else burned.

Nothing but Minnie.

Chapter Thirty-four

Martin

Mrs. Womack had stopped looking grandmotherly some time ago. As she looked at him from the other side of Agent Carling’s bed, she seemed like some evil old witch dug up from a fairy story, blue eyes gone cold, smile gone mean.

“This is your fault,” she said. Martin looked down at Carling’s too pale face, at the tubes going into her arm and mouth and nose. “Don’t bother to deny it, Mr. Grady. You wanted to play secret agent, and here we are.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He felt the lash of her scorn without looking up.

“How nice. I’m sure she’ll feel much better once she knows that. As far as I’m concerned, young man, the only reason I haven’t taken you out and put a bullet in your back is because that nice young doctor says she’s going to live through the night.”

When he finally had the courage to look up, he saw her dabbing her eyes with a tissue, hands trembling.

“She’s like my own. I don’t suppose you can understand that.”

Martin reached down and moved a strand of auburn hair away from Carling’s face, touched the curve of her cheek with one finger.

“I think I do,” he said. She huffed indignantly and crumpled the tissue in her fingers, over and over, until it was a wad the size of a walnut.

Agent Jennings looked in the door, gave Martin a cold stare, and addressed his remarks to Mrs. Womack.

“Ma’am, Agent Mendoza has those results you wanted. Want to look them over?”

“Have him bring them in, Bryce, thank you. Oh, and get yourself a cup of coffee. I’m sure we’ll be fine.” Mrs. Womack gave Martin a sharp-toothed smile. “Mr. Grady here will protect us.”

Jennings said, “Yes, ma’am,” and held the door open for Agent Mendoza. Mendoza gave Carling an expressionless glance and didn’t bother giving any notice to Martin at all.

“You have the report?” Mrs. Womack asked. He crossed the room to hand it to her and then stood in the corner like a Coldstream guard, hands at his sides, eyes on the still form of Agent Carling. Mrs. Womack flipped pages and raised her eyebrows. “My. How very interesting.”

She let Martin stew in silence while she read, pulling her half-glasses down her nose and holding the folder almost at arm’s length. The benevolent grandmotherly mask was back in place. She smiled at Agent Mendoza.

“Oh, Antonio, do sit down, dear, please.”

Mendoza sank into a chair, stiff as a corpse. A nurse came in and bustled around adjusting tubes, checking monitors. Mendoza’s lethally intense concentration shifted to observe her. Martin pulled up a chair to Carling’s bedside and sat, holding her hand. She had neat clever hands. He turned one palm up and winced at the long needles in her forearm, the outlines of forming bruises. He traced her lifeline with one fingertip.

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