The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Page 4

  Mrs. Pollifax gave her book and her money to him and they moved toward the counter. "Two," she told him, "a boy and girl, both grown up now. I've been a widow for eight years."

  He at once looked compassionate. "I am so sorry. But you have surely not come to Mexico alone?"

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded.

  "Then you are courageous. That is good, very good."

  "It's sometimes a little lonely," admitted Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes, but like me with my Olé you can be alone when you choose. Some of these American women, they are like swarms of—you will forgive me—swarms of geese, always together, always making cackling noises." Here the senor stepped back and did a very humorous imitation of chattering women.

  Mrs. Pollifax burst out laughing. "I'm afraid you're too good!"

  "But think—when you are lonely you need only find some American geese and join them. And when you tire"—he snapped his fingers—"off you go. To read. You like to read? I understand that, or you would not be here. Solitaire? Do you play solitaire?"

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head.

  "But senora," he cried, "you are missing a delight. I myself treasure the solitary cards." He tapped his forehead. "It clears the brain, it clears the thought, it is mentally sound, mentally healthy."

  Mrs. Pollifax said doubtfully, "I remember trying a few games when I was a child—"

  "Si, but you are a grown-up lady now," he told her, smiling. "Please—you are buying this book? Allow me then to add another as a small gift. No, no," he said, putting up a hand to cut off her protests, and he walked to a shelf, fingered a few titles and chose one with a bright blue jacket. "This one," he said, handing it to her with a flourish. "77 Ways to Play Solitaire."

  "Well," murmured Mrs. Pollifax, charmed but not sure what to say.

  "For the loneliness, si? Because you like my parrot and you are not a geese."

  "Goose," said Mrs. Pollifax and began to laugh. "All right, I'll try it, I really will."

  "Good, you accept my gift then. Better yet you read it and use it. Remember," he said as he finished tying up the book she had purchased, "remember you are not a child now, you will appreciate better the enjoyment." He nodded affably to a man and a woman who had entered the store. "This has been a pleasure to me, senora, may you have a beautiful visit."

  Mrs. Pollifax felt deeply touched and warmed by his friendliness. "Thank you so much," she said, "and thank you for the book."

  She had reached the door when he called across the store, "Oh, American senora ..."

  Mrs. Pollifax turned.

  He was smiling. "How can you play seventy-seven games of solitaire without cards?" He had picked up a deck from below the counter and now he tossed the pack of playing cards the length of the room to her.

  Mrs. Pollifax said, "Oh but . . ." and reached up and caught the cards in midair. Her son, Roger, would have been proud of her.

  "How do you Americans say it—'on the house!'" he called out gaily.

  How nice he was. Mrs. Pollifax gave in graciously—after all, he had other customers waiting. She held up the playing cards to show that she had caught them, dropped them into her purse and with a wave of her hand walked out.

  Mrs. Pollifax had gone less than a block when she stopped, aghast, her mouth forming a stricken O. She had just realized that the charming gentleman with whom she had been chatting for half an hour was no other than Mr. Car-stairs' Senor DeGamez. She had not intended to speak to him at all, she had meant only to walk in and very discreetly make a purchase and leave. How could she have allowed herself to be carried away like that? What on earth would Mr. Carstairs think of her now? For that matter what would Senor DeGamez think when on the nineteenth of August he looked for Mr. Carstairs' courier and it turned out to be the American tourist lady who was not a geese.

  "How awful," she thought, hurrying along with burning cheeks. "How terribly undignified of me. This is not the way secret agents behave at all."

  Thoroughly penitent, Mrs. Pollifax returned to her hotel, and as punishment resolved not to go near the Calle el Siglo again until the nineteenth. To further punish herself she made a list of Things To Do during the next four days: souvenirs to be found for Roger, Jane and the grandchildren, postcards to be sent to friends at home, and she even went as far as to carry her camera with her to Xochimilco and take a few pictures. Dear Miss Hartshorne, she wrote without enthusiasm, Mexico is lovely. I have visited . . ." and she listed some of the places she had seen. / hope you are having a pleasant August. Sincerely, your neighbor, Emily Pollifax. All of this seemed to her exceedingly dull because it deprived her of the opportunity to observe the Parrot, toward which she felt an almost maternal solicitude after this length of time. It was this frustration that led her to open the book that Senor DeGamez had given her, and to her surprise she discovered that she really could enjoy solitaire. Instead of going to bed with a book each night she invested in a tray upon which she could spread out her playing cards. The first ten games in the book were quite easy and she quickly mastered them; as the nineteenth of August drew nearer and she became increasingly restless she went on to more difficult games, sometimes playing them in the hotel lobby after breakfast or carrying the cards in her purse to spread out on a park bench or a cafe table. She found that solitaire not only relaxed her nerves but entertained her mind, and she wondered if she ought to mention this to Senor DeGamez when they met again.

  "Better not," she decided regretfully; this time she really must play the part of secret agent to perfection. She would be cool, impersonal, businesslike.

  On the eighteenth Mrs. Pollifax ventured out to complete her shopping for the family and when she retired that night there were serapes draped across desk, bureau and chairs. "Not the very best serapes," reflected Mrs. Pollifax as she turned out the lights, "but buying six is so expensive and of course I'm paying for these myself." She had kept a conscientious account of every dollar spent, recalling how grimly Jane's husband talked of waste in Washington. She had the distinct feeling that as a taxpayer Jane's husband would not enjoy contributing to her three-week holiday in Mexico. For the first time it occurred to Mrs. Pollifax to wonder why Mr. Carstairs had sent her here for three weeks. Why not one week, she wondered, or two at the most, and for a fleeting moment she toyed with the idea that her visit to the Parrot Bookstore might be more important than Mr. Carstairs had led her to believe.

  Nonsense, she thought, he wanted to be sure everyone knew her as a tourist. Nothing was worth doing unless doing well, she added piously.

  She fell asleep thinking of serapes and dreamed of serapes spread across chairs, desk and bureau with a talking parrot guarding them.

  Five

  When Mrs. Pollifax opened her eyes the next morning she knew it was The Day she had been waiting for, but she felt no fucker of excitement. She had waited too long, and during the last few days—she had to admit this—she had been quite bored. In fact nothing but her games of solitaire had kept her amused, and remembering this she tucked the playing cards into her purse to carry with her for the day. Glancing into the interior of the purse she noted that again it had become the repository of an astonishing assortment of odds and ends: a pocket knife for her grandson's birthday, two chocolate bars, a package of paper handkerchiefs, a tin of Band-Aids, stubs of travelers' checks, two new lipsticks and one old tube that was worn flat—she would have to clear this out soon. But not now. She zipped up the back of her best navy-blue dress, and because it was cool this morning she added the gorgeous hand-loomed Guatemalan wool jacket that she had given herself as a gift.

  She ate a small breakfast in the hotel dining room and passed the hour that followed in playing solitaire in the lobby. At 9:45 she was walking up the Calle el Siglo and repeating to herself the words A Tale of Two Cities and Madame Defarge. The door of the Parrot Bookstore was open. Mrs. Pollifax walked in with what she believed to be exquisite casualness, blinked a little at the sudden change from sunlight to shadow and nervously cleared her thr
oat.

  "Buenos dias," said the man behind the counter, looking up with a smile, and after a second glance he added, "Good morning."

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced uncertainly around the room, but there was no one else there. "Good morning," she said. This was not her friend Senor DeGamez whom she had met on her earlier visit. This man was small and dapper, with black hair, spectacles and no moustache at all; when he smiled a gold tooth gleamed at one side of his lip. To cover her confusion she gave him a bright smile in return and moved to the table on which the books from America were displayed. She began picking up one volume after another.

  "May I be of help?" suggested the man with a bow.

  Mrs. Pollifax had gained a moment to reflect. She decided there was no alternative but to ask just when Senor DeGamez would be back. Perhaps he had been taken suddenly ill, or had run out for cigarettes. "When I was here before," she told the man confidingly, "the proprietor was so helpful, he chose just the right book for me. Will he be in soon?"

  The man looked surprised. "But I am the proprietor, senora. I am Senor DeGamez."

  Mrs. Pollifax, taken aback, said, "Oh."

  Smiling, the man added, "That would have been my cousin, I thin, who comes in to the store to help when I am away on business. It happens that way, you know? He is Senor DeGamez too. But he is not here."

  "He was so extremely charming and kind," explained Mrs. Pollifax eagerly. "He gave me a book on solitaire—77 Ways to Play, and—" She gasped. "Oh dear, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that. After all, it's your shop—but I would be happy to pay you for it, indeed I insisted at the time—"

  "Yes, that is Jose"," said the man with a rueful smile. "Definitely that is Jose, but what is one to do with him?" He shrugged, his gold tooth gleaming. "Jose is always impulsive; if the store were his he would be bankrupt in one month. Still. . ." His second shrug was even more eloquent. "Still, it is Jos6's charm that brought you back, no?"

  "Yes indeed—and for A Tale of Two Cities," she told him boldly.

  "A Tale of Two Cities," he mused. He returned to the counter to thumb through a pile of papers. Extracting one, he ran a finger down its list. "That book we do not have, I am so sorry."

  "I believe there's a copy in your window," she told him breathlessly.

  "Si?" He said it with just the proper note of surprise and she walked with him to die low curtain that divided the window from the store.

  "Yes." They both looked, but Mrs. Pollifax could see no copy of A Tale of Two Cities and with a sinking sensation she realized that she ought to have looked for it before coming inside. Nothing seemed to be going well; it was as if fate was putting up little barriers everywhere to test her. She said with a frown, "It was here the other day, I ought to have stopped then. Or perhaps I have the wrong store. I think Madame Defarge is simply gruesome, don't you?" She waited now for him to say something, her eyes alert.

  Senor DeGamez continued to lean over the curtain and study the books in the window. When he stood erect he looked at Mrs. Pollifax and his eyes behind the glasses had grown thoughtful. She thought that he, too, appeared to be assessing. "It is not there," he said, watching her.

  "No, it is not there."

  He said quietly, "But I think that we understand each other nevertheless, you and I."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I mean that we have something in common, no? I have been expecting you. Please—a cup of tea while I get for you what you have come for. I was just brewing the tea in my little back room."

  Mrs. Pollifax said cautiously, "I'm sure that's very nice of you." She wasn't sure that it was nice of him at all; the absence of the book in the window was a jarring note and made her feel like a fool. Yet the man said he had been expecting her. Perhaps the book had been accidentally sold or mislaid—even spies must have their bad days. "Very kind indeed," she added more firmly, and since he was holding the curtain that separated the back room from the shop, she walked past him into the rear. There seemed nothing else to do.

  "Please forgive the untidiness," he said with a sweeping gesture.

  It was indeed untidy, with cartons of books piled to the ceiling and the floor littered with scraps of wrapping paper. But Senor DeGamez had not lied, he really had been brewing tea on a Sterno and was not luring her behind the curtain to hit her over the head. The tea was here and visible, and at sight of this domestic detail—there was something so cozy about tea-making and all its accouterments—her confidence returned.

  "Milk, lemon, sugar?" he asked, leading her to the desk and clearing a place for her.

  "Milk and one sugar, please," she said, sitting down in the swivel chair and looking around her with interest. "Although really I mustn't stop more than a minute."

  "No, of course not, that would be most unwise," he agreed, bringing her a steaming cup. "I will not take long. Tea is my breakfast I often share it with early customers." He placed a paper napkin before her. "Please relax, I will be back in a minute."

  He disappeared behind the curtain and Mrs. Pollifax obediently relaxed by slipping off one shoe and sipping the tea. He was certainly a very polite man, she decided, but he lacked the warmth of his cousin. She wondered what he would bring her, another book or something in a package? Tiring of the calendars on the wall in front of her, she turned in the chair to regard the room behind her. Her glance roamed over the cartons, a smock hanging on a peg, a sink in the corner—a very dirty sink, she noted disapprovingly —and she thought what a hot and stuffy room this was. Very hot. She drained the cup of tea, wriggled into her shoe again and stood up. It was kind of him to have invited her back here, but it would have been kinder of him to open a window; she would wait for him in the shop. An odd but vaguely familiar shape caught her eye; it was domelike and mounted on a pedestal and covered with a cloth. She walked over to it and pulled the cloth aside. It was a large bird cage, empty now of all but one vivid blue feather.

  "The parrot!" she thought in astonishment.

  In her confusion she had forgotten the parrot, and remembering 016 she at once recalled the first Senor DeGamez with great clarity. "My store is named after 016, not the other way around," he had said. "My Olé came first, she has been with me twelve years."

  My store . . . my Olé . . . yes, he had definitely referred to both of them as his. It was not so much that she had forgotten this as that today's Senor DeGamez had not given her the time to think. Nor could she think clearly now for it was very close in this room and her head was beginning to ache. She stared at the cage and forced herself to think about it. The cage was here. The parrot was not here. "But if this is the Parrot Bookstore, and if the parrot belonged to the first Senor DeGamez ..."

  There was something else, too, and she struggled to think of it. If the parrot belonged to the first Senor DeGamez, and the shop belonged to the first Senor DeGamez—there was a conclusion that ought to be drawn but Mrs. Pollifax found that she could not draw it. Something was terribly wrong, and not only with this shop but with herself, for her mind felt dazed, groggy, unable to reason or to reach conclusions. And it wasn't the heat, she realized, it wasn't the heat at all. It was the tea. Mrs. Pollifax had been drinking tea for years and it had never before left such a very peculiar taste in her mouth.

  "There was something in that tea," cried Mrs. Pollifax, taking a step toward the door, but her words made no sound, her cry was only a whisper, and she took no more than the one step before she sank, unconscious, to the floor.

  Mrs. Pollifax opened one eye, dimly aware that someone was methodically slapping her face, first the left cheek and then the right. She closed her eye and the rhythmic slapping began again. When she next roused Mrs. Pollifax made an attempt to focus on the face that loomed only a few inches away. "Fu Manchu," she murmured wittily, and giggled a little.

  "You will wake up now, pliss," said a disembodied voice.

  Mrs. Pollifax sighed. "Very well—except I don't really want to, and certainly not when you keep slapping my face." This time she made a di
stinct effort to open her eyes and keep them open, but the dismal sight that confronted her was not rewarding. She and the cheek slapper appeared to be sharing a small tar-paper shack that listed slightly to one side. A kerosene lamp hung from a rafter and sent grotesque shadows over the earthen floor and rough walls. There was a smell of kerosene and mustiness and wet earth. She saw no windows in the shack and the only bright new piece of equipment in the room was the lock on its door. Her eyes arrived at the cheek slapper and as she pondered him, too, she saw why she had burbled in her sleep about Fu Manchu: the man was Chinese. There the resemblance ended, however, because he was neatly dressed in Western clothes and looked like a serious and kindly young student.

  Then Mrs. Pollifax realized that her hands were bound tightly behind her with wire and she decided that the young man was not so kind after all. "Where am I, anyway?" she asked indignantly.

  "I wouldn't bother asking if I were you," said a voice behind her. The voice was male and very definitely American, and Mrs. Pollifax squirmed in her chair to look but discovered that she couldn't.

  "We're tied together," explained the voice. "Back to back, wrist to wrist—very chummy. Farrell's my name, by the way. Nice to meet you."

  "Nice?" said Mrs. Pollifax weakly.

  "I was only being polite, actually. Who the devil are you, anyway?"

  She said stiffly, "Mrs. Virgil Pollifax from New Brunswick, New Jersey. Look here, young man," she told their guard firmly, "I know enough about first aid to tell you that you will presently have to amputate my left hand if you don't allow it some circulation."

  The man said calmly, "Soon you will eat and be given an opportunity to exercise the hands."

  As he said this the door opened and a man walked in, and Mrs. Pollifax, glancing beyond him, saw that it was dark outside. Night already! "Then I've been unconscious all afternoon," she thought in astonishment. Her eyes fell to the tray the man carried and she realized how hungry she was. The cheek slapper brought a pair of pliers from his pocket, and while he leaned over to free her wrists Mrs. Pollifax kept her eyes on the food, which consisted of tired-looking tortillas, two slices of dry gray bread and two cups of either coffee or soup. It was just as well that she had this to divert her because her captor was none too gentle; tears rose in Mrs. Pollifax's eyes as he worked, and when her numbed hands were free she placed them in her lap and tried not to notice the blood trickling into her palms.