Cheap Tears, continued...

“Neil keeps coming back into your life, doesn’t he, Maggie?” He said in his clipped English butler accent.
“Do we have to tell Claire Conrad about this conversation?”
“You know the rules.”
“Goodnight, Boulton.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“The other woman.”
I hung up the phone. Lying back on my pillow, I thought how I was once the wife and Peggy was once the other woman. Now she’s the wife who thinks I’m the other woman. I grinned and stretched. And then as if in some kind of Karmic retaliation for enjoying another woman’s pain, the song Peggy had been listening to infiltrated my brain and lodged there. I turned onto my side. The song stayed with me. What was it called? I rolled over on my back again. I knew the name of the song as well as I knew my own name. Oh, I almost had it. No, that wasn’t it. It’s something like…no, no. God, it’s…

“Your turn, Miss Hill.” Staring at the Scrabble board, the great detective impatiently tapped her finger — the one with the lapis rock — on the head of her ivory walking stick.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Claire Conrad’s day to wear white: white slacks, white wrap jacket, and white silk blouse. Deep lines creased her forehead and curved around her refined lips. Her nose was as straight as a pilgrim’s hat. She wore her fifty-six years with an I-don’t-give-a-damn-grace. The kind of grace I would like to have. But then maybe you have to be fifty-six and not give a damn. I was thirty-five and my past, my choices, my mistakes, clung to me like a polyester blouse in August. And that stupid love song still rattled namelessly inside my head..
“It’s your turn,” she reminded again.
“I know.” I brushed my dark hair away from my face and peered at my pathetic array of seven little wood tiles; each one with a consonant carved on it. God forbid I should draw a vowel.
Claire and I were at my desk, the big round table, in the airy, cathedral-beamed, living room of Conrad Cottage. Bookshelves and paintings lined the walls. Claire had pulled her white linen-covered Queen Anne chair — a winged high-back affair with bowed legs — up to my desk so we could play Scrabble. The word game had become a diversion, a way to ease her depressions.
Usually when she wasn’t working on a case she’d take to her bed and read, or just sit in her Queen Anne and stare at the tips of her shoes. But one day she raised herself up from her lethargy and asked if I played chess. I’d told her I didn’t. And then I spoke the fateful words: ‘But I play Scrabble.’ A gleam had flickered in her shrewd lake-blue eyes, and now I’m here staring at my consonants trying to think of the name of that damn love song.
For the eight months since my divorce I’ve been Claire Conrad’s factotum, chronicler, and woman Friday. Boulton the butler / bodyguard, Gerta the cook, and I live with her in Conrad Cottage on the grounds of the San Marino Hotel in San Marino — a tiny enclave of wealth tucked next to a larger enclave of old and new wealth — called Pasadena. San Marino is the kind of place where men wear plaid pants and their wives mean it.
“I’m 150 points ahead.” Claire leaned back in her chair. Her silvery hair folded against the sides of her head like a bird tucking in its wings. I studied the word she had just placed on the board.
“Ba? Ba is not a word.”
“It’s the Arabic word for the soul of a bird.” She smiled beatifically. “Do you think birds don’t have souls?”
“Arabic? That’s it! The Nile. Wait, I have the name of the song. ‘See the pyramids along the Nile…’” I began to sing.
“What are you doing, Miss Hill?” She grimaced.
“Singing. ‘Just remember, darling, all the while…’ What? All the while what?”
“I don’t like to be sung to and I don’t like to be called darling.”
“I’m trying to think of the title of a song and I almost had it.”
“Do you wish to challenge my word?”
“No. Damn, it’s gone.” I sighed.
“It’s you turn.”
“I know.” I arranged and rearranged my consonants.
“You’re moaning.”
“I’m humming.”
“I don’t do divorce work.” Her sharp eyes burrowed into mine. “Boulton told me about the phone call you had last night. So when Peggy Brock calls to hire me be sure to tell her that I don’t do divorce work.”
“She’s not going to call again. I’m sure she’s feeling very embarrassed.”
“She’s feeling betrayed. I think if there were fewer marriages there would be fewer murders.”
“How’d we get on murder? Peggy’s not going to murder anybody, and she’s not going to call back, and she’s not going to want to hire you.”
“It’s your turn.”
“I know!” I glared at my letters.
“You’re moaning again. You sound like a horse I once owned. A beautiful jumper. Had to shoot her.”
“You shot a horse?”
“Had to put her out of her misery. You were raised in Ohio. That’s farm country. Surly you saw a horse being shot.”
“I can honestly say I never saw anybody shoot a horse. Our priest got angry at a horse once and hit him in the head and broke his hand. How can I concentrate when you’ve got me talking about shooting horses, and Peggy Brock?” I contemplated my tiles and began to hum again. She tapped her ring finger.
“Look,” I said, “help me out here. I know this song has to do with the Nile. And the lover in the song has to remember something while he’s away on the Nile. But what is it he has to remember?”
“Not to eat the fish.” Claire Conrad detested love songs. “It’s your turn.”
“Maybe you should do divorce work then you wouldn’t be sitting here playing Scrabble. And I wouldn’t be worried about your enormous overhead and how I’m going to pay the bills, which I should be doing right now except for the fact we don’t have any money.”
Exasperated, I plucked the letter ‘g’ and the letter ‘t’ from my row of consonants and using her letter ‘a’ I formed the word gat. Claire wrinkled her forehead.
“It’s a gun,” I explained. “The soul of a detective.”
“Just because you’re losing is no reason to be testy. You’ve opened up a triple word. You’re not concentrating, you’re not playing defensively, Miss Hill.”
The doorbell rang.
“Were you expecting someone?” I asked
“Peggy Brock about that silly husband of yours,” she said, not looking up from her tiles.
“Ex-husband. And will you just stop, please?”
Boulton appeared in the archway. He wore a gray jacket over black-and-gray striped trousers. A full head of chestnut–brown hair swept back from his high, intelligent forehead. The forty-five Smith and Weston he was carrying never caused a winkle in his jacket. As if announcing the Queen he said, “Mrs. Peggy Brock to see you, madam.”
And I didn’t even have any lipstick on.
Oh, hell.

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