Chapter 11

Bestwick was going to lunch, and when I'd seen him safely inside the restaurant – as if I were guarding him instead of Cinda, I thought with a little chuckle – I took out for my own lunch. There's a McDonald's on the edge of downtown, at Lomas and Broadway, and I went there. I sometimes wonder how I can reconcile loving Cecelia's cooking, and equally enjoying what I call "wormburgers." Perhaps the two are irreconcilable, and I'm just a walking oxymoron. Whatever the answer, I do love my wife's cooking, and I equally enjoy McDonald's – and if I have the choice, I'll choose McDonald's over any fancy restaurant where you've got to wear a suit, and you get, in John Anderson's words, "a little piece of fish, some rice, and three green beans."

I sat by the window and watched the traffic on Lomas, and the cars going north on Broadway too. The place is north of the old St. Joseph's hospital, what they call the Albuquerque Regional Medical Center these days, and a tad bit west. I remembered back when I was still getting to know Cecelia that on a winter day I'd walked down from my apartment, which was on Montgomery at Carlisle. It had been chilly, and as the sun began to set I'd hurried up to get to St. Joseph's and call a cab to take me home. It was on that walk that I'd first realized I didn't know whether Cecelia's eyes were brown or black. Later on I'd thought to check. By now I know they're black – I've been looking into 'em for all my life it seems like, though really it's not. I wasn't exactly sure, after all this time, which streets I'd followed after I left Carlisle, but I thought I'd come down Lomas and turned south on Broadway. Certainly I've done that at various times, if not on that occasion. Cecelia lifts weights and runs miles at a time, and enjoys it. My recreation and main form of exercise is walking. I can walk all day and not have it bother me. Cecelia can outrun me in about five feet, and leave me eating dust. But greyhound though she is, I think that if it came to walking alone, over a period of days I could wear her out – not that I'll ever try, or want to.

I grinned to myself around a mouthful of Big Mac. The thought of me competing with Cecelia is hilarious. I used to do it sometimes, mostly when it came to shooting. Eventually I realized that competing with her is like competing with the world's expert in everything. The only thing where I'm certain of my superiority is my Spanish accent – she speaks the language fluently, which I've never been able to do, but her accent is pure American while mine is Chicano. I'm afraid to have her try detection, for though I've got 20 years or more experience, she's so much smarter than I am that she'd take over the business in about 12 minutes.

We don't compete anymore. We know each other – who's weak in what areas, who's strong in what areas. I know she can shoot as well as I can at short range and outshoot me at long range. I know that she can bench press considerably more than her own weight, several times, while when I get on the bench I can get my own weight up once, but beyond that I make no guarantees. I know that she can sew and cook, and discuss poetry with professors of literature, and talk finance with investment bankers – while I can do none of these things, though I do write poetry and she can't. I know she can chop someone off at the knees with four or five sharp words when she has to – and I know that when she speaks to me in the night her words and her voice are as soft as the touch of a rose.

I was doing too much night work, I decided. I was getting analytical and maudlin both, neither of which are my speed usually. I needed to settle Cinda's problem and get back to what I do best – detecting. So thinking, I swallowed the last of my fries, and sucked up the last of my Coke, and put my trash in the barrel and went to see if Bestwick was still at lunch.

He was, but by barely. I peeked in the door – hat in hand to avoid being conspicuous – and saw him putting away his credit card and getting up from the table. I posted myself across the street, and at the intersection where I was sure he'd turn to go back to work, since that was the place he'd turned to get to the restaurant. People operate mostly on habit; the way Bestwick had walked to the restaurant was almost certainly the way he'd walk from it.

I was right. I followed him back to the office building, and settled down to do some more observation. I was getting a sense of what kind of people went in and out. Of course most of them had to do with other businesses in the building, but they were pretty much of a type – suits, ties, power men and women who no doubt mostly drove Beamers or Hummers or such things, lived in "townhomes" or maybe in a new development out on the West Mesa, and had a college degree but little real education outside their specialty. I've sometimes wished that more people were self-educated, as I mostly am, for a college education these days doesn't at all mean that you know about the Barbary pirates or the contents of the Constitution or how the big bang theory relates to the Bible or anything else that qualifies in some way as part of a general education.

Eventually Bestwick came back out, and I followed him to where he'd parked his car. I took note of the lot – I planned to be there early in the morning. Tomorrow would be surveillance for sure.

I didn't follow Bestwick home, though I thought about doing it just to keep my hand in. I knew where he lived – unless he'd moved, and in that case it would be easy to find him again. I could think of two or three ways to do it – I could do it while sitting at home, for that matter, since I had his license plate number now.

Instead I headed toward my home. Cecelia owns the house; she bought it before we met and we just never got around to putting my name on the title. But the home belongs to all of us – it is all of us. You can't buy a home. Only houses are for sale; homes really are where the heart is, whether it's a tiny apartment or a suburban house in Hoffmantown.

When I got home Cecelia was sitting on the sofa with her legs curled under her. She had on her red, yellow, and black dashiki. She's got two or three, but doesn't often wear 'em, though I think she looks gorgeous in one. The hem of the garment covered her feet, and as she lifted her arms to give me a hug the wide sleeves revealed her muscular thinness. I felt that muscle, too, as she held me tight for a moment.

When she released me I sat on the coffee table in front of her and looked at her – the black tilted eyes, the thin lips that told me of some white or Indian ancestry somewhere in her distant past, the broad flat nose which is the only part of her face that isn't as sharp as a knife, the diamond in her nose that sparkled in the light. She had a gentle smile on her lips as she endured my scrutiny ... no, "endured" wasn't the right word. It was as though she drank in my gaze as a thirsty woman drinks water, as dry ground drinks up rain. At that moment I thought I could never be happier; the love I had for her swelled within me and threatened to burst out through my skin.