Chapter 6

I called around to three friends who have security experience, but they were all busy and couldn't get loose. I called the two PIs in town I know well enough to ask for a favor – they were both on cases that wouldn't let them help. I stuck my tongue out at the phone. I hadn't expected to get such an uninterrupted series of negatives. Oh, well, there was always tomorrow.

I went back out into the living room. It was going on one in the afternoon – I still had time. I was reading The Sun Also Rises just then, and I picked it up and put my feet on the coffee table and undogeared the page, and went on from where I'd left off. Cecelia was doing something in my study – dusting, probably. I take care of the trash can in there, and if I take in something to eat I bring the dishes back out, but periodically she dusts my computer and my books, which otherwise would provide a running record of what I've done most recently. Darlia was at school, and in a couple of hours Cecelia would go pick her up ... or I might, since I didn't have to relieve Rudy till five.

After a bit Cecelia came out of the study and sat down in her rocker. "Darvin," she said, and then continued when I looked up, "we really need to find you more room."

"I'm fine, C, I've told you that."

"Yes, you have – and I do not question the unfictitiousness of your declaration. I am not, however, sightless, nor am I bereft of reason. When I observe the abundance of clutter on and around your desk and shelving, I can only conclude that you desperately need more room."

I grunted. She was right, after all – I was piling books on top of books by now. I was, in fact, holding off buying a multi-volume commentary because I had no place to put it, unless I pulled something else off the shelf. Like probably every preacher in history, I can never have too many books – even though most of them I've never actually read. I keep telling myself I want to read Matthew Henry or John Calvin or John Owen or W.E. Best or whoever, but even when you enjoy it – as I do – solid theology is dense writing and you can't plow through it as easily as I go through my library books.

"Darvin, I know you," Cecelia said. "I know your grunts – and I know that you do not disagree, even if you are not willing to overtly agree with me. I wish you would think about this. We need to give you more room, and we need to figure out how to accomplish the goal."

"Well," I said with a grin, "we could knock out the back wall and build a room as big as the back yard."

"Yes," she said with a smile of her own, "and we could build that house we've spoken of, desultorily, from time to time. But I really don't think we're prepared to divest Darlia of her grass, and I for one love this house too much to cavalierly jettison it. We must, therefore, find an alternative. I have not yet been able to see one – but I believe one exists."

"Well, there's grass in the park," I said, meaning Inez Park, which we live across the street from.

"Were I within arm's reach of you, I would cause you to regret that utterance. You know my point perfectly well, Darvin Carpenter, and you have with malice aforethought stepped by it."

"Why, yes I have!" I grinned at her. "You oughta be used to that by now, C. But yeah, you're right – I don't want to take the yard away from Darlia, even if I needed that much room, which I don't."

"Not yet, perhaps – but the day may come when Spurgeon's library would not be too large for you."

"I really doubt that, Cecelia. He pastored the same church for 30 years or thereabouts; I've not pastored for one year, nor yet for one day even."

"I admit I was hyperbolic – but again, my point is valid."

"Yeah, I know. Okay, I'll think on it. But don't expect miracles – my brain ain't rigged for quick movement."

"Darvin," she said, "your mind may, perhaps, function differently than mine does; it may be somewhat less immediately penetrating. But the last word I would dredge up to describe you is beefheaded; different you might be, but intelligent you most certainly are. You do not fool me one bit – and if there is one habit of which I shall endeavor to break you, it is that of ascribing to yourself the intellect of a cabbage."

I smiled, and shook my head, and went back to my book. Maybe I am as smart as my wife thinks. Either way, Hemingway wrote a good novel.

I pulled up in front of Cinda's apartment about 15 minutes before five. Rudy told me what had happened since I'd been there – which was nothing, but then we hadn't expected to see Bestwick poking his head around the corner every five minutes. Even stalkers have real lives, however pathetic those lives may be.

After Rudy took off, I knocked on Cinda's door to let her know I was back. She invited me in for a cup of coffee, which I declined since I can't stand coffee; she said she had tea, and that I accepted. We sat at her table, she with her black coffee – the same way Cecelia drinks it – and me with my hot tea that had plenty of sugar in it. We talked about nothing much. It wasn't so much what we said that mattered, as it was the fact that she could have a normal conversation. Being the victim of a stalker can't be fun – I've never been there, and if I were I'd turn it around on whoever tried it, but for a woman alone it must be terrifying. To be free from that fear has got to be a wonderful thing.

After half an hour or so I went out and did a patrol of the immediate area. The sun was heading for the horizon, and buildings and trees blocked the light and caused it to be cooler there than it might have been otherwise. I've seen bumper stickers here and there reminding us that Albuquerque is in a desert. Maybe so, though by my standards this country is plenty humid. But if it is a desert, it's one that people have modified to a great extent. It's happened all over the southwest – people move there for the dry climate, and then plant trees and flowers and grass and bring water in from wetter areas to keep the plants from dying. And so they create a humid island in the middle of the desert, and complain about sticky summers and the allergies that they thought they were getting away from. One wonders why they don't just stay in Ohio or Virginia or wherever, instead of ruining it for people who like rocks and cactus.