Chapter 4

After lunch Sara and Rudy took the girls, and Cecelia and I climbed into the Blazer. Usually when we're both going somewhere she likes to drive her Mazda sports car, in a gleaming shade of arrest-me-red, but for work it was the work vehicle. I'd once had a white Chevy pickup, which had endured so much mechanic work that I just called it a 60-something model; very little of the original truck was intact. I hadn't replaced any of the sheet metal, but the rest had gone through replacements and rebuilding and whatnot. Finally it had just gotten too expensive to keep it running, and I'd sold it for scrap and bought the Blazer.

Everyone on Central had known the pickup, and now they knew the Blazer. Whether the people we were going to see would know it was a question, but not a pressing one. At least some of them would know the Blazer by the time I was done.

As I drove, heading for a "studio" I know which produces porn videos, I laid out our plan. "Since these people objectify women, you're gonna have to be my assistant. If you ever build your own reputation then you'll be able to do this kind of thing on your own, or take the lead when it's you and a man, but these characters define sexism. If you ain't on your back, they can't find a use for you."

"I presume, then, that my function will be to observe and to take notes."

"Pretty much, yeah. In fact, I ought to have thought o' that before we left. If you were to stand a little behind me, and take notes on a pad, it might have an impact."

"I always have a pen about me; I am as uncomfortable without a writing instrument as you are. Do you think there might be a pad of some sort in this rolling disaster area?"

"You might check the glove compartment," I said, "though I won't swear to anything useful bein' there."

She scrabbled about in there, pulling out the owner's manual, the registration, the insurance card, and some miscellaneous papers that I couldn't remember tossing in there but obviously had. "No pad here," she said. "We'll need to stop somewhere and buy one."

"Don't you mean 'purchase, ' C?" I asked.

She shot me a dirty look. "You know my love for multisyllabic expressions, but you also know I disdain pretension. If 'buy' is a perfectly serviceable word, I shall use it, rather than attempting to sound consequential by employing the other. Furthermore, were I to seek a polysyllable replacement for 'buy, ' I would choose 'engross' or 'procure, ' on the ground that they are less common and, therefore, fresher."

"You an' me both, babe," I said, though I wasn't about to start tossing around her $64 words. It was her standing up for perfectly good words without pretense that I was agreeing with. I looked around. We were in spitting distance of the Wal-Mart at Central and San Mateo – or Zuni and San Mateo, as some people put it. I headed that way, and resumed my briefing. "I'll introduce you, if I do, as 'Ms. Johnston, my assistant, ' or something along those lines. It worked when we were visiting the scumbag, and it oughta work again."

She nodded, no doubt remembering the same thing I had in mind – the fact that I'd completely forgotten about that introduction three years ago, until she'd reminded me of it a couple of months ago. "I am, then, not your wife for the purposes of the investigation."

I shrugged, which isn't always easy driving but which my one-handed style makes a bit easier. "If they know or figure out that we're married, it's not a problem. But I'm not gonna bring it up either. If they think you're just my assistant they'll be just as happy, if not happier."

"And while I am not 'just' your assistant, that is in fact the role I am fulfilling today, and indeed for some time as my training progresses. It does not perturb me to be 'Ms. Johnston, ' for that was my name before I married you."

I was turning onto San Mateo now, heading south. "And they's some women keep their maiden name after they get married too. You got a sister-in-law like that."

"Yes, I do." Cecelia's tone was flat – she has never gotten along with my brother's wife, who goes by Miss Kim even when it's Memphis talking. "But I chose to take your name, and I am proud to be 'Mrs. Carpenter.' However, it does not disturb me to utilize my maiden name in the course of the investigation, for it's a name I am not ashamed of."

"No reason to be," I said. "Was I born into y'all's family, I'd be mighty proud of it."

"You might as well have been, the way Mama and Daddy treat you."

I flipped on my blinker – one of the easiest things to do while driving, even though everyone acts like it's going to break their backs – and moved over into the right turn lane so I could turn into the Wal-Mart parking lot. "I still get a kick out of how he introduces me to people I'm meeting for the first time."

"Yes – 'This is my son, the one who married Cissy.' He loves you, Darvin, as though you were his own son, and so does Mama."

"An' I love them," I said, heading for the far reaches of the parking lot. There was just no point in trying to get close, since it would probably take longer to find a spot closer to the door than it would to walk back and forth. "They're the only parents I've ever known."

"I wonder why you never got that close to your aunt and uncle."

"I guess it was 'cause Tony and Anna always loved me like their nephew they were raising, and not like their son. They never did adopt me, you know."

"If they had, I would not now be Mrs. Carpenter," Cecelia said. "Did Memphis' relations adopt him?"

"Yeah, both in Lahtkwa tradition, and under the law." Our parents had died when I was four and Memphis was nine. I'd gone to live with relatives of our mother, and he'd gone to our father's family on the reservation in Washington.

"I do not wish to exchange husbands," Cecelia said, unfastening her seatbelt as I parked, "but I do wish you had gained a loving family of the sort Memphis did." She might not like Miss Kim, but my brother she loves. She's closer to him, in fact, than I am. "Still, you are the man I married, and I am not sorry I did it – my joy at being your wife increases every day."