Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy Read Free Book Online

She raised her head and started the car. “This is Diego’s car.”
    “Diego’s? Jesus, Renata, are you crazy? They’ll be looking for it. They’re probably looking for it now.”
    “It really isn’t his,” she said. “It’s a stolen car.”
    “Oh, then there’s no problem. They never look for stolen cars.”
    “He said to park it someplace safe and wait for a call to tell someone where it is.”
    “You’re in serious danger in this car.”
    “I’ve been in serious danger for many months. Get out if you like.”
    “I said I’d take you home. Let’s go home. Your home.”
    “I can’t take this car home.”
    “Then take it someplace and let’s park it.”
    She pulled out into traffic, which was just beginning to move again. Hundreds were coming out of stores and offices, slowly and with curiosity, street vendors were back selling peanuts and peeled oranges, and two overfull buses were moving. People were walking backward in the street hailing rides.
    “I can’t give anybody a ride,” Renata said. “They might be killed if the police stop us.”
    “No point in getting anybody else killed,” Quinn said.
    She turned onto the Prado, still in tears. But the mood of her eyes was different from the rest of her face, less sad, more on edge, and he saw her capacity for dualities. Of course. Two lovers going on three, minus one.
    “How were you in serious danger for many months?” Quinn asked.
    “Riding with Diego. We would rent rooms for his friends to hide in, or to use for hiding guns. We said we were man and wife. I think we would have been.”
    “Then you’re a genuine gunrunner,” Quinn said.
    “Yes, and so are you. There are guns in this car. I knew as soon as I saw it. The rear end is very low.”
    Her passion had dried her tears and her eyes were evaluating how this sudden complicity with guns would change Quinn’s expression.
    “Do you like being a gunrunner?” she asked.
    “It’s delightful. I didn’t know how beautiful my fellow gunrunners could be.”
    “Are you afraid of dying if the police catch us?”
    “Not at all. I’ll explain I’m writing a story about gunrunning.”
    “They will kill you anyway. They kill anybody with guns, anybody.”
    Quinn the gunrunner had fallen in love before he’d said hello to this woman, who seemed as guileful as she was innocent, primal polarities. She had offhandedly exposed him to intimate elements of her love affair with living-and-dead rebels, and had speculated aloud that Quinn might be on a waiting list. Her legs and thighs were on exhibition, skirt riding high as she drove, that skirt soiled from her time on the museum floor with seventy tourists. How had she kept them horizontal and alive? A persuasive presence. Now she confesses her clandestine movement of arms and turns him into an accomplice. Was this sudden inadvertence, willful intent, an inevitable truth she feels they should share? Who is he to be her confessor? Forces are in play, Quinn, which you are only beginning to confront. No American women in your life like this one, who’s taken up residence in your soul overnight: invasive onset by a creature who commandeers the imagination: exotic, perhaps deadly. What did you get yourself into?
    “You are ready to die,” he said to her. “Do you know why?”
    “Because I believe in the people I’ve been with. And because it is a form of love. It is not death you love but the nearness of death to the people you love and to yourself. And because it thrills me.”
    “You know what would thrill me?”
    “Tell me.”
    “If you parked this goddamn car.”
    “I know the perfect place,” she said. “They will never look there for guns. A beautiful house and it is closed. The owner is a very rich American woman who comes here only in winter. My sister lives nearby and we can borrow one of her cars.”
    They rode out Fifth Avenue and past the Havana Yacht Club, where Renata was a star golfer. They moved through Country Club Park