“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Who else would see ancient Rome in the middle of Los Angeles?”
“Any student of history,” I replied.
She looked up at me and winked, just as she had the day I found her deep inside Nazi Germany.
Two motorcycle cops came in and removed their caps and sat at the counter. They were wearing leather jackets and knee-high polished boots and jodhpurs with stripes down the legs. Their faces looked tight and blistered, the skin around their eyes leached of color from the goggles they wore on the highway. One of them blew on his hands. Before I could turn away, our eyes met in the mirror.
I looked straight ahead, then out the window, and tried not to scratch my forehead, which is what a person does when he wants to hide his face. I felt I had stepped onto a stage. I cursed myself under my breath for my carelessness in looking at the cops and for my phone call to Grandfather. I started to say something to Rosita. She was eating silently, her face lowered. “I saw them,” she whispered.
“We’re in no hurry. We have no cares.”
“We’ll be fine, Weldon,” she said, not looking up.
I drank my cup empty and raised it to catch the waitress’s attention. I kept my gaze off the cops, but I could feel one of them looking at me in the mirror. I feigned a yawn. “I’m going to the washroom,” I said. “Don’t ask for the check.”
She nodded and smiled as though I had said something pleasant.
I washed my hands and combed my hair, so I would look like I’d taken my time in the men’s room. When I came back to the booth, I hoped the cops would be occupied with their breakfast or talking with the waitress. They were waiting on their food; the closest one was still looking at me in the mirror. The waitress put the check on our table.
“Stay here,” I said to Rosita. “Don’t get up for any reason.”
“What are you doing?”
“Paying the check.”
I walked toward the cashier, putting on my hat, glancing casually at the check, pausing when I was abreast of the cops. “Excuse me, we’re headed east through Clayton and Texline. Do y’all know if there’s much black ice up that way?”
“In the shady spots, maybe,” said the cop who had been looking at me. “Where you headed?”
“Big D.”
“You should have smooth sailing.”
“Somebody told me Clayton is where Black Jack Ketchum was hanged.”
“If you stop in Clayton, go to the Hotel Eklund. They have pictures of the execution on the wall.”
“I don’t remember exactly what his crime was.”
“You name it, he did it. A general bad guy.”
“I hear there’s a famous restaurant there.”
“It’s in the Eklund,” he said. “You’re from Dallas?”
“No, I grew up in southwest Texas. Thanks for your help.”
He said nothing in reply. I paid the check and went back to our booth and placed a tip under my plate. Then Rosita and I walked side by side down the line of counter stools, past the cops. Neither turned around or seemed to take notice of us in the mirror. They were both smoking cigarettes, sipping from their coffee, tipping their ashes in the saucer. The waitress was bending over to get some water glasses from a shelf, her skirt stretched across her shapely rump. The cops looked into space; they did not speak to each other. Nor did they look at the woman.
Rosita and I walked down the street, past the depot, the wind so cold there was no difference between it and a flame.
“What do you think?” Rosita asked.
“We stepped on a land mine.”
WE WENT THROUGH the side door of a grocery store and filled a sack with bread and sliced meat and cheese and canned goods and soda pop. From a window, I saw one of the cops come out of the café with his helmet and goggles on. A cruiser pulled into the parking lot. The motorcycle cop talked to the driver, leaning down to the window, the tailpipe of the cruiser puffing smoke. Then the cruiser drove out of view, and the motorcycle cop went back into the café. What did it all mean? I couldn’t be sure.