Missionary Stew by Ross Thomas

glass. “I remember these. Pimento cheese usedto come in them. The Keatses always drank out of these and jelly glasses. Back when we were poor. Are you poor?”
    “Extremely,” Citron said.
    “What’d you do—before you got poor?” she said. “That's my personal question.”
    “I wrote and traveled.”
    “You mean you were a travel writer? What's doing in Omaha? Beautiful, unspoiled Belize. Tierra del Fuego on twenty a day. Stuff like that?”
    “I guess I was really more of a writing traveler.”
    “What's the difference?”
    “Well, I’d travel to someplace where not too many people go, live there awhile, maybe six months, sometimes longer, and then write about what it was like.”
    “Is that what you’re doing here—in Malibu?”
    Citron shook his head. “No.”
    “What happened?”
    “I think I ran out of places.”
    “How long’ve you known the landlady?”
    “Craigie Grey? Not long.”
    “How long's not long?”
    “About five hours.”
    “You’re right. That's not long.”
    Velveeta Keats finished her wine, put the glass down, and cupped her face in her palms. “I was married to a Cuban for three years.”
    Citron waited for the rest of the tale. When there was nothing but silence for almost fifteen seconds, he said, “Well. A Cuban.”
    “His family used to own all the milk in Cuba.”
    “Before Castro.”
    “Uh-huh. I don’t know how anyone could own all the milk in Cuba, but that's what he always said. When I married him, he was in the dope business. That's really why I married him, so the Keatses andthe Manerases could combine operations. It worked out okay. Sort of, I reckon. For a while. You ever been married?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “The usual reasons.”
    “Name two.”
    Citron thought for a moment. “Well, one died and the other one said no thanks.”
    “Then you’re not gay?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “The guy who was here before you, he was gay. I mean, he was gay gay. I’d be feeling low and he’d pop over with a plate of fudge and the latest gossip and have me in stitches in no time.” She examined Citron carefully. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re the type to pop over with a plate of fudge.”
    “Who can tell?” Citron said.
    Velveeta Keats rose. “Well, thanks for the wine and the plumbing advice.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    She moved to the still open door, stopped, and turned. “I’m a good cook,” she said.
    Citron smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    “Yes,” she said. “You do that.” She then turned and went through the door.
    After Velveeta Keats had gone, Citron continued to sit at the table with his almost empty glass. He felt it stir then, almost uncoil, the first faint signs of the disease that had killed a billion or so cats. Curiosity. He began to wonder how it would all turn out and where he would be a year later. He was not accustomed to thinking of the future in terms of more than a day or a week—a month at most. The thought of a year was unsettling. It seemed like infinity. For a moment he thought of repacking his two cardboard cartons and returning to the comforting hopelessness of the Cadillac People. Instead, he rose, rinsed out the two glasses, transformed the couch into a bed, brushed his teeth, and got between what seemed to be a pair of reasonably clean sheets. After fifteen minutes or so, the sound of the surf put him to sleep. He dreamed of Africa.

CHAPTER 6
    For the past fourteen years home to Draper Haere had been a two-story red brick commercial building on Main Avenue at the northern fringe of Venice, almost in Ocean Park, a community that helps spell out the difference between Venice and Santa Monica.
    It had been a cheap neighborhood back in 1968, a blowzy, end-off-the-line kind of place with dim prospects and depressed real estate prices, which was why Haere had moved there: It was all he could afford. He had paid $27,500 for the old building with ten percent down. Less than thirteen years later an