On Monday afternoon there’s a knock on his door. Billy opens it with a sinking heart, expecting Ken Hoff, but it’s not Hoff. It’s Phyllis Stanhope. She’s smiling, but her eyes are red and puffy.
‘Take a girl to dinner?’ Just like that. ‘My boyfriend dumped me, and I need some cheering up.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘My treat.’
‘No need of that,’ Billy says. He has an idea where this might lead, and it’s maybe not such a good idea, but he doesn’t care. ‘Happy to pick up the tab, and if you really don’t like that, we can go dutch again.’
But they don’t go dutch. Billy pays. He thinks she may have decided to celebrate the end of her affair by sleeping with him, and the three screwdrivers she downs – two before dinner and one during – only cement the idea. Billy offers her the wine list but she waves it away.
‘Never mix, never worry,’ she says. ‘That’s from—’
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Billy finishes, and she laughs.
She doesn’t eat much of her dinner, says it was kind of a nasty breakup scene, part one in person and part two on the phone, and she’s just not that hungry. What she really wants are those drinks. They may not be going dutch, but she needs some dutch courage for what comes next, which now seems not just possible but inevitable. And he wants it. It’s been a long time since he’s been with a woman. As Billy pays the check with one of his David Lockridge credit cards, he thinks of the kids piling on him and chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. And here, only a day later, is that very vodka boozer, a loser in love.
‘Let’s go to your place. I don’t want to go to mine and look at his aftershave on the bathroom shelf.’
Well, Billy thinks, you can look at the aftershave on mine. You can even use my toothbrush.
When they get to the yellow house on Evergreen Street, she takes an appraising look around, compliments him on the Doctor Zhivago poster he bought in a downtown junkshop, and asks him if he has anything to drink. Billy has a six in the fridge. He asks her if she wants a glass, and Phil says she’ll drink it right out of the can. He brings two into the living room.
‘I thought you were off alcohol for the duration.’
He shrugs. ‘Promises were made to be broken. Besides, I’m off the clock.’
They have barely opened them when she says ‘It’s hot in here’ and starts unbuttoning her blouse. The beers will be open on the coffee table in the morning, flat and barely tasted.
The sex is good, at least for Billy. He thinks for her, too, but with women it’s hard to tell. Sometimes they’d just like you to stop trying so hard and get off so they can go to sleep, but if she’s faking it’s a good fake. There comes a point, just before he can hold back no longer, when she makes an mmmm sound against his shoulder and digs in with her nails almost hard enough to bring blood.
When he rolls over to his side of the bed, she gives him a pat on the shoulder as if to say good boy. ‘Please don’t tell me that was a mercy fuck.’
‘It wasn’t, believe me,’ he says. ‘I won’t ask you if it was a revenge fuck.’
She laughs. ‘You better not.’ Then she rolls over on her side, away from him. Five minutes later she’s snoring.
Billy lies awake for awhile, not because she’s snoring – they’re ladylike snores, almost like purring – but because his mind won’t turn off. He thinks her turning up the way she did and then coming home with him is like something out of a Zola novel, where every character has to be fully used and make one final appearance, like a curtain call. He hopes his own story isn’t over, but guesses this part of it almost is. If he finishes his job and collects his pay, some new life (maybe as Dalton Smith, maybe as someone else) will begin. Maybe a better life.
He has realized for some time, probably since he started writing Benjy’s story, that he can no longer live this one without choking. The idea – no, the conceit – that he only kills bad people will stretch just so far. There are good people sleeping in the houses on this very street. He’s not going to kill any of them, but he supposes he’ll kill something inside them when they find out why he was really here.
Is that too poetic? Too romantic? Billy thinks not. A stranger came, and he turned into a neighbor, but here’s the punchline, he turned out to be a stranger all along.
Around three o’clock Billy awakes to hear Phil puking in the bathroom. The toilet flushes. Water runs. She comes back to bed. She cries a little. Billy pretends to be asleep. The crying stops. The snores recommence. Billy sleeps and dreams of garbage bags fluttering in palm trees.
5
He awakes shortly after six to the smell of coffee. Phil is in the kitchen, barefoot and wearing one of his button-up shirts.
‘How did you sleep?’ Billy asks.
‘Fine. You?’
‘Terrific. And that coffee smells really good.’
‘I stole some of your aspirin. I guess I had one drink too many last night.’ She gives him a look that’s amusement and embarrassment, half and half.
‘As long as you didn’t steal any of my aftershave.’ That makes her laugh. One-night hookups can lead to some grisly mornings after, he’s suffered through a couple of those, but Billy thinks this one may be okay, and that’s good. Phil is a nice woman.
When he offers to scramble some eggs she makes a face and shakes her head. He does get her to eat some unbuttered toast. After, he gives the bedroom and bathroom over to her so she can shower and dress in privacy. When she emerges, she looks fine. Her blouse is a little wrinkled, but otherwise she’s good to go. She’ll have a tale to tell later on, Billy thinks. My Night with a Killer. If she chooses to tell it, that is. She may not.
‘Will you drive me home, Dave? I want to change my clothes.’
‘Happy to.’
She pauses at the door and puts a hand on his arm. ‘It wasn’t revenge sex.’
‘No?’
‘Sometimes a girl just wants to be wanted. And you wanted me … didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She gives a brisk nod that says that’s settled. ‘And I wanted you. But I think it’s going to be the only time. Never say never, but that’s my feeling.’
Billy, who knows it’s going to be the only time, nods.
‘Friends?’ Phil asks.
He gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘To the end.’
It’s still early, but Evergreen Street gets up early. Across the street, Diane Fazio is sitting in a rocker on her front porch. She’s bundled up in a wooly pink housecoat, with a cup of coffee in one hand. Billy opens the passenger door of his Toyota for Phil. As he walks around the back to the driver’s side, Diane gives him a neighborly thumbs-up.
Billy has to smile.
6
When the lunch trucks arrive, Billy goes down for a taco and a Coke. Jim Albright, John Colton, and Harry Stone – The Young Lawyers, like characters in a TV show or a Grisham novel – wave him over and ask him to sit with them, but Billy says he wants to eat at his desk and do a little more work.
Jim raises a finger and recites, ‘No man on his deathbed ever said “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” Oscar Wilde, just before he passed into the great beyond.’
He could tell Jim that Oscar Wilde’s last words are actually reputed to have been Either that wallpaper goes or I do, but he just smiles.
The truth is he doesn’t want to spend time with these guys now that the job is almost here, not because he doesn’t like them but because he does. And Phil seems to have taken the day off. He hopes she’ll take Wednesday and Thursday off too, but that’s probably too much to hope for.
His Dalton phone starts to ring just as he re-enters his office. It’s Don Jensen.
‘Dollen my man! You back?’
‘I am.’
‘How you doon? How’s Daffy and Woller?’