Again, the brevity left me hanging. There was no hostility in the voice, but no encouragement either. She was letting me stick my neck out.
“How are you doing?” This time, a stunned silence preceded any words, and I rued the banality of my question. Her delayed response had the predictability of the pain following a slap. “How the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m angry. I feel like you walked out on me without ever telling me why. I thought grown-ups talked through their problems-you just ran away.” “I told you I wanted time to think.”
“That’s bullshit, Joe. What good is thinking in isolation? This problem belongs to both of us. I’m not interested in what you come up with on your own. Christ, we’re friends; you’d think this would be the time to work together.” Her precision undermined any defensive maneuvers I might have attempted. She had hit on the exact subconscious motivation behind my dialing her number in the first place.
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do now.” Her frustration boiled over. “On the phone? I hate the goddamn phone. It’s a business tool, Joe, something you use to fire people you can’t look in the eye.” “I don’t want to fire you.” Only after I’d said it did I realize how idiotic it had sounded. The realization prompted a more accurate rejoinder. “But I’m not sure I want to look you in the eye, either.”
She sat on that for several long seconds. This was not an impulsive, highly charged individual. Gail had walked a long, experience-paved road, from the free-love, drug-stimulated sixties to a middle age of thoughtfulness and reflection. Her answer echoed that, and made me glad I had phoned. “That’s fair, but only if you’re coming back so we can talk properly.” I was surprised by the implication. “Of course I’m coming back. I won’t deny I ran for cover, but I didn’t run away. Your anger scared the hell out of me. It was like standing too close to a hot stove.” Again, the reflective pause. “I didn’t mean to put you down.” It was a classic Gail line, a little bit of psycho-talk, of I’m-okayyou’re-okay. It was an extraordinary and endearing trait, her ability to nail down unstable emotions so they wouldn’t run amuck and cause undue injury. She, unlike anyone else I knew, understood when it was time to put down the weapons and make peace long before I ever did.
“You felt I was that angry?” she asked.
“Weren’t you?” “I think it was more frustration. I felt totally cut off from you.
The time you left my house, I felt like a hooker who’d been underpaid.”
“Good Lord, Gail.” “Hey. You weren’t even there. You were God knows where, at the ce, feeling sorry for yourself, waiting for Tony Brandt to get back you could retrieve your freedom, or whatever the hell it was.
When said you were going up north, it was like hearing the other shoe p.
It was the predictability that made me mad you had totally cut off.”
“I’m sorry.” “I don’t want to hear that. I’m sorry, too, but is that going to get anywhere?” “I hope so. It’s a start.” The thoughtful pause. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry I’m sorry, or you’re sorry you’re sorry? Or are you ry you said we shouldn’t be sorry?” She laughed, and I realized I’d been clenching the phone. I relaxed grip.
“God, life is such a bitch.” She was right there, and by making the choices we had, we hadn’t de it any easier. We’d taken an ideal situation, one as potentially nsient as a burst of laughter, and had tried to freeze it in place. She single, as was I; she had a career, just like me; we both liked owing the other was there, available sexually and morally, but not endent.
How long, in a world crammed with other people and nts, could such a static emotional state exist? “So what do we do about it?” she continued. “I’d like to do something-have I done any permanent damage e?” She sighed, and I could hear the pillow rustling against the headShe was right again: Times like these are not good on the phone.
onged to be next to her. “No, and nor have I, at least I hope I en’t.”
I picked that up quickly. “I made the call, and you didn’t hang She laughed again gently. “All right. That proves something, but on’t want this to happen again. I can live with the fact that things ght change and we might choose separate paths, but not this way, y?” “Sounds good to me.” But she wasn’t going to let me off that lightly. “I thought it might, but I mean it, Joe. You’re good at talking to people in trouble, or giving them the third degree. You’re even pretty good at snowing the Selectmen, but you’re not that great talking to me. I think you hope all our little problems will just die natural deaths of their own.” Despite the urge to do so, I couldn’t deny it. “You know that’s not the way it happens, right?” The hint of maternal superiority suddenly irritated me. “I may not be the only guilty party here.” There was a long, dead silence, followed by, “Ouch.” This time I chuckled.
“This may work, after all.” “You are a bastard and I hate the phone and I wish you here.” “I love you, Gail.” “I love you, too, Joe, but it can’t stop there.” I had to give her high marks for persistence. “I know. I’ll try to do a better job. The Chief coming back is bound to help-at least my professional life will be back to normal.” “How’s your professional life doing now? From what I heard on the news, it sounds like you stepped into it again.” “Did my name come up?” “I could arrange for it to.” “Oh, please, spare me that. What did they report?” She told me what she’d heard, which didn’t vary much from what I’d seen on Greta’s TV. I told her the details and the cast of characters. I also told her of the changes that had come to Gannet, and of the damage they had wrought.
She listened and asked questions and heard the sadness in my voice and became again, as she had been for years, my best friend. She reminded me before we hung up that we had work to do, that things were going to change between us, for the better if we paid attention, and that she was looking forward to that.
So was I, although as I replaced the phone on its cradle, I thought of Laura, opening her coat to show me her curves. It made me doubly glad Gail and I had talked, before I’d been tempted to try something that was preordained to fail. But then, that had probably been my driving stimulus that in the midst of a complicated case, in a town whose memories were becoming at best bittersweet, I needed to connect with a person whose motives were clear and clean, and whose alliance was unquestioned. Laura had said of Gail, “Skinnier than me, I bet.”
Skinnier, more complicated, more intellectually demanding, more emotionally precise, but only a small part of me wondered why I’d reached out to Gail, when getting her back meant so much more work.
Early the next morning, none of us had any doubts a crime had n committed. Bruce Wingate was found stabbed to death. A breathless, half-frozen teenage boy had been dispatched by Renon a bicycle to fetch me. Buster’s only comment had been, “Better b a coat. Cold’s back.”
There was frost on the grass; the surrounding bare trees looked old d withered in their icy, silver sheaths. The “warm snap had ended e the slam of a door, leaving the air brittle and raw, almost painful breathe too deeply. In the low spots-the ditches, the dips in the d, the hollows between the hills-ground fog lay as if clinging to dry The three of us piled into Buster’s pickup, placing the boy’s bike 0 the back.
Dulac’s ravine, where Wingate’s body had been found, a mile north of town, bordering a road off of I II. Dulac had been armer in the region years ago, and the road had once led to his house. th he and the house were long gone, but the road remained, a major raction to those who had to opt for backseats over bedrooms for their ments of intimacy.