He stepped out of his car and slammed the door, the vigorous movement lending him energy to make it across the lawn. The sky was gray, retaining a glimmer of twilight. He looked up through the bare branches of the jacaranda tree — gnarled crone fingers scratching at the October sky — and he thought of Doris’s pale hands writhing in agony during one of her fits. He sighed heavily and walked up the front steps.
The windows were dark.
He opened the door, hung his coat and hat on a bentwood coat-rack, and set his doctor’s bag on a chair. He listened: The silence had an eerie sibilance. She must be dozing. He’d better go wake her or else she wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night.
He went upstairs into their bedroom, opened the door, and turned on a light. The bed was unmade. The coffee cup he had brought to her that morning sat empty on her nightstand. By Doris’s pillow, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook lay folded to the society page.
“Doris?” He checked the bathroom. No one. He headed down to the kitchen. Maybe she had gone out?
Dazey stared at the bowl of oranges on the kitchen table. No note. He heard the faint sound of a car motor, the distinct putter of a Packard sedan. She must be just leaving, he thought. He banged open the kitchen door and dashed across the backyard to the side door of the garage.
He paused to catch his breath, then opened the door.
A blast of hot air slammed into his face. Toxic milky-gray gases swirled in front of his eyes. Coughing, waving his arms, he reached to the wall, felt for the light switch, and snapped it on. The rounded shape of the rumbling Packard was barely visible. He sprang forward and grabbed the handle on the driver’s door. He swung it open and turned off the ignition.
He ran outside, gulped a mouthful of fresh air, then dashed back in. He tripped over something soft and fell, the heels of his palms slamming hard against the garage doors. He looked down. At first he thought it was a pile of rags. Then he saw the hair — there was so much of it. A wig? A Halloween costume?
Then he saw her profile.
He gasped, horrified, choking so hard tears sprang to his eyes. Grabbing the handle of the garage door, he shoved it open with his right shoulder.
Doris’s body curved along the arc of the streetlight like the figure of a goddess poised on the edge of a Roman portico. Her face, an arm’s length from the tailpipe, angled away from the car, her cheeks black with soot, her eyes partially closed, her hair spread out behind her as if facing a stiff wind.
He stared a moment, then, coughing violently, ran into the street. He buckled over and vomited.
Poisonous gases seeped into the street like a departing spirit.
He staggered back into the garage and knelt beside her. He pressed the artery at the base of her neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing. The throbbing blood he felt was his own.
He hurried into the house and came back with a wet towel. He tried to wipe the soot from her face, but managed only to streak it. He folded the towel and put it under her head, then sat back on his heels to look at her.
Grief would come later, he supposed, along with the inquest and accusations. But now all he felt was relief.
You can never save anyone, he realized. Not when one wants to die, not when one reaches out to Death like a flame to oxygen. He had always seen it in her, this tremulous wanting.
The sparrow had tumbled from her nest. Perhaps now she was free.
Were not all deaths suicides, he wondered.
Copyright ©; 2005 by Ruth Francisco.
The World by the Tail
by Bill Pronzini
Bill Pronzini is one of the most versatile writers working in the mystery field. Several recent books should interest his fans. Five Star Press has a new collection entitled A “Nameless Detective” Casebook, featuring Mr. Pronzini’s most famous character (from 40 short stories and 28 novels). The most recent Nameless novel is Spook (Carroll & Graf). There’s also a recent stand-alone novel, Alias Man (Walker 2004).
I was sitting in Jocko’s Cafe, at my usual place in front of the open-air window facing Round Bay.
Jocko’s isn’t much. Just your standard back-island roadside bar and grill, mostly frequented by locals black and white and a few slumming tourists, on the southeastern tip of St. John, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The road that loops around from Coral Bay ends fifty yards from Jocko’s dirt parking lot. End of the line.
The building is two-storied, made of pink stucco, and flanked by palmettos and elephant’s-ears; bar and food service downstairs, Jocko’s quarters upstairs. The pocked-plaster walls are festooned with nautical paintings, none of them very good, and dozens of snapshots of customers with and without Jocko. The furniture is old and mismatched. There are a couple of ceiling fans, a bleached steer head mounted above the bar, a dartboard, and a blackboard with the daily menu chalked on it. Today’s specials are every day’s specials — conch chowder and callaloo, a pair of West Indian dishes.
That’s because Jocko is West Indian, a native of St. Croix. Plump, hairless, skin as sleek and shiny as a seal’s. In one ear he wears a big gold hoop that gives him a lopsided appearance. He smiles a lot, laughs often — a happy man.
The open-air window frames a view of the narrow inlet and the broad expanse of Round Bay beyond, and if you sit at the table in its exact center you can also see much of the far shore — the villa-spotted hills above Coral Bay, and the jungly slopes of Bordeaux Mountain, the highest point on St. John at 1,277 feet. That table and chair are mine by tacit agreement. On the rare occasions when I’m not in the cafe, Jocko refuses to let anybody else sit there. My seat, my window, my view.
On the scarred tabletop was my usual glass of Arundel Cane Rum. Arundel Estate is the oldest continuously operated distillery in the eastern Caribbean, and the only one that makes rum directly from sugar-cane juice. I won’t drink anything else. Jocko imports it for me from Tortola, once the largest pirate community in the neighboring British Virgins. He does it because he likes me. And he likes me for the same reason he reserves my table: I’m his best customer.
We were the only occupants when the man in the yachting cap came in. He’d been in a couple of times before, once to eat lunch and once to drink a beer and give me a couple of curious looks. Big man in white slacks and a patterned island shirt, with a rough-textured face like something sculpted out of wet sand. The yachting cap didn’t mean anything; he wasn’t off any of the pleasure craft anchored out on Round Bay. One of the slumming tourists from Cruz Bay or Coral Bay.
This time he didn’t sit at the bar. Thirty seconds after he walked in, he was standing between me and the window, looking down and smiling in a tentative way.
I said, “You’re blocking my view.”
“Oh, sorry.” He gestured at one of the empty chairs. “Mind if I join you?”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. I’ve seen you here before — always alone. I thought you might like some company.”
“As long as you don’t block the view.”
He positioned the chair carefully to my left, sat down, and fanned himself with his hand. “Hot.”
“Not so bad today. You should be here in July and August.”
“I’d rather not, thanks. My name’s Talley, John Talley.”
“Paul Anderson.”
“Buy you a drink, Paul?”
“I wouldn’t say no. Arundel Cane Rum, neat.”
“I’ll just have a cold beer. Too hot for rum.” He called out the order to Jocko. “I’m a writer,” he said to me.