“Have her do it. Maybe she got a thing for old men. You never know,” he cackled, waving goodbye. “Get me a good night’s sleep, just in case.”
Raymer watched as Mr. Hynes shuffled down the dark corridor, one hand along the wall to steady himself. He tried to imagine his days, sitting outside in a lawn chair, hour upon hour, waving a little American flag at passersby. He recalled what Jerome had said earlier at Gert’s — that taking the time to talk to a lonely old man really was what police work was all about. He would’ve liked to believe Jerome was right, though a better policeman wouldn’t have allowed Mr. Hynes to remain at the Morrison Arms tonight. He’d have ignored his preference and made the man safe.
“I was about to go in there after you,” Charice said when he emerged from the building. “What took you so long?”
“I packed a bag,” he said, holding it up.
When they got into the car, she left her door open so the dome light stayed on and arched an eyebrow at him. “You think you’re stayin’ over? You think lamb chops is just the first course?”
“God no, Charice,” he said, feeling himself flush.
Her eyebrow elevated even farther now. “What do you mean, ‘God no’? Like you wouldn’t think of staying, even if you got invited? Is that what ‘God no’ means?”
“No, Charice,” he said. “All I meant was…”
She was grinning at him now, which meant she’d been toying with him again, as with the fake menu of fried chicken and collard greens.
“I just wish you wouldn’t be so mean to me,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I wish I wouldn’t, too. I just can’t help myself, I guess.”
“Please try.”
“I know one thing,” she said, turning the key in the ignition and closing the door. “Next time I’m coming in with you. No more sitting out in the parking lot, wondering if you’re lying snakebit on the floor in there.”
He looked over at her, but with the light out it was impossible to read her expression. It would have been nice to believe that maybe this was the beginning of a friendship, but how could you be friends with a woman if you never knew when she was making fun of you? At least with Becka, he told himself, then stopped. Had he completed the thought, it would’ve been: he’d known where he stood. But that wasn’t true. He hadn’t known where he stood with Becka. He’d just imagined he did.
“There might not be a next time,” he told Charice, something like an intention forming in the part of his skull where his headache had been earlier. Until that moment he hadn’t even been aware that it was gone. “I’m thinking about moving.”
On, he thought. He was thinking about moving on.
Spinmatics
FOR A WEEKDAY NIGHT, the White Horse was busy, its booths all occupied by out-of-towners, half of whom were talking on cellular telephones. Where most were headed — Lakes George, Placid, Schroon and Champlain — they’d have no service. Those headed up the interstate to Montreal wouldn’t have reception for a good three hours. So many downstaters heading north this early in the season should’ve been good news for Birdie, whose sweat equity made her co-owner of the establishment, but in fact she looked like someone who was about to burn her half to the ground. Weird how every single woman Sully knew — Ruth, Janey, Bootsie and now Birdie — was on the warpath, as if they’d all received the same gender-coded message on the wind. “Perfect,” Birdie said, glancing up and watching Sully and the two Rubs come inside. “Now my night is complete.”
Sully slid onto the only vacant stool, right next to Jocko, who was still wearing his Rexall pharmacy smock, and slapped a couple twenties on the bar to ensure his welcome. “Is it me,” Sully said, “or is she happier to see us in the winter, after all the rich tourists have split?”
“Actually,” Jocko said, “I’ve never felt particularly welcome here in any season.”
“Sit, Rub,” Sully said, and the dog curled up beneath his stool.
“Where?” said Rub, realizing as he did that he had fallen for the joke yet again.
“What can I get you, Rub?” Birdie asked.
He sighed. In the two decades he’d been drinking at the Horse, his order had never varied even once. Why couldn’t she just bring him what she knew he wanted?
“A buh-buh-buh—”
“Beer,” Sully translated.
“What kind?”
“Buh-buh—”
“Budweiser,” Sully said.
“Anything else?”
Rub looked at Sully, who’d sometimes spring for a burger, sometimes not. “Go ahead,” he told him. “You’ve had a hard day.” Which meant it wouldn’t be long before he launched into the story he’d promised driving over not to tell.
“A buh-buh-buh—”
“Burger,” Sully said.
“Anything on it?”
“Buh—”
“Bacon.”
Jocko’s shoulders were shaking now. “Jesus, you people are cruel,” he said.
“And cheese,” Rub added, since he liked cheese and the word was easy to say.
Birdie turned to Sully. “You?”
“Just a draft.”
“You should eat something. You look terrible.”
“No appetite,” he confessed, which was strange, because he’d been hungry earlier. Probably Bootsie and her syringe. Otherwise, he was actually feeling better, his chest less heavy, his breathing easier than it had been all day. “What’s got your knickers all in a twist?”
Birdie shot him a don’t-get-me-started look and then got started. “Buddy called in drunk again, an hour before his shift, so I had to scramble to find a cook.”
A waitress emerged from the kitchen just then, a silver tray balanced on her shoulder, and before the door swung shut behind her Sully caught a glimpse of Janey working the grill.
“Then I broke a glass in the ice and did this cleaning it up.” She held up her left hand, swaddled with half-a-dozen overlapping Band-Aids between thumb and forefinger.
“I wondered why my pinot grigio was pink,” Jocko said, holding his glass up to the light.
“Yeah, sure,” Sully said, “but what kind of man drinks that to begin with?”
“A confident man? A man with no need to demonstrate his masculinity?”
Sully rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that must be it.”
“Then Bridget lets a table of eight skip out on steak dinners and five bottles of wine.”
The guilty waitress just then happened by on her way to the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “I’ve got twice the number of tables I should, and you know it.”
Birdie ignored her. “It’s still two full weeks before my summer staff shows up, half of which probably found other jobs and never bothered to tell me.”
Rub, who disliked standing when everybody else had a seat, was eyeing a four-top booth that two couples were getting ready to vacate. He’d been hoping to find the Horse deserted, so he could have Sully all to himself. If he could convince him to move to the booth, he could tell him about Raymer fainting in the heat and falling headfirst into the judge’s grave. The story would appeal to Sully, who’d probably commandeer it as his own immediately. By this time tomorrow night he’d have told half the town. But he was an inspired storyteller, so Rub wouldn’t mind the theft. In fact, he enjoyed watching one of his stories evolve in Sully’s hands until he himself, its source, had disappeared completely. These days his own storytelling was undermined by his stammer, as well as by his conviction that a story had to be true. Sully was hampered by neither Rub’s condition nor his strictness. He shamelessly embellished, invented, reshaped and tailored every narrative, emphasizing with each new version the elements that provoked the most laughs or stunned disbelief in previous tellings, eliminating other elements that unexpectedly fell flat. At first he might credit Rub as his source, but as he grew more confident, he’d relate the story as if he himself had been the sole eyewitness. With Sully’s best efforts, Rub sometimes wished he’d been there to enjoy the events his friend was describing, until he remembered he actually had been.