“Jerome?”
“He’s coming to work for us?”
“No.”
Miller looked dubious. “Then why’s he always hanging around?”
“I’ve asked myself the same question,” Raymer admitted, recalling that afternoon’s conversation between Gus and Jerome at the mill. Was Jerome considering some sort of offer? The mayor pressing him for an answer? At the time Raymer, his head throbbing mercilessly, hadn’t given the matter much thought. Gus always had something going on. But maybe Miller was onto something. Was Raymer to be replaced — by Jerome? Had Jerome surmised that Raymer had found out about the plot against him and keyed the ’Stang in retaliation? If so, what part had Charice played in all this? Had she invited him to dinner in the hopes of figuring out what, if anything, he knew? That phone call she’d received just as he was drifting off on the back porch? Her casual tone had suggested she was talking to a girlfriend with boy trouble. (What had she said? As usual, you’re getting all worked up over nothing.) But what if it was Jerome who’d called, wanting to know what she’d learned? That made a kind of sense, except that Charice hadn’t seemed particularly curious during dinner. She’d spent more time trying to explain her brother’s bizarre behavior than questioning Raymer about his own.
“I wonder where she went?” Miller said, what seemed to Raymer a completely out-of-left-field question.
“Who?”
“Charice. Officer Bond.”
“She went somewhere?”
“Her car wasn’t in the drive just now.”
This was true, Raymer realized. Her Civic hadn’t been there. He’d been so focused on her destroyed porch he hadn’t really taken in the car’s absence and what that might mean. A wave of relief washed over him then, because among other things it meant that when he’d been pleading with Charice to let him back in the house, she hadn’t even been there. Nor had she heard his truly lame offer to reimburse her for the lamb chops or his pitiful admission that he was a terrible cop and a worse chief of police. She must’ve left shortly after receiving that phone call. Maybe she’d come to the screen door to explain that she’d be back shortly, seen him blissfully asleep and switched off the kitchen light so as not to disturb him. Maybe she’d locked the screen door to indicate he wasn’t supposed to leave until she returned. Okay, that last part made no sense, but maybe there was still some small piece of the puzzle he was missing. The important thing was that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t pissed at him after all — although it was also true that in this same scenario she didn’t know he’d managed to ruin her landlord’s porch totally. Maybe, he thought happily, they’d conclude it had been destroyed by that lightning strike.
“Miller,” Raymer said, impressed that the man had actually noticed the missing car. “You may make a cop yet.”
“Really?”
“You should stop stalking Officer Bond, though.”
“I know,” he said. “You probably think I’m a creep.”
“No, but she would.”
He nodded sadly. “Chief?” he said. “You think she’d go out with somebody like me?”
Not really wanting to answer this question, Raymer sought clarification. “You or somebody like you?” Because Raymer himself, he had to admit, was “like” Miller: perpetually bewildered and self-conscious and full of self-loathing. So yeah, it would’ve been nice to be able to say that Charice could conceivably fall for somebody like Miller, if not Miller himself.
The breeze came up just then, lifting Raymer’s hair as it had done on Charice’s porch, and yet again he felt, or imagined he did, Becka’s proximity, her need to communicate something to him. He even had a glimmer of what it might be.
Miller was looking glum. “Would I get fired? If I asked her out and she said yes?”
“It’s against the rules for me to date her, not you. I’m her boss. Whereas you…” Raymer struggled to locate the exact language needed to describe a relationship between Charice and Miller that didn’t exist and hopefully never would.
“I’m nothing,” he said, finally putting the cruiser in gear. “I know.”
Rub’s Penis
DURING THE LONG SECOND ACT of Sully’s life, he’d made it a point not only to be present for last call most nights but also to go on record as objecting to the concept as arbitrary and puritanical. These days, however, his third act well under way, though his core belief hadn’t changed, his behavior had. At seventy, in what at least his doctors believed to be terminally failing health, Sully had reluctantly come to suspect that misbehavior was a younger man’s sport. He’d played it longer than most, though, and tonight, thanks to Ruth’s heartfelt permission to stay away from Hattie’s for a while and the fact that his breathing had inexplicably improved as the day progressed, he fell gratefully and effortlessly back into the routine that had suited him so well for so long. As the thunderstorms rolled through, dimming lights and flinging rain at the walls outside, Sully reflected, and not for the first time, that there was no better place to be during violent weather than on a barstool. In any weather, for that matter.
The Horse remained lively until close to midnight, when the last of the storms headed north and word started to circulate that the power was back on in town. People began to drift out into the (finally!) cool night, leaving behind Birdie and Sully and Jocko and the Rubs. When Janey finished her shift Sully offered to buy her a drink, but she just looked at him like he was insane. What the fuck was this? Like maybe he was hoping to take up with her, now that her mother wasn’t interested anymore? Nothing could have been further from Sully’s mind, but her instinct was probably right. How would it have looked if she accepted his offer of a drink and settled onto the stool next to him? Besides, Rub wasn’t done with his litany of wishes yet. Having spent his afternoon in a tree, he seemed even needier than usual, if that was possible, so Sully let him get it all out of his system.
Half an hour before last call Carl Roebuck strolled in with a very drunk young woman roughly Janey’s age on his arm. She was exactly the sort Carl always seemed to attract: dim-witted or pretending to be, large breasted, oversexed. “Let’s play poker,” he suggested, taking out his wallet and counting the bills therein. “Ninety-eight dollars,” he said, slapping them on the bar. “And not just any ninety-eight dollars. My last ninety-eight dollars in the world.”
“Show of hands,” Sully said. “Who here feels sorry for Carl?”
“Let this be a lesson to you,” Carl told his companion, when she alone raised her hand. “This is the wrong fucking place to come if you’re looking for sympathy.”
“On the other hand,” Birdie said, handing him his usual Maker’s, “if you’re looking for alcohol…”
Apparently in response to the poker game idea, the young woman stood on tiptoe to whisper into his ear, all too audibly, “I thought you said you were going to take me home and fuck me.”
Birdie snorted at this. “You must be from out of town,” she said.
“Later,” Carl whispered back. Then, to Birdie, “Say hello to Jennifer, who’d like a Cuba libre, that is, if you can stop making fun of other people’s tribulations long enough to make her one. As you deduced, Jennifer here hails from Lake George and is not fully cognizant of certain extremely personal matters.”
Jennifer scrunched her shoulders. “I love the way he talks,” she said.
“Yeah, me too,” Birdie said, pouring rum over ice.
Rub, as he always did with Carl’s girlfriends, commenced staring at Jennifer’s chest, his expression identical to the one he always wore when contemplating big ole bacon cheeseburgers. Seeing she had his undivided attention, Jennifer extended her hand in greeting. “Hi!” she said. “What’s your name?”