King of Swords

At the liquor store he bought a quart of bourbon and smoked a Marlboro outside the cinema.

When he sat back down next to Sandra he tipped some of the bourbon into the cup. He offered Sandra some. She

352 shook her head and looked at him with a mixture of disgust and worry.

After the film was finished she insisted on driving his Mustang. He could see she was pissed off with him.

'Did you enjoy the film?' he said as they went down Alton Road.

'How much do you drink?' she asked.

'I'm sorry about that '

'How much do you drink, Max?'

'On and off, some days more than others.'

'So you drink every day?'

'Yeah.'

Why?'

'All kindsa reasons: unwinding, socializing, something bad's happened. And 'cause I like it,' he said. 'A lotta cops drink.'

'Why did you drink in the cinema?'

'I thought the film was boring. I needed a break.'

'You were with me.' She sounded hurt.

'You weren't up on the screen,' he quipped.

'Do you have a drink problem?'

'I don't think so, no.'

' 'Cause I'll tell you this now, I am not having a relationship with an alcoholic. There'll be four of us in the same room: you and me, the person you turn into when you're loaded and the bottle. I am not going to live like that. No way.' She was angry.

'Jeez, Sandra, I'm sorry, all right?'

She was having none of it.

'I had an uncle who was an alcoholic. He died of cirrhosis.

I le was in a lot of pain at the end, puking blood, scratching his skin raw. I don't want to have to go through that with you, if I can help it.'

They turned on to 15 th Street. Max lit a cigarette.

35 3 'And that's something else that's going to have to go.'

'Damn, Sandra!'

'Kissing you's about as close as I can get to licking a dirty ashtray. You ever licked an ashtray, Max?'

'I like smoking,' Max protested.

'No, you don't. You're just hooked. A junkie like Pam Grier was in the movie.'

'A junkie} Me? Get outta here!'

'Have you tried to quit?'

'No.'

'Bet you can't imagine life without one, huh?'

'I wasn't born with a cigarette in my mouth,' Max said.

'Have you ever smoked?'

'I tried it once and thought it was disgusting. Which it is.

And it's dangerous too.'

'So's livin' in Miami.' Max chuckled. 'Besides, cigarettes go great with coffee, drink, after sex, after a meal —'

'They don't go great with life.' Sandra cut him off. 'Are you going to be one of those guys you see, aged sixty, wheeling an oxygen tank around with tubes in their nose 'cause they've got emphysema and can't breathe? Or one of those people with a hole in his throat and a battery-operated voicebox?'

'You're assuming a lot,' Max said.

'Like what?'

'Like we're going to be together that long. I mean, we haven't even — you know — slept together.'

'You haven't asked.'

'I have to ask you?'

'I'm an old-fashioned girl,' Sandra said.

'I thought you wanted to take it slow.'

'You haven't even made a move in — in what's it been? — a month?'

'I didn't wanna scare you off. But since you're offerin' — your place or mine?'

3 54 'We're going to yours,' she said.

'I warn you, it's a tip.'

'I figured that,' she replied. 'Besides, my mama always told me to beware of a man with a tidy house. He's either loco or a maricon?

45

In his apartment in South Miami Heights, Joe put on his favourite sad song — Bruce Springsteen's 'The Promise' and sat back in his armchair with a glass of red wine.

Lina had just cleared away the plates and blown out the candles from their dinner. It should have been a happy occasion for him — a quiet confirmation of his love for the woman he wanted to marry. But instead, Joe felt bad. He couldn't slip away from the shadows in his mind and let go the heaviness in his heart.

'The Promise' was an unreleased song from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, which Bruce had played sporadically on his 1978 tour. It was a tortured, tragic dirge about betrayal and broken dreams, a loser's lament played solo on piano. The recording wasn't the best, taped at a Seattle gig by a member of the audience, but you couldn't hear another sound in the building, save that of someone who's reached the end of the rainbow and found absolutely nothing there but a cold open road to nowhere. To Joe it was the greatest, most moving song Bruce had ever written, and one whose words were coming to mean more and more to him every day.

Joe could have done with a joint right now, to go with the booze and the music. It would have been nice to get his head up a little. He'd always smoked grass with Max, and they'd always ended up laughing hysterically about stupid shit. Like the time they'd played the only white rock record Max owned — a 12 inch single of the Rolling Stones' 'Miss You' — about fifty times over, taking it in turns to imitate Jagger's mid-song rap about Puerto Rican girls that was juss

6 daaahyunnn ta meeetchooo. Eventually, when the high had worn off and they'd got sick of the song, Max had taken the record off and they'd gone down to the beach and played frisbee with it. The thought that he'd have to betray his friend and turn all those good memories to shit was killing him and poisoning everything in the process.

'Bad day?' Lina came into the room and sat down next to him. She still looked every bit as good to him as when he'd spotted her in church across from the altar: petite, dark-skinned, with short hair, high cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes and the kind of smile that could pull him out of the deepest darkest hole, but she wasn't smiling now. She was sharing his troubles.

'Forgot what a good one is.' Joe sighed, gulping down half his wine. He'd told her some of what was happening, how MTF was really run and how he was going to get transferred to public relations after the Moyez case was over.