The next night Dr. Carson came with a metal box that looked exactly the same as the one before, green with a silver handle. He went into the bedroom with Jan and closed the door while Starling sat in the living room, watched TV and drank beer. It was Christmastime and Andy Williams was on, singing carols with a man in a bear suit. After a while a loud whirring noise, like an expensive blender, came out of the bedroom. It continued for a while, then stopped, then started. Starling became nervous. Dr. Carson, he knew, was mixing up his little baby, and Jan was feeling excruciating pain but wasn’t making noise. Starling felt sick then with fear and guilt and helplessness. And with love. It was the first time he knew he knew what real love was, his love for his wife and for all the things he valued in his life but could so easily lose.
Later, Dr. Carson came out and said everything would be fine. He smiled and shook Starling’s hand and called him Ted, which was the phony name Starling had given him. Starling paid him the money in hundreds, and when Dr. Carson drove off, Starling stood out on the tiny balcony and waved. The doctor blinked his headlights, and in the distance Starling could see a small private plane settling down to the airport in the dark, its red taillight blinking like a wishing star.
Starling wondered where the hell Jan was now, or Dr. Carson, fifteen years later. Jan had gotten peritonitis and almost died after that, and when she got well she wasn’t interested in being married to Eddie Starling anymore. She seemed very disappointed. Three months later she had gone to Japan, where she’d had a pen pal since high school, someone named Haruki. For a while she wrote Starling letters, then stopped. Maybe, he thought, she had moved back down to L.A. with her mother. He wished his own mother was alive still, and he could call her up. He was thirty-nine years old, though, and he knew it wouldn’t help.
Starling drove along the river for a few miles until the wide vegetable and cantaloupe fields opened out, and the horizon extended a long way in the heat to a hazy wind line of Lombardy poplars. High, slat-sided trucks sat stationed against the white skyline, and men were picking in the near fields and beyond in long, dense crews. Mexicans, Starling thought, transients who worked for nothing. It was a depressing thought. There was nothing they could do to help themselves, but it was still depressing, and Starling pulled across the road and turned back toward town.
He drove out toward the airport, along the strip where it was mostly franchises and consignment lots and little shopping plazas, some of which he had once found the tenants for. All along the way, people had put up fireworks stands for the Fourth of July, red-white-and-blue banners fluttering on the hot breeze. Some of these people undoubtedly lived out where he and Lois lived now, in the same subdivision. That would mean something, he thought, if one day you found yourself looking out at the world going past from inside a fireworks stand. Things would’ve gotten far out of hand when that time came, there was no arguing it.
He thought about driving past the apartment to see if the nurses who sublet it were keeping up the little yard. The nurses, Jeri and Madeline, were two big dykes with men’s haircuts and baggy clothes. They were friendly types, and in the real estate business dykes were considered A-Is — good tenants. They paid their rent, kept quiet, maintained property in good order, and held a firm stake in the status quo. They were like a married couple, was the business reasoning. Thinking about Jeri and Madeline, he drove past the light where their turn was, then just decided to keep driving.
There was nothing to do now, Starling thought, but drive out to the bar. The afternoon shift meant no one came in until Lois was almost ready to leave, and sometimes they could have the bar to themselves. Reiner would be gone by now and it would be cool inside, and he and Lois could have a quiet drink together, toast better cards on the next deal. They had had good times doing nothing but sitting talking.
Lois was leaning over the jukebox across from the bar when Starling came in. Mel, the owner, took afternoons off, and the place was empty. A darkgreen bar light shone over everything, and the room was cool.
He was glad to see Lois. She had on tight black slacks and a frilly white top and looked jaunty. Lois was a jaunty woman to begin with, and he was happy he’d come.
He had met Lois in a bar called the AmVets down in Rio Vista. It was before she and Louie Reiner became a twosome, and when he saw her in a bar now it always made him think of things then. That had been a high time, and when they talked about it Lois liked to say, “Some people are just meant to experience the highest moments of their lives in bars.”
Starling sat on a bar stool.
“I hope you came down here to dance with your wife,” Lois said, still leaning over the jukebox. She punched a selection and turned around, smiling. “I figured you’d waltz in here pretty soon.” Lois came by and patted him on the cheek. “I went ahead and punched in all your favorites.”
“Let’s have a drink first,” Starling said. “I’ve got an edge that needs a drink.”
“Drink first, dance second,” Lois said and went behind the bar and got down the bottle of Tanqueray.
“Mel wouldn’t mind,” Starling said.
“Mary-had-a-little-lamb,” Lois said while she poured a glassful. She looked up at Starling and smiled. “It’s five o’clock someplace on the planet. Here’s to old Mel.”
“And some better luck,” Starling said, taking a big first drink of gin and letting it trickle down his throat as slowly as he could.
Lois had been drinking already, he was sure, with Reiner. That wasn’t the best he could have hoped for, but it could be worse. She and Reiner could be shacked up in a motel, or on their way to Reno or the Bahamas. Reiner was gone, and that was a blessing, and he wasn’t going to let Reiner cast a shadow on things.
“Poor old Lou,” Lois said and came around the bar with a pink drink she’d poured out of the blender.
“Poor Lou what?” Starling said.
Lois sat down beside him on a bar stool and lit a cigarette. “Oh, his stomach’s all shot and he’s got an ulcer. He said he worries too much.” She blew out the match and stared at it. “You want to hear what he drinks?”
“Who cares what a dope like Reiner drinks out of a glass,” Starling said.
Lois looked at him, then stared at the mirror behind the bar. The smoky mirror showed two people sitting at a bar alone. A slow country tune started to play, a tune Starling liked, and he liked the way — with the gin around it — it seemed to ease him away from his own troubles. “So tell me what Reiner drinks,” he said.
“Wodka,” Lois said matter-of-factly. “That’s the way he says it. Wodka. Like Russian. Wodka with coconut milk — a Hawiian Russian. He say it’s for his stomach, which he says is better though it’s still a wreck. He’s a walking pharmacy. And he’s gotten a lot fatter, too, and his eyes bulge, and he wears a full Cleveland now. I don’t know.” Lois shook her head and smoked her cigarette. “He’s got a cute girlfriend, though, this Jackie, from Del Rio Beach. She looks like Little Bo Peep.”