“Fuck that ‘Sonny’ bullshit,” the tough one said.
But Paul had a hand on his shoulder and was turning him back.
“She really wants to see me?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “She does.”
Paul looked at the tough one. “I better go, then, Michael.”
“With this creep?” Michael said.
“Yeah.”
Michael glowered at me. The others did, too, but Michael had done some graduate work in glowering so he was the most impressive.
“Nice friends,” I said, as we turned back toward one of the exits. I said it loud enough to get Michael all worked up again. “Especially the dumb one with the big mouth.”
We sat in an Orange Julius.
“I thought we were going to Molly’s.”
“We are.”
“When?”
“Soon as you explain this.”
From my pocket, I took a stained paper sack. “Know what this is, Paul?”
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“There’s a hunting knife in there. A bloody one. I’ll bet the blood is Molly’s.”
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“You said that already.”
“That’s illegal.”
“What is?”
“Getting into my trunk that way.”
“Wanna go call the cops?”
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“How about calling me a bastard for a while? Breaks the monotony.”
“It isn’t what you think.”
“No? You ride around with a bloody knife in your trunk and you don’t have an alibi for the other night and it isn’t what I think? You’re telling me you didn’t cut her?”
He started crying then, sitting right there in Orange Julius. He put his face in his hands and wept. People watched us. Son and father, they probably figured, with the father being a prime asshole for making his son cry this way. I took out my clean handkerchief and handed it over to him. I felt sorry for him. I shouldn’t have but I did. Loving somebody can make you crazy. All the fine sane people in the mental health industry tell you you shouldn’t give into it so hard but you can’t help it. There was a poet named Charles Bukowski and he said that the most dangerous time to know any man is when he’s been spurned in love. And from my years as a cop dealing with domestic abuse cases, Bukowski was absolutely right. So I sat there hating him for what he’d done to poor poor Molly, and feeling sorry for him too. He’d ended her life, now I was going to make sure that his life was ended too. He’d be tried as an adult and serve a long long sentence. The way all men who visit their rages on helpless women should be sentenced.
He started snuffling then and picked up my handkerchief and blew his nose and said, “You still don’t understand, Dwyer.”
“Understand what?”
“What really happened.”
“Then tell me.”
So he told me and I said, “Bullshit. I should beat your face in for even saying that.”
“Let’s go see Molly.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
I walked across to the payphones, keeping my eye on him all the time. It was preposterous, what he’d said.
When Linda came on, I told her I was bringing Paul over and taking him up to the den to see Molly. I said I couldn’t answer her questions. She did not sound happy about that.
Soft silvered shadows played in the darkness of the den. Molly wore a pair of jeans and a white blouse and sat primly in the chair next to the dead TV. There was no question of turning on the lights. Molly had pretty much decided to live her life in darkness.
Paul and I sat on the edge of the narrow leather couch.
“He told me something crazy, Molly,” I said. “I just wanted to give you the chance to tell me he’s lying.”
“I had to tell him, Molly,” Paul said. “I’m sorry.”
I told her what he’d said and she said, “Paul loves me.”
“I guess I don’t know what that means, Molly,” I said gently. I was starting to get goosebumps because it appeared that Paul had told the truth, after all.
“He loves me. That’s why he did it.”
“Why he cut you up that way?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted him to cut you?”
“I asked him to. He didn’t want to. But I kept after him till he did it. I just couldn’t take the way people acted around me. My face. It’s why I was having all this trouble with my mother and my sister and my friends. I didn’t ask for my face, Mr. Dwyer. I’d be much happier if I was plain because then I wouldn’t have to have all these people after me like I was some sort of prize or something. I finally made him understand, didn’t I, Paul?”
“Yes,” Paul said.
“And he said he’d love me just as much if I didn’t have my looks. And he does, don’t you, Paul, even though I’ll never be beautiful again?”
Even in moonshadow, his young face looked set and grim. He nodded.
Then she started sobbing and Paul went over to her and knelt next to her and took her in his arms and held her with a tenderness that moved and shook me. This wasn’t puppy love or lust. This was real and simple and profound, the way his young arms held her young body. At that moment he was father and brother and priest and only coincidentally lover. I let myself out of the den and went downstairs.
8
“I’m having one, too,” Susan said, when her mother asked her to bring us beers.
She brought three and we sat in the breakfast nook and I told them what had happened.
Linda cried and Susan held her.
“You think we should go up there, Jack?” Susan said as her mother wept in her arms.
“I’d give them a few more minutes.”
“Do you think she’s sane?” Susan said.
I shrugged. “I think she probably needs to see a shrink.”
Linda sat up suddenly. She was angry. “That little prick took advantage of her. That’s why he cut her face that way. He figured if he made her ugly nobody else would want her. He was just being selfish, that’s why he did it.”
She made a fist and muttered a curse beneath her breath.
“You think that’s true, Jack?” Susan said.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe he did it because he really loves her,” Susan said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to that bullshit,” Linda said. “I’m going up there.”
And with that, she forced Susan out of the booth.
“Mother, maybe you’d better stay down here for a little while,” Susan called.
“She’s my god damned daughter,” Linda said, sounding hysterical. “My god damned daughter.”
She stormed off to the front of the house and the stairway.
Susan shook her head. “Maybe he really did do it because he loved her. Isn’t that possible, Jack?”
She wanted to believe in love and romance, just the same way I wanted to believe in being redeemed by the right woman. There was a good chance we were foolish people. Maybe very foolish.
Then Linda was screaming and Molly was sobbing and a terrible rage and despair filled the house, like the scent of rain on a sudden chill black wind.
Susan said, “Could I hold your hand for a minute, Jack? For just a minute.”
I did my best to smile but I don’t think it was very good. Not very good at all.
“For just a minute,” I said. “But not any longer.”
Angie
Roy said, “He heard us last night.”
Angie said, “Heard what?”
“Heard us talking about Gina.”
“No, he didn’t. He was asleep.”
“That’s what I thought. But I went back to the can one time and I saw his door was open and I looked in there and he was sittin’ up in bed, wide awake. Listenin’.”