"And where'd you put him after you stuffed him?" I ask.
"The fireplace, where you see him now."
"I'm talking about Tommy's father."
The clerk's smile falters. He takes in the oil rag I'm holding to my cheek. "You seem to be bleeding, sir."
"So I do, isn't that something?"
Lancy steps in before things can get any happier. He flashes the badge with the All-Seeing Eye, lays down some cash. He gets two keys and a receipt.
"And some quinine, some bandages for my friend," he says. "And remember, there's two others coming, so keep an eye out for them too."
"Will they have identification?"
"You'll know them by their sloping skulls," I say. Then Lancy hustles me over to the stairway.
"You're going to want to lay off," he says. I don't answer. He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes. "I don't know, Frank," he says. "I just don't know. You realize I'm going to have to make a report out, don't you? What am I supposed to put on it? What am I supposed to say?"
"Put down that thing about the Mandans being Jewish, Kepler will like that."
"Listen." Lancy isn't fooling now. He presses two fingers into my chest. "Listen. Do you want this, Frank? Do you want to be back with the Agency?"
I look at the carpet, but it's the color of old blood. I look at the wallpaper but it's blue fleur-de-lis. I close my eyes.
"Do you, Frank?"
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"Because it's been a long time. And I know it hasn't been any picnic for you, the war, the in-between years, the sanitarium, all that."
"It wasn't a – ."
"Whatever you call it. Call it whatever you call it. You're back now, it doesn't matter. And we're glad to have you on board again. All of us. People still remember you, the new recruits hear stories, they want to be like you. Morris and Hinks, believe it or not. You could do a lot of good. Especially for those who worked like hell to get you this job. Me, for one. I put myself on the line, Frank."
"I know you did."
"All right then."
"I'm sorry about Cranovicz."
"That's all right."
"I broke his jaw, is all."
Lancy nods unhappily. "Well, that'll shut him up for now. He'll catch it one way or the other. Forget about him. Clean up. Rest. It looks like you've got the honeymoon suite."
He gives me the key. I look at it. One end is shaped like a valentine.
"Who's idea was this?"
Lancy shrugs. "Just worked out that way. There's a greenhouse next door, maybe you'll have fresh-cut flowers, a heart-shaped bed." He opens the door to his room. "Least it'll be clean," he says, "it'll make up for El Paso. Good night, Frank." And he shuts the door behind him.
The honeymoon suite. Someone at the Agency has a sense of humor. I cross slowly down to the end of the hall, and there I stop. The last door has ivy painted around the edges, and says Les Newlyweds in gold lettering. I stand there a while, looking at it, not wanting to enter but having nowhere else to go. My hand drifts up to my ripped cheek, comes away wet.
All of a sudden a case of the shakes catches me by surprise, and I grab the doorknob for support. I take long, slow gulps of air. Rest, I think, I need rest.
But when I open the door, it's not rest that comes to me. I've only taken two steps into the darkness when I smell it, a whiff of something dark and cloying and sweet.
Maybe you'll have fresh cut flowers, Lancy had said. And I do.
Lilacs.
I stand there in the darkness, breathing in the scent. Suddenly my gorge rises. I step back, slam the door shut, leaving a red smear below Les Newlyweds.
Halfway down the stairs I run into Tommy the Mandan. He's got my suitcase in one hand and a stack of bandages in another.
"Your bags, sir."
"Set it down."
"Down?"
"Down." I pull off his top hat, drop a pocketful of coins into it, hand it back to him. "Tommy, where can a working man find some refreshment on a Friday night, a town like this?"
"Refreshment?"
I make a hand gesture.
"Oh," he says, his glasses flashing. "Refreshment."
And the hunt is on.
# # # # # #
The town's small and the hour's late, but the boy knows his way around. Within the hour I'm walking back up the steps to my room, holding a paper bag filled with two bottles of McCullum's, two Old Crow, and a Booth Ultre. It's good stuff, too, uncut. The steals are still intact. But with every step my mood gets blacker.
Coming back we stopped at a fountain to clean my face and strap on the bandages. The cuts are deeper than I'd thought, three grooves beginning at my jaw and curving up to my cheekbone. Removing the oil rag sets them bleeding afresh, and now I can feel the bandages stiffening with blood and quinine.
The scent of quinine takes me back. Back to the old days, after I had graduated from beer to wine and wine to whiskey, and could no longer afford any of them. The war had only made my habit worse, and after I came home it really took off. I lost my job at the Agency, lost Ingrid, lost the memory of what my own face looked like. The last step on the rung, I got a job mopping the floors at a morgue in St. Louis. It paid five dollars a week, and I only took it because no one kept track of the formaldehyde. By then, that was the only thing that worked. I'd bring in jugs of cantaloupe-water from Little Mexico to cut it with, and drink all night. One night I didn't even have that, so I sat there, cotton up my nose, swallowing the stuff straight until I bled from the eyes like a horny-toad.
That was a year ago, a year that I spent mostly at the Osterhausen Sanitarium in Reno, Nevada. It's free of charge to Mormons, so I converted on the spot. I went to service every day, along with my treatments, for an entire year.
You'd think that memories of this kind would make me toss this paper bag in the trash. I would think so, too. But it's not the case. Climbing up these creeking steps in Bridgewater, Idaho, I can't really remember the tears, the vomit, the hours of work I put in to get this far. The past and the future disappear in a blur of Chesterfield smoke. And the present smells only of lilacs.
By the time I get to my room, my whole body is shaking like a tuning fork. When I open the door to Les Newlyweds, I catch a whiff of that dark taint of lilac, ripe to the point of rot. I thought I was ready for it. I'm not. But I press on anyway, into the room. A lamp has been left on, and by its light I see that there are no cut flowers, no heart-shaped bed. Only a standard queen with a red coverlet.
And on it, Ingrid.
I stop short. She's sitting there, her hands on her hat, her hat in her lap. I see that her hair has been bobbed, but the bangs are tousled to one side. The lamplight makes one side of her face glow, and leaves the rest to the shadows.
I stare at her and she stares back, crumpling her cloche hat. I open my mouth but all that comes out is, "You."
She nods. Her mouth is tight, her eyes shadowed. "I'm sorry," she says.
I'd forgotten her voice. Low, like torn felt. It works on me. The floor tilts and I brace myself. The bottles clink in the bag.
She hears the noise, looks at what I'm holding. Her upper lip gets the better of her lower. "What's in the bag?"
"Dishware. Why?"
She draws a shaky breath, says, "I didn't come here to fight."
"Why did you come?"
"Because it wasn't fair, what happened. I didn't mean to leave. That is, I meant to leave, but not without talking to you. That's why I went in the first place. To talk."
"About what?"
Her brow crinkles in that way it does. "Oh Frank," she says.