When it had become clear that Resnick’s marriage was over, his wife of six years setting off for pastures new, his first reaction had been to sell the house, find a flat, make a statement that now he was on his own. But the kind of energy required to go through that process had been lacking. Whatever else it was, the house-big and rambling for two, absurd for one-was comfortable. He called Family First and made them a present of the three-piece suite from Hopewell’s that had almost cost a second mortgage, took himself down to the auctions at the cattle market and replaced it with something older, broken in, the shape of other lives already impressed into the upholstery.
So he had stayed there and got on with his life and, opening the door one day to say no thank you to a pair of neatly suited young men who wanted to interest him in attending a class in non denominational readings from the Bible, a skinny young black cat had wandered in, ribs visible through falling fur. Resnick had fed him with chicken scraps and cheese and warmed milk. The cat had bolted the food, all the while glancing round nervously, and as soon as both saucers were licked clean, dashed to the door, and demanded to be let out.
Three days later, he was back.
Then the second day.
Then every day.
The first time the cat jumped on to Resnick’s lap and allowed himself to be stroked, Resnick was listening to the Prestige album, In the Beginning. You know, the blue fold-out cover with the beautiful picture of a handsome Dizzy Gillespie boxed in red. “Oop Bop Sh’Bam” with Sonny Stitt on alto, Milt Jackson on vibes. Dizzy’s solo taking them into the final theme, vocal coda, slurred notes at the end.
“Dizzy,” Resnick had smiled, feeling the new weight beneath the cat’s improving coat, and the animal had looked back at him with wide green eyes.
A few months later, a younger cat had appeared.
Miles: who else?
The following year, Pepper and Bud had strayed and stayed. Resnick fed them with little fuss and they grew used to his odd hours, demanding as little of him as he did of them.
He drank some more of the black coffee and started on the second open sandwich, olive oil from the sun-dried tomatoes sliding into the cracks of his fingers and making small stains to join those he was already wearing on his tie. Last time he had tried, the assistant in Sketchley’s had given him a you-must-be-joking look and handed him his ties back.
The letter lay on the small table alongside the easy chair, beside the telephone, resting on the cover of the Spike Robinson he was now playing. The stamps, the air mail sticker, he could only think of a couple of people who might be writing to him from the States, but neither of them from-where was it? — Maine? Pete Barnard was a jazz fan he knew, a dermatologist who was now working in Chicago, and Ben, Ben Riley, he hadn’t heard from Ben in ages, seemed to have lost touch, but when he had, Ben had been out in Montana somewhere, wearing a deputy’s hat and driving a jeep. Surely that wasn’t Ben Riley’s writing?
Of course, it was.
Here I am, Charlie, out in Ellsworth, Maine, enjoying the good life and working none-too-hard for the County police department.
The first of the Polaroids Ben had enclosed showed him with his hat and badge and holstered gun and, those aside, it wasn’t only the handwriting that the intervening years had changed. Ben was a lot fuller in the face, something akin to jowls hanging down towards a neck that showed a tendency to spread over his shirt collar. Gun belt and trouser belt served to support a sagging stomach that would have been more alarming had it not been for the expression of contentment on Ben Riley’s face.
Getting myself across to the east of the country has worked out fine, especially since I met Ali, my second wife.
Resnick wasn’t sure that he had known about the first. Mentally, she’s made me face up to a few things, knuckle down, cut back on the drinking, and learn to take myself more seriously. Of course, young Max has had a lot to do with that.
Alison was a broad-faced blonde who stared straight at the camera lens as if daring it to talk back. She looked thirty-four or — five, ten years younger than Ben, arms folded across her chest, wearing a check shirt and blue jeans. Max had her hair, his father’s eyes and looked pretty steady on his feet for the two years Ben assigned to him elsewhere in the letter.
Put together some of that holiday time you’re never using and get out here and see us, Charlie. There’s this little restaurant right by the Grand cinema, serves the best Thai food outside the Pacific. I guess, whatever else has happened to you, you do still enjoy your food.
The music clicked off and the cat that had wandered onto Resnick’s lap jumped down again and ate the fragments of ham that had dropped to the floor. Resnick slid the letter and the photographs back into their envelope and walked across the room, poured himself a drink. In 1981, when Resnick had been standing in that garage, staring into Prior’s face, reaching out to take his gun, Ben Riley had been the first officer through the door.
Eleven
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing. What d’you mean?”
“I hardly recognized you.”
They were in the cafe on West End Arcade, opposite the bottom of the escalator, Darren and Keith, the place in the city where they met, mornings, table close against the window. Every now and then there’d be some woman, short skirt, ascending in front of their eyes.
Keith was still staring at Darren, gone out. “How much’t cost, get it done?”
Darren ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Nothing.”
“How d’you mean, nothing?”
“Got someone to do it for me.”
“What someone?”
“Some girl.”
There was an old boy in the corner, chewing his way through two of toast, careful to break off the ends of brittle crust rather than risk his teeth. A young mum with a tired face was dipping her baby’s dummy into sweet tea and pushing it against the child’s squalling face. Couple of retro-punks waiting for the record shop back down the arcade to open, rifle through the racks of rare singles they couldn’t afford to buy.
“’Nother tea?”
Keith nodded. “Yeh, ta.”
“Anything to eat?”
Keith shook his head. “Skint.”
“I’m buying.”
While they were waiting for the sausage cobs, Keith marveled at the difference Darren’s haircut made to his face. Suddenly it was sharper, harder, his nose seemed larger, jutting out from the center of his face; and the eyes … Keith didn’t think he’d ever noticed them before, not really, blue-gray but bright, dead bright, as if for the first time they’d been let out from under a cloud.
“So what d’you think? Suit me?”
“Yeh. Yes. It’s good. Really is.”
“But you didn’t recognize me, right?”
“Well, I …”
“When I come in, you said …”
“I knew, but not straight off.”
“It’s the hair, right?”
“Yeh, of course …”
“Anyone as saw me before, just saw me, that’s what they’d pick on, what they’d say-hair, he’s got all this curly hair.”
“Yes.”
“That girl yesterday …”
“The one you got to cut it off?”
“The one in the building society. Lorna.”
“’S’that her name?”
“Lorna Solomon.”
“What about her?”