Old Flames

by Jack Ketchum

  The bartender asked if she’d like another. Two was her limit. Her third was nearly gone. Sure, she said. Ralphie ordered a Bud Lite.

  “I guess I just got to missing him,” Estha said. “You know? All those people from the old days? So I remembered hearing about this agency, some item in the magazine section or something from ages ago. But the name stuck with me so I decided to try them out. Flame Finders. A kind of specialized branch of this big detective agency. They’re right here in the City. Seven hundred fifty dollars or something and they’ll find anybody, if he’s findable, anywhere, all over the world.”

  “And I’m damn glad they did,” he said.

  “Listen, you should look them up!” she said. “See what old Jimmy’s doing nowadays.”

  She leaned in out of Ralphie’s earshot.

  “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “Just between you and me. He could never go this long back in high school.”

  THREE

  Dora and Will

  Thank god for Barbara. She was the one with the head for figures and the knack with computers. She was at it now. Keys clicking away while Dora on the other hand fine-tuned their arrangement of Victorian silver in the aftermath of their last sale. Every time she found herself forced to sit down in front of a spreadsheet she was reminded that her algebra teacher had agreed to pass her on the sole condition that she not go on to Algebra II.

  Barbara had the look of a well-put-together Park Avenue matron minus the half-dozen facelifts but her heart and mind were pure Yankee steel. She was not one of the ladies who lunch Sondheim wrote about. In fact she cordially despised the breed—though their money was perfectly good. That sensibility and their pride in Welles’ Antiques they had in common.

  She closed the case and turned the key in the lock.

  “I’m out of here Barb. Hope this is worth it.”

  Barbara smiled but didn’t even glance up from the computer.

  “You always bring back something,” she said.

  “Yeah. Last time it was a head cold and a runny nose. Terrific for sales.”

  “And a seven-thousand-dollar walnut side chair. Have a good weekend. Happy hunting.”

  The late-night drive was all she’d hoped for. Past Hartford it was all clear sailing, hardly any traffic at all ahead or behind her, her brights on more often than not cutting through the thin mask of night. She made it in under four hours. Checked into her motel and unpacked and found herself relaxed enough for nearly dreamless sleep.

  In the morning she was refreshed and ready to go.

  The auction was standing room only, maybe a hundred twenty people packed into the floodlit barn but Dora had managed to snag one of the folding chairs third row center. Among the locals and private collectors she recognized a number of dealers, mostly from Boston and Connecticut, but like them she wasn’t here to socialize. Only to buy.

  “I got a thousand two. One thousand three?”

  An auctioneer with a South Boston accent, she thought. Interesting.

  At one thousand four she made her bid and then at sixteen hundred went directly to two thousand. The auctioneer gave it a beat to let the number sink in.

  “I got two thousand dollars he-ah, do I hear two thousand one? Two thousand one? I got two thousand once. Two thousand twice. Sold.”

  She smiled at the rap of the gavel. The highboy looked sort of beat now but once her restorer got done with it, it would probably fetch them twenty grand. Between that, the 1800s trestle table and the federalist blue-painted corner cupboard she’d done just fine this evening, unproductive as the afternoon had been along the roadside stores that were either overpriced or gone to seed. She wasn’t interested in any of the rest of the offerings here. It was almost nine o’clock. By the time she paid and arranged shipping it would be ten. A drink was in order.

  The lounge was connected to some bright motel along the highway but the look of it was strictly rural Massachusetts. There were some 1950s-vintage Red Sox photos in dandy hand-carved frames, sports banners and old beer steins, a number of good decoys and a beautiful old barn red and black checkerboard to admire and while an apple martini was out of the question here a regular one wasn’t. She had her usual two. The patrons looked to be largely middle-and lower-middle-class husbands and wives except for three twenty-something boys in plain white tee shirts with their girlfriends off to her left and a single good-looking guy with cutoff denim sleeves in his midthirties she guessed opposite her at the horseshoe bar who glanced at her a time or two over his beer.

  She considered an offer on the checkerboard but decided against it. No point getting greedy. The board belonged right where it was.

  She paid the bartender and finished off her drink and left a good New York City tip. Waylon and Willie admonished mamas to not let their babies grow up to be cowboys which she figured wasn’t a bad idea at all as she walked out the door into the humid summer night. The lot was all pickups and economy cars with a motorcycle here and there so she found her rental Lexus LS quite easily.

  Her bag was in one hand and her car keys in the other turning in the slot on the driver’s side door when he hit her.

  Will watched the woman slide off the barstool and walk away and thought, you’re paid up, she’s lovely, get out of here. He picked up his gear.

  He had no idea what he’d say to her if he managed to say anything at all but it was better to be a fool sometimes than not risk being one. It seemed that when he’d looked at her across the bar she’d looked back. He guessed that was enough to go on.

  The Lexus came as no surprise. She’d worn the damn Lexus right on along with her into the bar. If you were going to be a fool you might as well be the queen’s fool he thought, not a pauper’s.

  He slammed into her ribs right below the shoulder and that and hitting the car drove the air out of her lungs and sent her down to her knees on the tarmac. She was barely even aware that her purse was gone and then she was and she looked up at him running away across the lot, one of the kids from the bar and kid or no kid she was going after him the little bastard.

  She flung herself into the Lexus and heard his motorcycle rev off to her right and turned the key in the ignition and threw the car in gear and stomped on the gas and then threw on her headlights. He was about to pull out of the lot waiting for a slow-moving pickup to exit ahead of him when she caught him in her lights. Her purse swung from the handlebars. She reached into the glove compartment and found the .22 pistol and held it in her lap.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw her coming up on him and she guessed he thought fuck this and instead of waiting for the pickup turned left and revved it and went over the curb instead into the street. She did the same except his landing was wobbly while the Lexus’ wasn’t. She slammed on the brakes ahead of him and it was his turn to hit the door only on the passenger side this time and she saw him roll away over the hood while the bike screeched across the street throwing sparks into the scrub along the roadside.

  She got out and pulled her purse off the handlebars and walked over.

  She pointed the pistol into his bloody face.

  “You hurt my car,” she said. “It’s a rental.”

  He tried to move away crabwise. She clicked off the safety.

  “Stay put, you little shit. You hurt my car and you hurt me and you tried to take my purse. You know I have photos in that purse? Photos I care about? I don’t understand that. Why would anybody do that to somebody? You that fucking hungry? You were just drinking in a bar for chrissake.”

  “Please, lady…”

  The palms of his hands were bloody too. Good.

  “I think you should chew on the barrel of this gun awhile. And think about it. About why you’d do such a thing. How about you do that for me.”

  The boy just shook his head. He was making these panting sounds out of his nose like it was all clogged up in there.

  “Tell me you’re a miserable little cocksucker.”

  He was definitely crying now. He mo
ved his head to the side and stared down at the tarmac. She guessed he couldn’t stand to look into that little black hole anymore. Maybe he saw his death in there.

  “Tell me.”

  “I…I’m…I…”

  He couldn’t get it out. Poor kid. When finally he looked back at her she shrugged.

  “Okay, don’t tell me,” she said.

  And pulled the trigger.

  The kid just screamed. She wondered if he could even hear it click. He collapsed onto the street. His jeans started to glisten in the streetlight.

  “I sure do hope you knew that chamber was empty,” she heard someone say behind her and turned and there was the guy from the bar, the guy with the torn-off sleeves. Standing at a wary distance. But interested. He had a utility belt around his waist and held a shiny white hard hat.

  “They’re all empty,” she said. “I hate guns.”

  He looked at her a moment and then laughed. So did she. He walked over.

  “You want to call the state police on this joker?”

  She shrugged. “He’s the one with the damage. The rental’s insured.”

  “Then how about a drink?”

  She looked him over. He looked relaxed and slightly amused. She liked that.

  “How about driving me back to the lot. I think I’m a little shaky actually.”

  “Sure. Then the drink?”

  “Then the drink. Who are you anyway?”

  “Will Banks. Pleased to meet you.”

  The kid on the street was sitting up now. Like he could hardly believe he was still alive.

  “You,” Banks said. “Get the hell out of here. I see you or your friends around here again I’ll take up where the lady left off, you know what I mean?”

  The kid got to his feet and limped toward his bike. Banks held open the passenger-side door for her. She liked that too. She thought that the damage to the door wasn’t too bad considering. He went around to the other side and got in.

  “You always carry that thing?”

  “I’ve got a permit. My work.”

  She wasn’t about to tell him it wasn’t worth a damn thing in the state of Massachusetts.

  “What are you, federal? Private detective?

  “Not hardly.”

  “Well put it away, will you? Those things make me nervous.”

  “Sure.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  She opened the glove compartment. “No problem.”

  FOUR

  Will

  In bed he tried to be gentle but she wasn’t having gentle. She rode him until he finally lurched and shuddered and then rode him some more until she did too. Then she just crumbled. He felt like his hips and solar plexus had been hit by a pair of sandbags.

  “My god, lady,” he said. “You do play to win, don’t you.”

  She smiled. “You make it pretty easy.”

  Her expression changed. Went serious suddenly. Made him realize again that he hardly knew the woman. She reached up and moved her fingertips over his face. His cheeks, lips, his chin. He felt like he was being memorized by a blind person.

  “You really do,” she said.

  And he was touched by this. Some deep sadness welling out of her palpable as the sweat between them. Touched and just a little shamed.

  “Hey, now,” he said.

  “It’s all right. I know you’re married. There’s woman written all over this place. And I’m going to bet you love her too.”

  There was nothing there to deny.

  Exactly why he’d done this he didn’t know. The usual reasons didn’t apply. He was happy in his marriage to Elena. The fact that Dora was attractive as hell didn’t quite cut it either. But he’d known as soon as he saw her in the bar and then standing over the kid on the street that he was going to try. Guilt be damned. And he was glad he had. There was something special about this one. Something not to be missed.

  “So where’s she off to?”

  “Her mom’s. For a long weekend.”

  “You do this every time she goes away for a long weekend?”

  “Never.”

  She looked at him. Touched his cheekbone again.

  “I believe you.”

  He’d known she would. It was as though they’d been together not just a few hours but long enough so that an unspoken agreement had time to grow and pass between them. One that precluded lying altogether. She smiled again.

  “So what’ve you got planned for the weekend?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really? Nothing?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  “So now you do, right?”

  “Now I do.”

  He took her along his favorite path through the woods behind his house and they sat down to picnic along what he had long since come to consider his stream. She drove them in the Lexus out to Ludlow and they walked into maybe a dozen antique stores before he pled fatigue. He was not of the opinion that a lineman’s job was the most fascinating in the world unless you were on the rodeo circuit maybe but she was interested so he strapped her into the body belt and safety straps and slapped a hard hat on her head and helped her hoist herself up laughing a few feet on one of the lonely poles along Sullivan Street.

  They ate in restaurants where he was not known and drank in bars for businessmen.

  But mostly they made love. Before Elena came home Monday he was going to have to wash the sheets and pillowcases with extreme prejudice. Fucking Dora Welles was like riding out a storm at sea on a ship upon which he was alternately captain, mate and green passenger. He could hardly get enough of it. In the lulls between he learned something of her life in New York City, nearly incomprehensible to him, about the business of antiques and about her college love affair followed by loveless marriage to someone named Wilkes who had attempted—and she accented the word—to abuse her. He gathered he had attempted it just once.

  He told her about growing up out here in the boonies and about his father and mother and the grandfather who had raised him after their deaths by stroke and cancer respectively but steered clear of his marriage to Elena.

  She asked no questions of him.

  But in two short days and nights he felt that by some strange magic they had become close. He was startled to find himself a little in love with her. The slightest bit jealous of a man named Owen back in the city though she told him that was over. He realized that he wanted her to fall in love a little too. And just how selfish was that? He was a married man and she was alone. Yet by late Sunday afternoon lying in bed the storm at sea seemed largely to have passed and they rode far more gentle waves of sex. In the wake of one he asked her, was she in love? not with him of course but with anybody.

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t loved anybody for a long time. And even then it was a cat.”

  “A cat?” He didn’t say you’re kidding.

  “Lawrence. His name was Lawrence—after D. H. Lawrence. I was living in a four-family apartment house in L.A., I ’d gone back to graduate school, it was right after I left my ridiculous marriage. But I ’d had Lawrence all through that and even before, as an undergrad. He was about six years old and my best buddy. Just a mutt, a tabby. I got him at a shelter. He used to like to ride my knee. I ’d be sitting in a chair watching television and if he saw I crossed my legs that was his cue, he’d jump up and drape himself lengthwise from my thigh to my kneecap and he’d watch too. He really would. And if there was music on, say a musical or the soundtrack to a movie, I’d pick him up by the forelegs and dance him along. He loved it. He’d purr like crazy. I think his favorite was SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN.

  “Anyhow I was asleep one night and I heard him howling. I ’d had a little too much to drink or maybe a lot too much to drink—I was passed out I guess. So I had no idea how long he’d been howling. But Lawrence never howled, hardly ever used his voice at all. And he was really loud. So I wake up and the bedroom’s completely filled with smoke. I can hardly see him and he’s right down there in front of me at t
he foot of the bed.

  “I get out of bed and he jumps down and the two of us head for the door. At least I figure we’re both headed for the door. My apartment’s on the second floor. And I’m all the way down to the first-floor landing when I realize Lawrence isn’t with me. I turn around and there he is above me right outside my door, just standing there and smoke is pouring out of my apartment. I’m afraid to go back up so I try to coax him down but he won’t come down, he just starts to howl again.

  “Finally I shout at him, Lawrence! come! and he gets it. He trots down the stairs. I pick him up and bring him outside to the lawn, we had this fenced-in lawn, and I put him down because I know he’ll be safe there and all of a sudden I’m thinking, jesus, what about the other tenants? There’s nobody out here but us two. So I run upstairs though damned if I want to and start knocking on doors. Understand that I can still barely see, my eyes are tearing like crazy and I’m hacking away coughing and I’m lightheaded, dizzy as hell. But we all get out of there. We’re all on the lawn when the firemen arrive and I go looking for my cat.

  “I can’t find him. Hell, I can’t see to find him. I go searching across the lawn, calling him, feeling my way along the grass on my hands and knees. There’s nowhere he can go but damned if I can find him. Then the emergency team starts insisting I get to the hospital. It’s an electrical fire and god knows what kind of stuff I’ve inhaled. I tell them I’ve got to find my fucking cat but they’re scaring me about toxic this and toxic that so I finally go.

  “I’m there about five hours. They’re worried about my lungs, my heart, my eyesight. They even mention brain damage for godsakes! When they release me I’m half in a panic I’ve been there for so long, so I get a taxi home and the second floor’s a drenched, burnt-out shell but the house is still standing and I go out to the lawn and I see Lawrence right away. Lying in the grass, under a shrub.”

  “Damn. What happened? He’d burned somehow?”

  “No. There’s not a mark on him. But my cat is dead. I don’t get it. I’m thinking, how can he be fucking dead? He got me out of there. He was fine when I left him. How the hell could this happen?