She got up off the ground and went back inside her parents’ house. Ate a sandwich. Got hungry the way you sometimes do when you’re drunk, only she didn’t know she was drunk. She said she hadn’t been sure which was scarier, that dizzy sick feeling in her head, or the other feeling in her stomach. She wound up throwing up right there in the kitchen, hunks of peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread. She got all kinds of upset when he asked her what bread and what jelly (grape), and did the peanut butter have chunks (nope, creamy), and what was she wearing (a blue pleated skirt and yellow blouse under her pea coat), and even what kind of day was it (a sunny winter day with birds chirping), but he couldn’t help it. Told her it was the detective in him. Hated, actually, the idea that she had gone through it alone, and with those details he’d wanted to follow her there in his mind.
After she threw up, the pangs started. She called them pangs. Told him it came from the drinking. She tried to take a nap, sleep it off, but wound up sitting on the toilet for five hours, full of cramps that came in waves. Never labor pains, she never called them that. The thing came out and she told him it was too big to flush. What was it? He asked. Nothing, it was just a lump, she told him. No matter how many different ways he asked, she always said the same thing: It was nothing.
She put it in a Hefty bag and buried it in her backyard. Managed, tiny as she was, to dig right through that frozen dirt behind her garage. She told him it was born dead. And he believed her. Well, why not believe her? What would have been the point in doubting?
He married her twenty years later. She was a gossipy town librarian who’d never been able to get past more than two months dating a man before her phone stopped ringing, or some fight brewed and she wound up saying the kinds of things that most people can never forgive. She had a habit of running off at the mouth and making comments, delivered innocently enough, that you could never quite shake off. “You really shouldn’t eat so much,” she told him on their first date at the Beefsteak Charlie’s that was now a Weathervane in Corpus Christi, “You’ve got a belly as it is.”
Never the most clever of men, a man who admittedly could not follow half of what Paul Martin was saying on any given day, Danny had still learned a few things by the time he took April out to dinner. He understood that she did not mean to cut him down. It was how she made conversation. People who say the wrong kinds of things are not always bad people. Sometimes, and this was a feeling with which he could identify very well, they were just lonely, and so unaccustomed to having people look them in the eye that they got overwhelmed. “Glad you noticed,” he told her. “I was hoping you’d be looking at my belly.” She blushed that day, and it had surprised him that, aside from when he spilled food on his shirt or licked his fingers in public, he could make any woman blush. They were married within the year.
Since she was in her mid-thirties and he in his late forties, they immediately tried to conceive a child. When nothing happened, she told him the story of her pregnancy. He was the only person she’d ever told. Not even Kevin Brutton knew that buried behind her parents’ old house was a child that with one spank might have cried.
After that, they just kind of gave up on kids. April never went to a gynecologist, and he never pushed her because he knew she didn’t want to have to explain. She did not want to know for sure what had happened to her body that day she drank too much and hurled herself out a window.
So it made him feel pretty low when she got back every year from taking care of those spoiled kids in Saratoga Springs who complained about her cooking and laughed at her Maine accent. It made him feel pretty low. If they’d had kids of their own, April would never have let anyone treat her that way.
When she got back last night, April had been pretty upset. She’d talked about the kids, how they were growing up, how one day she expected they’d get married and have children of their own. He’d tried to keep the news from her but it had been impossible. “Where’s Benji?” she’d asked.
“Taking a stroll,” he’d told her.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” Too tired to accompany the old mutt, he’d let it out the back door earlier in the day to conduct its business, and mysteriously, the damn thing never returned. Five minutes later they were wandering the streets searching for Benji. April shouted his name until her throat was hoarse. They didn’t get home until after midnight. If he’d slept peacefully straight after that, he might not be feeling so badly today. But April had tossed uneasily next to him for a good couple of hours, and when he finally did fall asleep, he’d had a nightmare about Susan Marley. And now here he was, so sleepy he’d had to swallow five cups of coffee this afternoon just to keep from nodding off.
Just then the phone rang in Danny’s office and he moaned. “Who is it, Val?” he called to his secretary. Please, he thought, not an accident.
“Your wife,” Val answered.
He picked up the phone. April immediately began jabbering in a voice so shrill he thought maybe only harpies could understand it. She told him that Benji was nowhere to be found. She’d phoned all over, put notices up on the bulletin board of the church and some of the lampposts in town, but no one had any news. “You think he maybe got run over?” she asked. “Somebody ran him over and buried him?”
“Naw,” Danny said, rubbing his temples, “Everybody knows Benji. He’ll be back. Probably just met a pretty little she-dog.”
“I think you should put out an APB,” April said.
“Now, April. You know I can’t do that.”
She sighed for a moment, a funny sigh that sounded like a shriek. “You think maybe Susan Marley has him?”
“No,” Danny said. “We’ll find him. I know we will.”
“You never know what people are like on the inside, Danny. You’re too kind. You think everybody else is the same way. But that girl is different. And Paul Martin, too.”
“They’re just down on their luck, April.”
There was silence on the other line. “I know it’s crazy, Danny, but would you check for me? Would you see if Susan has my Benji? I heard she goes to Montie’s Bar in the afternoons.”
“April, this is daft.”
Her breath hitched, and he felt himself melt. Foolishness, he knew. But she sounded so sad. And he really should have put the dog on a leash. Partly, this was his fault. “Well, I’ve been meaning to say hi to Paul, and he’ll probably be at Montie’s, too.”
“Oh, please, Danny.” She brightened.
“Yeah, after work I’ll drop by.”
“Ask about Benji,” April whispered excitedly.
“Yes, dear,” Danny had said before hanging up.
In a way it was a relief. He knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight with this rain, and he’d rather worry about a mutt than the people who might get hurt this week, or the feeling in his gut that told him something bad was about to happen. He looked over a few more reports, gulped down two more bitter cups of coffee (his secretary brewed it like syrup, hoping that he would stop asking her to make it), and drove to Montie’s Bar.
EIGHT
Guy Walks into a Bar
The windows at Montie’s Bar were taped over with double-layered Hefty bags. The inside of the place was dark, as if no one’s eyes could possibly adjust to the light emitted by a sixty-watt bulb. By the time Danny Willow got there, Paul Martin had been slugging scotch for the better part of two hours.
Danny grabbed a stool and parked himself next to Paul. They sat together in companionable silence, or what passed for it. Danny was a broad, soft man with tufts of white hair that sprouted in a circle around his head. He lit a cigarette, a Captain, the cheapo kind, and took a short, nervous drag. A layer of smoke drifted a few inches above eye level like visible ozone.
“I like the Dugout better,” Danny said.
“Then why are you here?”
“Thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
“Hi.”
Danny grinned. “Howdy.”
“Aloha. April’s in Sa
ratoga, huh?”
“Springs. No, she got back yesterday. Benji’s missing. She’s wound up tight as a clock.”
“Your problems started when you named your dog Benji,” Paul said.
“Started when I met you.”
“Benji, come home,” Paul whined in an uncanny impression of Danny’s wife April. Danny grinned.
Montie, the bartender and owner, poured Paul a scotch and soda without having to be asked. Then he returned to his seat behind the bar to watch the local news.
“You sure you should drink that?” Danny asked after Montie was gone. “It gets Cathy all upset and then she goes to April and I have to hear about it for days.”
Paul took a gulp. “So look. April send you to look?”
“Yeah, I got that much free time.”
When Paul finished his drink, he clanked it against the bar and called over to Montie, “Honey, I’ll take another.”
“You shouldn’t,” Danny answered him.
With an old man’s grunt, Montie got up and poured Paul another drink. Paul often thought Montie looked like an angry Buddha with his stocky body, round stomach, and small arms. He smelled like an alcoholic—that stale, sour smell, but still, Paul liked him. Well, sort of liked him. The way smokers liked the friendly folks at R. J. Reynolds.
“Paul,” Danny said, “slow down.”
“Fucking inbreds,” Paul mumbled.
What?”
“Cathy, she’s inbred, ya’ll are. Everybody’s a cousin. That’s why my kids can’t pass their math midterms. Their parents are siblings. You and April are probably cousins.”
“Something happen today, Paul?”
“Yeah. Something always happens. Something or nothing.”
Danny sighed. “Fine.”
“Pain in the ass,” Paul mumbled at him.
Danny looked down at his beer. Paul looked straight ahead. A reporter on the local news announced that the rain over the next week would be relentless, and that Bedford would be hardest hit. Danny sighed. He seemed despondent and sad sitting there, and Paul wondered if this was his special gift to the world, making everyone (even his only friend, pitiful as that was) miserable.
“Hey, Danny,” Paul said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“You always are, aren’t you?”
“Are you going to take my apology or not?”
“I’ll take it.”
“Buy me a drink?”
“No.”
Paul smiled winningly at this expected reply. Danny, at first grudgingly, and then freely, smiled back with crooked yellow teeth. “It was worth a try,” Paul told him.
Paul noticed that, after drinking two Miller Lites, Danny was on the road to joining him in the land of the inebriated. The three of them were talking about the 2004 Red Sox. Having been raised on Long Island, Paul was a Met fan to the bone. “What about eighty-six, Montie? Remember Buckner in eighty-six?”
Montie’s eyes widened and he smashed his fist against the bar so hard it must have hurt his hand. Yes, Paul thought, people in Bedford were very stupid. Instead of telling Paul to get the hell out of his bar, Montie looked in the direction of the back of the room where a couple of underage kids were shooting pool. He smiled. Paul followed his gaze, and saw Susan Marley. She was leaning against the back door while some hick who looked like he was from one of those nontowns up north and thought of Bedford as a city fumbled through his pockets, searching for a light for her Marlboro Red.
Paul hadn’t seen Susan in a while. Not that that was a bad thing. Ending it with her was the smartest thing he’d ever done in his not-so-smart life.
“Crazy bitch,” Montie said, nodding at Susan. “Dreamed about her last night. Swear to God it felt like it was really happening. My wife thinks she’s the devil.”
Right now, Susan was swaying to Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “I Like the Way You Walk.” Her hands were clasped around the hick’s shoulders. She wore a long, sopping wet spring dress that showed off her headlights. Paul made a motion to stand. Danny caught his wrist. “Leave it alone. You know she makes you nuts.”
Paul ignored him and walked over to her. He glared at the hick until the hick, fists clenched, asked what he wanted. “Spend your money someplace else,” Paul said.
The hick asked Paul if they could take their problem outside. He puffed out his chest like a rooster, and Paul knew that this hick could probably take him. These days a tough cheerleader could probably take him.
“Sure. See that guy over there?” Paul asked, pointing at Danny. “He’s a cop. This is a bust. Go home before you get in trouble. We’re not after you.” Paul winked.
The hick took another look at Danny. Danny waved, and when he did, his uplifted arm exposed the .357 slung across his chest. The hick picked up his coat and left the bar.
Paul was left standing next to Susan. Though the music had stopped, she was still swaying. It occurred to him that she hung out here late at night after he’d gone home, because she seemed like a regular. She was skinny, but her face was bloated from drinking or, more likely, because Paul had seen this kind of bloat before, from strange living habits. From sleeping most of the day. From having nothing to do for long stretches of time. Boredom bloat. She wore little sandals, her toes painted pink, and shivered.
Paul put his hands on her shoulders and stilled her movement. “How’d you get here?” he asked.
She grinned.
“You sick or something?”
She wrapped her arms around him, smelling musky and sour, like she hadn’t showered in at least a week, and put her ice cold lips to his neck.
The sensation was both erotic and repulsive.
He gave her his coat, told Danny to keep his mouth shut, and drove her home.
NINE
Another Fall
Susan’s apartment was on the south side of town near the trailer park. She lived on the second floor of an old wooden house. Graffiti was spray-painted on her sidewalk and front stoop. It said things like: Susan Marley sucks cock. A witch lives here. Best lay in town. She is always hungry; she is never satisfied.
Such abuse of the local loon bolstered Paul’s theory that the majority of Bedford’s population was the product of inbreeding. He stepped over the graffiti and helped Susan through the screen door and up the stairs to her apartment. The door was unlocked, so he pushed it open and searched for a light while she stood behind him, swaying like at the bar to music that came from her head.
He had not been here for over a year. Even then, it had been only to drop by, to make sure that all was well and to play that game that all people who once knew each other play. No hard feelings? You don’t bear any grudges that might entail stalking my wife or mailing dead rats through the U.S. Postal Service? Nod your head if you mean “yes” and shake it if you mean “no.” Fantastic! See you next year. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, have a good Easter, and don’t blow anything up on the Fourth of July.
When he flicked the switch to the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, he saw that the room was very different from when he’d last visited. The first thing he noticed was the soup.
There were fifty or so cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup on the green shag carpet, atop the kitchen table, and on the side of her bed. Some were inverted. Inside a few were spoons that had congealed to whatever black residue was left inside the can.
With one look, Paul created the scene. Overwhelmed by too many options at the Shaws Supermarket and with fifty dollars or so in hand, Susan had gone the staple food option. Tomato soup, she must have decided, would cover all her nutritional requirements. She had probably been good at first. She had probably heated it up on the stove. But after a while she’d said, what the hell, it’s only heat, and spooned it right out of the can. After all the spoons had been used up—this might have taken as long as a week since she probably ate only a can a day—she had decided, why do dishes? Why not just guzzle that slop up like a V8? And then, at some point, maybe over the last couple of days
, she had run out of soup. She had decided to go to the bar and see if she could find someone willing to pay for a meal. But perhaps he was giving her too much credit. Perhaps there had been no forethought at all.
Along the walls were six large mirrors, each hanging at different levels, none straight. They were the cheap, Kmart, faux-cherrywood variety, and they were fixed to their places by thick layers of duct tape. Inside them, he saw an infinite number of drunk Paul Martins with their left hands rubbing their foreheads. As he entered the room, they came at him all at once.
“Shit weeps,” he pronounced.
Susan had stopped swaying, and was now eyeing him. The blue in her irises got big, and then small, and a shiver ran down his spine. Was it possible for eyes to do that?
He noticed that her hands and feet were dotted with pinprick-sized red spots: frostbite. “Come on,” he said. He pushed the dirty clothes and soup cans from the bed. Like a somnambulist, she let him arrange her body so that her arms were at her sides and her head on top of the pile of clothes he had made for her as a pillow.
“Get some sleep,” he whispered. He thought about it for a second, then gave in to the impulse and kissed her on the forehead. Soon her breath rose and fell as steadily as a metronome.
In the quiet of the apartment, he went about looking for a kettle to warm some water for when she woke. But there was no kettle, only stacks of dirty dishes in the sink and little roaches that scampered near the drain. It was a mess too big to bother with. Better to throw everything away. Better to nuke it with some of those flammable chemicals stored at the mill. The room was so filthy that his skin literally itched.
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