Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  “You sound hard,” Cole said.

  “It’s an act.”

  Somebody was standing on the bottom step, a gray-haired man with a handkerchief in his grasp. He had a small trivial-looking nose, almost not worth blowing, but he blew it anyway and then hopped apologetically out of their way. They stepped down onto the sidewalk and immediately moved out of the streetlight to avoid people who were leaving. Across the street a woman squawked Spanish at a man who looked no good. Figures loomed in the large lit windows of a four-family house. A siren wailed from the direction of downtown. Once again Louise snugged her arm inside Cole’s, and they moved along, avoiding the seams in the sidewalk. Her stride was stiffer than his.

  “Something feels wrong,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What makes you think it?”

  “I don’t know that either.” A car flashed by, painting them. “Maybe it’s being back in Lawrence. I hate it, Barney. I have no good memories, except maybe of you.”

  “You’re forgetting Scampy.”

  “That wasn’t all roses,” she said without explanation.

  They strolled to the corner, where the vast concrete Masonic temple hovered like the hulk of an abandoned ship, distress lights burning from the bridge. Across the way, buried in darkness, lay Campagnone Common, out of which ricocheted the rapid fire of youthful Spanish voices. She listened, and then turned away.

  “No spics in Mallard Junction, Barney, and except for the guy that runs the Texaco station I’m the only wop.”

  “Makes you a novelty.”

  “Except I won’t wear off.” Abruptly she pulled herself erect and retook his arm. “I think I’d better get back, give my mother a break from my sister.”

  They retraced their steps to the front of the funeral home, where reluctantly she released her hold. She could tell from his expression that he did not intend to go back inside with her.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he said. “I have somebody waiting for me.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky woman,” she said. “Or maybe you’re a lucky man. I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow, won’t I?”

  “Yes,” he promised.

  “I’m not as tough as I seem.”

  “I know that.”

  “You more than anyone else,” she said with a blank stare, as if someone had put out the light in her eyes. “When I go back in there, maybe the old man will be sitting up enjoying himself. He always did like attention.”

  “We all want that,” Cole said.

  “My sister kissed him, but I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to make him more dead.” She smiled over the chill of her jewelry. “Go, Barney. I’m talking foolish.” They embraced, and then she watched him edge away into the gap between two parked cars, one a limousine insolent in its size and glitter and tinted glass. He was halfway across the street when, surprising herself, she called out, “Barney — don’t leave me.”

  She saw him turn around, but the scrape of the shoe she heard was not his. It was quicker and closer, either behind or beside her. She moved reflexively but vaguely as if she were not quite with her body. She glimpsed the face, a sheen of sweat, and then the pistol, which seemed to make no more noise than the double crackling of a banknote.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said more in anger than in panic. Then she looked for Cole.

  His arms swept around her and kept her on her feet. At the same time she exercised a strength of her own, which brought her to the threshold of an imbecilic calm. The bug-eyed man from the funeral home rushed toward him. Cole said, “Get an ambulance.”

  SEVEN

  HENRY WITLO came into the den and threw her a look of impatience. She had rid herself of the robe for a dress and had done something with her hair, but she had buried herself again in the upholstered chair and, as if to ward him off, had tilted her husband’s picture toward the doorway. “I brought in your mail,” he said, sorting pieces. “You got bills to pay. I’ll leave them here.” He dropped them on the desk near her husband’s photograph. “Who’s the person sending you a postcard from Florida? I can’t read the writing.”

  “It’s none of your business,” she said with courage, and he smiled.

  “That’s better, Mrs. Goss. About time you showed a little life.”

  She sank deeper into the chair, the shock of her own voice pushing her there. She wanted to say something else, but her thoughts were too loose to collect. Then, quite suddenly, her eyes were drawn to his feet, and she experienced another shock. “Take them off,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked amiably. “They fit fine. My first pair of Florsheims.”

  “They’re not yours.”

  “They’re not anybody’s. Your husband’s gone, Mrs. Goss, won’t be back, so what’s the harm? Unless you’re afraid you’ll hear me and think it’s him.”

  Again, desperately, she wanted to add something vital but could generate nothing. She felt that her head was no more than the pulp of a peach adhering to its stone. Henry moved closer.

  “Time you got up again, Mrs. Goss, did some walking around.” With what seemed an amazing lack of effort, he gripped her under the arms, lifted her to her feet, and tilted her toward the light as if to examine her for freshness. “We’ve got to make some rules,” he said. “From now on you eat at the table with me, no more stuff about not being hungry. And you talk more. I want real conversations.”

  She imagined herself dying the death of a thousand cuts from the bite of his voice. He had steadied her and was maneuvering her out of the den, her shoulder brushing the frame of the door. Her slippered feet were clumsy on the carpet. “Easy,” he told her. The bathroom door was open. She saw her husband’s toothbrush, razor, and metal comb laid out neatly on a folded towel beside the sink. “You got to go in there?” he asked, and she shook her head fast. He guided her into the kitchen, where everything looked spick-and-span, not a dirty dish in sight, no stains on the floor, though she had heard things spill. “When I was a kid, Mrs. Goss, my mother never cleaned anything. I did it all.”

  She wanted a drink of water and edged to the sink, which appeared perfectly clean until she gagged over the exhalation from a rancid sponge. “I’ve always taken care of people, Mrs. Goss. Nobody’s ever taken care of me. The army did a little, but that wasn’t personal, and then they stopped caring when I got to Nam.”

  She deposited the sponge in the wastebasket under the sink and then turned on the tap and watched the water glove her hand. When the water was cold enough, she filled a tumbler.

  “Only one who really did something for me was God. He gave me looks. Bet you think I dye my hair, Mrs. Goss. I don’t. It’s my natural color. Women, that’s the first thing they see, my hair. Then my eyes.”

  She drank too much water, and it stung her stomach.

  “We both got nice eyes,” he said. “Yours are kind of like violet.”

  “Please,” she said. She did not want to be touched, but his hands were already on her, propelling her in a direction that seemed dictated by drafts of air from windows not normally open. There was something he wanted to show her, he told her, angling her into the dining room, where he had placed a mass of cut flowers in one of her larger vases.

  “Got ‘em from your garden,” he announced proudly. “Figured they’d look good on the table in case we start eating in here. Kitchen’s OK, I don’t mind it, but this would be nice and fancy.”

  More than ever she felt the shape of her world bending in, leaking precious air, deflating around her. Staring at the china closet, she cried her husband’s name, the cry inward.

  Henry said, “While I was getting the flowers I saw your neighbor, Mrs. Whipple she said she was. I told her I was your nephew, just to keep the story straight. I said I’ve come to look after you for a while, you not being all that emotionally well since your loss.”

  For a number of seconds she had no feeling in her f
ace, none in her neck, and only a little in her arms, which she could not raise.

  “Why are you staring at the china closet?” he asked. “You think I took a dish.”

  She imagined herself on her hands and knees at Bellevue Cemetery, tearing at the sod, as if it were possible to yank her husband from the grave and make him see what his death had done to her.

  “Those are your best dishes, Mrs. Goss. I wouldn’t use them unless we were eating fancy.”

  “When?” she said. “When are you leaving?”

  He moved close to her, breathed her air. “You really want to live here alone, Mrs. Goss? You’re no spring chicken. What happens if you have a stroke or something on the toilet, who’s going to pick you up, make you decent? Cops come, see you that way, they wouldn’t even bother to pull your dress down.”

  Her gaze was frozen, her arms stiff, her feet planted.

  “Ambulance attendants, they’re no better. Nobody looking, they grab a feel.”

  Her wrists twitched. There was life in her forearms all the way to her elbows. Cautiously she lifted them.

  “I’m here, you think I’d let that happen? No way, Mrs. Goss. I haven’t known you very long, but already you’re special to me. What do you think of that?”

  She spread her fingers and with the nails went for his face.

  • • •

  Dr. Stein, who was in his early forties but had the small puckish face of an old man, looked Barney Cole up and down and said, “You look pretty fit, I’ll say that for you, but of course I don’t know how you are inside. You could be rotten.”

  “From the neck up I’m perfect,” Cole said, “every thought pure.”

  The doctor laughed. He was still in his scrubs and had blood on his knee. “I’ve never had you under my knife, have I? Lucky you.”

  Each stepped aside as an attendant pushed by with a steam trolley of food. Cole said, “Maybe not me, but you had my uncle.”

  “God, yes, I did a gastrectomy on him. Years ago, but I remember it well. I thought his intestines were going to spring out at me. That happened just as the head scrub nurse sliced herself on a scalpel. And I had a miserable headache all through it. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s fine. Living in Florida.”

  “Glad to hear some of my patients survive.”

  A nurse came out of Louise Baker’s room and said to Cole, “You may go in now.”

  “You going in too, Doctor?”

  “I’ve seen her. She’s doing OK. Lucky for her the weapon was small-caliber, otherwise the nerve damage would’ve been greater.”

  “There were two shots,” Cole said.

  The doctor held up a single finger. “That’s all she took.”

  There were no flowers in the room. Cole had expected to see many, but she had allowed none. He had expected to find her flat on her back, but she was sitting erect in the high cranked-up bed. Her black hair was swept back, giving her pallid face a stark emphasis. Cole’s eyes traveled curiously over her.

  “This what you’re looking for?” she said, and widened the top of her johnny. The bandage embraced her left shoulder and ran tightly taped down to the rise of her breast, which was black and blue. Awkwardly she tipped her face, and Cole kissed her dry cheek.

  “You look uncomfortable,” he said.

  “I’m in pain, but they give me stuff. The worst of it was I lost blood and got transfused. That scares the hell out of me.”

  “The blood was mine.”

  “Good. I didn’t know that. You’re in my veins, Barney.” She patted the bed. “Sit here. Just don’t do it hard.”

  He sat gently on the edge. “I called your housekeeper. She made the decision not to tell your husband just yet.”

  “That was wise. I’ll call him later.” She shifted slightly against the raised pillow and winced. Her voice went flat. “You know what it was, don’t you, Barney? It was a hit.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t know that.”

  “You know I’m connected.”

  “I prefer not to know. None of my business.”

  “You knew Scampy was.”

  “That was the suspicion.”

  She tugged at the covers with a hand bleached of its color. Her face was gloomy. “Am I in all the papers?”

  “The Eagle-Tribune ran an inside story, no picture. I doubt any other papers picked it up.”

  Her eyes flashed at him. “I don’t get it.”

  “The police are treating it as a shooting during an attempted mugging. I told them a man tried to snatch your jewelry, you resisted.”

  Her eyes filled. “I thought everything I worked for in Mallard Junction would be gone. I’d be too notorious. Thank you, Barney.”

  “Thank Chick Ryan. He went along with it.”

  Her eyes fluttered shut and reopened grudgingly, as if whatever sensations were running through her were unpleasant. “I saw his face, Barney. No one I know.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  She shook her head. “That close, he should’ve got me. I lucked out, didn’t I?” Her mouth parted in a slow unnatural smile. “You didn’t set me up, did you Barney?”

  Cole did not bother to answer. There was a picture on the wall, a pastoral scene in watercolor. He stared at it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s a funny feeling to come that close. You’re not the same after.” She picked up a water glass and drank from it, her long throat pulsing as the water went down. Then she clenched the glass and said, “I need your help.”

  “I’m not a bodyguard.”

  “I need answers, Barney. For my own safety I need them fast.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “No,” she said, “but Chick would. Scampy died leaving a lot of money on the street. Me in charge, people thought it was uncollectable until I used muscle. That made me enemies. Tell Chick to start there. I’ve got to know if this thing was local.”

  For several seconds Cole was silent, his gaze back on the watercolor, the name of the artist etched childishly in a corner. “Chick was your muscle, wasn’t he?”

  She turned her head slightly as if the lighting were defining her face more than she wanted it to. Her jaw was set.

  Cole said, “Why don’t you deal with him directly?”

  “I want to do it through you. You’re the one I trust.”

  “Few moments ago you didn’t.”

  Her eyes were half closed. “Remember when we were kids, Barney? I mean, little kids. We played cops and robbers, and Chick was always the cop. He pat-searched me.”

  “Till you got wise.”

  “You put me wise. Do this for me, Barney.”

  Cole stood up. He pried the empty glass from her hand and placed it on the bedside cabinet. “What makes you think I will?”

  “Because I’m scared, and you know it.”

  • • •

  The hour was late. Cole, awake, lay with his head high in the propped pillow. A nightlamp burned vaguely from the top of the dresser, for Kit Fletcher did not like sleeping in the dark. Her silken underthings had been left errantly about, tossed here and there in languid abandon. She lay sprawled beside him on her stomach, a large exemplary leg thrown clear of the covers. He thought her sound asleep, but her voice curved up at him. “Are you thinking about her?”

  “I’m not thinking of anything,” he said.

  “That’s humanly impossible.” She turned over on her back, much more of her coming out of the covers, and lay pink and vivid, her contours unsparingly feminine and heroically proportioned. She made a dish of her belly. “I want to know more about her.”

  There was nothing he wanted to add to the little he had already told her, and he bided his time by staying quiet. She shifted closer, her body blissfully cool and clean against him.

  “So far she sounds fascinating.”

  “She’s dangerous,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “In her business she has to be.”

  “I
didn’t say what kind of business she’s in.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She pushed the covers from him and passed a hand over his chest. “You love me, Barney?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “More than her?”

  He raised his head higher. In the half-light the mirror over the dresser looked like water on the wall. “I can’t believe you’re jealous.”

  “I can’t either, but I am.” Her smile was frugal. “A side of me you haven’t seen before. Drink it in, Barney, I don’t show it often.”

  He felt the faint chill in her voice and the cool give of her leg against him, as if the jealousy were some ill-begotten child coming to rest between them. She drew her knees up.

  “When is she getting out of the hospital?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, conscious of a drumroll. He was not sure whether it came from his stomach or hers.

  “What kind of help does she want from you? Legal?”

  “Personal.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “You’re making too much of it.”

  “I was an only child, Barney. I’m not used to sharing.”

  Her raised knees were gleaming and taut. The heel of her left foot bore the ghost of a blister, from which he drew an image of her forging through Boston crowds with a high sense of purpose. She said, “If you had to choose between her and me, I wouldn’t be automatic.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The way you talk about her. She has deep roots in you, mine are shallow.” She lifted her face, one cheek carrying the phantom pattern of the pillow. “You probably think I take you for granted, but I don’t. Never have. Everything’s an act, Barney, just like in the courtroom. The best of us lawyers deserve Oscars.”