by Ed Gorman
The way things were going, I was going to be the one who was sobbing.
"McCain?"
"Yeah?"
"Why don't you say something?"
"Because I don't know what to say."
"I just never realized before how much he loves me. I need to think things over."
I sighed. "Yeah, I suppose that's how it's got to be."
"It's kinda funny, isn't it? For the first time it looked like we - you and I - would get together, and then Wes comes along and - "
"I think I'll go now."
"You really should take the blouse back."
"Just bring it to work and I'll pick it up."
"It's all kinda crazy, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I said. "I guess that's a good way to describe it."
***
I was scared and I prayed. The old Our Fathers and the old Hail Marys. I was scared and confused; I felt like I was eight in terms of wisdom and eighty-eight in terms of spirit. I wish I was an old man and love was through with me. Somebody wrote that once and I've never forgotten it, but I couldn't tell you who it was.
Thoughts like that here in the Lucky Strike-Hamm's beer darkness. TV on but no sound. Me propped up in bed. The three cats fanned out all around me. A little Miles Davis on the turntable.
I thought of all the dead people too. And all the red scare bullshit and how I hated both sides. And Dorothy. Eyes so forlorn in death, tears collected in the corners of their sockets.
I stubbed my cigarette out and went to sleep, clothes and all. Needing to pee. Not caring if I ever woke up again.
And then sometime somewhere the phone rang and I groped for it, badly disoriented, wondering who the hell would call this late, and then I got scared thinking maybe something had happened to somebody in my family.
But when I got the receiver to my ear, a voice I didn't recognize at first said, "McCain. Listen. I have to whisper. Or he'll hear me."
"Who is this?"
"It's Pamela, you dope. We have this big hotel suite. He's in the bathroom right now. Oh, McCain. I've made a terrible, terrible mistake. I'm going to sneak out of here tomorrow and take the train back to Iowa City. Can you meet me at the depot at seven p.m.?" Then, frantic: "Oh, God, here he comes!"
And she hung up.
I lay there and lit another Lucky and thought of another great line. This one I knew the source of: E. M. Forster: Beauty makes its own rules.
It sure as hell does, I thought. It sure as hell does.