by John Lutz
“She'll learn about his death while she's waiting tables,” Nudger said. The mundaneness of that bothered him. Sweet rolls, cream for the coffee, and Death.
“She'll learn,” Siberling said, “then she'll probably take a cab home and weep. She'll get over it, Nudger. She's young, and stronger than you think. She'll recover, and we did everything we could. Life will keep dealing people shitty cards, the world will keep turning. Case closed. Or it will be in … twenty-five minutes now.”
Siberling had finally lost interest and enthusiasm. Already he was thinking about his next case on his road to wherever his career might take him. Maybe he was being hard, maybe just sensible. Nudger wished he could be like that.
After hanging up on Siberling, he walked around the apartment, staring out the windows at nothing. It occurred to him that he'd never washed the outside storm windows. No one had. Whose responsibility were they? What was in the lease about that? He'd never thought about it before, and he wondered why it was worrying him now. He went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. Might as well get really jittery.
He tried to take Siberling's advice to Candy Ann and treat this like any other morning.
Not looking at the clock, he began preparing breakfast.
He heated the frying pan, sprayed it with Pam, and broke two eggs into it. Then he slid two pieces of bread in the toaster and pushed down on the handle.
Orange juice. He told himself he wanted some orange juice.
On the way to the refrigerator, he switched on the radio on the counter. It was tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour all-talk stations. He tried not to think about what they'd soon have to talk about. Right now an astrologer was explaining how the stars could affect our ability to make love.
Nudger poured a glass of juice and returned to stand over the sizzling eggs. He noticed he'd broken one of the yolks and it had run in a pattern that resembled the state of Missouri. What the hell could that mean? Was it some kind of omen? Maybe he ought to call the astrologer at the station and find out about this. But then that wasn't her specialty; she read stars, not eggs.
He stood slouching in front of the stove and worried the eggs with a wood-handled spatula. The morning had started badly and wasn't getting better.
At ten minutes after nine, a newscaster somberly announced that Curtis Colt had been put to death in the electric chair. It had taken three minutes and several surges of electricity to kill him. He'd offered no last words before two thousand volts had turned him from something into nothing.
Immediately after the announcement, a Jefferson City interview with Governor Scalla was played. The governor assured the voters that the electric chair could be made to do its work faster and more humanely, and that now that this unpleasant but necessary task had been done, potential murderers would realize the seriousness of what they might be considering and society could sleep easier in its collective bed. Justice had been served, Scalla said. Only by taking life could we emphasize the value of life.
Nudger switched off the radio.
He went ahead and ate his eggs, but he skipped the toast.
26
Siberling was wrong. Candy Ann was in no condition to take a taxi home from the Right Steer. She had fainted when told of Curtis Colt's execution, and when she'd been revived, through her stammering and weeping she'd given the restaurant manager Nudger's number to call.
The aging White Knight to the rescue. By ten o'clock, Nudger had parked the VW in front of the Right Steer and was on his way inside to get Candy Ann.
The manager met Nudger just inside the door. He was wearing pointy-toed boots, jeans, and a fringed vinyl vest today. Everything but spurs and six-guns. He said his name was Mathewson and led Nudger through the dining area, then behind where the steaks were being broiled on an open grill, to a small office next to the kitchen.
Candy Ann was lying on a brown vinyl sofa that matched exactly the color of Mathewson's vest, as if material had been left over and put to practical use. She was calm now, but she'd been crying hard. Her eyes were reddened and swollen almost closed. They were the kind of eyes that made your own water when you looked at them.
When she saw Nudger, she reached inside herself for a smile. She found a faint one that would have to do. “Mr. Nudger …”
Mathewson said, “You can take her out the side door.” He sounded impatient, worn down by Candy Ann and her trauma. This was a place of business, for chrissakes! The lunch crowd was already on his mental horizon; he could see their dust as they stampeded toward the swinging doors, hell-bent for the Buckeroo Special. “Take as long off as you need, Candy Ann,” he added. “Your job will be here for you.” Well, not such a bad guy after all.
Nudger thanked Mathewson for calling him, then led Candy Ann by the arm into the hot parking lot. Asphalt stuck to their soles. The sun was like a velvet weight pressing down.
“You want to go home?” he asked.
She nodded, then kept her head bowed. She'd never looked so frail; she seemed to have lost twenty pounds overnight.
Nudger held the car door open for her; she was, especially now, the kind of woman who aroused male protective impulses and was naturally treated as a lady.
He walked around and got in behind the wheel, then edged the Volkswagen out onto Watson Road and drove toward Placid Grove Trailer Park.
This threatened to be the hottest day of the summer, and the inside of the trailer was stifling. As soon as they'd entered, Nudger switched on the air conditioner.
Candy Ann slumped in the small chair in the living room and used her palms to wipe perspiration from her face. The sweat stung her eyes, and that got her crying again. She didn't seem able to stop. It was the kind of deep, racking sobbing that perpetuated itself, that could lead to complete physical and mental exhaustion.
“Do you have a regular doctor?” Nudger asked.
She shook her head. “Never needed one much. I've been down to People's Medical Clinic a few times, for female things. They assigned me to a Dr. Ochebow, a foreigner.”
Nudger phoned the clinic, talked to Dr. Ochebow, and explained the situation. Ochebow had a high voice and what sounded like an Indian accent. He was difficult to understand, but he seemed sympathetic and competent. He said he'd phone in a prescription for a sedative.
“Which of the neighbors do you get along with best?” Nudger asked, after he'd hung up.
Candy Ann thought about that. “Wanda Scathers, in the trailer behind this one.” She stopped talking for a moment to ride out a sobbing jag. “The one with the brown awnings.”
Nudger told Candy Ann he'd be back soon, then went outside and stepped over a twisted wire fence between the two trailers. A small grayish dog scrambled out from under the Scathers' trailer and started yapping at him as if it had never laid eyes on anything quite so contemptible and threatening. He noticed that its ears were laid back flat against its head, so it was scared and probably bluffing. Or so he told himself as he advanced and the dog retreated, matching him precisely step for step, as if they were performing an intricate Latin dance maneuver Nudger vaguely remembered from the movies.
“Stop it, Buffy! Right now!” the woman in the trailer's open back door shouted.
Magic voice, magic words. Buffy abruptly calmed down. He turned up his pinkish nose at Nudger, blinked several times, then retreated back beneath the trailer where it was cooler, as if to say all this wasn't worth his trouble anyway. Dogs could be fickle that way, not unlike people.
Nudger walked over to the woman, who had waddled down the metal steps and was standing in the shade of the back-door awning. She was in her forties, and hadn't been pretty even twenty years and fifty pounds ago. Her hair was thin and scraggly, and she was wearing bright pink slacks and a clashing green blouse with dark stains down the front. In her right hand was a paint-smeared screwdriver long and thick enough to use as a crowbar.
She looked at Nudger, then glanced down for a second at the screwdriver in her hand. “Been fixin' things
,” she explained, not smiling.
Nudger tried a smile and introduced himself. “You're a friend of Candy Ann Adams, aren't you?”
She nodded. “We know each other. Talked over the fence from time to time.”
“She's suffered a shock,” Nudger said. “A friend of hers was killed and she's pretty upset.”
Wanda appeared surprised. Apparently she didn't read the newspapers or watch what passed for news on TV. She hadn't known about Curtis' execution and his relationship with Candy Ann. And, obviously, Candy Ann hadn't considered her enough of a friend to confide in.
“Was this person killed in some kinda accident?” she asked.
“You could say that. And you could help Candy Ann by driving over to Walgreen's Drugstore on Watson and picking up a prescription her doctor phoned in.”
“How come you ain't going?”
“I think I need to stay with her, the way she is.”
Wanda still wasn't sure about Nudger, the ominous stranger. What might he be up to? She peered around him, down along the side of Candy Ann's trailer. “Can't tell, the past several months, whether she's home or not,” she said.
“She's home,” Nudger said. “And I'm worried about her and telling you the truth. You want to phone her to check?”
But the offer itself was enough. “I guess not.” She contorted an arm to reach behind her and scratch between her shoulder blades with the screwdriver. “I'd like to help. Who knows, I might need the same sorta help myself someday. What kinda prescription?”
“Just a sedative to help her sleep off some of her grief. Nothing strong.” He looked into Wanda's small brown eyes, imagining her thoughts. Prescription medicine. Drugs. He couldn't blame her for being skeptical. “Everything's legal,” he said. “I promise. Nothing crossed but my heart.”
“I didn't mean to act like I didn't trust you.”
“That's okay,” Nudger said. “You should be careful.”
“That's the truth, way people are these days.”
A thin girl about ten, with Wanda's tiny, vacuous eyes, came to the door. She stood with one hand lightly touching the doorjamb, as if to maintain contact with reality.
Wanda noticed her. “Can you watch your baby sister for a while, Lou Jane? I gotta run an errand.”
The girl nodded silently.
Wanda turned back to Nudger, waiting. A large fly touched down on her shoulder. She absently brushed it away and it buzzed into the trailer.
Nudger gave her a ten-dollar bill. “The prescription's in Candy Ann's name, phoned in by Dr. Ochebow from the People's Clinic.”
Wanda nodded, pocketed the money, then tossed the screwdriver past Lou Jane onto the trailer floor. Nudger heard it bounce and then roll into the dimness behind the child.
“Back as soon as I can, Lou Jane,” Wanda said. “You keep your hands outa them potato chips.” She walked heavily around toward the front of the trailer.
Nudger heard a car start after three long, grinding attempts, then saw her drive down Tranquillity Lane in a dented blue Datsun.
He looked at Lou Jane and smiled. Deadpan, she quietly closed the door on him. Such a way he had with women.
He climbed back over the wire fence, knocking it flat and then stooping to bend it erect again. Buffy took that as a signal for mild aggression and emitted a few halfhearted growls from the shadows beneath the trailer. But it was a hot, hot day, and one burst of ferociousness by one small dog was enough.
The pills took effect less than an hour after Candy Ann had swallowed the first one. She wanted to sleep where she was sitting in the living room chair, but Nudger forced her to stand and helped her into the tiny bedroom. He was surprised to see that most of the room was taken up by a water bed. He guided her down onto the bed, then timed his actions with the waves so he could remove her sensible waitress shoes.
“Lightnin',” she muttered. “Hit the old tree behind the house. Left it all black and charred. Lordy! Don't let it get me, hear? Hear?”
“I hear,” Nudger said. He patted her forehead and waited for her to be quiet, to sleep.
When she was breathing evenly, he left her alone.
He didn't think he should leave the trailer. He had nowhere important to go, anyway. He sat on the sofa in the living room and read dog-eared back issues of People magazine while Candy Ann slept.
After learning a lot about Johnny Carson's diet, Debra Winger's taste in men, Walter Cronkite's boat, and a history of show-business deals struck in hot tubs, Nudger fell asleep himself.
Biff Archway was stripped to the waist, dressed like a pirate and struggling with the spoked wheel. Debra Winger was lounging on the deck in a bikini, pointing languidly toward land. Nudger was being interviewed for People by Walter Cronkite on Cronkite's boat.
“So they executed him,” Nudger was saying. “Zap! Just like that. Well, not just like that. It took a little longer than they expected. In fact, a lot longer. His flesh sizzled like bacon.”
Johnny Carson peered down from the bridge and grinned. “How dead is he?” he asked.
Cronkite laughed like an amiable grandfather. Archway winked at Debra Winger, who smiled. Lightning danced on the horizon.
“Thar she blows!” Archway yelled lustily. He waved his cutlass.
A woman's voice, not Debra Winger's, said, “Mr. Nudger?”
The trailer was dim. Candy Ann was standing over Nudger. Or was he dreaming?
“Why does that bastard get to steer the boat?” he asked.
“Mr. Nudger, wake up.” She was shaking his shoulder.
His body jerked and he sat up on the sofa. He looked around, remembering. The boat was gone. So was the ocean.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Better,” Candy Ann said. “You been dreaming?”
“I sure hope so.” Nudger wiped at his eyes and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. His brain was still fogged from sleep. His side was aching from his uncomfortable position on the sofa. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine-thirty,” she said. “We both slept for a long spell.”
“I'm still tired,” Nudger mumbled, and struggled to his feet. A dull pain crept up his right side, reached his armpit, then retreated halfway. It leveled off and was bearable.
“Will you stay?” Candy Ann asked. “Please!”
“Stay?”
“I need someone with me tonight. All night.” She'd moved closer and he smelled gin on her breath.
“You've been drinking.”
“Not much.”
“You can't mix booze with those pills. Dangerous.”
“I ain't had another pill.” She was walking now, into the bedroom, glancing back at him.
Nudger followed.
He stood next to her by the bed, thinking about Curtis Colt, not yet buried. He was repulsed by what he wanted so desperately to do. Life as opposed to death.
Candy Ann knew what was in his mind, sensed his desire and his revulsion.
“Not sex,” she said hastily. “I need someone to hold me, is all. Tonight I'm alone more than I ever been.”
Her words released him. He nodded and lay down with her on the water bed, feeling the mattress undulate as she moved up against him, scooting on her elbows and knees.
She sighed, as if for the first time in hours she was finally relaxing. He held her tightly and she dug her chin sharply into his chest. Then a sudden looseness ran through her body as tension at last flowed from her.
Her immense weariness was contagious. Nudger realized he probably couldn't climb out of the comfortable bed even if he mustered all his willpower. He wasn't sure if that was because he was still tired from mental strain, or from not enough or too much sleep, or if he wanted to stay there as long as possible and clutch the fragile, bony form of Candy Ann to him. It was as if he could absorb her pain, and she his.
She seemed to drift into sleep again almost immediately.
It was past midnight before Nudger slept again, but he was content lying quietly a
wake until then.
27
Nudger left Candy Ann asleep the next morning, making his way out of the trailer silently and driving home over empty early-Sunday streets. He'd realized what might happen if he stayed with her that day. And there was something else, something nibbling at the edges of his consciousness. It was more than the fact that her blind optimism had affected him, made him believe in life over death despite pronouncements of doom by the state and by Curtis Colt's own lawyer, and then left him saddened and disappointed. There was a frayed loose end somewhere, occasionally tickling the back of Nudger's neck.
After showering and changing clothes at his apartment, he read the account of Colt's execution in the morning Post-Dispatch. Colt reportedly had rejected the presence of a clergyman and had walked calmly to the execution chamber. He had been quiet and composed until just before the switch was to be thrown, then he'd panicked and struggled. But only for an instant. The high voltage had grabbed him, distorted his struggles into grotesque contortions. Three powerful surges. Flesh had burned, sparks had flown, smoke had risen. Witnesses had turned away. The Post had an editorial about the execution on the op-ed page. They hadn't liked it, didn't want it to happen again. Good for them. Too late for Curtis Colt, who had gone to meet his Maker fortified with a last meal of White Castle hamburgers and Pepsi.
Nudger turned to the sports page and found that the winning streak had also expired: the Cardinals had finally lost a ball game. “Braves Bury Cards 10–0,” the headline read. There was no joy anywhere in the paper today.
At eleven o'clock, Nudger phoned Candy Ann. She'd been awake about an hour, she said, and wondered where he was. She didn't ask him why he'd left. She knew why. Her voice was thick from too much sleep and too much grief, but she seemed composed now and resigned to the fact that Curtis was gone. She was young, Siberling had said. Stronger than Nudger thought. She'd recover. Maybe Siberling knew about such things. Nudger hoped so.
