Old Flames

by Jack Ketchum

  “So I brought him to the vet. I paid for an autopsy. I had to know. Smoke inhalation, they told me. And he’d been gone for quite a while. I think now that probably he crawled in under that shrub and died while I was upstairs knocking on doors. There was no way of knowing exactly how long he’d been breathing in that awful shit before he managed to wake me. But if he hadn’t woken me I’d be dead. We’d probably all be dead. Everybody in that goddamn house.”

  There were tears in her eyes. But she wouldn’t even acknowledge them enough to wipe them away.

  “Anyhow,” she said, “that was my cat. I’ve never really loved anybody since.”

  He didn’t know what to think or say for a few moments. The house was so quiet he could hear the clock ticking them away.

  “I’m sorry,” is what he finally said. “You never got another?”

  “Another cat? No. Never. Why would I?”

  They smoked cigarettes and after a while made love again and smoked more cigarettes and he glanced at the clock which told him now that this was going to be the last time they lay this way side by side staring quietly up at the ceiling.

  “God,” she said, “New York City…”

  “I’d like to see it sometime,” he said.

  Did it sound to her like it did to him? Like he was looking to be asked there? He guessed it probably did. And probably he was asking.

  “Take your kids,” she said. “When you have kids. Take them to the natural history museum and the Statue of Liberty and the zoo at Central Park. Have a drink with your wife at Tavern on the Green.”

  He put his arm around her and buried his face in her hair. He wanted the smell of her with him for awhile.

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes I’d just as soon kill a man as leave him.”

  He smiled. “Not me I hope.”

  She turned and kissed him long and deep and then she smiled too.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Definitely you.”

  He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets and listened to the Lexus spring to life. He watched her back up and turn and put the car into drive and then glance back at him through the windshield. He couldn’t read the expression on her face in the glare of the afternoon sunlight on the safety glass but knew that his own smile was sad and he waved at her once and watched her pull away.

  FIVE

  Dora

  She didn’t bother to unpack but simply opened the suitcase on the four-poster bed and left it there. She walked into the kitchen and in the refrigerator found a carton of milk and sniffed it. Pronounced it sufficiently fresh and drank directly from the carton. Was milk lasting longer these days? It seemed it was. Was that a good thing or bad? She took the carton with her past the hutch in the hall and the bookshelves, the secretary and pie safe in the living room to the picture window which looked down from the twenty-second floor onto the lights and moving traffic along Broadway. The lights always reminded her of the lights of a suspension bridge rising up a gentle grade.

  She walked back into the bedroom and set the carton down on the end table beside the bed and slipped out of her shoes and jacket. She folded the jacket neatly and draped it over the quilt at the foot of the bed. She sat down at the eighteenth-century dresser and looked at her reflection in the swing mirror. The woman who looked back at her looked tired. Driving or fucking? She decided driving. The apartment was warm and stuffy. She unbuttoned her blouse and lifted it free of her skirt and let it hang there.

  Was she really going to do this? She’d thought about it pretty much all the way back from Massachusetts. Tossing out the notion only to have it creep back in again a few miles farther on. It was probably Will’s fault she thought. He’d been far too good to her and far too kind.

  She got up and went back into the living room to the bookshelves she’d had built years ago in Early American style, expensive enough to fool the untutored eye. She knew the book was in here somewhere. But for a few minutes it eluded her as though it didn’t want to be found until finally her fingertips seemed to recognize the faux-leather binding. She pulled it off the shelf and opened it.

  It opened immediately to the page she wanted, its spine broken to exactly that page. And there he was smiling up at her. A boy from de cades past, fresh and clean and handsome, a boy trapped in amber. Beside the photo was a heart drawn in red ink capturing the word ALWAYS in printed capital letters like a cartoon balloon and beside the heart, in script, the words, Love, Jim.

  “Jesus, Dora,” she said aloud. “Good god.”

  She thought of what had transpired between them and how long ago and sat there awhile remembering.

  SIX

  Dora

  The elevator had to be one of the slowest in Manhattan. When the double doors slid open she found herself facing another door with the words FLAME FINDERS—DIVISION OF THE PETERS DETECTIVE AGENCY etched in frosted glass.

  The office could not have been called high rent exactly anywhere but on the Upper West Side where everything was high rent but it wasn’t shabby either. The receptionist behind the desk was regulation cornfed pretty but smiled sweetly and said may I help you. I have a two o’clock appointment with Joseph Ledo she said and the girl asked her name. Dora Welles she said. The girl picked up the phone and punched in his extension. I have Dora Welles to see you she said and put down the phone and smiled again. Let me take you right in.

  She’d been feeling off-balance about this all along but one look at Ledo in tie and shirtsleeves conspired to unnerve her almost completely. He was shockingly young—barely twenty-five she thought—and more than a little good-looking. Rising from his computer in the small inner-office cubicle in utter comfort and assurance, smiling and extending his hand.

  “Ms. Welles. Joseph Ledo. Pleased to meet you.”

  She shook the hand distractedly. It was impossible not to stare. Then impossible not to realize that he was watching her stare.

  “I’m sorry…” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “You were expecting Philip Marlowe. Have a seat, will you?”

  The chair was comfortable but not too comfortable. It wanted to relax you but not encourage you to stay. She watched him swivel in his own chair and pull a file from the filing cabinet behind him and then swivel back to his desk again with the efficiency of a man who’d practically worn a path to and fro. He opened the folder.

  “Okay. As I said on the phone, this should be pretty much a piece of cake. Weybourne isn’t that common a name and it’s a man we’re looking for, not a woman who may have married, changed her name and then never worked again. We know his approximate date of birth, probable place of birth, mother and father’s first names, and we have a former address through what? his twentieth year approximately, though you say his parents are no longer living there. We don’t have his social security number and unless you have a detective’s license, the feds are tightening up on that.

  “Happily we do have a detective’s license so I should be able to find that for you too. Once I have it we can punch him up on the computer and find out all the rest. Where he lives, works, married or single or divorced, kids, phone, e-mail address, all that kind of thing. I presume you want to know all of it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You figure people are about 95 percent findable, generally. Unless of course they don’t want to be found. So assuming he isn’t running away from child-support payments and hasn’t gone mobster on you I think we’re in excellent shape here.”

  She decided to tell him the truth. “I have to say, I don’t feel in excellent shape here. What I feel is…well, I feel a bit ridiculous.”

  He laughed. “Sure you do. Everybody feels that way a bit when they come in. Only to be expected. It’s a kind of…sentimental, romantic thing you’re doing here. So what’s wrong with that? The steely New Yorker thing is total myth. We’re as sentimental and romantic as the next person. And there’s plenty of room in our lives for that, isn’t there? You could easily argue we don’t have nearly enough of
it. Believe me, you’ll be totally kicked in the head when we find him for you. That I guarantee.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And I do. So all I need from you now is proof of identity for our insurers, credit card and driver’s license. I already have your address, work address and phone numbers. That and of course your check.”

  She handed him the cards. She wrote the check.

  “So how long…?”

  “A week, tops. Maybe less.”

  “Really?”

  “Quite possibly less. Could be a matter of a day or two.” He smiled. “Listen. You’d better get ready to meet him or phone him or write him, Ms. Welles, however you’ll want to handle it. Because I think you can consider this as good as done. Mr. Weybourne’s back in your life again. To whatever extent you want him there.”

  SEVEN

  Dora

  On her way home from work in the descending dusk along Columbus two things caught her eye. The first was an old woman alone and frail and tiny, no more than four and a half feet tall wearing a black dress and shawl in the manner of someone from old-world Europe who has lost a husband or a child—stopping on the sidewalk and peering into a new French bistro, not at the menu but at the decor inside, taking it in and nodding her apparent approval and then slowly moving on.

  The second was a white pigeon speckled black and gray that darted out in front of her and then at her approach darted back to the curb in retreat and she thought how much she had come to like the pigeons in New York. She liked them for their beauty—if you looked closely no two feather patterns were remotely alike, all abstract minglings of gray, black, brown, white, emerald green and violet. She liked the alto thrum of their voices and the fragile sound of their wings fluttering off the ground—the same creatures she saw from her apartment window soar like eagles on the updrafts from the street. She liked their insolent bob and strut.

  And she respected their resourcefulness. The longago cousin of the New York pigeon was the dodo—huge flightless birds so unused to man that they were hunted to extinction in just a few years for the amusement of the sailors who discovered them and who in their arrogance confounded their docile innocence with stupidity. These modern relatives were a whole other matter. Dogs chased them, kids tried to kick them, cars and cabs and bicycles and skateboards all whizzed by and while these vehicles on many occasions did plenty of harm to one another they rarely brushed a pigeon’s wing. The birds lived quite well on what was dropped along the wayside or cast aside as garbage.

  She thought that pigeons were wise to us beyond our understanding.

  She was toweling her hair dry after the shower when she heard the key turn in the lock and the door catch on the chain.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  She digested that information.

  “What do you want, Owen?”

  She draped the towel over her shoulder and began to belt her bathrobe and then thought fuck him, let him see what he’s missing and closed and unlatched the door and opened it. He looked flustered. A bit disheveled as though he’d had a hard evening and she saw that the open robe wasn’t lost on him.

  “Could we talk? I thought maybe we could talk.”

  “You want to talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead. Talk.”

  He made a stab at a grin and raised a bagged bottle of wine.

  “I mean inside.”

  “Inside.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She reached up to tousle her hair. The robe opened wider.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Come on, Dora. Just for a while. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

  “That’s good, Owen. You just keep on thinking and maybe you’ll have an honest-to-god thought one day. And won’t that be a red-letter day for all of us.”

  She’d offended him. Awwww.

  “Hey…”

  She put out her hand.

  “The keys, Owen. You don’t need them any more.”

  “Dora…”

  “Give me the keys.”

  “What about my keys?”

  “You’ll have to trust me. I threw them away.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  He put the keys in her hand. He was reluctant to do so. His eyes went to the open robe again.

  “Go away, Owen. Go screw yourself. Nobody else here wants to.”

  She closed and double-locked the door. And the last she glimpsed of his face told her everything. The client’s ex-wife had dumped him or was in the process of dumping him or he was afraid she was going to dump him. In any case there was trouble in executive paradise. She leaned against the door. She could hear his feet moving away toward the bank of elevators.

  There was nothing she missed about him at all.

  The phone rang so she went into the bedroom and checked the caller ID and when she saw who it was she answered it.

  “We’ve found him, Ms. Welles,” Ledo said.

  “You did? My god, that was fast.”

  “What did I tell you.”

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  EIGHT

  Dora

  The rental was another Lexus LS. She figured the last one had brought her luck. It came complete with a voice-activated DVD navigation system. So all she needed was to punch in his address and listen to a pleasant if robotic female voice now and then telling her where to turn.

  What was it about bright sunlight that seemed to peel the years away? Driving up through Laurel Canyon she felt younger and stronger by the moment. As though each hill were a wave drawing her back through time. It was only when the system announced that she’d arrived at her destination—a modest white house with black shutters overlooking the valley—that she felt back in her own skin again.

  Uncomfortably so. If retaining Joseph Ledo had got her to feeling slightly foolish that had receded over the four-day drive to L.A. but now in front of this house with the word WEYBOURNE on the mailbox beside their carefully tended lawn it all seemed positively insane. What had she been thinking?

  The house was quiet. No signs of activity. A blue Honda Civic in the carport and room for another car behind it. She slowed and stopped for a moment and then drove on by.

  She had a good dinner of steak and salad in the hotel dining room and ordered a chilled bottle of Stoli and a bucket of ice from room service and when it arrived she poured herself a stiff one and then another. In her address book she turned to the next to last page and found the name Weybourne with his own name and his wife Karen’s and his childrens’ Linda and James Jr. along with his street address and phone number. On a separate line she had written a Westwood address for Kaltsas, Street & Nichols, Attorneys at Law and his work number there as well.

  Flame Finders had been thorough.

  A few more sips of Stoli and she thought she was ready to dial. The phone rang for a while and then what she hoped would not happen, did. A bright clear female voice answered sounding slightly out of breath as though the call had found her in the middle of something. Maybe laughter she thought. The voice had laughter in it.

  She found herself incapable of responding.

  Hello? the voice said again. Hellooooo out there…? This time the amusement was unmistakable.

  She heard the number disconnect. She put down the receiver.

  She felt like a kid caught in some idiotic prank. Why the hell didn’t you talk to her? she thought.

  But she knew why.

  She poured another glass of vodka and sipped it sitting back against the pillows and after a while turned off the bedside lamp and used the remote on the TV and sat in the soundless flickering light.

  The Save-on Drugs parking lot was by no means all economy cars and pickups but even in Sherman Oaks the Lexus attracted an admiring glance or two. People liked their cars here. She parked off to the right where she could see the glass doors to the National Bank of California tower across the street. According t
o the building’s directory his office was on the eleventh floor. The pent house. According to Joseph Ledo he would be driving a new BMW, license plate number NFB 418. Over an hour went by and she watched people come and go out of the tower and the bank and the Goodwill on one side and the Taibo Fitness Center with the SUPPORT OUR TROOPS banner on the other. She watched the entrance to the parking garage for the BMW.

  There was plenty of time to ponder the tender ironies of the two signs posted as you entered the tower. One said WARNING: THIS BUILDING CONTAINS DETECTABLE AMOUNTS OF CHEMICALS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM. The other said NO SMOKING.

  She almost didn’t recognize him at first because of the limp which made him come down heavily on the right foot and favor the left. He was carrying a leather briefcase and talking with a tall sandy-haired man with a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard whose gestures were almost theatrical. They were laughing.

  They were also headed right for her. Jaywalking in California. Crossing the street toward the Lexus and the lot.

  There was only one thing she could think to do and that was to turn her head away much as she wanted to stare at him, to take him in. Her heart was suddenly pounding. It wasn’t supposed to be happening this way. He was supposed to turn left or right on Ventura or pull out of the garage in the BMW and she would follow. But here he was walking by with only two parked cars between them and he was looking in her direction talking to the other man and she had this ridiculous notion that it was possible he could recognize even the back of her head after all these years.

  She didn’t dare breathe until they passed. You could disappear if you held your breath, right? Every little kid knew that.

  When she was sure they’d gone by she turned and saw them headed for the drugstore. He entered the store while the other man waited outside. She saw the man check his watch. In a little while he emerged and they walked to the corner. There was an upscale furniture store on the corner and a restaurant above it. She was guessing the restaurant. She waited twenty minutes by the clock on the dashboard and decided it was now or never.