I opened my mouth, closed it again. Raised my eyebrows.
“Edgar Allen Poe,” Jack supplied helpfully.
“Ah. Well. Does that mean you are in this with me?”
“Sure. Tell an old man you are going to make him more relevant, and he’ll go just about anywhere with you.”
Jack liked to talk about himself as if he were a washed-up, frail old creature. I called bullshit. His hair might be white, but his leathered skin was deeply tanned and his arms twice as meaty as mine. He had retired from teaching high school, but he hadn’t retired from life.
“Okay, well, we’re going to tackle some quality-of-life issues that affect just about everyone. I have two stories I want from you by Saturday presstime. Is that doable?”
“You bet. What are the stories?”
“I want you to do a story on the divorce rates in Colorado. They’re improving within the state, but still very high compared to the rest of the nation. Pull together some facts, see if you can find some contributing causes. I have a couple of names for you,” I handed over two business cards, gratis Dayla’s advertising efforts yesterday, “of local divorce attorneys who would be willing to give you a quote or two.”
“Hmm.” Jack looked briefly at the cards before tucking them into his wallet. “All right. Any idea on those root causes?”
I shook my head. “No idea. Could be as simple as the fact that Colorado has such a mobile population anyway, since we have a high number of transplants, that these people are willing to pick up and leave not just houses but other people, too.”
I saw a suggestion of sympathy creep into Jack’s eyes and quelled a little flicker of rage. This was not about Ada. This was about money.
“Your second story will be on the sex offender population. Stats for this one are easy to come by. The county keeps a map of these guys, complete with photos, addresses, criminal offenses, etc. This will be more of straight news piece … know who your neighbors are, how to navigate the resources we have to identify these guys, what rules are governing their behavior. Be sure to include a big disclaimer on any vigilante violence. This is a strictly what-you-should-know story.”
Jack nodded slowly. “I have to be honest, it may be hard to write anything on that subject that isn’t inflammatory.”
“Just do your best and leave the rest up to me. That’s why you have an editor.” I winked.
“All right, then. I better get to it. I still need to put the finishing touches on my latest HOA story.”
“Did you just growl?”
“Those people are the worst combination of bored-to-tears and self-important that I’ve ever endured. They grind on a person’s soul. But it would be wrong for a sweet young thing like Sami to have to cover them. I wouldn’t mind if you shared the love with Delores, though.”
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I laughed. “Duly noted. I’ll try to dole out those stories a little more fairly. And she probably knows all of those people already anyway.”
“No doubt. You have a good week.”
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I got Sami’s text as I was walking home that evening.
U do know I don’t smoke pot, right?
I laughed out loud. I’d assigned her the cannabis story featuring the two dispensaries that Dayla had sweet-talked into paying for some extra exposure. I hadn’t known if Sami smoked pot or not, but I figured the owners would be more comfortable talking to a college student than to Jack or Delores. Although maybe I was entirely wrong about that. Jack could do a pretty good old hippie impression. It might even be true.
I texted back.
Hey, who doesn’t like gummi bears?
I suspected that the dispensaries might be feeling a little vilified after last Sunday’s stories that everyone had read as linking them with transients and dog-killers, so I knew they wouldn’t want to talk to me. Sami was a sweetheart, and not bad-looking to boot. Plus, she fancied herself a real journalist, so I knew she’d apply her wiles to getting a good story. And the dispensaries would have reasons of their own, of which she knew nothing, for being as accommodating as possible. Wins all around.
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I wondered if the police had made any leads on the dead dogs story. I meant case. To me, it’s a story. I should go see Bonnie Mac tomorrow, find out what progress had been made. It seemed like a tough one to me. Without any witnesses or a bloody trail to follow, I didn’t know how they could find the guy. It’s not like the county’s mobile forensics unit was going to come check the leaves in the backyards for skin cells or whatever. And since killing those three dogs in one night, the perpetrator hadn’t done anything else. That we knew of.
So he could actually have been a transient, already long gone. An angry teenager who regretted his deeds as soon as he committed them. The burger girl’s budding serial killer or Dayla’s ’shroom eater. Maybe someone having a bad night who was feeling better now.
In any case, I’d better drop in on the police station soon. Who knew what other fascinating stories were fulminating there? I’d seen other papers that regularly ran police call logs as part of their weekly reports. Maybe I should consider that. Or maybe not. Chief Joe didn’t need me making him look any more like Sheriff Andy Taylor than he already did. Although Bonnie Mac would make an outstanding Aunt Bee. I snickered in spite of myself.
I was being unfair, I knew. Patrolling the bars and responding to domestics kept the cops busy enough, and Brisby had as much petty crime and drug-related offenses as any other small town. But not any more, either, so I figured they must do a reasonably good job with what they had in the way of resources, which were damn scant.
Maybe there’s a story there, I mused. How small town police services survive financially. Hmm. Sure. I’ll add it to the list.
The streets were dark and quiet tonight. I’d stopped at the Long Tall for a couple of gin martinis when I’d left the office. No reason to hurry home, after all. Lorna had been behind the bar. I wondered if she ever went home. I supposed it was entirely possible that she lived above the bar. Somebody did, after all. And I had no idea if she had a husband or kids or even a wife.
She definitely had a tattoo artist, though. And for some of us, that is the closest we ever get to a long-term relationship.
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The combination of just enough gin and the bracing night air was having the effect of making me feel almost weightless, as if I were maintaining contact between my feet and the sidewalk through sheer force of will. It was not an unpleasant feeling. I wondered if this was how Ada had felt at the end, if she’d simply lost the will to keep that contact. So she’d floated away.
I liked the thought of that.
I couldn’t wait for Sunday. I wasn’t sure if it was the beginning of my efforts or the end. A wave offering. One of the first truly positive acts I’d committed since Ada had left. The first step back to her, somehow. As if I were the one who’d gone away.
And maybe I had. I could accept the responsibility for my part in this. She’d fallen in love with a writer, a reader, a seer who could look into her heart and into her canvasses and see all the truth that was written there. But she’d found herself living with a failure so steeped in despair, he couldn’t even acknowledge it. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to share that life. To risk being swept into that same cold, murky swamp, to watch all the colors fade to gray.
I wasn’t willing to take all the blame, though.
Unregarded loneliness. That was what she’d said. I had to believe that was the final straw for her. I felt a surge of absolute hatred for that family she’d served on her last night. I didn’t question her perception of events. I figured she�
�d probably been absolutely correct. Ada had an intuitive, empathetic nature to which I could never pretend, but I recognized it for what it was in her.
In spite of my defect, I tried to imagine what that autistic boy had felt like. The object of sidelong glances and outright stares, pointing fingers and smothered laughs, and yet still somehow entirely invisible. Speaking in every way he possibly could, yet not being heard by a single other soul. His own family manipulating and shifting him out of their way like an unwieldy piece of furniture that they’re too sentimental to discard but secretly wish they could stash in the attic. I wondered what he’d been thinking as he’d stared at that wall, what he’d wanted to see.
I’d almost made it home when I swerved left and headed to the Hideaway, the diner where Ada had worked, instead. I knew the odds of the same people being here tonight were slim, especially at nearly eight o’clock at night, but the compulsion was too great to resist. Besides, what was the point of resisting life’s urges? That’s how we cage ourselves. If we gave into our urges more often, think how much more satisfying life would be. I’d spent too many years resisting already; now I was working on giving in.
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The cheery red-and-white sign proclaiming “The Hideaway Restaurant – Granny’s Diner” set my teeth on edge before I even stepped inside. I’d hardly come here even when Ada worked here. Not my kind of place. Home-cooked food that tasted good enough, but served with a heaping helping of self-satisfied mediocrity that inspired contempt more than comfort. The gingham curtains, the frilly aprons worn by male and female servers alike, worked off of a stereotype so stale it was more of a caricature. Coming here felt like a mistake as soon as the door closed behind me.
The hostess, probably a high school student, smiled nervously at me.
“Just one?”
“Yes, please.”
She led me to a booth at the back. As I’d suspected, the crowds, such as they’d been, had cleared out. Only a few customers remained.
I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to accomplish. I could eat, at least, I guessed. I ordered chicken-fried steak with fries and extra gravy, and a Coke. I wouldn’t be feeling weightless after this. Not until I could get back to the bottle of gin at home.
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With enough fat and salt, any meal could be palatable. Probably not a pronouncement many doctors would agree with, but most of us still carry enough Neanderthal genes to find it acceptable.
I looked around. From my vantage point, I could see all the customers currently seated as well as anyone who happened in. As unlikely as it had been, I was still disappointed that neither the family Ada had served nor the old Mexican man appeared to be here. I wasn’t sure what I would have said if they were, but dashed hopes were a bitter accompaniment to potatoes nonetheless.
I finished my meal quickly, unable to entirely banish the sense of anticipation. Walking back home through the darkness to an empty house seemed impossibly anticlimactic. But walk home I did. And empty was the house.
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Thursday morning was not my finest moment. After a week of fruitless phone checks and a complete absence of any sign of life from Ada, I gave up and called her voicemail.
The call clicked over on the first ring, of course. I’d known that it would. She hadn’t reached out to me; she wasn’t about to answer. But I needed to hear her voice.
“Hi, you’ve reached Ada Grigori. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Just a standard voicemail message. Nothing in her words to suggest that she was a beautiful dreamer, a mad artist, the bravest of doers, the love of my life. But it was all there―in the tenor of her voice, the feathery little breath she drew between sentences. My heart seized up. I wondered if I were dying.
Of course I wasn’t. I don’t guess anybody ever does. Broken hearts are some kind of myth. But I wished they were true.
* * *
Even now, it’s hard to accept that the air I taste will never hold the flavor of her breath again. I sit in this room and try to summon up her voice, but those beloved timbres are forever just out of earshot.
* * *
Thursdays were slow days, our mid-week delivery days. There was no need to open the office. I decided to go straight over to the police station this morning. Make the requisite stop at Crumbly’s. In fact, maybe I’d go there first, see if a little sugar and cinnamon wouldn’t soften up old Bonnie Mac for me.
Crumbly’s was chaotic. All the early morning grouches shuffling toward relief while fighting the panicky suspicion that the person in line ahead of them was going to get the last whatever-it-was that they desperately needed to survive the day. I joined the mania and ordered a couple of bags of doughnut holes and a half dozen bear claws. I’d wait for coffee. No sense paying four dollars for what I could get for four cents back at the office. I’m a coffee drinker, not a coffee aficionado. I’m perfectly happy drinking the Folgers stuff that the Starbucks snobs consider bilge. As long as it’s hot, strong, and black, it fuels me just fine. So I buy it for the office by the tubful.
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When I stepped out of Crumbly’s, I was surprised to see old man Whithers kicking back on the bench in front of the police station. He grinned at me from under a greasy old ballcap.
“Seems like a pretty safe spot to me,” he told me in his gravelly smoker’s voice. “I couldn’t take being cooped up in that church anymore. Pastor Randolph means well, but man wasn’t meant to live inside of four walls, you know.”
I couldn’t figure out a response to that then. Most people live quite happily inside four walls. I admit it makes more sense to me now. But at the time, all I could think was that Whithers’ stubborn refusal to do the same was probably going to see him frozen to death one of these days. All the same, that was his choice. I was more interested in the fact that he didn’t seem to be holding a grudge against me for Sunday’s altercation.
I offered him a bear claw wrapped in a napkin. He took it and nodded his thanks. That was Whithers’ way. You didn’t see him with his hand out or one of those cardboard signs, but he was always grateful for help. Help without strings, that is. Some of the less progressive Christians than Willis Randolph had tried a more evangelical tack with Whithers once upon a time, but they quickly realized he couldn’t be tricked into any other life than the one he had chosen.
I decided head-on was the best approach.
“You’re not mad at me?”
He swallowed before speaking. “You didn’t throw any rocks at me.”
“Well, you’re taking a more generous view than some folks. Several people believe that the stories I published in the newspaper made it appear likely you might have been the one to hurt those dogs.”
“Kill.”
“Uh, excuse me?”
“Kill. Kill those dogs. They weren’t just hurt, you know.”
“No, right. Of course.”
“I read your stories. You never said I killed those dogs. You never even said a homeless person had killed those dogs. People will believe what they want to believe. They’ll do what they want to do, and then they’ll blame whoever else they can for what they’ve done.”
It was a little eerie hearing my own justification come out of Whithers’ mouth.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. Anyway, I’m glad you’re okay. No more nastiness … people saying things?”
“Nope. I figure folks mostly got it out of their system. Now they’ll be looking for what’s next.”
What’s next. I wondered what Whithers meant by that.
Pointedly, he focused all his attention on the bear claw. I considered that a dismissal and w
alked past him into the police station.
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Bonnie Mac fought a smile when she saw the paper sacks in my hand. Crossing her arms, she fixed as stern a look on me as she could muster.
“What can I do for you, Jeff?”
“Grab me a paper plate so I can unload some of these doughnuts on you?”
She abandoned her fight and let the smile spread across her cheeks. “All right then. Be right back.”
She wasn’t kidding. The police station was tiny. Even though there were three separate offices for each of the police officers and a dinky kitchen, you couldn’t go more than a few feet in any direction without hitting an exterior wall. Thirty seconds later she was back with a paper plate and a stack of napkins.
“I saw you talking to old man Whithers,” she offered, popping a glazed doughnut hole into her mouth with a blissful moan.
“It seems he’s forgiven me,” I said, snagging one of the sugary treats for myself. “What about Chief Joe?”
“Oh, he never blamed you much. He just worries. Doesn’t want people getting all whipped up into some kind of frenzy about nothing. Especially now.”
“Now?” That sounded promising.
She leaned forward conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the office to overhear us. As cramped as this place was, I figured I’d have heard them breathing by now if anyone else were here.
“I thought that’s why you were here. Didn’t you know? They found another poor dog this morning.”
Grimacing, I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb. “Does Whithers know that?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I made sure to warn him. He doesn’t seem too concerned, though. And it is a school day. Those little brats should be locked up indoors today, anyway.”
I ceded the point. “Although I seriously doubt a bunch of middle school kids read the newspaper and came to those conclusions themselves,” I pointed out. “I’d be more worried about mean adults than mean kids.”
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