On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  "Bad news for you, Chief. It shit the bed."

  "A pity," Morgan said. "I guess the town will have to spring for a new one."

  The selectmen, notoriously frugal with town money, were not pleased but reluctantly approved the purchase of a bare-bones Ford Escort, on which the bright town seal looked like huge postage. The selectmen arrived to view the automobile in the town hall parking lot. Randolph Jackson, who was no longer chairman but continued to act as one, said, "I still think we could've got it cheaper."

  Orville Farnham, who was the chairman, said, "Treat it like it was your own, Chief."

  "It is my own," Morgan said testily. "It's part of my salary package."

  1vo weeks later young Floyd Wetherfield, less than a year on the force, Matt MacGregor's replacement, responded to a call from the library. Elderly and cantankerous Dora Biggs, a widow, was causing a disturbance and flinging books around. When Officer Wetherfield arrived she threatened him with her cane. He drew his revolver. She dared him to shoot, and for a surreal second it seemed he might. Morgan arrived on his heels, suspended him on the spot, and took the heat.

  Within hours Randolph Jackson strode into the station, Orville Farnham behind him. Morgan was in his office with his shirt half out. He stuffed it in. Confronting him, Randolph Jackson said, "Another officer playing with his gun. First one shoots himself to death, and this one's ready to blow away a little old lady. What kind of people do you hire, Chief?"

  Morgan saw no point in reminding them that the selectmen were the final authority and had chosen Floyd Wetherfield over his candidate.

  Orville Farnham said, "She could sue you know."

  "She won't," Morgan said. "She had too much fun."

  "What if this gets in the papers?" Randolph Jackson said.

  "It's not the kind of news The Crier prints."

  "I mean the real papers."

  "They don't know w- we exist."

  After they left, Morgan took a spin in his stillnew car. He hadn't consciously intended to drive into the Heights, but there he was. He took a sharp turn into Trish Becker's drive.

  Gloria wasn't around. Trish took him into the kitchen and served him coffee.

  "You don't usually come calling unannounced," she said. "What's up?"

  "I've had better days. Where is she, Trish?"

  "Key West. Visiting a friend."

  .The one who's sick?"

  "The one who's dying."

  Morgan toyed with his coffee cup. "She never told me she was going."

  "Should she have?" Trish gave him a cynical look. "You two have the same kind of relationship I had with Harry before we married. Everything was up in the air. Marriage is better, believe me."

  Morgan sipped his coffee. Some feelings he could not express and expected others to divine them and, if possible, explain them to him.

  "Ask yourself a question, James. Now you know her, can you do without her?"

  With Ben Sawhill's help, Trish got a part-time proofreading job with a small Boston publishing house that put out mostly self-help books. She did most of the work at home. On the days she had to go into the office she hitched a ride with Ben and occasionally manipulated him into taking her to lunch.

  At the Maison Robert, where everyone seemed to know him, he said, "How's it feel to be gainfully employed?"

  "I feel useful, productive," she said, "but I can't say much for the pay." She gazed at him pensively. "Do you know we're going to grow old together and never so much as hold hands?"

  He abruptly stuck his hand across the table. "Go ahead, hold it."

  Ignoring it, she said, "You can be cruel when you want to."

  He ate rapidly because he was short on time. Tearing a roll, he said, "When's Gloria coming back?"

  "When her friend kicks the bucket."

  He gave her a curious look. "He's your friend too, isn't he?"

  "No," she said. "Harry was my friend. I don't want to lose another."

  Gesturing for coffee, he said, "How about the chief?"

  "He's a shared friend, more Gloria's than mine, if you understand."

  "The question is whether he understands. I'd hate to see him hurt."

  "He's a big boy," she said with a tinge of resentment. "Order me a ricotta cheesecake. Screw my diet."

  At his office Ben Sawhill looked through his mail, all of it opened by his secretary except for a gray envelope from Sherwood. Inside the gray envelope was a white one, addressed to his daughters, the first in a long time, ending his hope that there would be no more. He didn't open it. He didn't want to know what it said inside. In his secretary's office, his back to her, he shredded it. Facing her he told her he wanted a check drawn on his personal account, two-hundred dollars.

  "Make it out to Ralph Grissom," he said. "Mark it recreation fund."

  At day's end he was glad to leave the office. He picked Trish up at the corner of Winter and Washington, the traffic brutal, fixed most of the time. For a long while they couldn't get on the artery, and for a longer while they couldn't get off it. He gave Trish a sidelong look.

  As we grow older we should be less afraid of living," he said, "but that's not always true, is it?"

  "The worst time," she said, "is when we realize we're utterly on our own."

  With a slow movement, he placed a hand on her knee and didn't remove it until the traffic began to buck forward.

  On Interstate 93 they didn't speak. He turned on the radio for the news. A basketball player of national note had been busted for marijuana possession. A serial killer was apprehended in Florida. The Congressional Budget Office reported that the richest in America were getting richer.

  On the cutoff that would take them to Bensington, Trish said, "For a while there I was a port in the storm."

  When he dropped her off near her front door, he said, "Don't read anything into it."

  "Too late, Ben. I already have."

  He took the family to dinner at the country club. As soon as they entered the dining room, the twins, adorably awkward in high heels, became an immediate center of attraction, the pink freshness of their identical faces drawing admiring smiles. Their appetites were big. So was Belle's. His wasn't.

  He felt a nervous exhaustion when they returned home. He soon went to bed, and Belle followed. He fell asleep fast and woke an hour later from a dream he chose not to remember, the chill in his chest a factor. Rolling toward Belle, he passed a slow hand over her body and woke her. His fingers plaited her sexual hair where it grew the thickest.

  "What brought this on?" she asked in a sluggish voice.

  He was totally honest. "I need to unwind."

  Noontime, still in her robe, Trish Becker sat at her computer and proofed a manuscript about selfreliance and a healthy life through meditation. She didn't trust the writer, any writer. Writers were dreamers, and dreamers lived on air. Opening the dictionary to check a spelling, she gave a start when the phone rang. She knew without a doubt that it was Gloria, though she hadn't heard from her in weeks.

  "He's gone, Trish." The voice was naked, raw. "He died with Barry holding his hand."

  "You knew it was coming."

  "I think Barry hastened it. A drop of something. I'm glad he did it. Stirling wasn't Stirling anymore. There was so little of him left. Barry won't get in trouble. Officials-down-here are understanding."

  "How's Barry doing?"

  "He's running around, making arrangements, doing everything to stay busy. He'll fall apart when the funeral's over. Are you coming down for it, Trish?"

  "I can't."

  There was a silence. "You mean you won't."

  "Don't be mad at me, Gloria. Please understand."

  There was another silence, though not as long. "I do. I wish I didn't."

  "When are you coming home?"

  "No idea," Gloria said.

  "He keeps asking for you. The chief. James. He's like a sick puppy."

  "That's another life," Gloria said. "I'm not even sure it's mine."

  She
sat alone in a back pew in the empty church and drew a hand over her forehead. Nearly fortytwo years old, she still didn't feel grown up. Sometimes in the morning, crunching cornflakes, she felt like an adolescent. Depressing was when she saw herself as an old broad. She turned at the sound of footsteps.

  "I didn't come in to pray," she said. "I came in to think."

  "I can't think of a better place," Reverend Stottle said. A look told him she didn't want him sitting beside her, so he stayed on his feet. "I often do this myself. Sit in a pew and mull things over."

  "I'm down in the dumps, Reverend. I don't know which end is up."

  "Fight the dark," he said. "Go for the light."

  "I wish I had your faith."

  "Mine occasionally falters. For an intelligent person, faith is a blind leap. Luck dictates where we land." He shifted his weight. "May I call you Trish?"

  "Sure. Why not," she said, speculating on whether the two of them were more alike than different. "I'm a weak person."

  "I have many weaknesses," he confessed needlessly, her shirt open enough to let him glimpse what he couldn't touch. "It was," he said, "either foolishness or cruelty that prompted God to make us as he did. He gave me the sensibilities of a saint and the balls of a billy goat. I have to live with it."

  "Then how can you love him?"

  "Loving God is like loving an idea. Except an idea is intellectual. God is institutional."

  Crossing her legs, she flashed the lavish underside of a thigh and felt no shame. Why shouldn't she give a momentary thrill to a man in perpetual need of one? "A week ago a man I knew died miserably. All because-" Her teeth came down on what she was going to add.

  "There'll always be misfortune. It's one of the vectors of life."

  "I worry about Harry lying in his grave. No one to give him a drink."

  "Our minds have a will of their own. When they want to worry us to death, they will. When they feel like misfiring, they'll do that too."

  "Harry died because of what his kid did."

  "No, Trish. Not at all." He leaned toward her in his collar and brown suit, the lapels frayed at the points. "He died because body and soul had had enough. His teeth were probably going too."

  "Why do I want to spit in your face?"

  "No one wants to hear the truth. I dislike it myself. It's like water unsafe to drink."

  She struggled to her feet and stood outside the pew. He curved an arm around her waist to steady her. "I'm fine now, thank you," she said.

  He walked her to the double door and opened the half that was never locked. "We all know there's another world besides this one. What we don't know is where it is, why it's there, and if we'll ever see it. It may not be for us."

  She kissed his cheek. "You've made me feel better, Reverend. But not much."

  She had a manuscript she had to return to the publisher, but she didn't feel like going into Boston. The morning was rainy, gloomy. She phoned Ben Sawhill. "I need a favor," she said, and he agreed to pick up the manuscript and drop it off for her. He arrived within the half-hour, the front door left ajar. She called to him from deep in the house, from the kitchen. He appeared suddenly.

  "Where is it?" he asked impatiently.

  She was not dressed. She was bottled milk in a gauzy gown. "Have some coffee first," she said.

  "No time."

  The boxed manuscript was behind her on the table. "You look haggard, Ben."

  "I haven't been sleeping well. Not myself lately." He watched her pour coffee, a cup for herself and a cup for him if he wanted it. "You're not decent, Trish."

  "You're seeing me as I am," she said and placed the steaming cups on the table. Raising her elbows, she showed her underarms "Look, I haven't even shaved."

  "What are you doing, Trish?"

  "It's all up to you, Ben. It always has been."

  He followed her up the stairs, her feet bare, his shod. They entered a room in which the bed was in disarray. She raised a window so they could hear the rain. Out of the gown, she was ample breasts and blemished belly.

  "This is Gloria's room," she said. "Since she's been gone I've been sleeping in her bed."

  She lay flat, the covers down near her feet, and with the aid of a finger identified her scars, the longest the result of her two children, both by caesarean. He undressed furtively and approached big.

  "I'm not used to the daytime," he said.

  "It's supposed to be more fun."

  He sloped over her, their torsos pale white and pink. "Do you mind being under? Or would you prefer the top?"

  "Christ, Ben. Anyway you want."

  He stayed as he was, deepened the fit, and became a prisoner of her legs, her twining grip meant to hold him forever. When his breath began beating against her neck, she got into the swing of it and egged him on. Her teeth scraping his shoulder, she sought his mouth. Without warning he broke away. Christ! He practiced coitus interruptus. No damn need for it.

  "You should have told me," he said.

  They lay apart with the covers half pulled up. She listened to the rain gain strength, take on power, and pound the roof. Some was coming in the window. "You're not romantic, Ben. Harry at least tried to be."

  "I'm sorry. "

  "This was a mistake."

  "Then you should have left it alone," he said.

  "Yes, I should have."

  He was out of bed, avoiding her eye, dressing as quickly as he could. He lowered the window. She reached down and pulled the covers to her chin. "May I?" he asked and used the telephone. Looking away, he called his office and told his secretary he'd been delayed and would be in soon.

  "Some delay," Trish murmured when he put the phone down. "Will I see you again?"

  "We've done it once. What'll stop us from doing it again?"

  She watched him move toward the door. "If you're ashamed, Ben, we can forget the sex. We can just hold hands."

  "We'll see," he said.

  "Don't forget the manuscript."

  Zipping up, Bobby Sawhill stepped away from the urinals and strode to the sinks. He washed his hands, splashed his face, smoothed his hair, and spoke to the mirror. Jason, occupying a stall, called out, "I know who you're talking to."

  "It's none of your business," Bobby said.

  Jason came out off the stall tucking a comic book inside his sweats. He wore Bobby's Seiko. Bobby wore a Rolex. Looking up at the ceiling, he said, "That's where that Dibs did it, right? Fuckin' hanged himself."

  "Wash your hands. Use soap."

  "I was gonna. You didn't give me time."

  Bobby walked away from the sinks and pointed up. "Right there, that's where he did it. He's in oblivion. That's where you got no memory of yourself. You don't know you exist, so you don't."

  "If he's there, how can he be here, you talkin' to him?"

  "It's what used to be him that's here. And we don't say much. We don't have to."

  Jason used an excess of paper toweling in drying his hands. "Where's that other kid? Duck?"

  "They're together, but they don't know it. That's the way it works. Don't you have something to do?"

  Jason was kitchen help, pots and pans twice a week, general clean-up the rest of the time. He said, "You want me to bring you back somethin'?"

  "Cookies," Bobby said. "Chocolate chip if they got 'em."

  They parted in the corridor. In the TV room he watched a show in which women abused by their boyfriends gave reasons for putting up with it. One of the women, light leaping into the lenses of her glasses, stirred a memory.

  Sitting beside him was a Jamaican named Boy, from Dorm C. Boy said, "I like your watch. How much product you want for it?"

  "I don't do drugs," Bobby said. "You're lucky I don't report you."

  "You wouldn't do that, would you, Sawhill?" Boy's voice was mocking. He had an extra hole in his nose from the overuse of cocaine. "Besides, Grissom wouldn't wanna hear it. He wants happy news. That's what Dibs gave him."

  The woman with the glasses failed to keep h
er voice steady and began to sob. The camera closed in on her and caught all the tears. The scene triggered more memories.

  "Threatening me like that," Boy said, "I oughta whip your ass."

  Bobby rose. He was bigger than Boy. "You want to try?"

  Boy said, "Sit down."

  Later Jason arrived with cookies, six or so on a plastic plate. He was wearing a borrowed jacket of baker's white over his sweats and had a big smile. "Chocolate chip like you wanted," he said. "They're still warm."

  Bobby said, "Give Boy one."

  It was treat time, but Sharon wasn't among the women, which confused him and deeply disappointed him. He inquired of Virginia and then of the other women. Mr. Grissom drew him aside. "I should've told you before, Bobby. She won't be back."

  His face fell. "Why not?"

  "She met a guy. She moved to New York with him."

  "I won't see her again?"

  "Probably not."

  Bobby turned sharply and strode away, leaving Mr. Grissom to handle the women and their assignments. Virginia, who had changed her hair color from quince yellow to fuchsia, said, "You knew he'd take it bad."

  "What I don't do for these boys," Mr. Grissom said with a sigh and tracked Bobby down in the laundry room. Bobby sat on one of the dryers, his big feet dangling, the laces loose on his sneakers. Mr. Grissom leaned against a washer. "She has a life of her own, Bobby, nothing we can do about it. I'm going to miss her too."

  "She lied. She said she'd always come back."

  "She told you what you wanted to hear, to protect you. You were her pet."

  "She should've said good-bye."

  "Something good comes along for a gal like Sharon, she's got to grab it. Think about it, Bobby, you'll understand." Mr. Grissom moved closer to him. "I've been putting this off, but there's something else we have to talk about. A few months you'll be eligible for a halfway house. We'll try to get you one near your hometown if that's what you'd like."

  Bobby shook his head. "I like it here."