The following evening he called her from Kalamata. He was feeling under the weather, he told her, and there was fresh snow on the ground with more of it in the forecast, and tomorrow or the next day would be a better choice for their festive dinner. He’d fix himself something before he left, then go home and make it an early night.
“Feel better,” she told him.
There was a piece of pecan pie left, and he decided that would do him for dinner. He topped it with a scoop of rum raisin ice cream. It had turned out to be a successful combination, and had in fact upped the sales of both components, the pie and the ice cream.
And he could see why. They were a good match, the rum raisin and the pecan.
He could make the place work. Hell, it worked already, and his mind kept coming up with ways to make it better.
He walked home. There was snow on the ground, but the sidewalks were mostly cleared, and his shoes could handle a few inches of snow with no trouble. He let himself into Mrs. Minnick’s house, stomped his shoes clean in the entryway, went up to his room. His coat was a heavy-duty Buffalo plaid from Walmart, all wool, all red and black squares, and once he’d hung it on a doorknob he retrieved the bottle of J. W. Dant from the bottom drawer.
It was a little more than a third full. He poured two ounces of whiskey into his drinking glass and moved his chair over to the window. It was peaceful, with a little snow on the ground, and, of course, it was quiet.
It suited him here, he thought. He’d slept well in this bed, in this room. It was so remarkably convenient to Kalamata that even now, when he owned a car, he never used it to get to and from work. The walk each morning got the blood moving in his veins and set him up for a day’s work. The walk home each night gave him a chance to shed all the workday tension on the way.
Would he be able to stay?
Because it was perfectly appropriate for a new man in town, a fry cook, a counterman, to live in a furnished room. But he was no longer a new man in town, no longer a drifter who’d got off a bus and grabbed a job to support him while he figured out where to go next. He’d been there long enough for Cross Creek to know who he was, or at least who they thought him to be. He was Bill, worked alongside Andy at Kalamata, and maybe he ought to live in quarters that suited his station in life.
Not that there was anything less than respectable about Mrs. Minnick’s.
Soon everybody would know he’d arranged to take over the diner. And not long after that, he’d be its owner, and did a man who owned a restaurant live in a furnished room, however respectable it might be?
A man in that position ought to have an apartment. Ought to have a house, really.
He lifted the glass, found he’d drained it. He considered the fact, and then he walked to the dresser, where the bottle stood waiting. He’d left it standing on top of the dresser instead of returning it to the drawer, perhaps in anticipation of this moment.
He poured another two-ounce measure of bourbon into his glass and returned to the chair. He took the glass of whiskey with him, of course, and this time he took the bottle, too.
The bourbon fed his imagination, and he gave it free rein. Saw himself moving in with Carlene. Keeping his room but living with her, and the town would be fine with that, there were plenty of couples living together without being married. Cross Creek generally expected you to make it legal when there was a kid on the way, but even that was negotiable nowadays.
Still, living together that way would feel unresolved, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d ask her to marry him, and even if she hadn’t said anything along those lines, it would be what she was waiting for. He figured the wedding would be something simple, the two of them standing up in front of a town clerk or a justice of the peace, however it worked in Montana, or a minister if she wanted, because it didn’t make any difference to him. Just the two of them, or maybe Andy to be his best man and a friend from the library to stand up for her, and whoever else she wanted to invite.
If there had to be something along the lines of a reception, Kalamata could cater it.
He went to refill his glass, found the bottle was empty. He must have poured a time or two without paying any real attention to what he was doing. He’d had what, eight or nine ounces of bourbon?
Didn’t feel any different. Still comfortably tired, the way he always was at the end of a long day’s work. Still feeling the lingering sadness that had come upon him during their lovemaking the night before; he’d gone to sleep with it and awakened with it, and it was still there.
Once they were married, they could sell her house. They’d buy something larger and more conveniently located, maybe one of the big old homes a half-mile or so east of the diner. If her house was a little snug for two people, those Victorians had far more space than the two of them needed. There’d be rooms they had no use for, rooms they’d have to furnish or leave empty.
A big kitchen, most likely. A formal dining room.
Maybe a sun parlor. A front porch, and possibly an upstairs porch as well.
Trees. A front lawn, a backyard.
Way more than either of them needed. Still, he’d always wanted a house like that. Couldn’t say why, hadn’t lived in anything that grand as a kid growing up. Never knew anybody in a house like that, not really.
Liked the way they looked, though. Just half a mile down Main, meant he could still walk home from the diner. Make himself a drink, take it out on the front porch. Sit in a rocker, sip his bourbon.
Two rockers, and she’d sit in the other one. The two of them, side by side, on their porch. He’d talk a little, about his day, and she’d do the same, and then they’d fall silent and just sit there, not needing to say anything, content to share the silence.
All a man could want. All he’d ever wanted, just waiting for him to say yes to it.
Outside it had resumed snowing. It wasn’t working very hard at it. The big flakes were pretty as they fell through beams of light.
He sat there, watching, thinking. He looked at the empty glass, at the empty bottle.
He got to his feet.
By the time he’d crossed from the doorway to the bar, the Stockman’s bartender had an unopened fifth of Dant in a paper bag. When he shook his head, the fellow said, “Back to Old Crow?”
“No, Dant’s good, but I don’t need a bottle. Just a drink.”
“Neat?”
“With water back. And make it a double.”
He picked up the glass and looked at it, then looked around the room. Football on the TV with the sound off, six or seven men in the room besides himself and the bartender. Familiar faces, most of them, but nobody he’d ever spoken to, no one he knew by name.
The drink was gone, the bartender was pouring him another, helping himself to the price of it from the change on the bar top.
The water glass was still full.
He drank the second double. He’d barely been aware of drinking the first one, but now he paid attention, took a moment to tune in to the alcohol in his system. But he couldn’t feel it. He knew he’d had a lot to drink, could have come up with a total, but he didn’t seem to be able to feel any of it. Not that he felt sober, but he didn’t really feel drunk, either. All he felt was—what?
Couldn’t find the word for it.
A commercial on the TV, someone pouring beer into a glass. The last beer he’d had was when Carlene cooked that Flemish pot roast, and the last beer before that was too long ago to remember. Nothing wrong with beer, but what was the point of it? If a man was going to drink, why drink anything but whiskey?
“Another?”
Why not?
Under the weather. That had been his excuse to Carlene, breaking their date. Outside, his fingers just the least bit clumsy with the buttons of his wool Walmart jacket, he told himself that there was plenty of weather to be under. Snow still falling, with a little wind blowing up to drive it.
He’d finished his third drink and said no to a fourth, and he stood in the snow and wondered w
hich way to go. Turn right and walk back to Mrs. Minnick’s. Turn left and then what?
Walk a block and a half, he thought, to Panama Red’s. He’d never been there, but he knew it by reputation. What he’d heard, they got a rougher crowd.
Standing there, trying to decide. Turn left or turn right.
That was the last thing he remembered.
When his eyes snapped open he willed them shut before they had time to register an image. He tried to will consciousness away, but that didn’t work. He was awake, like it or not.
And he was sprawled on the floor, one arm pinned awkwardly beneath him. He tried to learn what he could without opening his eyes, using his other senses in turn. He felt cold, and he felt pain mixed with numbness in one hand, its circulation cut off by his body weight. He smelled vomit, and he tasted blood in the back of his throat.
He heard nothing.
He didn’t want to open his eyes for fear of what he’d see. But he was even more afraid to remain unknowing.
When he forced his eyes open he saw where he was, sprawled on his own floor. He moved slowly, got to his knees and then to his feet, swaying slightly as he breathed deeply and tried to get his balance.
He’d evidently made it back to his room, closed the door once he was inside. He’d sat on his chair, or tried to, and had managed to knock it over and break one of its legs on the way down.
He’d vomited. There was vomit on the rug, streaks of vomit on the front of the wool jacket. He was still wearing the jacket, but he’d managed to unbutton it before he sat down and passed out. Or he’d never gotten around to buttoning it when he headed for home.
No point trying to work it out now. No time to waste.
There was, thank God, nobody in the hallway. He went to the bathroom, cleaned himself up as well as he could. Washed his hands, his face. He’d bloodied his nose, or someone had bloodied it for him, and it hurt when he dabbed at it, but he didn’t let the pain stop him. He dampened a towel and scrubbed at the stains on his jacket, and on the shirt beneath it.
Not too much blood on the jacket. More on the shirt beneath it, a long-sleeved polo shirt that had come with him from Galbraith. He didn’t bother trying to clean it up, because there were other shirts he could wear, but in this weather he’d need the jacket.
Hurry up. Don’t stop to think, no time to think. Later, later he could think all he wanted. More than he wanted, really.
Back to the room. Strip off the bloody shirt, toss it in the trash basket. Pull open drawers, prop his suitcase on the bed, stuff things into it. Take this, leave that, decisions made more by reflex than by thought. No time to waste, Jesus, no time to waste.
Take his drinking glass? Oh, Jesus, what did he need with that?
But he took it. And he retrieved the bloody shirt, found a plastic grocery sack to hold it, put it in the bag.
The first bus was headed for Fargo, and that wasn’t the direction he wanted to go. He made himself stay in the station, perched on a stool at the lunch counter. A lifetime ago Andy had assured him he’d be taking his life in his hands if he ate there, but the thought of eating anything anywhere was impossible. He sat with a cup of black coffee. It had started out weak and sat on the heating element until it had turned to sludge, and he drank it anyway and had a second cup.
He couldn’t keep from watching the door, bracing himself every time it opened, waiting for someone to walk in with a badge. Two uniformed deputies did walk in at one point, stepped to the counter and picked up a couple of coffees to go. They both ordered it with a lot of cream and sugar, and he wondered if that would help.
He’d finished a little less than half of his own second cup when his bus came, bound for Spokane.
He relaxed, but only a little, when the bus pulled out. If Cross Creek had a Resume Speed sign at the edge of town, he missed seeing it. It was snowing again, so it was easy to miss things.
Minnie Pearl’s hometown. Funny how a line like that would stay with you.
He closed his eyes, surprised himself by dozing off.
When he woke up they were still in Montana. He looked out the window and watched a freight train a few hundred yards north of the highway, running west at about the same speed as the bus. He found himself counting the cars, and he drifted off like that, and the next time his eyes opened they were in Idaho, coming into Coeur d’Alene. He didn’t know how much difference it made, crossing from one state to another. It worked like a charm for Bonnie and Clyde, the boxy cop cars had to turn around and go home when they hit the state line, but things had changed some since then.
They stopped for fifteen minutes in Coeur d’Alene, with some passengers hopping off for a smoke break. He stayed where he was, and the bus pulled out on schedule, with half an hour to go before they were due in Spokane.
He’d never been to Spokane. Bigger city than he was used to, and that might make it easier to get lost in. Other hand, it was the right time of year to be heading someplace warm. Get off in Spokane, catch something southbound. There’d be towns all the way to the Mexican border, and they’d all have restaurants, and there was always a restaurant that needed somebody who knew his way around a grill.
Once he landed somewhere, he’d have to take that bloodstained shirt and lose it. He was pretty sure it was his own blood and nobody else’s, because he’d evidently taken a pretty good punch in the nose, but his knuckles were bruised, so he’d very likely gotten in a few licks of his own.
Two drunks punch each other out in a barroom brawl, well, that was no way to get your picture on a post office wall. And if that’s all it amounted to, why did he have to leave town? Why walk away from his room, his car, his job? His girlfriend?
There was every chance in the world no one was chasing him, just as no one had chased him out of Galbraith or the town before Galbraith. For Christ’s sake, it was odds-on he hadn’t been in a fight at all. Drunk as he was, he could have fallen down without getting a push.
Did he even make it to Panama Red’s? Probably fell on his face before he got there, skinned his knuckles trying to break his fall, bloodied his nose, scrambled to his feet only to fall a couple more times on the way home, pausing to puke a time or two while he was at it. Then pulled himself together enough to get in the door and up to his room, and, well, the rest was clear enough. He couldn’t remember it, but he could see a movie of it in his mind—the chair collapsing, the floor rushing up at him, the lights going out.
By the time he got off the bus in Spokane, he knew he wanted someplace hot and dry. Some town in the desert, California or Nevada or Arizona.
Make a nice change.
Trailways and Greyhound shared the terminal in Spokane, and a sleepy-eyed man at the Greyhound window sold him a ticket to Sacramento. That wasn’t where he wanted to wind up, but he could get a room there for a couple of nights, then plan his way south from there.
In the washroom, he stuffed the bloody shirt, sack and all, into a trash container. It was good to be rid of it, and he wasn’t worried some janitor would rush it to the CSI crime lab.
His own blood, he was sure of it. All he’d had to do was clean himself up and he could have stayed in Cross Creek. Told Mrs. Minnick her chair just collapsed under him, said it was probably his own fault, and paid to replace it. And if he’d been in a fight, if he’d made it to Panama Red’s and raised a little hell there, well, when was that a hanging offense? He was still good old Bill Thompson, decent, respectable fellow, worked behind the counter at Andy’s diner, and if once a year he got a wild hair and had himself a snootful, well, sheesh, man, it could happen to a bishop, you know?
He drank a cup of coffee, ate a dish of scrambled eggs and bacon. The coffee was so-so, and the eggs and bacon weren’t as good as they’d have been if he’d cooked them himself, but at least he had an appetite and at least he was putting food in his stomach. He had a second cup of coffee and even thought about a piece of pie, but decided it would be a disappointment after what he’d gotten used to.
If he’d stayed, if he’d gone ahead and bought Kalamata, he’d have had Hilda Parkhill working nights and weekends. He’d have been selling pie as fast as she could bake it. The woman had a gift.
He had to share a seat on the bus to Sacramento. His companion was an older man who mostly slept, and didn’t snore too badly. He slept himself, and woke up thinking if he had any sense, he’d change buses at the next opportunity and head back where he’d come from. Back to Cross Creek, back to the rooming house and the diner. Back to Carlene.
Except he couldn’t.
Because he’d had to leave, and somewhere within himself he must have known that, or why break the date with Carlene? Why empty the bottle and go out for more?
Coming to, lying on the floor in a mess of blood and vomit, along with all the fear and all the dread and all the guilt, along with everything, there’d been another terrible thought.
Now’s your chance. You can cut and run, you can leave it all behind.
Beside him, the old man shifted in his sleep, let out a sigh.
He let out a sigh of his own, thought again of how he’d been lying there in a pile of blood and puke.
Damned lucky he’d landed facedown. You vomit while you’re passed out, you could breathe it in, choke on it. Die without ever knowing what was happening.
And wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing.
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About the Author
* * *
Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. You can read his thoughts about crime fiction and crime writers in The Crime of Our Lives, where this MWA Grand Master tells it straight. His most recent novels are The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes; The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; Hit Me, featuring Keller; and A Drop of the Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, played by Liam Neeson in the film A Walk Among the Tombstones. Several of his other books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He’s well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, and The Liar’s Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
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