I
got back to my apartment around nine-thirty. I immediately poured myself a shot of Rebel Yell, gulped it down, poured another, and took it into the bedroom.
My machine was blinking, as I'd hoped it would be.
I hit the button, it whirred and clicked, and then Evie's voice said, “Hello, dear man. It's me. It's about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I just walked in the door. Where are you? You better call me so I'll know you're not mad. I missed you horribly all day, and ⦔
I started dialing her number while the machine was still replaying her message.
She answered on the second ring with her usual cautious, “Yes?”
“Hi, babe. It's me.”
She laughed. “Oh, geez. Thank God. I figured you were totally pissed at me and had decided to never talk to me again.”
“I'm not pissed, honey.”
“Are you home now? What time is it? Is it too late toâ?”
“It's not even ten,” I said. Certainly not too late on a Saturday night.”
“I'm on my way.”
“I'll go there if you'd rather.”
“You sit tight,” she said. “See you soon.”
“Don't forget your nightie.”
After we hung up, I sat on the edge of the bed, raised my glass, and drained it. Then I went to the kitchen, splashed in another few fingers of Rebel Yell, took a couple glugs straight from the bottle for good measure, and took the glass out to my balcony. My aim was to sit and relax and not think about Jake and wait calmly for Evie to arrive.
I knew it would be a while. When Evie says she's on her way, it means that she's only going to take a shower, wash and dry her hair, reapply her makeup, try on a few blouses and sweaters, and agonize over which lipsticks and items of lingerie to pack in her overnight bag.
Sometimes she says it's going to take her a little while, which means that before she showers and packs she intends to run the vacuum around her place, unload the dishwasher, call a few friends, and set her VCR to record something from the Discovery Channel.
I tried to focus on Evie. But in spite of my best efforts, the image of Jake Gold's bloated, tortured body kept flashing in my mind.
I finished my drink out on the balcony, went inside, took another big swig out of the bottle, and poured some more into my glass. Then I put on a Beach Boys CD. I played it loud. When Evie arrived, maybe we'd dance.
I practiced dancing. I hadn't rocked or rolled for many years, but I was groovin', man. “Little Deuce Coupe.” “California Girls.” “Good Vibrations.” Happy, carefree music. Love those Beach Boys.
One of them drowned. A Beach Boy drowning, for Christ's sake. Imagine that.
Ironic, dude.
Catch a wave, you'll be sitting on top of the world.
My glass was empty. I had another drink.
A
re you drunk?”
I opened my eyes. I was slouched in my armchair, and Evie was standing between my sprawled legs, leaning over me with her hands braced on my shoulders.
“Yes,” I said, “I believe I am.”
“I've never seen you drunk.”
“Not a pretty sight, huh?”
She smiled. “It's a different side of you.”
“I'm sorry, baby.”
She leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips. I reached up and held her hips, and when she started to push herself away, I pulled her down onto my lap.
She sat there stiffly with one arm around my neck.
I stroked her leg. She picked up my hand and held on to it. I twisted my head around and kissed her throat. She didn't move.
“This was the worst fucking day of my life,” I said.
“I'm sorry.”
“Are you?”
She turned her head to look at me. “Huh?”
“Honeyâ?”
“I don't want to talk about it,” she said.
I nodded. “Did you have a nice day?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did. I had a lot of fun.”
“Good,” I said. “That's nice. I'm glad.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Glad I had fun.”
“No.”
She smiled. “So tell me about your day.”
I shrugged. “Typical Saturday. Read the paper. Did some laundry. You disappeared. Found Jake Gold. His dead old body. Poor guy got murdered. Came home. Listened to the Beach Boys. Got a little drunk.”
“What?
”
“The Beach Boys,” I said. “You wanna dance?”
“What'd you say about Jake Gold?”
“I found his body in Ed Sprague's barn. He'd been dead for a while. Very smelly. He'd been tortured. Went and broke the news to Sharon. Then I came home and got drunk. Now aren't you sorry you didn't spend the day with me?”
Evie slumped against me. She tucked her face into the hollow of my shoulder, snaked her arms around me, and held me tight. “Talk to me,” she whispered.
“You want the long version or the short one?”
“The long one.”
“Then I think I need another drink.”
“You better get me one, too,” she said.
I
t was nearly two in the morning when Evie and I staggered into the bedroom. By then I was beyond drunk, and I passed out before my head hit the pillow.
A dream woke me up. I was sweating. I forgot the dream instantly, but the weird, disorienting panic of it stayed with me. I slipped out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, peed, splashed cold water on my face, and swallowed four aspirins.
When I glanced at my watch, I saw that I'd been sleeping for only about an hour.
I hadn't been truly drunk in years.
Never again.
When I slipped back under the covers, Evie was lying on her side facing away from me. She was breathing quietly. I slithered over beside her and pressed the length of my body against hers from behind. She was wearing a short silky nightgown. It was bunched up around her waist. She wore nothing underneath it. I buried my face in her hair, put an arm around her hips, and snuggled up against her. Her body was very warm. A little humming moan came from her throat. She took my hand,
moved it up so that it was cupping her breast, and held it there. Her butt wiggled back against me. She sighed.
We slept that way, and I don't think I had any more dreams.
I
t was nearly ten in the morning when my eyes popped open. I staggered naked out into the kitchen and got the coffee going.
Somebody was driving nails into my eyeballs. He was wielding a heavy hammer, and each blow clanged in my brain. Somebody else was doing sit-ups inside my stomach.
I had a long hot shower while the coffee was brewing, and after I got dried and dressed, I poured a mugful and brought it to Evie.
I sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her bare shoulder. She groaned. “Jesus,” she mumbled. “Don't touch me.”
“I got coffee,” I said. “Happy Sunday.”
She rolled onto her back and blinked at me. “What time is it?”
“Around ten.”
“What?
”
“Ten o'clock on a pretty Sunday morning.”
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Gimme the phone.”
I passed the phone to her. She sat up, brushed her hair away from her face, and pecked out a number. While it rang she frowned up at me. Then her eyes shifted and she smiled. “Hi. It's me. I'm kind of under the weather this morning. I'm gonna be a little ⦠No, I'm feeling better. Something I ate, is all ⦠Oh, about eleven?” She ducked her head so that her hair fell like curtains around her face. “No, really,” she said softly. “I'm okay now ⦠. That's sweet, but I'm fine.” She was smiling. “Yes, you, too,” she said. “Thank you.”
She turned and handed the phone to me.
I gave her the mug of coffee I'd been holding. “What's up?”
She shook her head, bent to her mug, and took a sip.
“You got a date or something?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Lucky you,” I said, and I stood up and went into the kitchen.
I set the table, mixed an omelette, poured two glasses of orange juice, and sliced some English muffins while Evie took her shower.
When she came into the kitchen, she had her coat on.
“I made breakfast,” I said.
She shook her head. “I gotta get going. Thanks, anyway.”
“It'll only take me a minute to cook,” I said.
“I'm not feeling that hot.”
“You can't leave on an empty stomach.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I can.” She put her coffee mug in the sink, then brushed my cheek with a kiss. “Have a nice day.”
By the time I said, “You, too,” the door had slammed and she was gone.
Have a nice day?
I
cooked the omelette and ate it at my kitchen table with the sports section of the
Sunday Globe
for company. Then I took the rest of the paper into the living room. I read it all, even the business section.
There was no mention of finding Jake Gold's tortured body in Ed Sprague's barn in Reddington, of course. That would have to wait for the Monday paper.
I tried calling Sharon in the middle of the afternoon. Her machine answered. She hadn't changed her message. Her voice was still cheerful and carefree. “Sharon, Brian, and Jake aren't here right now,” she said, without irony.
I tried not to think about Evie. But my place felt empty without her. It was Sunday afternoon, dammit. She should've been there.
Evie and I had made no agreements, no commitments. We'd met back in September. We'd exchanged house keys only a couple of months ago. The life stories we'd exchanged were skeletal. She knew I'd been divorced, had two grown boys, and
had lived alone for a long time. She knew about Alex, my most recent love, knew that I'd blown that relationship and still regretted it.
I knew even less about her. Just that she'd been involved with several men. She didn't like to talk about them, and I didn't push it.
It was still early times in our relationship. Evie and I were two grown-ups who'd lived some life, and we'd both grown some scar tissue around our hearts. I figured that was part of the attraction for both of us. We didn't have to explain ourselves to understand each other.
We'd lapsed into the comfortable habit of spending weekends together. We always had fun. We cooked and ate and watched old movies and played cards and board games and made love. We laughed a lot.
Evie had joined the rhythm of my life.
So what the hell was she doing?
A date?
I'd asked her.
Something like that,
she'd said.
Huh?
The more encounters I had with women, the more mysterious and frustrating they became. It reminded me of a conversation I'd had with Charlie McDevitt the last time we had lunch together.
There were some things, he'd said, that men should say to women, but none of us ever did.
Such as:
1.
If you think you might be fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
2.
Learn how to work the toilet seat. If it's up, just put it down.
3.
Don't ever cut your hair.
4.
If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, you should expect an answer you don't want to hear.
5.
Sometimes we're not thinking about you. Live with it.
Charlie and I had fun with it. We came up with a dozen other things we wished we had the balls to say to women.
Charlie said that pissing accurately while standing up is harder than pissing from point-blank range, and they ought to accept the fact that even the best shots will sometimes be off target.
I suggested that men who own two or three pairs of shoes at the most are poor judges of which ones go with which outfit.
Charlie added that men didn't bother matching their shoes with their wallets.
I said that the ugliest, most evil-tempered dog is a better friend than the cutest, sweetest cat.
We agreed, of course, that telling women exactly what we were thinking was guaranteed to ruin a relationship forever.