Authors: Jack Ketchum
“He’d be mad. He’d be mad as hell. But he’d get over it. It was only just the one time. You’re his best friend, for godsakes.”
“I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Did he seem to know . . . I mean, that the two of us, you and
me . . . jesus!
that we were with him that night?”
“No. I don’t think so. Man, I gave that a
lot
of thought. Just that we probably knew something. Like maybe something Ray told us ’cause we were his friends and all. Something we weren’t telling.”
Thank god for that much, she thought. There was a pause, both of them considering. It was Tim who broke it.
“So how come you won’t talk to me, Jen? How come they keep saying you’re not home every time I call you? I know you’ve been there. I thought it was nice, what we did. I thought you thought so too.”
She’d known it was coming. She guessed it had to sooner or later.
“It
was
nice, Tim. But see, it can only be that one time, you know? I didn’t want to get your hopes up that it would be anything more than that. I mean, I’m still with Ray.”
“I don’t get it. Why? What in the hell has Ray done for you lately? All he does is give you shit all the time.
I’m
the one who’s got . . . I’m the one who’s got feelings for you. Ray’s all weirded-out over Katherine.”
“Katherine’s just another one of his flings. My god, he’s had a dozen Katherines! It’s me he always comes back to. You know that, Tim. I’m still his number one. Nothing changes that.”
“How do you know? This thing with Katherine Wallace looks pretty damn serious from where I’m standing, I gotta tell you.”
She almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. That Tim would take it this far. That he was willing to betray Ray this way. He’d never done anything like it in the past. She couldn’t believe he
ever
would. But she had to be patient with him.
“Tim, is Katherine Wallace wearing his ring?”
“Hell, I dunno. Why? What’d he do, give you a ring?”
“Yes, Tim. He gave it to me Wednesday night.”
“Jennifer, I hate to tell you, he’s got a
drawer
full of rings. He showed me. He’s given out half a dozen of the damn things. Some diamondlike thing? They’re fake, for chrissake!”
“I don’t believe you.”
But she already did. He was just affirming what Schilling said. She felt her face flush. Her heart was pounding.
He sighed. And then his voice went all sad and lost-sounding. “I wish you did believe me, Jen,” he said. “About everything. Not just Ray. But about you and me. I just wish you did.”
And then he did something else he’d never done before.
He hung up on her.
She replaced the receiver and looked at the ring, turned it between her fingers. She felt like crying but she couldn’t cry. All she could do was turn the ring and turn it again, the feel of it already familiar and comforting to her. She walked into the kitchen and poured some dish detergent on her finger and turned the ring some more and removed it over the knuckle and rinsed her finger.
In the utility drawer next to the refrigerator she found an old claw hammer amid the pliers and screwdrivers and batteries and she took it out and closed the drawer. She set the ring on the Formica counter next to the sink and covered it with a frayed white dish towel and raised the hammer and brought it down and removed the towel.
And looked at the ring. And then she did cry.
It was one-thirty in the morning when she drove the Griffith’s car through the winding streets down to the lake. She parked in the lot of Tony’s Fish and Bait Shop, dark now and closed and walked down to the pier and sat down at the end of it. She could feel the rough gray weathered wood beneath her jeans. The night was cool with the wind off the water and she hadn’t brought a sweater. She sat with one arm wrapped around in front of her, cupping her elbow tight against the breeze and smoked a Viceroy, one of two she’d taken from Mrs. Griffith’s pack on the coffee table.
How weird
, she thought.
The lake is so beautiful and we hardly ever use it. Tourists use it. Little kids use it like we used to once but now we hardly ever do. Like the lake would have to be a novelty, something fresh and new the way it would be to some tourist or you’d have to have the innocence of a little kid to bother
. She felt stupidly old and tired and wasted. Wasted even more than when she was drunk or stoned. She stared out at the water, starlight glinting on the waves and black and deep beneath and wondered who was out there if anybody was out there at this hour, sitting on a dock like she was across the distant shore.
Such a strange thing watching her father. So strange the choices people make and why they make them. She’d known all this week now why he’d never gotten involved with another woman. Never even so much as dated. He still loved her mother after all these years, loved her deeply. Loved her crazy or not. It was simple as that. It had never even occurred to her that he might. But then it had never occurred to her that
she
might either, that it was possible to love the person someone once had been while hating and even fearing what that person had become. It was as though the mother she loved had been trapped inside Katherine all this time just as her mother was trapped inside the insanity, a pair of flies in amber.
Strange too to be doing all these things for him. She’d arranged for Etta to come in tomorrow morning but tonight it was she who made him dinner, a salad and spaghetti in red sauce and she who served it and cleaned up afterwards and earlier, she who poured him the unaccustomed glass of single-malt whiskey, who sorted through the stack of mail, opened the windows to let some air in, cleaned a week’s worth of dust off the kitchen table and counter. He stayed mostly in his study with the door closed. Whether he was working in there or not she didn’t know but did not disturb him except to call him to dinner. Afterwards they watched TV until ten. He got up and kissed her on the cheek and smiled and said he was going up to bed. They both were drained and exhausted. She lingered in the flickering light until the news came on at eleven. She didn’t care to watch the usual parade of wars, crimes and politics, the smirking talking heads. Not tonight.
She went upstairs to her own bed and sat there staring at the phone.
The phone felt like the enemy.
What to tell him. How to handle Ray
.
There was no denying she had to handle him one way or another, and do it right away. He’d already called once in the middle of dinner. She’d had to promise him yet again that
she’d
call
him
. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t put it past him to come over for a visit in the middle of the night. The guy was starting to sound obsessive, that was the only word for it and obsessive from him was a little scary.
After what he’d told her.
How long had she known him? A couple of weeks?
His
interest
in her was way, way over the top.
Deke with his usual sensitivity said she was crazy as her mother was if she didn’t dump the guy like he was wired to a keg of dynamite. It was not the best way to put it at the time but she had to agree. You didn’t fool with guys like this. Though she’d never
met
a guy like this exactly she wasn’t stupid. You didn’t have to shoot yourself in the foot to know that guns can hurt you.
The problem was what to say and how to say it. To let him down fast or easy.
If at this point easy was even possible
.
The way he was sounding she wasn’t sure it was.
Just phone him and let the call decide, she thought. See where it goes. Otherwise you’ll be sitting here the rest of the goddamn night.
She found his number in her book and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ray.”
“Kath! Great! How you doin’? How’s your dad?”
“He’s okay. Better. He did some work, I made some dinner, we watched television. Fairly normal evening.”
“Yeah, he’ll be okay. It just takes time.”
“I know.”
“What about you?”
“I’m fine. Tired. Exhausted. The flight, the drive and all.”
“So I guess you wouldn’t want to be going out or anything.”
“Tonight?”
He had to be kidding
.
“Sure. I got kind of a present for you. You’re gonna like it. I know you are. A surprise. Right up your alley. I thought maybe we could . . .”
“Ray, listen, we have to talk. There’s no way I can go out tonight. I’ve got to get some sleep. I figure I’ve got maybe another half hour in me and that’s it. But we can’t do this anymore, anyhow.”
“Huh?”
“This just isn’t working out for me, Ray. I’m sorry. I mean, I’ve been thinking. I like you and we’ve had a good time together but I’ve got to be honest with you. I really don’t think we should keep on seeing each other.”
He started to interrupt but she wanted to keep this rolling.
“I think you’re getting too involved with me, you know? And I don’t
want
to get involved right now. I don’t mean just with you. Not with anybody. I mean, you say things like . . . you tell me you’re falling in love with me . . .”
“Jesus, Kath. I
do
love you.”
“See? That’s what I’m saying. You
can’t
love me, Ray, not after a couple of weeks and a couple of dates and even if you could, you’ve got to understand, I don’t
want
to be loved. Liked is fine, loved’s a whole other thing.”
“Everybody wants to be loved, Kath.”
“Sometime, sure. Sure they do. But I don’t want somebody loving me right now. You see what I’m saying? Not now. I don’t want the responsibility. Look at it my way. I’m new in town. I hardly know anybody here. I’m heading into my senior year in a brand-new school in a brand-new town.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want to get into some serious thing with somebody. I’m gonna be meeting a lot of new people, I want to be able to . . .”
“Fuck other guys.”
“Excuse me?”
“You want to be able to fuck other guys, that’s all the fuck you’re saying.”
“No, that’s
not
all the fuck I’m saying. You keep hearing what you want to hear, Ray, you know that?”
“So then it’s college, right? Your daddy’s got this great job and all this money and you’re going off to college in another year like that bitch Sally Richmond and Ray isn’t. Ray’s some kinda loser, Ray’s staying right the fuck where he is. So to hell with Ray, right? Jesus Christ, Kath.”
Sally Richmond? Who in god’s name was Sally Richmond?
“Ray, it’s none of those things. It’s just what I said it is. I don’t want to get involved, that’s all. No more, no less.”
There was a silence on the other end. The room felt oppressively warm though she’d opened the windows first thing and tonight was on the cool side. But there wasn’t much breeze. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the brandy she’d snuck after dinner. But what she really wanted to do now was strip off her clothes and take a shower and he down naked on the bed and try to relax but she had to talk to him and get this over with and until that was done the jeans and shirt seemed weirdly necessary. Protective, like second skins.
“So you want to tell me who he is?” he said quietly. “The other guy?”
“There isn’t any other guy.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Kath. I’ll find out anyway.”
“I’m telling you there isn’t. There’s nobody.”
“I don’t know why you’d want to he to me. I mean, I’ve been straight with you.”
“Ray, there
isn’t any other guy
. This is
me
we’re talking about, what
I
want and don’t want. Stop trying to make more of it than it is. There’s no
other guy
.”
“What you want. It always comes down to that doesn’t it, Kath?”
“It comes down to that for everybody, Ray. You included. Isn’t that why we’re having this discussion right now? Because I’m not telling you what you want to hear? I’m sorry. I’m really sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. I really am. But you’re not going to change my mind arguing about it. You can’t
talk
a person into having a relationship with you.”
He laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. It seemed to say she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
And maybe in his case she didn’t.
“No other guy, huh.”
“No.”
“I figure you owe me the truth. I figure you owe me that much. You fucked somebody else out there, didn’t you.”
“For chrissakes, Ray!”
“One of your old biker buddies, right?”
You should hang up right now
, she thought.
Don’t get into this
.
“Come on. You did. Didn’t you.”
“What business is it of yours what I did or didn’t do? What do you care?”