Bad Things (30 page)

“You know the Robertsons?”

“Well, yeah. I met Gerry a few times, on business. We used to

represent his fi rm.”

“What about the current generation?”

“Sure. Brooke and Cory. Why?”

“Gerry’s second wife was in an accident yesterday,” I said.

He frowned. “Really? What was her name, Helen?”

“Ellen.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I don’t really know that, either,” I said.

It was full dark now and the light coming out of the house lit Bill’s

face harshly, revealing lines where there had been nothing but fi ne

young skin when I had fi rst known him, ten years before Scott had

been born. I’m sure he saw the same thing in me.

“You going to explain that?”

“Do I need to?”

He took a long swallow and looked away down the yard, a space

that was open about not being the haunt of children. “Depends what

you want from me,” he said. “If it’s legal advice, then yeah, kinda.”

“Probably not legal,” I said.

“Then what?”

“I met with Ellen a couple times over the last few days. That’s

who I was hoping to hook up with, the day I ran into you down in

Black Ridge.”

“Met with her . . . why?”

B A D T H I N G S 211

“Long story. She got in contact with me. The point is she’s con-

vinced she’s in some kind of danger.”

“From whom?”

“Brooke. Cory, too, probably.”

“Cory’s the kind of guy you could lay out with one slap. Brooke . . .

yeah, I could see her unnerving someone.”

“She’s unnerved Ellen pretty bad.”

“I’m kinda not following you,” Bill said, and downed the rest of

his beer. “They should make this shit in bigger bottles. One more?”

While he was gone I stepped back into the living room. There

was a pair of shoes under one of the side tables. A tie, too, hanging

over the back of a chair. There would come a point, not soon, but

eventually, when fi les and folders would be the dominant furnishing.

Bill wandered back into view, two bottles in one of his large hands.

He paused to glance down at a fi le on the table. I took a deep breath.

“Jen really out of town?”

He looked up. “She’s really out of town.”

“How far out?”

“What’s it to you, John?”

“House just feels a little empty, is all.”

He looked at the fl oor. “Things have been a little rocky lately,

since you ask. We’re undergoing a period of domestic reorganization

right now.”

“I’d probably better not drink that beer after all,” I said. “I’m

driving.”

“Responsible guy. Well, next time you’re passing through town,

give me a little more notice, okay?”

“I will.”

He walked me out into the hallway. A couple yards short of his

front door, I half turned.

“She’s okay, though, right?”

“Who?”

212 Michael Marshall

“Jenny.”

“She’s fi ne, John. Nice of you to ask. But she’s fi ne. Right as

Raines.”

“That’s good,” I said, but I could not smile at another of his ha-

bitual jokes. I looked at him and something hooded and fl at in his

eyes made me fear that Bill’s wife was not fi ne, and that harm might

have been done to her.

Unfortunately, whatever channel opened in the ether evidently

operated in both directions. He blinked, just once, otherwise stand-

ing very still.

The fi rst punch nearly took me out of the game right there. It

came up low and hard and though I started to turn it landed heavily

and it was all I could do not to go straight over onto my back. Instead

I staggered sideways into the wall.

I crouched just in time, getting under Bill’s second lunge and

managing to partially turn him toward the door.

I stepped back up the hallway, but not far. I didn’t want to get

backed in that direction, farther into the house. I didn’t want Bill to

be able to get around me, either, because I was sure somewhere in

the building would be a gun. So when he came charging toward me I

went hard straight back at him. I got his shirt in his hand and he hit

me in the gut so hard I lost all my breath. He put his hands up around

my neck, and I snapped my head forward to hammer down onto his

nose. There were smashing sounds, as arms and shoulders and heads

cracked into things on the walls, pictures coming down along with

an ornamental bookcase, spreading glass and broken pottery over the

fl oor and our clothes. He looked like he was going down but then

came up even stronger and knocked my head back against the wall so

hard that for an instant everything was white.

He was trying to shout something, and so was I, but I never had

any idea what it was. He tagged me again and again in the stomach, up

under the ribs on my left side, close-up work I couldn’t seem to turn

away from and I knew I couldn’t take for much longer. He started try-

B A D T H I N G S 213

ing to drag me down, to drop me around his leg so he could get to the

footwork, the real business, from which I knew I’d never get up.

I wrenched away and took a lurching step back, saw him coming

after me again. I ducked low and to the side and drove up under him,

turning and pulling his shoulder down at the same time, sending him

barreling past awkwardly enough for me to drive my knee into his

chest as he fell past. He tried to recover his balance but his right leg

went out from underneath as he slipped on a piece of glass and his

head went smack into the bottom of the staircase.

I was over him immediately, foot drawn back, but after he’d

crashed to the ground he didn’t move.

I stayed there, panting, and waited.

He was out.

I rolled him onto his back and made sure he could breathe, then

hauled myself up the stairs. It was less tidy up here, though still far

from bad. Men living on their own make at least as good a job as

women do of holding back the chaos.

There were four sections to the closets in the bedroom. Two were

full of suits and shirts. One was empty, the other held a couple of

dresses on hangers.

I went back down to the kitchen. Quickly washed my face with

cold water from the tap, and dried it with a hand towel that smelled

of mildew.

And then, before I sat down and was unable to get back up again,

I left.

“What the
hell
happened to you?”

“Nothing,” I said. I was sitting in the window of the Mountain

View, turned away from the rest of the bar. It wasn’t very full, but

though I knew from the bathroom mirror that the bruising hadn’t

really taken color yet, I didn’t much want to look at people anyhow.

The only reason I was here was I was freezing cold and my hands

214 Michael Marshall

and ribs hurt, and being inside anywhere seemed like a good idea.

On the opposite side of the street I saw the Write Sisters now had

a piece of hardboard up over the broken window. Quick work.

Kristina set down the beer she’d brought without my asking for it.

“Your face have anything to do with the Robertsons? Or Ellen?”

“No,” I said.

She left me alone, coming back twenty minutes later with another

beer. I thanked her and turned pointedly back to the window. The

boarding over the Write Sisters looked wrong to me, as if it had been

nailed up over something that was still broken, as if beyond it a body

still lay.

Kristina didn’t leave, however, and eventually I looked back at

her. “What?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I’m good,” I said breezily. “Just a trying day.”

She shook her head. “I was concerned before you even arrived

tonight. You . . . I’ve been hearing things.”

I saw the other bartender, a young guy in a black T-shirt, looking

our way. “From who?”

“I just don’t think this is a good place for you to be.”

“Why? The beer’s great and the ser vice is friendly, sometimes,” I

said, trying to make a joke.

She didn’t go for it. I was jittery, fi nding it hard to look at any-

thing, but my eyes found her face and stayed there. Her gray-green

eyes, pale skin, and black hair. She looked like the opposite of every

woman I’d ever known.

“So what
did
you hear? On the barkeep grapevine?”

I was trying to be offensive. I don’t know why. Either side of her

nose there were a couple of faint things that must have been freckles.

I felt uncomfortable under her gaze.

I lit a cigarette, and focused on that, trying to hide the trembling

in my fi ngers.

“You need to give up,” she said.

B A D T H I N G S 215

“Yeah. But not tonight.”

“Not that. Smoke yourself to death, be my guest. I mean give up,

get away from here.”

She handed me my check.

I stood on the sidewalk outside, not knowing what to do. I still didn’t

want to go back to my motel room. Those places are like a living

death when you’re in a certain state of mind.

In the end I crossed the street and went into the pizza place,

where the a/c was up unnecessarily high and the music plumbed the

forgotten depths of the 1980s as if in a deliberate attempt to keep the

clientele moving through. If so, it was working. The place was virtu-

ally empty and the waitress had no problem with me ordering coffee

and sitting at a booth in the window, out of everyone’s way.

As I sat I realized fi rst that one member of the family of three

in the far corner was watching me, and then that it was Deputy

Greene.

He was seated with a woman of around his own age and easily

his own weight, her ass crammed into a pair of blue velour pants and

threatening to seep off either side of her chair. Sitting opposite them

was someone I also recognized—Courtney, the waifl ike teenager who

cleaned the rooms at my motel.

Greene and his wife ate in silence, methodically pushing slices

of pizza into their faces as if engaged in a competition where fortune

favored the steady and consistent performer. The girl who I assumed

must be their daughter had either fi nished already or was not hungry.

I worked through my coffee and accepted a refi ll when the wait-

ress silently reappeared. It was a reassuringly old-school brew, without

froth, syrup, or environmental attitude. Just a big cup of something

hot and wet, and I sat there with my hands around it for warmth and

comfort, watching nothing happen in the street outside, wondering

if my head was actually going to burst. I was not hungry, could not

216 Michael Marshall

imagine being so, but the pizza smelled good. Perhaps just because

it reminded me of a time, very few days ago, when life had seemed

simpler.

Eventually Greene and his companions left, still in silence. As

they walked by the window Courtney’s eyes passed vaguely across

over mine, but not in a way which suggested she had any idea what

she was looking at, or that she recognized me at all.

At some point after that my phone buzzed in my pocket but I

couldn’t imagine anyone I might want to talk to. I assumed Becki had

given Kyle my message, in which case not being able to contact me

might work even better than hearing my voice.

I didn’t notice anyone coming into the restaurant until I heard

the sound of cloth swishing as she slipped into the seat opposite me.

I looked up to see Kristina, sitting very upright, with her arms

folded.

“Tell me,” she said.

C H A P T E R 2 9

There was a stage in Scott’s development when he’d begun to under-

stand that making coherent sounds with his mouth was regarded

as a good and clever thing, and he was keen to show he was get-

ting with the program. In addition to his more straightforward

declarations, he’d sometimes regale us with monologues in which

he’d announce something about an object or situation, say the word

because,
add another clause, then another
because
—and keep going until he’d delivered a (somewhat surreal) sentence about two minutes long. He didn’t yet understand what
because
meant, but he’d got

that it could be used to connect things, to form a bridge between

states of affairs.

After he was dead I came to believe this insight had not con-

cerned merely language. He would have forgotten it in time, as we

do, but back then he knew everything there was to know.

I had an affair, basically.

There was this woman and something happened and by and by

it became a situation, by which time it was too late. I tried to do the

Right Thing. The Right Thing came for long walks with me, but

218 Michael Marshall

was just too evenhanded in his approach. I wanted the Right Thing

to be tough as nails, a track coach crazy to win and willing to kick

ass. I wanted him to be Jesus, arms out in front of me, obscuring the

road to wrongheadedness and shining with the pure golden light of

everything that was good and sensible and true.

Instead he came on like an old drinking buddy who’d seen too

much of life to take a hard line on anything.

“Well, yeah,” he’d say. “I hear you. I
am
what you should be doing.