Part 6 (2/2)

His eyes were rimmed with red, as though someone had poked at them-someone with a sharp stick and a mean streak. His gray hair was matted. (Clara had always made fun of his hair in the morning, the way sleep had poked it into fuzzy tufts at the back.) His skin was gray and blotched and lined; along his cheeks and nose, narrow red veins traced whorls and curlicues. His stubble was pure white now, an old man's, not a speck of black in it anywhere, not a one.

One day you wake up and you look in the mirror and you discover that you're an old man.

And one day you wake up and you discover that you're dead.

He said aloud, ”Grigsby, you are one pathetic son of a b.i.t.c.h.”

He took another swallow of bourbon.

Better. The whiskey was driving its core of warmth down through the hollow center of his being.

He was beginning to feel half human again. Half human was about the best he ever managed.

Now if he could get himself cleaned up and dressed and away from the house before Brenda figured out that he was gone.

She came into the kitchen while he sat gulping his coffee at the table. Making the coffee had been a mistake.

She was wearing an old pink bathrobe of Clara's, one that Clara had left forgotten at the rear of the bedroom closet, and for an instant Grigsby wanted to leap up and rip it off her back.

His fury surprised him. And then somehow, in the midst of his surprise, the anger dissipated.

These days none of his emotions lasted for very long. Not fury, not surprise.

Self-contempt-but that wasn't an emotion.

f.u.c.k the robe. What difference did it make if Brenda wore the d.a.m.n thing?

He set the coffee cup down atop the red and white checkered oilcloth that covered the table. (Clara would've hated it, but it was easier to keep clean than wood.) He lifted his cigarette from the ashtray.

Brenda smiled at him-she was a bit blurry, like a photograph not quite in focus-and padded around behind him, put her heavy arms around his neck. ”How's my big man this morning?”

Sucking on the cigarette, he concealed a cringe of distaste. This was what she always said in the morning, whenever he had been lonely enough, desperate enough, drunk enough, to bring her here for the night.

He grunted then, his standard morning greeting, deliberately cool, almost gruff. He always hoped that by refusing her any real conversation, she would one day stop trying to have one. So far, this had never worked.

She put her cheek next to his. Her hair was stiff and p.r.i.c.kly against his skin, like dried gra.s.s. ”Let me fix you up some food,” she said. ”You're a growing boy, Bob. You need your vittles.” Her cheek pillowed out against his as she smiled.

This was something else she always said.

And that was the problem with Brenda. (One of them, anyway.) Give her the same d.a.m.n situation and she would say exactly the same d.a.m.n thing. Every time. Regular as a banker's bowels. And whatever it was she said, you could tell from her smile, all sugary and pleased with herself, that she still thought it was cute as kittens. The first time, maybe it had been. (He couldn't remember, but he doubted it.) Now, after ten or twenty or fifty times, whenever she did it he wanted to scream.

He told her, ”I'm not hungry.” And then-reluctantly, because her pitiful grat.i.tude at his small kindnesses always shamed him-he added, ”Thanks.”

She squeezed his neck and again he felt her smile against his cheek. ”Yeah,” she said. ”I reckon maybe you had your fill last night.”

Jesus.

He had f.u.c.ked her.

He sighed. He lifted his cup and took a bitter, penitential swallow of coffee.

”'M I gonna see you tonight?” she asked him.

Not if he stayed sober. ”Don't know,” he said. ”Lot of work to do.”

”Well, you know where I live.”

He grunted. He was able to make each grunt identically non-committal to the grunt before.

She smiled again. He thought, I'll keep the home fires burning.

She said, ”I'll keep the home fires burning.”

He grunted.

She chose to take this particular grunt as an endearment, and nuzzled her nose into his neck.

That was another problem with Brenda. She saw anything short of a punch in the gut as affection.

And even if he were the kind of a.s.shole who punched out women, how the h.e.l.l do you punch out a woman who was hurting so badly for some kindness? Any kindness at all? Be like kicking a little puppy dog.

The main problem with Brenda, when you got right down to it, was that she wasn't Clara. And he couldn't really blame her for that. Wasn't her fault.

The main problem with him was that he deserved Brenda, or someone like her, more than he had ever deserved Clara.

He finished off the rest of his coffee. ”Gotta go,” he said.

She stepped back as he stood up, and just then someone knocked at the front door.

Grigsby frowned. Doors that got knocked on at six in the morning never opened up onto anything good.

He turned to Brenda. ”Stay here,” he told her.

She curtsied, smiling. She was too big a woman to pull off a curtsy-too big and too old a woman to do half the cutesy little-girl things she did. His feelings moved through their old familiar dance, shuffling from embarra.s.sment to irritation to shame.

She said, ”Your wish is my command, sire.”

He nodded, looked grimly away. Jesus.

His clothes from yesterday, and hers, were flung about the parlor-pants on the floor, s.h.i.+rt draped over the armchair. Her corset wrapped around his other pair of boots. Her stiff petticoat standing upright, like a squat teepee, in the center of the carpet.

He and Brenda had done themselves proud, looked like. No wonder he was so d.a.m.n tired. He couldn't remember any of it, but probably that was a blessing.

He opened the front door.

Officer McKinley stood there in his blue Denver Police uniform, looking fat and ill at ease. He glanced quickly up and down the empty street, as though he suspected that spies watched him from within the small frame houses or from behind the hedges and shrubs. He tapped the brim of his cap. ”Mornin', Marshal.”

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