Alex’s headlights caught the Leary’s walking slowly along the wet sidewalk. He slowed, and Betty Lou rolled down her window. “Need a ride?” she called.
“No, thanks,” Mr. Leary said. “We live just around the corner.”
“Well, welcome to Dallas,” Betty Lou said.
JAKE
Jake had never had trouble sleeping, until lately. It had to do with the separation. Or maybe not. Maybe it was this lousy apartment and its grimy carpets that felt greasy to his bare feet and the cockroaches that scurried about the cracked linoleum in the kitchen when he turned on the light. Maybe it was the two open suitcases at the foot of his bed. For two months he had held in the back of his mind the thought of unpacking and getting settled. He ought to hang some pictures and clean the refrigerator, do something to give himself a stake in the place, something to make it his own. But he hadn’t, and maybe that wasn’t the trouble at all.
He flung the covers back and sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette in the dark. Sometimes that helped. Sometimes all he needed was one last cigarette after he went to bed. He liked to smoke in the dark. The orange glow of the cigarette was a comfort, almost like a person. He resented needing another person or even wanting one. He had always thought of himself as a loner. Liz had called him that. “You’re a real loner,” she used to say. “You don’t need anyone, do you?” And Jack had believed that. He always felt betrayed somehow when he realized it wasn’t true. Oh, he needed James. He didn’t mind admitting that, even to Byron and Jean. It was a way of hanging onto a shred of his fatherness, admitting that he needed James. “Fatherness.” Was that a real word? It ought to be. It wasn’t the same thing as “fatherhood.” “Fatherhood” had to do with copulation, conception, birth. Biology. “Fatherness” was something else. Reading to James, bathing him, arranging the covers over him, kissing him goodnight. He wondered how James was doing in school. Whenever Jake asked him, he said, “Fine,” and when he asked Liz, she said, “Fine.” Fine. It wasn’t much to know about a son’s experience in first grade. There was no fatherness in “fine.” Thinking of James make Jake’s gut ache. He couldn’t go to sleep thinking of James.
He should have gone home with Byron, if he had gotten too drunk to drive, he could have slept on the couch, and Jean would have awakened him and given him a good breakfast and gotten him off to work. God, he envied Byron, married to the same woman all his life and still in love with her. Why couldn’t everyone be like that? Why couldn’t Jake Callison be like that? Byron’s whole life was measured in ones. One city, one newspaper, one wife, one son dead in Korea. One house, even. Maybe that was the secret. Never count beyond one. Never let the possibilities into your mind. Never dream. Never want. What did wanting get you? Greasy carpets. Cockroaches. Walls without pictures. God, he hated that place. He should have looked around some more, found a place he really liked. It was dumb, taking the first place he looked at. But he could afford it, and hadn’t felt like looking. Maybe he hadn’t thought he would be here long. Hell, couldn’t he still look if he wanted to? This place might be all right if he fixed it up. But what for? He couldn’t bring James to the neighborhood with dopers and hookers on the sidewalks. He wouldn’t even bring Sherry here. Like most bankers, she despised untidiness. She would think less of him if she saw the cockroaches and the suitcases. She would want to fix it up, take him shopping for bedspreads. Shower curtains. Pictures. A picture of James was in one of the suitcases.
Maybe more bourbon would do it. The bottle that Byron had given him was on the kitchen counter, still in its brown bag. No. he couldn’t take any more bourbon. He wished he had some brandy, or even a beer. God, he felt lousy. Jesus H. Christ. Maybe he should see a doctor. “What seems to be the trouble?” the doctor would ask. “I’m coming apart, doc. I drink too much, smoke too much, can’t sleep, hate my job, don’t have any money, and my kid keeps asking me why I’m mad at Mommy and don’t live with them anymore.”
Maybe he should call Byron. Byron would have some brandy. Jean wouldn’t mind. Byron was a lucky son of a bitch. The couch unfolded into a bed. Clean sheets.
He picked up the telephone receiver and held it in his lap while he lit another cigarette, then dropped the match in the ashtray and dialed. Sherry answered on the first ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was groggy, irritated.
“Hi, hon. What are you doing?”
“Jake? Is this Jake?”
“Sure it is, hon. Did I wake you up?”
“Jake, do you know what time it is? It’s—almost two.”
“I’m sorry. I—lost track. I said I would call you.”
“Well I was expecting it a wee bit earlier. I stayed in all evening—.”
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. Byron and I…”
“Yeah, I figured. Well, now that I’m awake, what do you want?”
Jake hesitated. He didn’t trust her mood. “I’d like to come over.”
“Jake, it’s two! I have work tomorrow, and so do you. How about tomorrow night? I’ll fix you dinner.”
“I accept. But I’d still like to come tonight. I won’t give you any trouble. Just go back to sleep if you want to. Just unlock the door and I’ll lock it when I get there.”
“I’m afraid to. I ought to give you a key.” She was more awake, more pleasant now. She sighed. “OK. But hurry. I don’t want to be a wreck tomorrow.”
“Right. I’m on my way.”
Jake hung up the phone and switched on the lamp beside the bed. He rummaged in the suitcases for clean clothes, found socks and underwear. Nothing else was clean. He laid them on the bed beside the damp suit, shirt, and tie he had just taken off. What the hell, it was raining, anyway. He walked naked over the greasy carpet to the bathroom and spread dirty towels on the dirty white tile floor and turned on the curtainless shower. After his shower, he shaved and splashed aftershave on his face and brushed his teeth. He kicked the wet towels into a pile beside the toilet and returned to the bedroom to dress. Sometime during all this, he started to whistle.
JONATHAN
Jonathan Waters poured the milk into the pan and set it on the stove and got the jar of Ovaltine down from the shelf. He got down the silver beer stein with J.L.F. engraved on it in Old English and spooned Ovaltine into it. When the milk was warm, he poured it over the Ovaltine and stirred it until the crystals dissolved, then set the stein on a small silver tray and carried it into the front hall. He always used the front stairs when it was late and nobody was around. They weren’t as steep as the servants’ stairs.
Late at night, when it was so quiet, the Fisher house reminded him of a funeral home, although it was more elegant than any he had visited. The lights turned low, the reflections of electric candles in the huge, gilt-framed mirrors, the heavy velvet draperies and their heavy gold fringes and tassels seemed the perfect setting for corpses in mahogany caskets.
Jonathan’s slippers whispered up the curve in the wide stairs and down the wide hallway to the front corner bedroom. He knocked and waited for Mr. J.L.’s brusque “Come in! Come in!” He opened the door quietly and closed it quietly. He couldn’t see Mr. J.L., but he knew he was sitting in the velvet wing chair in front of the fireplace, hidden by the chair’s high back. Jonathan waited in front of the door for the rest of the ritual.
“Is the place secure?” the voice asked from behind the chair.
“Yessir. Calvin locked up about three hours ago, sir.”
“Are the yard lights on?”
“Yessir. Calvin turned them on, too. Everything’s just fine, sir.”
“Good. Good.”
That was Jonathan’s signal to advance