361 - Donald E. Westlake [7]
We sat in the dinette and drank Bill’s beer, and played gin with a deck of Bill’s cards. The blue-black revolver looked strange on the rose-mottled formica of the table. The guy lost consistently. He couldn’t keep his mind on the game. Every once in a while, he’d talk to me about letting him go. But he didn’t really think he could convince me.
The backyard, just outside the dinette window, gradually became night. In the other direction, through the archway, was the living room and the picture window. It was night out that way, too, with a streetlight off a ways to the side and amber light from the picture window across the way.
Bill came home after ten. By the way he drove, he was drunk. When he was in high school, he owned a Pontiac with no back seat and a Mercury engine, and he shoved it around tracks in stock races. Most of the time he was drunk, and half the time he rode in the money. Sober, he was a good hard driver. Drunk, he shaved his corners.
He came in wide-eyed, blue basketball jacket crooked over T-shirt. He looked at me and shook his head and leaned back against the kitchen wall. “Don’t do that,” he said. His voice trembled. “Jesus, don’t do that. I thought it was Ann.” He held a quaking hand to his chest.
It hadn’t even occurred to me. Who but his wife would be waiting home for him, the lights on? I got up, remembering the gun just in time, and said, “I didn’t think, Bill.”
“Jesus,” he said. He shook his head and licked his lips. He pushed off from the wall and opened the refrigerator door, and dropped the bottle he grabbed for. He shut the door and fumbled for the bottle.
I thought he was going to fall over. I waved the gun at my gin-partner. “Go open it for him,” I said.
He did it. Bill watched him, frowning. He took the bottle and drank from it, and then he said to me, “Who is this?” He waved the bottle at the guy the way I’d waved the gun.
“He met me outside the hospital,” I said. I told the story, finishing, “And he won’t say any more than that.”
“Oh, he won’t.” Bill put the bottle in his left hand, and hit the guy in the mouth.
I’d never seen that before, a man knocked out with one punch. The guy just fell down like his strings were cut.
I said, “That’s bright. He’ll talk a lot better in that condition.”
“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.” He gulped the beer again, put the bottle down on the drainboard, filled a glass with water.
“No,” I said. I put the gun on top of the refrigerator, knelt beside the guy, slapped him awake. Over my shoulder, I said, “Make yourself some coffee. You’re supposed to be three years older than me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ray. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself.”
“For how long?”
“I know. Two weeks ago today. Ann.” He was on the verge of a crying jag.
“Make coffee,” I said. “Three cups.”
The guy on the floor twisted his head away from my slap. “Cut it out,” he whined. “Cut it out.”
“Get on your feet,” I told him. “He won’t hit you again.”
He didn’t believe me, but he got up, shakily. Bill was watching the water not boil. I said to him, “When you’re sensible, come into the living room. Bring the coffee with you.” I reached down the gun from the refrigerator.
Bill said, “I’m sorry, Ray. Jesus God, I’m sorry.”
“If you start crying,” I told him, “I’ll walk out and the hell with you.” I prodded the guy into the living room. We turned on lights and sat looking across the street, where the picture window framed a happy family watching television, just like the ads in the Saturday Evening Post. It looked so normal I wanted to cry. Give me back my three years, Air Force. Four years, counting the year before they sent me to Germany. Give it back, I want to be home again, with Dad sometimes good for a game of catch, with Bill a big brother smelling of beer and Pontiac. I don’t want to be twenty-three, without a home or an old man. I don’t want a brother who’s grieving for a wife I never even met. That makes us strangers.
I said to the guy, “What’s your name?”
“Smitty.”
“Crap.”
“Honest to God. I got a library card