First Thrills - Lee Child [120]
“Should I turn off the AC?” Pedro asked.
“No,” Marina said. “Leave it on. Or else he’ll stink up the place and the neighbors will call police.”
They left.
Baretta came on the TV. In the old days, back when he and Joanne still lived in Laguna Beach, Victor would come home from work and watch Baretta. Or Kojak. Those two were his favorites. Although, he also liked Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife. That was before McMillan was a fag. That reminded him: he used to watch Rockford, with that guy who was Maverick. And, speaking of fags, Victor liked Ironside because Raymond Burr was a cripple and could still solve crimes without getting up. Victor thought he’d heard that Ironside was a fag, too.
And he liked Cannon because the show always got personal—Cannon was always solving a crime for some dame who was a former girlfriend.
“He sure gets a lot of action for a fat guy,” Victor would call out to Joanne who was in the kitchen.
Plus, when it came time for Cannon to nail the perp, the crim would take off running and then they’d show Cannon start to run and cut right to Cannon grabbing the guy by the collar and tossing him on the ground. Every time that happened Victor would laugh and holler for Joanne to come in and see it.
“They never show the fat guy running,” Victor would bray.
But Joanne didn’t give a shit about Cannon. She wouldn’t even look at the show.
All Joanne ever did was complain. Not shrill, but plaintive. Like a martyr. Saint Joanne, our lady of neglected sorrows. Victor couldn’t even recall the sound of his ex-wife’s voice. It had been muffled, always coming from over his right shoulder. Joanne always stood in the blind spot of Vic’s recliner.
Joanne would pepper Victor with questions and demands. Did you get the car smogged? You need to talk to Ronny about his allowance. Look at what the girl did to my hair!
She never asked about Heidi. Victor wasn’t even sure if Joanne knew her name. She always referred to her as “your secretary.” “They call them ‘administrative assistants’ now,” Vic would tell her. “What-ever,” Joanne would say, “she’s curt with me on the phone.”
“What?” Victor would have to yell.
“Curt,” Joanne would yell back from the kitchen. “She’s rude and disrespectful when I call you at the office. Who does she think she is?”
When Joanne came home from work, she would always go straight to the kitchen. She’d take off her shoes and hang her blouse over the back of a kitchen chair. She’d cook dinner in her brassiere, and her skirt and her suntan pantyhose with the reinforced toe. Joanne would stand at the stove, stirring Ragu spaghetti sauce. The loose flesh at the back of her upper arms quivered. But her breasts stood high and firm in the cross bracing of her sturdy white brassiere.
Joanne stuck it out until Ronny went off to college.
One afternoon, while Victor was watching a sport-fishing program, Joanne entered the TV room. She was wearing her blouse, and carrying a suitcase. She said she was going to her sister’s, and there were potpies in the freezer. After a month, Joanne hadn’t come home. But Victor received a letter from her lawyer.
Victor continued to get mail after his death. Every morning, the postman slipped mail through the slot. It fell onto a pile drifting up against the door.
As a corpse, Victor received glossy brochures beckoning him to join other active seniors in their retirement communities. The retirees in the ads were always cutting up—spinning brodies in their golf carts or coasting on their bicycles with their feet kicked up in the air. And the active senior men were always with foxy active senior women who looked like forty-year-old models in gray wigs.
It was when he retired that Victor noticed Heidi started going out more. They’d only been married for a couple of years. But she was restless. She’d leave dinner for him, a plate covered in foil. He’d put it in the micro wave and eat on a TV tray. When she got home, she’d turn