The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

the steps to my room, holding a paper bag filled with two bottles of McCullum's, two Old Crow, and a Booth Ultre. It's good stuff, too, uncut. The steals are still intact. But with every step my mood gets blacker.

Coming back we stopped at a fountain to clean my face and strap on the bandages. The cuts are deeper than I'd thought, three grooves beginning at my jaw and curving up to my cheekbone. Removing the oil rag sets them bleeding afresh, and now I can feel the bandages stiffening with blood and quinine.

The scent of quinine takes me back. Back to the old days, after I had graduated from beer to wine and wine to whiskey, and could no longer afford any of them. The war had only made my habit worse, and after I came home it really took off. I lost my job at the Agency, lost Ingrid, lost the memory of what my own face looked like. The last step on the rung, I got a job mopping the floors at a morgue in St. Louis. It paid five dollars a week, and I only took it because no one kept track of the formaldehyde. By then, that was the only thing that worked. I'd bring in jugs of cantaloupe-water from Little Mexico to cut it with, and drink all night. One night I didn't even have that, so I sat there, cotton up my nose, swallowing the stuff straight until I bled from the eyes like a horny-toad.

That was a year ago, a year that I spent mostly at the Osterhausen Sanitarium in Reno, Nevada. It's free of charge to Mormons, so I converted on the spot. I went to service every day, along with my treatments, for an entire year.

You'd think that memories of this kind would make me toss this paper bag in the trash. I would think so, too. But it's not the case. Climbing up these creeking steps in Bridgewater, Idaho, I can't really remember the tears, the vomit, the hours of work I put in to get this far. The past and the future disappear in a blur of Chesterfield smoke. And the present smells only of lilacs.

By the time I get to my room, my whole body is shaking like a tuning fork. When I open the door to Les Newlyweds, I catch a whiff of that dark taint of lilac, ripe to the point of rot. I thought I was ready for it. I'm not. But I press on anyway, into the room. A lamp has been left on, and by its light I see that there are no cut flowers, no heart-shaped bed. Only a standard queen with a red coverlet.

And on it, Ingrid.

I stop short. She's sitting there, her hands on her hat, her hat in her lap. I see that her hair has been bobbed, but the bangs are tousled to one side. The lamplight makes one side of her face glow, and leaves the rest to the shadows.

I stare at her and she stares back, crumpling her cloche hat. I open my mouth but all that comes out is, 'You.'

She nods. Her mouth is tight, her eyes shadowed. 'I'm sorry,' she says.

I'd forgotten her voice. Low, like torn felt. It works on me. The floor tilts and I brace myself. The bottles clink in the bag.

She hears the noise, looks at what I'm holding. Her upper lip gets the better of her lower. 'What's in the bag?'

'Dishware. Why?'

She draws a shaky breath, says, 'I didn't come here to fight.'

'Why did you come?'

'Because it wasn't fair, what happened. I didn't mean to leave. That is, I meant to leave, but not without talking to you. That's why I went in the first place. To talk.'

'About what?'

Her brow crinkles in that way it does. 'Oh Frank,' she says.

'Don't.'

She looks away for a minute, and the lamplight loses everything but her ear, which is small and pointed. She looks at the far wall, but there is nothing to see there but a bureau and a straw cornucopia filled with red-foil chocolate hearts. An old print hangs above it, showing a pack of beagles cornering a fox.

Her shoulders rise with a slow breath, and when she looks back her eyes are steady and her brow is smooth.

'Lionel. I want to talk about Lionel.'

'So talk about him.' I take the bag over to the corner desk and set it down. Clink, clink. 'How's he doing?'

'Not well. I haven't heard from him in three weeks.'

'That long?'

'Frank.' Her voice stops me halfway to the window. The old stuff, she hasn't lost it. 'I said I didn't come here to fight.'

'Who's fighting?' I pull open the drapes. The town is asleep, and clouds blot out the moon. 'So tell me, I say. 'Tell me about Lionel.'

'He had a hard year.' Looking down, she smoothes her skirt. 'You know he never approved of my…' biting her lip, '…friendship with Jake Kepler. Well, it was worse than ever this year. At each other's throats constantly. So bad, in fact, that I nearly left town. But when Jake heard that I was considering leaving Chicago, he came up with a plan. He said Lionel just needed life experience. So he gave him a job with the Agency – and oh Frank, it made all the difference in the world.' Looks up, her eyes shining.

'How so?'

'These past few months, he's been like a whole different person. He was assigned to help the El Paso border-police root out corruption. Now he's like a hero to them, from what I hear. Did you know he speaks Spanish? He's changed, Frank, he works so hard. Every week I get letters from him in the mail. Raids, patrols, intelligence- gathering. He's been so useful. Everyone at the Agency says so.'

'Lionel speaks Spanish?' I stare out the window. There's a break in the clouds and the moon looks through it like a flame-within-a-flame. Lux et Calor.

'He speaks it like a native. A woman at the Agency taught him. He tells me he passes for Mexican all the time and no one raises an eyebrow.'

'He always was dark, Lionel.'

'Yes.'

'Got that from his father, I suppose.' I turn back to her. 'Speaking of which,' I say, but she's already off the bed and standing, pulling on her coat.

'What do you think you're doing?'

'I shouldn't have come.'

'Hold on.' I cross to her but she backs away.

'Don't, Frank.'

'I'm not doing anything.'

'Exactly.' She puts on her hat.

'Well, what do you expect? What do you want from me?'

'Help, Frank. I wanted your help.'

'You'll get it.'

'Will I?' She's not looking at me. She's looking at the bag on the desk.

'Don't say it.'

'What should I say? I'd heard you'd changed.'

'I have.'

'I'd like to believe that. I did believe it. But then I come here, I see the bag, the basket.'

'Basket? What basket?'

She points to the far bedside table. Next to the unlit lamp is a wicker bowl filled with pink silk roses, a card and two long-necked bottles of champagne. I blink, but it's still there. 'That's not mine,' I say. 'I didn't order that.'

She nods. 'I've got to go.'

'Not yet.' I snag her arm and pull her close. 'Stay a while, Ingrid.'

'I can't.'

'Yes you can. Give me a chance.'

'Lionel,' she said. 'Lionel's your chance.' She takes my hand but only to press something into it. An envelope. 'This is his last letter,' she says. 'It was sent to me by mistake. Maybe you can make some sense of it.'

'I will.'