Bob sat back, turning the TV on by remote, discovering to his surprise that it worked. The news came on.
Bob paid no attention. It was just white noise.
His head ached. He held a bottle in his hands, between his legs as he lay on the bed, on a thin chintz bedspread.
Jim Beam, $9.95 at the Boise Lik-r-mart, recently purchased.
There were water spots on the ceiling, the room stank of ancient woe, of raped girlfriends and beaten wives and hustled salesmen. Cobwebs fogged the corners, the toilet had a slightly unwholesome odor to it, like heads he'd pissed in the world over.
I am losing it, he thought.
He tried to press his brain against the riddle again.
He felt if he could get that, he would have something.
Why, all those years ago, did Soloratov use an Ml rifle, a much less accurate semiauto? It appeared to be one of those mysteries that had no solution. Or, even worse, the answer was mundane, stupid, boring: he couldn't get a bolt gun, so he settled for the most accurate American rifle available, an MID Sniper. Yes, that made perfect sense but ... . but if he could get an MID, he could get a Model 70T or a Remington 700! It don't make no goddamn sense!
It doesn't have to make sense, he told himself. Not everything does. Some things just can't be explained, they happen in a certain way because that's the way of the world.
Bob looked at the bottle again, his fingers stole to the cap and the plastic seal that kept the amber fluid and its multiple mercies from his lips, and yearned to crack it and drink. But he didn't.
Won't never touch my lips again, he remembered telling someone.
Liar. Lying bastard. Talking big, not living up to it.
He tried to lose himself in what was on the tube. The news, some talking head from Russia. Oh, yeah, it sounded familiar. Big elections coming up, everybody all scared because some joker who represented the old ways was in the lead and would carry the day, and the Cold War would start up all over again. The guy was this Evgeny Pashin, handsome big guy, powerful presence. Bob looked at him.
Thought we won that war, he said to himself.
Thought that was one we did okay in, and now here's this guy and he's going to take over and restore Russia and all the missiles go back into the silos and it's the same old crock of shit.
Man, there was no good news anywhere, was there?
He was feeling powerfully maudlin. He yearned for his old life: his wife, his lay-up barn, the sick animals he was so good at caring for, his perfect baby daughter, enough money. Man, had it knocked.
It all was taken away from him.
He turned the TV off and the room was quiet. But only for a moment. A couple of units down, somebody was yelling at somebody. Somewhere outside, a kid was crying. Other TVs vibrated through the walls. Traffic hummed along. Looking out the window he saw the buzz of neon, blurry and mashed together, from fast food joints and bars and liquor stores across the way.
Man, I hate to be alone anymore, he thought.
That's why Solaratov will get me. He likes being alone. I lived alone for years, I fought alone. But I lost whatever edge I had.
I want my family. I want my daughter.
The lyrics of some old rock and roll song sounded in his ears, moist, rich, poignant.
Black is black, he heard the music, / want my baby back.
Yeah, well, you am 't going to get her back. You 're just going to sit here until that fucking Russian hunts you down and blows you away.
Ceiling, discolored. Cobwebs, mildew, the sound of other people's grief over the traffic and me stuck by myself with no goddamn way in hell to figure out what I got to figure out.
You think everything is about you and that blinds you to the world, his wife had told him.
Yeah, as if she would know. She really never did get him, he thought bitterly.
His hand involuntarily cranked on the bottle top and he heard it crack as the seal broke. He opened the bottle, looked down into the open muzzle. He knew a form of doom lay behind that muzzle. It was like looking down the barrel of a loaded rifle, the incredible temptation it had to some weak and deranged people, because to look down it was to look straight into death's own eye. So it was with the bottle for an ex-drunk. Look into it, take what it has to offer and you are gone. You are history.
He yearned for the strength to throw it out but knew he didn't have it. He raised the bottle to his lips, wise with the knowledge that he was about to die, and brought the bottle-You think everything is about you.
Bob stopped. He considered something so fundamental he'd not seen it before, but suddenly it seemed as big as a mountain: his assumption that Solaratov came to Vietnam to kill him and had returned to Idaho to kill him.
But suppose it wasn't about him?
What could it be about, then?
He tried to think.
The sniper had a semiauto.
