'Nope. Sorry.'
Disappointed, Chase got up. 'Thanks anyway.'
Blentz turned on his stool. 'How did you go about borrowing two hundred bucks from a guy without learning his name?'
Chase said, 'We were both drunk. If I'd been half sober, I'd have remembered it.'
Blentz smiled. 'And if he'd been half sober, he wouldn't have made the loan.'
'Probably not.'
Blentz raised his glass and took a swallow of beer. Light sparkled on the polished edges of his silver ring. A double lightning bolt.
As Chase walked across the tavern and out the door into the mall, he knew that Eric Blentz was still twisted away from the bar, watching.
Aryan Alliance. Some sort of club, like the Elks Club or the Moose Lodge, for God's sake, but for a bunch of white supremacists who had perhaps grown tired of running around the countryside in hooded white sheets and were looking for a more modern, urban image.
But why the hell would they want to kill a high-school boy like Michael Karnes? Why would one of these fanatics — Judge — be engaged in a campaign against promiscuous teenagers, ranting on the phone about sin and judgment? What did that have to do with making the world safe for the white race? Michael Karnes had been a white-bread boy — not a natural target for something like the Aryan Alliance but a potential recruit.
The blacktop in the parking lot was soft in places.
The summer sky was gas-flame blue. And as blind as a dead television screen, offering no answers.
Chase started the car and drove home.
No one shot at him.
In his room, he turned on the television, watched it for fifteen minutes, and turned it off before the program was finished. He opened a paperback book, but he couldn't concentrate on the story.
He paced, instinctively staying away from his window.
At six o'clock he left the house to keep his date with Glenda Kleaver.
To avoid leading Judge to the woman and perhaps endangering her,
Chase drove aimlessly for half an hour, turning at random from street to street, watching his rearview mirror. But no tail stayed with him along his circuitous route.
Glenda lived in an inexpensive but well-kept garden-apartment complex on St. John's Circle, on the third floor of a three-floor building. There was a peephole in her door, and she took the time to use it before answering his knock. She was wearing white shorts and a dark blue blouse.
'You're punctual,' she said. 'Come in. Can I get you something to drink?'
As he stepped inside, he said, 'What're you having?'
'Iced tea. But I've got beer, wine, gin, vodka.'
'Iced tea sounds good.'
'Be right back.'
He watched her as she crossed the room and disappeared down a short corridor that evidently led to the dining room and kitchen. She moved like sunlight on water.
The living room was sparely furnished but cozy. Four armchairs, a coffee table, a couple of end tables with lamps. No sofa. There were no paintings because all the walls without windows were covered with bookshelves, and every shelf was crammed full of paperbacks and book-club hardbacks.
He was reading the titles on the spines of the books when she returned with two glasses of iced tea. 'You're a reader,' he said.
'I confess.'
'Me too.'
'See any shared interests?'
'Quite a few,' he said, accepting the tea. He pulled a volume off one shelf. 'What did you think of this?'
'It reeked.'
'Didn't it?'
'All the publicity, but it's empty.'
He returned the book to the shelf, and they adjourned to two of the armchairs.
'I like people,' Glenda said, which seemed an odd comment until she added, 'but I like them more in books than in real life.'
'Why's that?'
'I'm sure you know,' she said.
And he did. 'In a book, even the real bastards can't hurt you.'
'And you can never lose a friend you make in a book.'
'When you get to a sad part, no one's there to see you cry.'
'Or wonder why you don't cry when you should,' she said.
'I don't mind living secondhand. Through books.'
'It has big advantages,' she agreed.
He wondered who had hurt her, how often, and how badly. Beyond doubt, she had suffered. He could sense a depth of pain in her that was disturbingly familiar to him.
Yet there was nothing melancholy about her. She had a sweet, gentle smile, and she virtually radiated a quiet happiness that made him more comfortable in her living room than he had been anywhere since he'd left home for college seven years ago.
'When I returned to the reference desk at the morgue and you'd gone,' she said, 'I thought you were angry about being made to wait.'
'Not at all. I just remembered… an appointment I'd forgotten.'
'I'll be back on duty Monday if you want to stop around.'
'You like working there?'
'It's nice and quiet. Some of the reporters can be too flirty, but that's the worst of it.'
He smiled. 'You can handle them.'
'Reporters all think they're persistent and tough,' she said. 'But they're no match for a newspaper-morgue librarian.'
'At least not for this one.'
'Where do you work?' she asked.
'Nowhere right now.'
'Waiting,' she said, instead of anything that anyone else might have said. 'Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.'
'But it's all you can do.'
She sipped her iced tea. 'One day there'll be a door like any other door, but when you open it, right in front of you will be just the thing you need.'
'It's nice to think so,' he said.
'Then you forget the pain of waiting.'
Chase had never been party to a conversation half as strange as this — yet it made more sense than any conversation that he'd ever had in his life.
'Have you found that door?' he asked.
'There's not just one. A series of them. With spells of waiting in between.'
Dinner was delicious: tossed salad, potatoes and pasta layered with spinach and basil and feta cheese, zucchini with slivers of red pepper, and marinated sea bass lightly grilled. For dessert, fresh orange slices sprinkled with coconut.
When they weren't talking in that strange shorthand that came naturally to them, they fell into silences that were never awkward.
After dinner in the dining area off the kitchen, she suggested that they adjourn to the small balcony off the living room, but Chase said, 'What about the dishes?'
'I'll take care of them later.'
