most of her clothing out of the way.
His weight pressed her helplessly back and his hands were on her and she could barely move and barely breathe and thought oh, God, what’s one more time, and gave up.
It had eased when he stopped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Pittsburgh. He got a cheeseburger in the restaurant, and a cup of coffee. He ate at the counter looking at the scattering of travelers around him. A lot of trackers, a lot of old people, retired probably, who’d arrived in their RVs. See the country: Trailer parks where you could get water and electrical and sewage hookups. Gas stations where you could fill up on gas and buy a pre-made sandwich wrapped in Saran Wrap, places like this where you could sit among your fellow adventurers and not look at them. They all looked like they’d eaten too much white bread. When he finished eating, he went to the men’s room, and washed, and came out and walked to his car. The rain was firm now, and pleasant. Standing beside his car with one hand on the door, Jesse took off his baseball cap and turned his face up to the min. He stood a long time letting the hard rain soak into him. He didn’t know why he was doing it, and he stopped only when he became aware that because other people were watching. His wet clothes were uncomfortable to drive in and when he reached the next rest stop he got some dry clothes out of his suitcase and changed into them in a bathroom stall. He bought a large coffee at the rest stop, and back in the car added a lot of scotch to it. He sipped the laced coffee as he crossed the Delaware River north of Philadelphia and picked up the Jersey Turnpike.
He was in the east now, but it wasn’t yet the east he imagined. This part of the east looked like Anaheim. Except for the rain. This was eastern rain. No sudden outbursts, no scudding clouds, no interruption for sunshine before another downpour, no bright colors made more brilliant by the wetness. Eastern rain was steady and unyielding’and gray… What confused him most was that Jennifer would neither embrace him nor let him go. He was a self-reliant gust. He had spent most of his life staying inside, playing ‘ within himself. He was pretty sure he could still do that, but there had to be some sort of completion between them.
Having been her lover, he was quite sure he could never be her friend and nothing more. In the early days of his dismay he had thought maybe he could share her. He had, after all, in the last year or so of their marriage been sharing her involuntarily. But in a while he understood that he i C°uld not. And so he sat one evening in their kitchen, on one of their high stools at the breakfast counter, with a States road atlas, a police help-wanted listing, and bottle of scotch, and decided where he would go to look peace. He had to work and all he knew was cop. Of possible jobs the one in Paradise, Massachusetts, was farthest away. With a lot of scotch inside him, which him ironic rather than sad, he imagined the salt spray the snowy streets at Christmastime and the cheery New going steadfastly about their business and de-to try Paradise first. Now as he approached the George Washington Bridge he was maybe two hundred miles away from it and he felt as remote and unconnected as if he were adrift in
‘space. There were other ways to get to New England, but he wanted to do it this way. He wanted to drive over the Hudson River across the George Washington Bridge. New York City stretched along the river to his right looking the way it did in all the pictures.
Not to be confused with Los Angeles, he thought.
He’d been in Chicago once looking for a guy who’d killed a process server in Gardena, and again for the Paradise job interview. He’d arranged several at a law enforcement convention in the Palmer House. But he assumed he wasn’t getting a glowing recommendation from the LAPD, and Paradise was the only one to offer him a job. He remembered the march of Chicago cityscape along the lake front, but the New York skyline was different.
Chicago had been exuberant. This congregation of spires was far too reserved for exuberance. There was nothing exultant in their massed height. There was something like contempt in the brute grace of the skysc.rapers standing above the river.
The memory of the interview embarrassed him. He had been drinking scotch in the bar downstairs and his memory was the embarrassing memory of all drunks, he thought, the struggle to seem sober undercut by the half- suppressed knowledge that you were slurring your words. What bothered him even more was that he had needed to drink even though he knew it would jeopardize the job. His face felt hot at the memory. But they hadn’t noticed. The two in-tcrviewers, Hathaway, the selectman, and a Paradise police captain named Burke, seemed oblivious of the times when he couldn’t stop slushing the’s‘s in Los Angeles. It was late afternoon.
Maybe they’d had a couple before the interview themselves.
They’d talked in a one-bedroom suite that Hathaway was in.
The police captain had a single room the hail. Jesse remembered the room being too hot. he remembered that Burke hardly spoke at all, and Hathaway didn’t seem to be asking the right questions. had to excuse himself twice to go to the bathroom, each time he had splashed cold water on his face from sink. But drunk is drunk, as he well knew, and cold didn’t change anything. Hathaway had sat in front of window eleven stories above the loop with a manila in his lap, to which he occasionaily referred. Hath-asked about his education, his experience, his marital
“Divorced,” Jesse said.
He didn’t like saying it. It still seemed to him somehow shameful thing to admit. It made him feel less.
Hathaway, if he thought it shameful, made no sign. was silent in the shadow near the window to Hathleft.
“What do you think, Jesse,” Hathaway said, about fifminutes into the interview, “about the right to keep bear arms?”
“Constitution’s clear on that; I
think.” Jesse had trouble all the’t‘s in constitution.
“Yes,” Hathaway said, “I think
so too.”
They talked a bit about Jesse’s life in the minor leagues how it was too bad that he couldn’t make the throw They talked of how many cases he had cleared
“Nobody clears them all,” Jesse said with a smile, trying enlist Burke, who remained silent, his arms folded.
came out clearth.
“We talked with your Captain Cronjager,”
Hatha,vay referring to his folder.
Jesse waited. Cronjager was a decent enough guy, but he believed in police work and he might not recommend a cop who drank on duty.
