I swallowed. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick and furry. “You been talking to Barney?”
She nodded. “He’s got a fight to train for. You shouldn’t be distracting him like this.”
“Nobody asked him to.”
“To what? Sit with you while you drink yourself into a stupor? Carry you up the stairs and toss you in bed? Why’d you call me, Nate?”
Now I could find the smile; just barely, but it was there. “Barney talked me into it.”
She shook her head, smiled wryly. “You don’t deserve friends like us.”
“I know I don’t,” I said, and started to weep.
She had an arm around me. I was hunched forward cupping my hands over my face. She was offering me a handkerchief that she’d had in her hand, at the ready; she’d been talking to Barney, all right.
“Ain’t very dignified for a tough copper,” I said, swallowing snot. “I been on this crying jag for so long my goddamn eyes burn.”
“Is that why you’re drinking, Nate? Does the flow of booze stop the flow of tears?”
I grunted something like a laugh. “You don’t drink much, do you, Helen? Getting drunk is the one socially pardonable way a man can cry in public. Nobody blames a drunk for crying in his beer.”
“I hear you’ve been hitting something a little stronger.”
“Yeah. But not today. Today I’m stone-cold sober. And it scares hell out of me.”
She looped her arm in mine, moving closer. “Let’s go to bed.”
I shook my head, violently. “No! No. That won’t solve anything…that won’t solve anything.”
“We don’t have to do anything, Nate. We’ll just get under the sheets and be together. What do you say?”
“I’m so goddamn tired I’d fall asleep in a second.”
“That’s okay. What else is Sunday afternoon good for?”
The satin sheets felt good; for a moment it was like I’d never left this room. Like I’d been here with Sally forever. For a moment I felt like myself again.
For a moment.
“Did you love her, Nate?”
She really had talked to Barney; I’d spilled my guts to the little palooka, and he’d spilled his to her. Damn him. Bless him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was too rushed. She wasn’t…she wasn’t like you, Sally. She was just this dumb little farm girl.”
“I’m just an intelligent little farm girl, Nate.”
I found myself almost managing to smile again. “She
“Did you love her, Nate?”
“I don’t know. It hadn’t got that far, really.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
I wondered how much Barney had told her.
“No,” I said.
She smiled like a wicked madonna. “You don’t lie worth a damn, Heller.”
Somebody laughed. Me?
I said, “It probably wouldn’t’ve lasted. But that isn’t the point. She was this sweet naive thing who had a father who beat her and a husband who beat her some more. And then she fell in with…a bad crowd, and I came along, and she trusted me, and I killed her. I fucking killed her.”
She stroked my arm. “You didn’t kill anybody.”
“As good as. I took her right to the son of a bitch who did. For a thousand dollars.”
It had come in an envelope, with a bunch of stamps stuck on it, the Monday after. A fat envelope full of twenties. I’d hurled it against the wall, and the money spilled out like green confetti. Later, in one of my rare recent sober moments, I’d picked it up and stacked it and put it in a new envelope. It was in my bank deposit box, now. Money was money; it didn’t know where it came from. And even though I did know, I kept it. Out of perversity in a way. Because I had earned that money. Brother had I earned it.
“Why demand the impossible of yourself, Nate?” Sally asked. “There was no way you could have known that man wasn’t really her father.”
“I should have checked up on him. That’s twice lately somebody’s come in off the street and told me a story and I swallowed hook, line and sinker. I’m supposed to be a guy with some street savvy. Stick around—some guy’ll sell me the Wrigley Building, before the summer’s out.”
Smiling, she said, “You’re starting to sound like Nate Heller again, whether you like it or not.”
I sighed. “It’d be all right with me to come out of this. And I will. Being here’s a good sign.”
