“Rigby’s relationship with Grayson, you mean.”
“Yeah, sure. You don’t walk in that house and say anything against Darryl…not if you want to come out with your head in one piece. And the same is true over here, by the way, so let’s back off on the rhetoric and we’ll all be a lot happier.”
“And I still don’t get my questions answered.”
“You got questions, ask ‘em. Let the sons of bitches rip.”
“Let’s start with this one. Do you think Nola Jean Ryder set the fire?”
He rocked back in his tracks. But he kept on moving, trying to cover his surprise by making the sudden movement seem intentional. He climbed up on a high steel chair at the table where the answering machine blinked its red light and looked at me from there, leaning in and out of the shadow.
I wasn’t going to ask him again. Let him stew his way through it. Finally the silence got to him and he said, “The fire was an accident.”
“Some people don’t think so.”
“Some people think the world is flat. What do you want me to do about that?”
Who’s got an attitude now? I thought. But I said, “Give it a guess.”
“Darryl died, that was the end of it. That’s my guess. There wasn’t any reason for Nola Jean to be here anymore. I doubt she ever stayed in one place more than six months in her life till she came here. Why would she stick around after Darryl died? Everybody here hated her.”
“Did you hate her?”
“I never gave her that much thought.”
I grunted, the kind of sound that carries a full load of doubt without the bite.
“Look,” he said, annoyed that I’d caught him lying. “She was Darry’s woman. That made her off-limits to me, no matter what I might’ve thought from time to time or how willing she might’ve been to play around.”
“Did she come on to you?”
“That woman would come on to a green banana. Look, I’m having a hard time understanding how any of this old shit’s gonna help you find Ellie.”
“This sounds like the stone wall going up again, Arch.”
“Well, fuck, what do you expect? This stuff hurts to talk about.”
“Who does it hurt? Grayson’s dead, right? Can’t hurt him.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Who does it hurt?…You?…Rigby?…Crystal?”
“Hurts us all. When you lose somebody like that, it hurts.”
“But real people get over it. At least they move on past that raw hurt and get on with life. I’m not saying you forget the guy: maybe you love him till you die. But you don’t carry that raw pain on your sleeve for twenty years.”
He rocked back, his face in darkness.
“So what’s the real story here? Why does Rigby get the shakes every time Grayson’s name comes up? Why does Crystal go all protective and clam up like Big Brother’s listening? You’d think the man just died yesterday.”
“Gaston…”
I waited.
“Gaston thought Darryl walked on water. Damn near literally. Haven’t you ever had somebody in your life like that, Janeway?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got enough trouble with the concept of a real god. Don’t ask me to deal with men being gods.”
“Then how can you expect to understand it?”
I reached into my jacket where I’d tucked the envelope under my arm. Took out the glossy photograph and held it up in the light so he could see it. “Can you identify the people in this picture?”
He made a show of it. Took the picture and grunted at it. Leaned way back in his steel chair. Put on his glasses, squinted, and finally said, “Well, that’s Nola Jean Ryder there in the front with her arm around that fella.”
“Are you telling me you don’t know the others?”
“I don’t seem to recall ‘em.”
“That’s strange, Archie, it really is. Because here’s another shot of all of you together. I believe that’s you over there in the corner, talking to this fella you say you can’t remember.”
