“Trish Aandahl,
She still couldn’t see him. He stood just beyond the doorway, a shadow filling up the crack, his face reduced to an eye, a cheek, part of a nose.
“D’you think it would be possible for me to come in and talk to you for just a minute? I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
He didn’t seem to hear that either. He leaned closer to the door and in a voice barely louder than a whisper said, “Did you say something about Nola Jean?”
This was the key to him, the only reason he had opened his door to her. Blow this and you lose him, she thought.
“We can talk about Nola,” she said as if she’d known the woman all her life.
He opened the door wide and let her in.
She had to squeeze past him in the narrow hall. In that second they shared the same space, close enough to bristle the hair on her neck. She brushed against his arm and felt the soft flannel of his long-sleeve shirt. She smelled the sun-baked male smell of him. She smelled tobacco, the kind her father used to smoke, that Edgeworth stuff with the hint of licorice.
She moved quickly past him, through the dim hall to the big room at the end. The door clicked shut behind her and she heard the lock snap in. His footsteps came along behind her, and for a strange moment she fought the urge to run on through and out the front door.
His house was orderly. The hardwood floor gleamed under a coat of varnish, and there were rugs with what looked to her like Navajo designs in the places where people walked the most. It was not a new house. The floor creaked under her weight and she could see faint ceiling stains where the roof had leaked. The room was steeped in ancient smoke. It had soaked into the drapes and walls and furniture, and in here it had no hint of flavor. They were both chain-smokers, she thought, remembering her parents and what her childhood had smelled like. They smoked what they liked when they had it, but if times were tough, they’d sweep the dust off“ the floor and roll a tobacco paper around that.
He had a homemade going in the ashtray and a coffee cup that still had almost a full head of steam. His living room was narrow and long. It opened out to the front deck and a secondary hall led away to the right, probably to a bedroom. She turned and looked at him. He was a rugged guy in his sixties. His hair was slate gray, his skin the leathery brown of a cowboy or a farmer. His demeanor was flat, the last thing she expected after hearing his forceful voice on the telephone recording. He had a curious habit of avoiding eye contact: he almost looked at you but not quite. He seemed to gaze past her left shoulder as she told him her name for the fourth time. He sat without offering her a chair and made no move to offer coffee as he leaned forward and sipped his own.
She grappled toward an opening. “I’ve heard a lot about Nola.”
What a bad start, she thought, but it seemed to make no real difference to him. His eyes lit up at the mention of the name; then his mind lost its focus and he looked around the room. He flitted his eyes across her face, stopping on a spot somewhere behind her head. But he didn’t say anything and she came toward him slowly and sat on a hard wooden chair facing him. His eyes followed her down, but he kept looking slightly behind her, always picking up something just behind her left ear.
Then he spoke. “Who…did you say you are?”
“Trish Aandahl…I write for the
“Why did you come here? Did you bring Nola back with you?”
There’s something wrong with this guy, she thought. He acted like the prototype for all the dumb jokes you heard kicking around.
“Good.” He gave what passed for a smile. “Real good.”
He blinked at whatever held his attention behind her head and said, “I want to see her real bad.”
“I want to see her too.”
“She was here.”
“Was she?”
“Yeah. Nola Jean.”
“When was she here?”
“Soon.”
This guy’s from the twilight zone, she thought. She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “When will Mrs. Jeffords be home?”
“She’s gone to the store.”
“When will she be back?”
