The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

Oh hell. It just died. She pulled off her glove and touched the cat's ribs with her fingertips. The fur felt like frost, but underneath warmth throbbed. Anyway, it'll be dead soon on a night like this, that's for sure. Suddenly, green gleamed up at her again, and the mouth opened in a silent bleat.

Great. She put her glove back on and tried to lift the creature without hurting it or getting blood on herself. Now, what am I doing? Am I nuts? Stiffening, the cat arched and bristled, hissing like a ruptured steam pipe. She almost dropped it as claws dug frantically into the arm of her jacket. 'Hey, cut that out!'

The cat went limp. Oh hell, I killed it. But it squirmed feebly as the wind keened around her. Now what? Hell hell hell hell hell.

'Is one of these going to be enough, hon?'

One eye in the mirror, he watched his own smile erode...then rebuilt it, grain by grain. When he considered the image convincing, he turned to find the barmaid studying him, her lips slightly parted, a sharp line creasing her forehead. Nodding at the mirror, he made a show of raking his fingers at the windblown mess of his hair.

'...have noticed if you'd been in before.' She watched him gulp the messy sandwich. 'Guess you were hungry.' Dragging delicately at her lipstick-smeared cigarette, she plucked it from her mouth and dropped it back in the clamshell. 'This bother you while you're eating?'

'Sorry?' The food actually tasted of nicotine. 'I mean, no. Fine.'

'The way you downed that--you sure one's enough?'

Nodding, he wiped at his face with the paper napkin. 'So, you from here?'

'Who me?' She practically gurgled. 'I lived here all my life. This place was my dad's, but I run it myself, since me and my husband split.' She blew smoke out of her mouth and sucked it back in through her nostrils, an action that made her look bizarre, dragonish. 'Bar's about the only business that makes money in this town, especially in winter. What did you say you were doing here?'

He gave her the new name and the story about being a real estate appraiser. '...several properties to inspect in the area. Might take a few days. You never know.' She accepted this without comment, and he nodded at his reflection. So easy for me to fool them anymore. The hollow mask in the mirror watched him. Lying takes hardly any effort.

'Sal? Could you get the phone, hon?' Shaking another cigarette out of the pack, she felt around in her apron pocket. 'You don't smoke? Barry, is it?' The box of matches still lay on the counter, and she leaned forward so he could light her cigarette.

'I tried a pipe once. Kept dumping it on myself. Got sick of finding scorch marks on all my shirts.'

'Yeah?' She raised an eyebrow. 'You don't strike me as clumsy.'

'I...was drinking a lot then.'

'Can't picture that neither.' She winked at him. 'You strike me as the kind of guy who's in control. What? Did I say something? You sure you're all right? I guess there must be a lot of work in this area for you then. What with every house on the peninsula up for sale, just about. Not that there's any buyers anywheres.'

'Why's that?'

An old man in a fur hat with earflaps stumbled over from one of the tables, and she handed him a glass. 'Here you go, Slick,' she said. 'Oh, thank you, honey. Did you hear about all that commotion by the bay? State troopers and everything. Some kind of accident, I heard.' She counted change. 'So did you decide whether you want another one before I put this stuff away or what? Barry?'

Have to keep her talking, find out about the town...about them. But have to be subtle, have to...

Inexorably, the beer he'd tried only to sip uncoiled a knot of weariness deep within him, and he felt it spring through every limb. Helpless to stop himself, he realized that he was about to say something disastrously reckless. 'When I was driving into town, I practically had an accident.' He strained to control the stream of words. 'Some kid came tearing out of the woods right in front of my car. I think maybe I might've clipped him. But he took off. Maybe you know the kid? About fifteen or so--pale looking, skinny. Ring any bells? Long sort of blondish hair sticking out from under one of those caps. Any ideas?'

She actually took a step back.

Damn. Immediately, he knew he'd screwed up again. Big- time. If only he'd been patient, played her along. 'I just wanted to be sure the kid was all right, know what I mean?'

She gnawed her lipstick, darkening the edges of her front teeth. 'Uh huh.' She turned to slice a roll with a long knife. 'Where'd you say you was from?' She looked up, scrutinizing him.

'Trenton, originally.' He'd have to talk fast now. 'These days I pretty much live where they send me. Suitcase in the car mostly. One motel after another. So this kid doesn't sound like anybody from around here?'

'Don't sound like nobody I know.' She pursed her lips. 'Maybe you ought to check with the cops.'

She knows him. He nodded, a pulse thundering in his ears. 'Yeah.'

'Practically no teenagers left anyways.'

'Why's that?'

'Runaways. We had a real problem with that. Something awful. You can't blame them really. Nothing much to hold them here no mores. If you're in real estate, how come you don't know about this town?'

'Uh huh.' Meticulously, he prodded the corner of the beer label with his thumbnail. 'I'm not in the sales end of things,' he explained as foil peeled smoothly from the damp bottle. 'I just examine the structures, the land.' He replaced the label, upside down, smoothing out the wrinkles. 'So, what's it like living here?' Pouring the last of the beer into his glass, he smiled hard.

She got him another bottle. 'Oh, you know, like anywheres else, except now it's so empty. But I'll tell you one thing, I wouldn't want to live nowheres where I couldn't hear the ocean.' She rinsed a couple of glasses, set them to drain.

Nodding and smiling for the next twenty minutes, he tried to draw her out about the town but could elicit nothing beyond vague generalizations, which seemed to reflect her genuinely vague outlook. Finally her mental fuzziness proved infectious: he couldn't even remember her name. Margie? Tracie? He watched the ashes from her cigarette spill across the bar. After his third beer, their conversation lapsed, and she turned her attention to the other patrons.

'I didn't have to get involved, you know.' Three people sat at one of the nearer tables, two men sipping drinks with a woman who kept stirring ice in a glass. 'I could of very easily just continued on.' The woman wore rollers, which had been covered with some sort of sparkling mesh scarf, as if for emphasis. 'I'm telling you.' Her eye makeup reminded him of the album jackets of the opera recordings his wife had loved...of how he'd used to tease her about all the fat ladies done up like love goddesses. Can't get lost in the past now. Have to stay alert. He could actually feel the fever surging within him. Might learn something. He shook his head, tried to concentrate. You never know. One of the three at the table would speak, then stop, then another would say something, though not apparently in response, more as if they'd suddenly recalled some forgotten detail. 'Is that what you want? To wind up like Atlantic City?'

'I'm telling you.'

He struggled to find the thread of their conversation, but the loudest one, a gaunt man in a toupee, seemed to be engaged in a different discussion altogether.

'Slums by the sea?'

'You know who found it? Dolly's father. Yeah, the old man. Pieces floating. I hear he's been in bed ever since.'

'That's so bad when they get like that at that age. Probably never get up again.'

'No,' she agreed. 'It ain't.'

'Homeless people pissing under the boardwalk? Is that what you want?'

'I'm telling you, we will never have gambling here. Don't be ridiculous.' She banged the bottom of her empty glass on the table for emphasis, but the rollers on her head never so much as vibrated.

He strained to listen. It seemed they'd paired off differently now, two still conversing and one continuing to