His fez clung to his balding scalp at a precarious angle.
Through the opaque effect of the snow, the man resembled Oliver Hardy. Maybe he wasn't a Shriner at all but a son of the desert.
'You sure fella? Hell, we'll probably buy you a lot more drinks than one. We really shook the girls up in the backseat. Our wives, I mean.'
'No, thanks. That really won't be necessary.'
'Up to you.' He gave a jaunty fat-handed salute off his fez. 'Night, then.'
'Night.'
He took his fez and went back to his Caddy.
The Caddy was moved down closer to the entrance of the bar. Four of them stepped out and went inside. When they opened the door, the piano bar sounded very loud on the snowy mid-western night
His breathing came in ragged knots. He was saturated with her odours. He wanted to vomit. He reached a gloved hand up and touched the part of his neck where she'd sunk her teeth in. It hurt badly. He was worried about infection.
When he could see that nobody was coming, he got out of the car and walked around to the driver's side.
When he opened the door, he could see in the dim light from the overhead that her blood had soaked through the seat cover entirely on the driver's side. He pushed her over and then slid behind the wheel. It was like sitting in a puddle. My, oh, my.
His original plan had been to leave her and the car right there in the parking lot. Nobody would have seen him. But the stupid bastards in their fezzes had changed all that. He would have to park the car in an alley somewhere and walk back to get his own car.
Before he forgot, he took the cuff link and tossed it on the floorboard on the passenger side. It was platinum, and it had on its plain surface the inscribed initials FB. Frank Brolan.
He put the car in gear and drove carefully away from the parking lot
21
'Did I ever tell you that I wanted to be a nurse?'
'No.'
'When I was in high school.'
'Oh.'
'I suppose you can't imagine that, can you?'
'It's not that.'
'It's all right. I know how you think of me.'
'How do I think of you?'
'You know.'
'No. How?'
'A stereotype yuppie. A lot of cunning and greed but no scruples.'
'That isn't how I think of you.'
'It really isn't?'
'No.'
'Then, how do you think of me?'
'As confused about what you want.'
A pause. 'Maybe I am. But I don't want to start talking about us again. I'm tired of it, Frank. I can't help it. I'm just tired of it.'
'Believe it or not, so am I.'
For a time neither of them said anything. They were in the master bedroom upstairs. In keeping with the Victorian motif of the house, the room was filled with such things as a canopy bed, a George III kingwood inlaid Pembroke table, and a nineteenth century mahogany display cabinet in Chinese Chippendale style. Not a graceful man, Brolan was always warned by Kathleen to be careful in the house.
Wind rattled the windows; a faint silver light from the street painted one wall, cross-hatched by the intricate shadows of tree limbs.
'I really did want to be a nurse, Frank.'
Whenever they argued, whenever he implied that she couldn't be faithful to anybody, that she wanted too many material things and not enough spiritual things (though who was he to talk?), she found a way to work into the conversation proof of what a good person she was. That was always her justification for herself for whatever she did-something she'd learned in six struggling months of analysis shortly after she left college. That no matter what she did, however many men she might fuck over, she was basically a 'good person.'
Kathleen was the fourth daughter of a dumpy little man who'd owned his own dry-cleaning business, one that was never quite successful. He managed to put his girls through college, Kathleen being the last-and shortly after that dropped dead of a heart attack while pressing trousers for some impatient customer who stood waiting in the shabby fitting room.
Whenever Kathleen spoke of her father, it was with great anger and bitterness. Not directed at him but rather at the world that had treated him so badly. She often said 'They never gave him a chance.' Well, it was obvious she was going to get her chance from the world. She wanted to be the best-looking, most successful woman anywhere she went. And she was well on her way.
Most of the time Brolan felt sorry for Kathleen. Hers had been a harsh and unloving background. Her mother had pushed and pushed her father constantly, almost never being gentle or tender with the man. Kathleen often recalled how, when her father had suffered an early heart attack, she had run alongside the stretcher that the ambulance attendants carried her father on. As she ran along, her mother said, 'Well, he'll miss two weeks of work over this. I'll have to go in and run the place.' About all Kathleen's mother ever did was watch soaps, smoke Kools, drink Cokes, and talk on the phone with her girlfriends about how pretty she used to be back when she was young ('Before I met Chester') and what a limp-dick Chester was in the sack ('He doesn't even know how to fondle my breasts; it's like he's kneading dough').
It was no wonder that such a marriage had produced such a sad, confused, and angry little girl. One who had a great deal to prove to the world at large. One who had a great deal to prove to herself.
But what Kathleen couldn't seem to understand was that she was crushing Brolan, just as her mother had crushed her father.
Kathleen rolled over and kissed him. 'I really like you, Frank.'
'But you don't love me.'
'I-I've tried.'
'You really think we should be friends instead of lovers?'
'I really do.'
He was tired of supplication, of hearing his whining. She owed him nothing. If she chose not to have a relationship, that was her choice alone to make. He had no right to ruin her life.
He lay next to her, his eyes open.
'Need to pee,' she said. 'Be right back.'
He saw her naked backside in the faint light from the window. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman.
He wanted a cigarette, had in fact bought a pack earlier. Given the situation he was in, worrying about his health did not seem like much of a consideration.
He reached through the gauzy curtain hanging down from the canopy top and got his cigarettes. He found a package of matches next to them. The matches must have been there all along. He'd forgotten his in his sport coat. As he lighted his cigarette, he idly noted The Paramount Motel signature on the red, fancily embossed match cover.
Then he realized what he was looking at.
Kathleen, a jogging fanatic, didn't smoke.
