'Ever change your mind, you know where to find me. I throw in his bed, blanket, all the dog food I've got stored. He has his shots. He… shit, who'm I kiddin'. I couldn't give nun away. I'd feel…'
Nestor didn't know how he'd feel. He finished his drink, sucked his teeth, and looked at the empty glass. Then he stood up.
'I'm going home,' he said, fumbling for his wallet.
'Want me to walk you?' asked Hanrahan.
'On our first date?' Nestor said with a slurred laugh. 'Never.'
'I'll cover the drink,' said Hanrahan. 'Me and Doyle Murphy.'
'Doyle…? The guy from Galway? Whatever happened to him?' asked Briggs, looking up at Bill Nicholson over the bar.
'He went back to Australia,' said Hanrahan, rising. He fished a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it on the table. 'I'm walking you home, first date or no, and I promise not to kiss you or get in your jockey shorts.'
Nestor Briggs shrugged and allowed himself to be led toward the door.
'Hanrahan,' Applegate shouted. 'You're Irish. You'll know this one. When you get Briggs home, come back and we'll settle this.'
Johnny Cash was walking the line with his eyes wide open. The stein of Coors on tap bubbled on the table, untouched, as the doors of the Blue Parrot closed behind Hanrahan and the weaving Nestor Briggs.
The rain had slowed to near mist.
Somewhere nearby a lonely dog was waiting.
When Mothers Dream
'You know, Gregor,' Wanda Skutnik said to her son as she sat in her favorite chair and tried to talk over Jenny Jones. 'Those things on the things.'
She held out her hand and moved it about as if she had developed a regional palsy.
'I don't know, Ma,' George said.
'Oh,' Wanda said in exasperation, trying to find the right words. 'The ones my sister gave me when she came in… nineteen and eighty-two.'
'The coasters? Little round things with flowers on them?'
Wanda nodded, relieved.
'You gave them to Mr. and Mrs. Karawan for Christmas, before I went back… Look, Ma, I want to talk about Seattle again.'
'I know,' Wanda said, sitting up, eyes not leaving the television screen, where Jenny was arguing with a fat, bearded man who had a wife and a mistress who used to be a man.
'Look, Ma.'
She held up her hand. 'I know what I was trying to think of before the little round things. A mouse.'
'Ma, we don't have any mice.'
'Not the animals,' she said, shaking her head at her son's denseness. 'The ones on the typewriters with the screens.'
'You mean the mouse on the computer?' asked George.
'Yes,' she said, relieved. 'If you have more than one mouse, is it mouses or mice?'
'Why would anyone have more?'
'If you sold them you would have more,' she said patiently. 'If you were the person at the computer store who sold them and you had to order more.'
'I don't know,' said George. 'I don't know what you'd call them.'
George Patniks was defeated.
He hadn't slept well last night Dreams, fears, and shadows. He had gotten up a little after four, taken a shower, gotten on some reasonably clean sweats, and gone back to the painting. By a few minutes before eight, when he heard his mother's feet shuffling across the floor above him, George finished the painting. He stepped back and examined it, waiting for the release he wanted.
The woman was vivid now, her face pleading with horror, and the robed figure above her, knife in hand, was looking out of the canvas as if he had discovered the painter. Harvey Rozier's face was as vivid as his wife's. The white-white of the kitchen hi the painting contrasted with the deep pool of dark blood on the terrazzo floor. Things were reflected hi the blood, dark, grinning things only suggested by light and shadow. And in the midst of the blood sat George's toolbox, mundane, out of place, inappropriate for the horror depicted.
It was probably the best work George Patniks had ever done, but he'd never be able to show it. He didn't want to show it. He wanted to take the image from his memory and banish it to the canvas.
Should he have jumped out and gone for Rozier, tried to save the woman? He had been surprised, hypnotized, as if watching a horror movie suddenly thrown up on his ceiling hi the middle of the night. Even if he had jumped out, George had reasoned as he looked at his painting, the woman was nearly dead already, wasn't she? And the floor was covered with blood. George would have slipped and Rozier would have been all over him. George shuddered. That picture was clear and sudden. He hoped he didn't have to paint it. Wait, Rozier had a knife and Rozier was in better shape and outweighed George. George had done all he could do. He had saved himself.
But the phone. George had cut the phone line. Dana Rozier had gone for the phone, her last chance, and had gotten nothing. Rozier had been through the door and had attacked her within seconds, but would those seconds on the phone been enough for her to call 911 and simply say, 'My husband's killing me'?
'You should take a shower, Gregor,' Wanda said.
'I already took one,' he answered, looking at himself and realizing that he was, once again, covered in paint. 'Ma, I want to pack today and go to Seattle for that art fair. You don't want to come, OK. I'll call Tommy. He and Sissy can look in on you, maybe stay awhile.'
The doorbell rang.
George's hands clutched the arms of the chair, knuckles and hands white under dabs of blue and red paint 'The mistress is better looking than the wife,' Wanda said, looking at the television screen and clearly not hearing the doorbell. 'And she ain't even a woman. I see that all the time.'
The doorbell rang again.
This time she heard it.
'Gregor, the door. It's ringing,'' she said, looking at her son. 'Gregor, are you OK? Get the door. It's probably Mrs. Vivlachki or someone.'
The doorbell rang again and George got up. His mother was right He couldn't go through mis every time the doorbell rang. Rozier couldn't have found him this quickly. Rozier would probably never find him, especially if he moved to Seattle for awhile. He'd have to tell his latest parole officer, but…
The doorbell rang once more.
George shuffled past his mother and into the little hallway with the tiny faded fringe rug. George took a deep breath and opened the door.
The rain had stopped but the dark skies suggested that it was only a temporary halt.
Before him stood a man about George's size, maybe sixty-five or older, curly white hair and a little white mustache. The man looked weary and bored, and George knew with certainty that the man was a cop.
'Gregor Eupatniaks?' asked Lieberman.
'Yes, but my legal name is George, George Patniks.'
Lieberman was wearing an open raincoat over his brown jacket and a tie he had gotten for his birthday from Barry and Melisa. The tie depicted little brown World War I airplanes circling purple clouds against a dark blue background.
'Name's Lieberman. I'm a detective with the Clark Street Station in Rogers Park. I think you know the neighborhood.'
Lieberman took out his wallet and showed his ID card.
