anything? Creepy, isn't he?'
'Frank has his problems. But, yes, he was helpful.' 'He must have talked to Billy not long before it happened. He was out here that night.'
'Here? Zimka was out here the night of the murder?' 'I saw him in the parking lot around one when Phil and I were leaving-that was the night Phil and I met.' The head thing again. I loved it. 'Zimka was sitting in the car parked beside mine,' Deslonde said, 'with the window rolled up.
I figured he had the air conditioner on; it was a hot night. I said 'Hi, Frank,' and he just stared at me like he was spaced out. Which he probably was-I think he frequently uses his own product.
Although he did look quite a bit less wasted that night than he usually does. He didn't tell you he was out here?'
What Zimka had told me was, when Billy arrived at six A.M., Zimka was asleep and had had 'a busy night.' That was all.
I said, 'He was vague about it.' 'Yeah, he would be.' 'Was he alone in the car?' 'He was.
Maybe he was waiting for someone.' 'Describe what you remember about the car.' 'Seventy-nine Olds Toronado. Gold finish, new white side-walls. I'm not sure whether it was a standard or diesel V8. I didn't look under the hood.' 'You know cars.'
'Sears Automotive Center wouldn't have it any other way.'
Timmy and Phil came out. Phil and Mark Deslonde soon left, and I told Timmy I'd just be a minute. I approached Mike Truckman, then changed my mind-I'd try to catch him sober on Monday-and went to the bar. I asked each of the bartenders if he knew Frank Zimka, and when I described Zimka, each said he knew who Zimka was. I then asked whether anyone had seen Zimka with either Billy Blount or Steve Kleckner on the night of the murder, and each said no, he didn't think Zimka had even been in Trucky's that night.
At three-fifteen Timmy and I drove back to his place through a cool drizzle, made love with a furious intensity that was reminiscent of the night after the night we first met, and set the alarm for ten.
7
Out of the house, through the breezeway, into the garage where the rental van with the fickle transmission was parked, we hauled books-me, Timmy, Brigit, the new hubby, the four daughters. Hugh Bigelow was a big, friendly sheepdog of a man who had been a widower for a year and did something in an office for the State of New York. Timmy said he thought he'd seen Bigelow in the elevator of his building at the Mall. The daughters, aged three through eight, were chubby, round-eyed and earnest, and they worked with an unchildlike, methodical determination as they moved the residue of me out of their new home.
When we'd nearly finished, Brigit beckoned me into the kitchen and said, 'Thank you for doing this.' She'd had her hair cut short and looked like Delphine Seyrig in a blond wig.
'Ultimatums work with me,' I said. 'I can be successfully menaced.'
'I wouldn't know about that,' she snapped. 'I never gave you an ultimatum.'
Christ, she'd pulled me aside to pick a fight. Or had I done it?
I said, 'I guess you're just too forebearing for your own good.' I grinned and tried to sound lighthearted, jocular.
'It was because I'm kind. And naive.'
'Could I have some of that coffee?'
She poured a cup. I sat at the Formica counter. She stood.
'Would you really have tossed the books out in the rain? It may freeze tonight. Booksickles.'
She tried to keep from smiling. She succeeded. 'How are you doing?' she said.
'Well. Quite well. I like my life.'
'Good. I like mine. For a long time I didn't.'
I slurped at the coffee, trying to keep it from burning my lips. 'He seems like a nice guy,' I said.
'Hugh.'
'He is. You'd like him.' She poured herself some coffee. 'He's sweet, and funny.'
'He's a bureaucrat, right?'
'Hugh's an inspector for the Public Service Commission.' She eased onto the stool across from me. 'Hugh really enjoys his work and he thinks its terribly important. Which it is, of course.
Hugh doesn't become excessively wrapped up in bis job, though. He's extremely easygoing.'
'He seems to be. You must be devoted to him-he doesn't exactly come unencumbered.'
'Oh, I love the girls. Well, most of the time.' Now she smiled a bit. 'It's a big adjustment to make. But I'm doing it.'
'Will you keep teaching?'
'I think so. There's a baby-sitter the girls are used to. I'm not sure yet.'
'Are you planning on having any of your own?'
Timmy staggered past the doorway balancing three boxes of books one atop the other. Brigit glanced at him as he went by and said to me, 'I don't know yet. Are you?'
She knew it was a dumb thing to say, and she flushed as she said it. But she'd pulled the old trigger. She had not liked being a victim of my self-deception, and during the last years of our marriage, the malicious humor that was part of what had drawn us together in the first place had hardened into cruelty on both our parts. I hadn't liked being a victim of my self-deception either, and I often took it out on Brigit, who dished it right back. And-now here we were, in character to the awful end.
I sipped my coffee and said, 'There's an equality, a symmetry about Timmy's and my sexual relationship. It has balance. In seven years you never fucked me once.'
She tightened like a fist. 'Yes. And you must have fucked me twelve or fifteen times.' She smiled, tight- lipped, the flesh around her lower jaw quivering.
Sex. It isn't everything in a relationship. But it's plenty.
Hugh Bigelow came into the kitchen panting. 'Whew. Jesus. Whew. Done.' He tried to mop his forehead with the sleeve of his Orion windbreaker, but it just smeared the droplets around.
'Thanks for all your help, Hugh,' I said. 'That was twenty-two years' worth of books. Dinesen to Didion to Don Clark.'
'Whew-oh-anytime, anytime.'
Brigit and I glanced at each other quickly, then looked back at Hugh's big, nodding, wet face.
Timmy came in, and Hugh asked us to stay for peanut-butter-and-Fluff sandwiches. We thanked him but said we'd made other plans.
In the garage I said, 'Good-bye, Brigit,' and she said, 'Good-bye, Don,' like two stockbrokers who had just ended a business lunch. My impulse was to shake hands, but I knew mine were trembling.
Through a steady rain we drove out to the Gateway Diner on Central and had bacon and eggs.
We didn't say much. I knew what Timmy was thinking but was too sensitive, and canny, to say out loud.
I said, 'I suppose this would be a good time for me to move over to your place, now that we've got that van. Except the goddamn thing is full of books.'
Timmy, ever the rational man, winning another war over his Irish soul, looked at me and said nothing.
We put half the books in my apartment-the stacked boxes took up an entire wall-and carried the other half down to the storage alcove in the basement of Timmy's building.
We showered together at his place, and one thing led to another.
At six we showered again, separately, and while Timmy made coffee, I dialed the number for Chris.
'Hello?' A woman's voice. Young, pleasant, a bit tentative.
'May I speak with Chris, please?'
'Oh-Chris isn't in just now. May I take a message?'
Discretion was indicated. 'Yes, would you please have him call Donald Strachey at this number?' I gave my service number. 'When do you expect him?'
A pause. 'Who is this?' A real edge to the voice now.
