Bud slipped out of his suit coat and vest, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. In his pinstripe oxford-cloth shirt strapped with black suspenders, he looked solid, purposeful. He glanced at his fingernails. “I should clean up. I haven’t been taking care of myself.”
Then a knowing smile played across his scabbed lower lip and his lidded eyes. “You fuck her?”
Harry couldn’t help grinning. He saw his old friend in that smile.
A touch of the unaffected grim elegance he’d always envied in the younger, thinner Bud. Getting stronger. Fought his way back through that wall of black plate glass, came up here and faced it.
“Well? Did you, you devious, airborne crud?”
“C’mon. Knock it off. I guarded Castle Frankenstein here against the serfs when they came with their torches to burn it down.”
“You did, didn’t you?” He held up his hand to stay Harry’s pained expression. “No sweat I wouldn’t have married her sober. But you were sober when you fucked her. It was…predictable. Like you coming back up here was predictable.” He smiled. “Even you shooting Chris was predictable.”
“Bud—”
“Let me be a bit irreverent, Harry. It’s healthy.”
“So you’re coming out of your funk?”
“Yeeeaah,” said Bud. “There’s a downside, though. Considering that things couldn’t get more fucked up than they are.” Bud’s freckles did that rivet-pop on his pale skin and Huck Finn mischief twinkled in his eyes and the old charismatic smile was back. “Why in the hell are we sober?”
Absurdity tumbled in their eyes and they laughed at the same time.
346 / CHUCK LOGAN
56
“How about it? One drink to celebrate catching Emery,”
said Bud with convivial glee as he opened the cabinet next to the fireplace. He moved the gun rack aside and withdrew a long shimmer of old glass. No label.
“Hundred-and-fifty-year-old sherry.” Bud winked. “Before we turned inland to trap, we were pirates. Story is, my great grandfather got it from a shipwreck off the coast of Maine. Family heirloom. This we have to drink out of glasses. Be right back.” Bud started for the kitchen.
Harry held up his hand. “Make mine ginger ale, there’s some in the fridge. One of us has to stay straight. To drive.”
“You being predictable again?” Bud yelled back. He laughed and reappeared with two water glasses. “We’re short on crystal…these’ll have to do.” He handed the one fizzing with soda to Harry and then he struggled with a corkscrew. The ancient cork crumbled. “Fuck it”
He broke the neck of the bottle on the fireplace.
The impulsive gesture galvanized them with laughter. Bud slopped the amber liquid into his glass and the wine glistened on his hand.
“I’m the designated driver,” said Harry, studying his glass.
“All you have to do is make it to Duluth. We’ll spend the night.
Big steak at the Pickwick.” Bud raised his glass. “Down Eros, up Mars,” he toasted.
“Whatever,” said Harry, tasting the pop. His face screwed up. It had a chalky, chemical bite. “Shit’s gone sour.”
“Down the hatch, buddy,” said Bud. They drained their glasses.
Bud gestured with his empty glass, one arm on the mantel. “You flatter these people, Harry. They couldn’t put together a plan. That would involve thinking past the next paycheck.”
Harry grimaced. Something was seriously wrong. A flush and a tingling wave of euphoric nausea radiated from his stomach and into his veins. He lowered himself to the couch.
HUNTER’S MOON / 347
Bud leaned against the mantel, drinking now from the broken lip of the bottle. Soot made a broad slick on his shirt under his arm and down his side. “Hey, you don’t look so hot, partner,” he said.
Harry grinned weakly, lit a cigarette, and adjusted the .45 in his waistband so the barrel didn’t jam his nuts. “Need some sleep.”
“When we get to Duluth, let’s really tie one on. Then we could both go through treatment. Be roommates again.”
Bud tipped the bottle and the antique wine ran down his chin onto his suspenders. Harry sprawled, very involved in the intricate curl of smoke seeping from the cigarette.
“Pictures,” he mused. “I think somebody was up on the balcony, behind the sheeting, taking pictures…” his voice trailed off, disappearing in the air like the swirls of smoke.
Bud arched his eyebrows. “Really? Ah, fuck ’em all,” said Bud.
“Especially Jesse.” He swung the bottle, taking in the overturned den. ’To fucking women, may they all rot in hell.”
Harry’s vision was getting furry and Bud smiled at him. Bud looked…happy.
“Just keep squeezing tighter and tighter,” said Bud. “Crush all the life out of a guy. Eat their fucking young…” Bud loomed in Harry’s vision and his smile jerked into a distorted grin and Harry had seen mat rictus of a smile before, on a picture hanging on the wall in Chris’s room, and things were becoming very fucked-up.
“Don’t know if I’d go mat far,” said Harry.
“Cows,” said Bud. “Milk machines. Hook ’em up in a barn in stanchions, one long production line pumping out milk, babies, and pies of shit.”
Harry winced at the image. But he smiled too as the edges on objects in the room acquired a hazy nimbus. He was sinking through the cushions and ever so slowly his fingers touched the handle of the pistol in his belt. The idea— danger—formed in his mind. “Jesus,”
he muttered.
“What’s the matter? You get some bad Schweppes?”
“Man, I don’t know. Something…”
348 / CHUCK LOGAN
Bud’s devouring grin yawned. “Could be the qualudes. You just swallowed enough to stop an elephant dead in his tracks.”
Harry struggled to get up and fell back onto the couch. Bud lifted his head, put a pillow under it, and patted him on the cheek. “Sorry, Harry, but you’re going to sit this one out. like Karson said, no more sick macho bullshit.” He lifted the pistol from Harry’s jeans and tossed it aside.
Then Bud stalked back and forth in front of
