“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “Listen. I’ve given it some thought. I think you’re right. Those kids don’t want any more shit from us. I don’t have any real worries now.”
“Now you’re confident.”
“I just want it to be over, Cason. Be done with.”
I went and got a bottled coffee and sat back down in my chair. Jimmy said, “But you aren’t going to let it go, are you? I know you. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious? About her? Why, and all that? I mean, you got snookered by someone for no reason you can discern, and she did the same to a lot of others. So, don’t you want to know?”
“I think I just got out of hot water, thanks to you, so why climb back into it? Sleep with the satisfaction that you saved your dear old brother some money and his marriage and his job, and I didn’t shoot anyone. And you got to punch me for no good reason. Just let it pass. We’re not the law.”
“Man, you have made a turnaround,” I said.
“I’m not as scared as before. I’m ready to let it go. You should be too.”
“Can’t. It’s the reporter in me.”
“It’s the obsessive-compulsive in you. This isn’t Santa Claus and this isn’t trying to call up the bull ape. Whoever did this thing, took Caroline, I got a feeling he isn’t like the kids. We don’t want to fuck with whoever that is, now that we don’t have to. He’s most likely moved on, so why stir things up, man? Let’s let this stuff be.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I know I’m right.” Jimmy put his empty bottle on the coffee table and got up. “I got to go home. I think I’m going to soak in a tub, try and treat Trixie right. Give her a foot rub, take her to lunch. Something nice.”
I walked him to the door. I said, “I really am sorry about hitting you.”
“I don’t think you’re that sorry.”
“That was sort of for Trixie.”
“Oh, it was, huh?”
“Sort of.”
“Listen, man,” Jimmy said. “We’re done on this. Right?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
I opened the door, and he reached back and slapped me on the shoulder, smiled and went away.
25
Exhausted and confused, I stretched out on the couch and was soon asleep. When I awoke the apartment was hot and full of the aroma of rotting rat. I got up and turned up the air conditioner and found something to eat in the fridge, compartmentalized my thinking about the rat to some deep section of my brain and tried to enjoy eating. I took a shower and put on some clean clothes and was happy that with the air conditioner going the rat was down to half level, demoted to corporal.
I didn’t really have to check in, but I got my cell phone and dialed work and told Timpson I would be out today so I could work on a story at home. Then I dialed Belinda.
She answered immediately.
“Cason,” she said.
“Wanted you to know I took off today, but I was wondering what you’re doing tonight.”
“I called in sick, not because I’m sick, but because I’m sick of the job.”
“I lied and said I was working at home.”
Belinda laughed. “What liars we are. I called this morning and went back to sleep, not wanting to get up, wondering if maybe you had already had your fill of me. I was thinking about what my mother used to say about giving out, and how when you did it was pretty much over.”
“Mothers aren’t right about everything,” I said. “It’s time you moved into the twenty-first century, though I’ve been living here for a few years now and don’t think much of it…Look, I’ve just been a little wrapped up is all.”
“Work?”
“You could say that.”
“Is that what we’ll say?”
“Yeah. Let’s say that.”
“Will I hear more?”
“Nothing really to hear.”
“Okay, then. What are our plans?”
“It’s as much about your choices as mine, kid…But I was just sitting here thinking we ought to go to dinner tonight and maybe a movie. After that, we could come to my place, but it smells like there’s a dead rat in the wall, because there is.”
She laughed. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe we can do the hotel again. I loved room service.”
We worked out the details, and I lay down on the couch again and went right back to sleep. I woke up after a few hours of deep satisfying sleep, got into the boxes I had first shipped to my parents’ house and brought over just a few days ago. I had yet to open them. What was in them was a new computer, the odds and ends that go with it. I spent some time setting it up and made myself a cup of hot coffee. I fiddled on the computer for a time, making sure it was working, no damage in shipping, just sort of cruising Web sites, looked to see if I could find a MySpace site for Caroline. I didn’t.
I finally decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to work on a column, so I did. When I finished with a rough draft, I went back to playing online. While I killed time, I wondered about Belinda, thought maybe I ought not to have called, that it was just a way for me to soothe my banged-up heart and she deserved better. My penis argued with me for a while, and by the time I had to get up and brush my teeth and put on a better set of clothes, my penis had out-argued my brain and was trying to tell me that what we were doing was okay and that all that mattered was everyone had a good time and didn’t get hurt. It was the greatest oration since Cicero.
I drove over to Belinda’s place. We went to a nice steak house downtown, had some rib eyes and some drinks and a lot of conversation. We went to a bad movie, and then we went back to her place instead of the hotel. I don’t know why we did it that way, instead of the hotel, which had been our plan, but that’s how it came out.
Inside, the place was neat. It was about the size of my joint, but it was well furnished. Nothing fancy, but everything was nice and the colors were coordinated and there was no dead rat smell in the wall. That fact alone was enough to charm me.
We talked about having drinks, but we never got that far. Our hands found each other, and then we were kissing, and pretty soon she was leading me through a door and into her bedroom, which smelled of scented candles, which had a real leg up on my dead rat. She lit a fresh candle that was melted onto a saucer by her bed, and the smell that came off of it was banana nut bread. She started up her CD player, some soft jazz. She slowly took off her shirt and bra, smiled her shiny braces at me and shook her head, throwing her hair about. She began to move slowly to the music. It wasn’t what I expected of her, but I stood there grinning like a fool, watching her move, watching her skin out of her pants and what little there was of her panties. She was someone who didn’t overdo the shaving and had left a bit of womanly hair where it counts, and when she swayed the little guy in my pants swayed with her.
She danced over to me, took hold of my shirt and started to undo the buttons. I tried to help, but she pushed my hands away and did it herself, and pretty soon I was out of my clothes and we were in the bed. The smell of the banana nut bread from the candle was strong and I felt hungry. I took it out on her, and she didn’t mind. The next thing I knew it was morning and the sun was shining through the thin white curtains, and we made love once more, just to make sure we remembered how, and then we went back to sleep and didn’t awake until midday.
I woke up first and thought about trying to make breakfast in bed, but that time was long past, so I took a shower, and about five minutes into it, she joined me. That took some more time.
Dressed, we went to the kitchen. She got out some plates, the bread, peanut butter and jelly, and we made sandwiches and poured up glasses of milk and sat at her kitchen table and talked about silly things for a while, then she said, “You know, I knew her.”
“What?”
“Caroline.”
