The Night Watchman(92)

“Yes and no.”

“I’ll give it anyway. For another Lucky. My last before I really quit. Don’t chase her. Not too much. She’s the type who likes a man to hold off a little bit.”

“Do you think I chased Pixie too much?”

“For the last time.”

“Okay, forget her. I know. I’ll be suave and debonair.”

Like hell you will, thought Juggie. That’s just the thing a man who’s neither of those things would say.

“Be like Cary Grant,” she said, finally. “Don’t let your feelings play out all over your face. Just use your eyes. And the corner of your mouth.”

Mouth?

A look of distress passed over Barnes’s face. He was thinking of Valentine’s pretty bow-shaped mouth and the glint of her sharp teeth between her lips. How could a man willing to take a punch be so unnerved by a woman’s pearly whites?





The Runner




On the way home from work, Thomas saw something disturbing out of the corner of his eye. A boy was running alongside the car, keeping right up with him. Thomas was going twenty, thirty, sped up to forty, then fifty, and still the boy kept running. He could feel the boy’s eyes on him. Thomas knew that if he glanced over he would not be able to turn his attention back to the road. Because of course the boy would be Roderick. He knew that the running boy was a hallucination and that the two or three hours a night he’d been getting this week were not enough. The boy veered away once Thomas reached town and Thomas drove carefully the rest of the way home. By then, the fright had awakened him so thoroughly that he was afraid he’d have trouble falling asleep.

“I saw Roderick again,” he told Rose over his breakfast, a bit of venison, potatoes, oatmeal. “He was running beside me on the road.”

“I’m coming with you tonight,” said Rose.



That night she rode with him to work. The cold was deep and the wind was up. The snow was drifting along the surface of the road in shapes that twined and twisted in the headlights.

“Sometimes I get hypnotized by the snow snakes,” said Thomas.

“I’ll pinch you if you look glassy,” said Rose.

“Well, pinch me nice then, in a good place.”

“You’re bad. Anyway, I’m not singing to you.”

The only songs Rose ever sang were wordless and repetitive lullabies that put her babies straight to sleep.

“Also, I brought you a few surprises for lunch,” she said. “And the biggest surprise of all is that I am going to make you put your head down on your desk. I’ll keep watch while you take a good nap.”

“I believe that would be against the rules.”

“Who’s going to know?”

They rolled along quietly.

“Except Roderick,” she said. “But he won’t tell.”

“Now don’t you go joking about my ghost,” said Thomas. “We’ve gotten reacquainted pretty good since the old days.”

“The two of you talk?”

“It’s mostly a one-sided conversation. But then again sometimes I hear words in my head. Things he said long time ago.”

“You’re going bats, old man.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, wife.”

“How long is this business going to last?”

“After we go to Washington, I am taking a break.”

“You don’t notice, but it’s hard on us.”

“I do notice.”

Thomas took her hand, her strong knobby hand, which had never been a girlish hand. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d been known as a worker. She could outwork anyone. Her own mother had said so. The base of their marriage was work, each pitching in when the other flagged, like tonight. He squeezed her hand. She squeezed his hand back. That’s how they sometimes talked. They got to the door just as LaBatte was leaving. He saluted. Went out and coaxed his car to life. They could hear it sputter and pop a few times before LaBatte roared off with a backfire down the road that stalled him out, then another backfire, and a slow roll toward home.

“He works on his own car,” said Thomas. “He should take it to Lemon.”

Rose put her things near the desk, pulling up a bench. She trailed along when he made his first round, then spent a long time in the ladies’ room. She couldn’t help but like the plumbing. When she came out she was smiling. Her hair was combed and she was wearing lipstick.

“Hot running water.”

“Someday,” said Thomas. He looked at her again and suddenly felt shy. “You’re dolled up.”

“Just trying to keep you awake.”

“It’s working, real good.”

They drank a cup of coffee together. He was moved that she’d come with him, Rose with her household burdens, her make-do challenges, her care for their parents and the endless children of people in trouble. She took care of everyone around him and now she was taking care of him, and wearing lipstick. She looked demurely down into her cup of coffee and then raised her eyes to his. He looked back at her and everything else fell away. It was only Rose and always Rose. They held each other’s eyes for so long the tension made them laugh. And then there was a noise from the darkest corner.