Lisey's Story(84)

Then Dooley was bending down, holding out one of the heavy Waterford glasses. It was three-quarters full, and while the water hadn't run entirely clear, it looked clear enough to drink. It looked wonderful. "Slow and easy does it," Dooley said in a solicitous tone. "I'll let you hold the glass, but if you throw it at me, I'm gonna have to snap your ankle. Hit me with it and I'll snap both of em for you, even if you don't draw blood. I mean it, all right?"

She nodded, and sipped her glass of water. On the stereo, Dwight Yoakam gave way to Ole Hank himself, asking the eternal questions: Why don't you love me like you used to do? How come you treat me like a worn-out shoe?

Dooley squatted on his hunkers, his butt almost touching the raised heels of his boots, one arm wrapped around his knees. He could have been a farmer watching a cow drink at a stream in the north forty. She judged he was on alert but not on high alert. He didn't expect her to throw the clunky drinking glass, and of course he was right not to expect it. Lisey didn't want her ankles snapped.

Why, I've never even taken that all-important first in-line skating lesson, she thought, and Tuesday nights are Singles Nights at Oxford Skate Central. When her thirst was slaked, she held the glass out to him. Dooley took it, examined it.

"You sure you don't want them -  those - last two swallows, Missus?" Not even close to swallers, and Lisey had a sudden tuition of her own: Dooley was exaggerating the goodold-boy thing. Maybe on purpose, maybe without even realizing it. When it came to language he corrected up because it would have been pretentious to correct down. Did it matter? Probably not.

"I've had enough."

Dooley polished the last two swallows off himself, his adam's apple sliding in his skinny throat. Then he asked if she was feeling any better.

"I'll feel better when you're gone."

"Fair enough. I won't take up much of your time." He tucked the gun back into his waistband and got to his feet. His knees popped and Lisey thought again (marveled, really), This is no dream. This is really happening to me. He kicked the glass absently, and it rolled a little way onto the oyster-white wall-to-wall carpet out there in the main office. He hitched up his pants. "Can't afford to linger in any case, Missus. Your cop'll be back, him or another, and I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?"

Lisey made no reply.

Dooley shrugged as if to say Have it your way and then leaned out of the bar alcove. For Lisey it was a surreal moment, because she had seen Scott do exactly the same thing many times, one hand gripping each side of the doorless doorway, feet on the bare wood of the alcove, head and torso out in the study. But Scott would never have been caught dead in khakis; he had been a bluejeans man to the end. Also, there had been no bald spot at the back of his head. My husband died with a full head of hair, she thought.

"Awful nice place," he said. "What is it? Converted hayloft? Must be."

She said nothing.

Dooley continued to lean out, now rocking back and forth a little, looking first left, then right. Lord of all he surveys, she thought.

"Real nice place," he said. "Just about what I would have expected. You got your three rooms - what I'd call rooms - and your three skylights, so there's plenty of natural light. Down home we call places all a-row like this shotgun houses or sometimes shotgun shacks, but ain't nothing shacky about this, is it?"

Lisey said nothing.

He turned to her, looking serious. "Not that I begrudge him, Missus - or you, now that he's dead. I did some time in Brushy Mountain State Prison. Maybe the Prof told you that. And it was your husbun got me through the worst of it. I read all his books, and you know which one I liked best?"

Of course, Lisey thought. Empty Devils. You probably read it nine times. But Dooley surprised her. "The Coaster's Daughter. And I didn't just like it, Missus, I loved it. I've made it my bi'ness to read that book ever' two or three years since I found it in the jailhouse library, and I could quote you whole long passages of it. You know what part I like best? Where Gene finally talks back and tells his father he's leaving whether the old man likes it or not. Do you know what he tells that miserable holy-rollin old f**k, pardon my French?"

That he has never understood the duty of love, Lisey thought, but she said nothing. Dooley didn't seem to mind; he was on a roll now, enraptured.

"Gene says his old man has never understood the duty of love. The duty of love! How beautiful is that? How many of us have felt something like that but haven't never had the words to say it? But your husbun did. For all of us who otherwise would have stood mute, that's what the Prof said. God must have loved your man, Missus, to give him such a tongue."

Dooley looked up at the ceiling. The cords on his neck stood out.

"The DUTY! Of LOVE! And the ones God loves best he takes home soonest, to be with Him. Amen." He lowered his head briefly. His wallet stuck out of his back pocket. It was on a chain. Of course it was. Men like Jim Dooley always wore their wallets on chains that were attached to their belt-loops. Now he looked up again and said: "He deserved a nice place like this. I hope he enjoyed it, when he wasn't agonizin over his creations."

Lisey thought of Scott at the desk he called Dumbo's Big Jumbo, sitting before his bigscreen Mac and laughing at something he'd just written. Chewing either a plastic straw or his own fingernails. Sometimes singing along with the music. Making arm-farts if it was summer and hot and his shirt was off. That was how he agonized over his smucking creations. But she still said nothing. On the sound-system, Ole Hank gave way to his son. Junior was singing "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound."