He wouldn’t look at me. He kept his head down, eyes on the divots ripped in the gnarled wood.
“I gave in once,” he said.
“Gave in?”
“To Karen. She kept on talking about dark gods and dark rides and places she could take you and…” He looked back over his shoulder at the motel office, and the silhouette of his wife moved past a curtain. “I don’t…I mean, what makes a man who has the best woman the world can offer-what makes him…?”
“Fuck around?” I said.
He met my eyes and his were small, now, shamed. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” I said gently. “You tell me.”
He drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair, looked off past me at the wasteland of broken trees and black earth. “It’s the darkness, you know? The chance to disappear into, I mean, really bad places while you’re doing something that feels really damn good. Sometimes, you don’t want to be on top of a woman who looks at you with all this love in her eyes. You want to be on top of a woman who looks into your face and knows you. Knows the bad you, the nasty you.” He looked at me. “And likes that you. Wants that you.”
“So, you and Karen…”
“Fucked all night, man. Like animals. And it was good. She was crazy. No inhibitions.”
“And afterward?”
He looked away again, took a deep breath, and let it out slow. “Afterward, she said, ‘See?’”
“See.”
He nodded. “‘See? No one loves.’”
We stayed out there by the picnic table for a while, neither of us speaking. Cicadas hummed through the scrawny treetops and raccoons clawed through the brambles on the far side of the clearing. The barn seemed to sag another inch, and Karen Nichols’s voice whispered through the rural blight:
See? No one loves.
No one loves.
15
I had taken my work to a bar when Angie found me later that night. The bar was Bubba’s, a place called Live Bootleg on the Dorchester-Southie line, and even though Bubba was out of the country-off to Northern Ireland, the rumor was, to pick up the arms they’d allegedly laid down over there-my drinks were still on the house.
This would have been great if I’d been in a drinking mood, but I wasn’t. I nursed the same beer for an hour, and it was still half full when Shakes Dooley, the owner of record, replaced it with a fresh one.
“It’s a crime,” Shakes said as he drained the old beer into the sink, “to see a fine, healthy man such as yourself wasting a perfectly honest lager.”
I said, “Mmm-hmm,” and went back to my notes.
Sometimes I find it easier to concentrate in a small crowd. Alone, in my apartment or office, I can feel the night ticking past me, another day gone down for the count. In a bar, though, on a late Sunday afternoon, when I can hear the hollow, distant crack of bats from a Red Sox game on the TV, the solid drop of pool balls falling into pockets from the back room, the idle chatter of men and women playing keno and scratch cards as they do their best to ward off Monday and its horn honks and barking bosses and drudging responsibilities-I find the noises mingle together into a soft, constant buzzing, and my mind clears of all else but the notes laid before me between a coaster and a bowl of peanuts.
From the morass of things I’d learned about Karen Nichols, I had compiled a bare chronological outline on a fresh sheet of yellow legal paper. Once that was done, I doodled in random notes beside hard facts. Sometime during all this, the Red Sox had lost, and the crowd had thinned slightly, though it had never been much of a crowd in the first place. Tom Waits played on the jukebox, and two voices were getting heated and raw back in the poolroom.
K. Nichols
(b. 11/16/70; d. 8/4/99)
· a. Father dies, 1976.
· b. Mother marries Dr. Christopher Dawe, ’79, moves to Weston.
· c. Graduates Mount Alvernia HS, ’88.
· d. Graduates Johnson & Wales, Hospitality Mgmt., ’92.
· e. Hired, Four Seasons Hotel, Boston, Catering Dept, ’92.
· f. Promoted Asst. Mgr., Catering Dept., ’96.
· g. Engaged to D. Wetterau, ’98.
· h. Stalked by C. Falk. Car vandalized. First contact w/ me: February ’99.
· i. D. Wetterau accident, March 15, ’99. (Call Devin or Oscar again, try to see BPD report.)
· j. Car insurance cxld due to lack of payment.
· k. May, receives photos of D. Wetterau and other woman.
· l. Fired from job, May 18, ’99, due to tardiness, multiple absences.
· m. Leaves apartment, May 30, ’99.
· n. Moves into Holly Martens Inn, June 15, ’99. (Two weeks missing. Where’d she stay?)
· o. Seen w/ Red-Haired Geek and Blond Rich Guy @ HM Inn, June-August ’99.
· p. C. Falk receives nine letters signed K. Nichols, March-July, ’99.
· q. Karen receives private psychiatrist’s notes, date uncertain.
· r. Raped by C. Falk, July ’99.
· s. Arrested for solicitation, July ’99, Springfield Bus Depot.
· t. Suicide, August 4, ’99.
Overview: Falsified letters sent to C. Falk suggest third-party involvement in K. Nichols’s “bad luck.” C. Falk not being vandalizer of car suggests same. Third Party could be Red-Haired Geek, Blond Rich Guy, or both. (Or neither.) Possession of psychiatrist’s notes suggests possibility of Third Party being employee of psychiatrist. Further, ability by psychiatric employees to garner personal info of private citizens supplies opportunity to Third Party to infiltrate K. Nichols’s life. Motive, however, seems nonexistent. Further, assumptions-
“Motive for what?” Angie said.
I put my hand over the page, looked back over my shoulder at her. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you-?”
“It’s rude to read over someone’s shoulder, yes.” She dropped her bag on the empty seat to her left and sat down beside me. “How’s it coming?”
I sighed. “If only the dead could talk.”
“Then they wouldn’t be dead.”
“Staggering,” I said, “that intellect of yours.”
She backhanded my shoulder and tossed her cigarettes and lighter on the bar in front of her.
“Angela!” Shakes Dooley came bounding down the bar, took her hand, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Well, if it ain’t been too many days.”
“Hey, Shakes. Don’t say a word about the hair, okay?”