“Really?” John sounded interested. “Which bar?”
“Place called the Cowboy Boot. It’s two-buck pitchers until nine o’clock.”
“Dan.”
“Yes, John.”
“I know that place from the old days. If you’re going to flush your life down the toilet, don’t start there. The ladies are skanks with meth-mouth and the men’s room smells like moldy jockstraps. The Boot is strictly for when you hit your bottom.”
There it was, that phrase again.
“We all have a bottom,” Dan said. “Don’t we?”
“Get out of there, Dan.” John sounded dead serious now. “Right this second. No more f**king around. And stay on the phone with me until that big neon cowboy boot on the roof is out of your rearview mirror.”
Dan started his car, pulled out of the lot, and back onto Route 11.
“It’s going,” he said. “It’s going . . . annnd . . . it’s gone.” He felt inexpressible relief. He also felt bitter regret—how many two-buck pitchers could he have gotten through before nine o’clock?
“Not going to pick up a six or a bottle of wine before you get back to Frazier, are you?”
“No. I’m good.”
“Then I’ll see you Thursday night. Come early, I’m making the coffee. Folgers, from my special stash.”
“I’ll be there,” Dan said.
12
When he got back to his turret room and flipped on the light, there was a new message on the blackboard.
I had a wonderful day!
Your friend,
ABRA
“That’s good, honey,” Dan said. “I’m glad.”
Buzz. The intercom. He went over and hit TALK.
“Hey there, Doctor Sleep,” Loretta Ames said. “I thought I saw you come in. I guess it’s still technically your day off, but do you want to pay a house call?”
“On who? Mr. Cameron or Mr. Murray?”
“Cameron. Azzie’s been visiting with him since just after dinner.”
Ben Cameron was in Rivington One. Second floor. An eighty-three-year-old retired accountant with congestive heart failure. Hell of a nice guy. Good Scrabble player and an absolute pest at Parcheesi, always setting up blockades that drove his opponents crazy.
“I’ll be right over,” Dan said. On his way out, he paused for a single backward glance at the blackboard. “Goodnight, hon,” he said.
He didn’t hear from Abra Stone for another two years.
During those same two years, something slept in the True Knot’s bloodstream. A little parting gift from Bradley Trevor, aka the baseball boy.
PART TWO
EMPTY DEVILS
CHAPTER SEVEN
“HAVE YOU SEEN ME?”
1
On an August morning in 2013, Concetta Reynolds awoke early in her Boston condo apartment. As always, the first thing she was aware of was that there was no dog curled up in the corner, by the dresser. Betty had been gone for years now, but Chetta still missed her. She put on her robe and headed for the kitchen, where she intended to make her morning coffee. This was a trip she had made thousands of times before, and she had no reason to believe this one would be any different. Certainly it never crossed her mind to think it would prove to be the first link in a chain of malignant events. She didn’t stumble, she would tell her granddaughter, Lucy, later that day, nor did she bump into anything. She just heard an unimportant snapping sound from about halfway down her body on the right-hand side and then she was on the floor with warm agony rushing up and down her leg.
She lay there for three minutes or so, staring at her faint reflection in the polished hardwood floor, willing the pain to subside. At the same time she talked to herself. Stupid old woman, not to have a companion. David’s been telling you for the last five years that you’re too old to live alone and now he’ll never let you hear the end of it.
But a live-in companion would have needed the room she’d set aside for Lucy and Abra, and Chetta lived for their visits. More than ever, now that Betty was gone and all the poetry seemed to be written out of her. And ninety-seven or not, she’d been getting around well and feeling fine. Good genes on the female side. Hadn’t her own momo buried four husbands and seven children and lived to be a hundred and two?