“If you didn’t go there to see Ruth or the kids, why were you there?”
“Well, to get evidence. For the custody case. I thought she might have another guy there. I wanted to be sure the kids were okay. And . . .”
“And what?”
Another sigh. “I just went there sometimes. I’d park up and just sit. I wanted to be near her, I guess. Near Ruth. Near my kids. She’s my wife. That’s . . . that was my family.”
He spread his hands. Looked at Pete.
“I’m living in a shitty boardinghouse with three other guys. The bathroom stinks, the kitchen’s a mess. That’s why I don’t eat dinner at home. No one cleans. Things never get fixed. The lightbulb in the hallway went out nineteen days ago, and nobody’s replaced it yet. Nineteen days. I count ’em, every morning.
“That’s where I live now, and I miss my home. I miss my wife. I miss my family. Sometimes I used to go to the apartment building to be near them. So what? That’s not a crime.”
There was another pause, and then Pete asked, “What time did you leave?”
“Eleven-thirty, eleven forty-five maybe.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Like I told the cops—I drove home. Went to bed. I didn’t wake up until Ruth called in the morning.”
Pete was back outside Ruth’s building the following night. He watched her get into a cab, and trailed her to Gloria’s. It used to be a fancy place, back when it first opened: ropes for the lines, the bouncers young and tough. When the novelty had worn off, the lines died away, the bouncers were replaced by an older guy with glazed eyes and a broken nose, and then even he disappeared.
The night Pete walked in, the sidewalk outside was dead. There was no one on the door, no one lined up outside. No homeless, even, panning for change—there wasn’t enough passing traffic to make it worth their while.
He saw Ruth right away. She looked at him, puzzled, like she half-recognized him, then turned back to her drink. She was sitting alone at the bar, but there were two cops at the far end. She kept shooting them filthy glances, checking her nails, looking up from under her lashes whenever someone stood next to her. Pete knew her well enough by now to guess she was on her third Scotch Mist. Almost drunk enough.
She leaned into the bar, beckoned the bartender over.
“Another one, Hud.”
Hud and Pete both looked at her and there was a moment where Pete thought the other man might say something. It passed, like all moments, and Hud just shrugged and poured her drink in silence. She raised it to the cops at the end of the bar, threw it back, and turned to face the room.
She leaned her weight on her elbow, resting on the bar, back arched. Her hair was pinned and sprayed, her skin matte and flawless, her eyes huge: what Pete’s Irish grandmother used to call “put in with a smutty finger.”
As he watched her, Ruth lowered her gaze. Moistened her lip with the tip of her pink tongue. Crossed her legs.
She reminded him of the cat who lived in the apartment building across from him: a tortoiseshell who spent hours staring at the birds that settled on the small plane tree in the front yard. They both circled their space with golden eyes: they owned it.
And then her prey appeared.
A swagger in a suit with slick hair and a dimple in his chin and the laughter of his friends shoving him forward. She took out a cigarette, he produced a lighter. They started the practiced dance: she bent to the flame, his eyes flickered to the V of her breasts, to the way it widened as she leaned back again.
He smiled at her, stepped up to the bar, and raised his chin; the bartender was there, smooth as a long streak of polished wood.
“Whatever the lady’s drinking,” his gaze on her again, “two of those.”
A bill appeared between his fingers, disappeared as the glasses were placed carefully between them. While he raised his to her, her eyes slid sideways to the solemn-faced Hud. Maybe there was just the hint of a comradely wink.
They drank. He told her a name, she told him one in return. She sought out the damp pink faces of his friends over his shoulder, baying like dogs, beating the table, and she turned back, smiled, fluttered.
Next time, it was Ruth who caught the bartender’s eye. He asked, “What’ll it be, folks?”
She looked at her friend and said, “You choose. Last time we had my drink. I want to know what you like.”
He held her gaze, but he wasn’t quite drunk enough for a line, or a lie. Not quite. Ruth just sipped and waited.