“You’re supposed to be heading this investigation, but look at you; you’re a mess. I don’t know what it is about Huston, but you’re taking this case way too personally. It was probably a mistake for me to let you head the investigation in the first place. But just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I’m going to keep looking the other way while you rip yourself to pieces over this guy.”
DeMarco remained with his back pressed to the door. He tried to still the caffeine jitters streaming through him, watched the ripples in his coffee cup.
Bowen’s voice softened. “Or maybe this isn’t about Huston at all. Maybe it’s about Laraine somehow? Or Ryan Jr. maybe?”
DeMarco gripped his cup with both hands. His mouth felt sticky and sour. He spoke in a whisper. “Don’t talk about my family,” he said.
Bowen stood and scooped up the white tablets. He crossed to DeMarco. Took the coffee cup from his hands, pressed the tablets into his palm, closed DeMarco’s hand around the pills. He stood very close, his fingers still clenched around DeMarco’s.
“Go home, Ryan. If there’s any news between now and morning, I’ll send a trooper to drag your ass out of bed. That’s not a suggestion; it’s an order. And this time, you’re going to fucking listen to me.”
For some reason, DeMarco could not bring himself to look Bowen in the eye. For some reason, all he wanted was to go to sleep now. He wanted to sleep a hundred years, no dreams, no night sweats, no thoughts of another day.
He leaned slightly forward, reached behind himself, and gripped the doorknob. With a sliding, turning motion, he faced the door and pulled it open and said as he stepped into the hallway, “Make sure you scrub my mug out when you’re done fondling it.”
Fifty-Six
The long, cool shadows of afternoon. On the edge of his back porch, DeMarco stood for a while and looked at his unfinished brick path. Streaks of soft yellow sunlight slanted in low across his yard. He remembered that Laraine had told him once that photographers and painters call this hour of such clear, soft sunshine the hour of magic light. He wondered what a painter would make of the scene from his back porch. Dandelions and crabgrass had grown up between the bricks and out of the bare soil. The grass in his yard was four inches high and hadn’t been mowed for over a month. At the far end of the yard, the windows in the unfinished apartment in the small barn looked back at him like cartoon eyes, black and unblinking.
For just an instant, he thought he saw himself looking back from one of those black windows, but then the image was gone. Must have been the me that never was, he thought. Never was or will be.
He wanted a drink, but Bowen’s white pills were in his pocket and he knew he should not mix them with alcohol. He told himself he should heat up a can of soup. He should eat some soup and maybe a can of fruit cocktail. Eat something sensible, then take the pills and sleep for twelve hours, then wake up refreshed and ready to kick some tail again.
It was a good, simple plan. He was glad he had thought of it. To celebrate, he went inside and took a bottle of Corona out of the refrigerator and drank it down in four gulps. He drank another one while studying the eight cans of food in the cupboard. There was one can each of sliced beets, whole potatoes, mushroom pieces and stems, and five cans of tuna. He drank another beer while standing at the back door and looking out through the screen. Beer is okay, he told himself. Beer is mostly water. Water is supposed to be good for you.
To keep the first three beers company, he carried a fourth beer into the living room and swallowed the white pills and turned on the TV. With the beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other, he surfed channels for a while before finally settling on a cooking show. He watched a slender, pretty woman demonstrate how to prepare a chicken breast with caramelized onions and mushrooms and a sauce made with white wine, capers, and the juice of one lemon. The pretty woman told him that the sauce could also be used with shrimp and that it was wonderful for poaching salmon.
“That’s wonderful to know,” he told her. He imagined that if he lifted the hair off the back of her neck, she would smell like moonlight with a hint of lemon. He watched her until his eyes grew heavy, then he closed his eyes and listened to her voice become a murmur, and when she leaned close to whisper to him, he could feel her breath on his cheek and the clean, cool scent of her body filled him with the soft, unhurried heaviness of magic light.
“That’s wonderful,” he told her, and he let the empty bottle slip from his hand and onto the floor.
Fifty-Seven
The remote slid upward past DeMarco’s fingers. He thought about tightening his hand around it, but he was in a gray, soft place and could not summon sufficient interest to hold on. He heard the television click off and the silence that followed, and he wondered about that too but from a long distance away.