She rolled her eyes in exasperation.
‘He meant well,’ I said. ‘He was worried about you.’
‘Joel says that he doesn’t think I should work there no more. He says I have to quit my job and find another. We had a fight about it.’
She glared at me, the implication being that it was my fault.
‘And what do you say?’
‘I love him, and I love this house. If it comes down to it, there’ll be other jobs, I guess, but I’d prefer to keep working for Mr. Patchett.’ Her eyes grew damp. A tear fell from her right eye, and she rubbed it away hurriedly.
This whole case was a mess. Sometimes that’s just the way things are. I wasn’t even sure why I was here, apart from ensuring that Joel Tobias hadn’t done to Karen Emory what, once upon a time, Cliffie Andreas had done to Sally Cleaver.
‘Has Joel hit you, or abused you in any way, Ms. Emory?’
There was a long pause.
‘No, not like you, or Mr. Patchett, think. We had a big argument a while back, and it got out of control, that’s all.’
I watched her closely. I didn’t think it was the first time that she’d been hit by a boyfriend. The way she spoke suggested that she regarded the occasional slap as an occupational hazard, a downside of dating a particular type of man. If it happened often enough, a woman might start to believe that she was at fault, that something in her, a flaw in her psychological makeup, caused men to respond in a particular way. If Karen Emory wasn’t already thinking along those lines, then she was close to it.
‘Was it the first time that he’d hit you?’
She nodded. ‘It was – what do they say? – “out of character” for him. Joel’s a good man.’ She stumbled a little on the last three words, as though she were trying to convince herself as well as me. ‘He’s just under a lot of stress at the moment.’
‘Really? Why would that be?’
Karen shrugged and looked away. ‘It’s hard, working for yourself.’
‘Does he talk to you about his work?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Is that what you were arguing about?’
Still no reply.
‘Does he frighten you?’
She licked her lips.
‘No.’ This time, it was a lie.
‘And his friends, his army buddies? What about them?’
She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray.
‘You have to go now,’ she said. ‘You can tell Mr. Patchett that I’m fine. I’ll give him my notice this week.’
‘Karen, you’re not alone in this. If you need help, I can put you in touch with the right people. They’re discreet, and they’ll advise you on what you can do to protect yourself. You don’t even have to mention Joel’s name if you don’t want to.’
But even as I spoke, I could see that my words weren’t going to have any effect. Karen Emory had hitched herself to Joel Tobias’s star. If she left him, she’d have to go back to Bennett Patchett’s dorms, and in time another man would come along, one who might be worse than Tobias, and she’d go with him just to escape. I waited for a moment, but it was clear that I was going to get no more out of her. She gestured to the door, and followed me down the hallway. As she opened the front door, and I slipped past her to stand on the front porch, she spoke again.
‘What would Joel do if he knew you’d been here?’ she asked. She sounded like a mischievous child, but it was all bravado. Her eyes were bright with tears waiting to be shed.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I think his friends might kill me. What are they doing, Karen? Why are they so worried about someone finding out?’
She swallowed hard, and her face crumpled.
‘Because they’re dying,’ she said. ‘They’re all dying.’
And the door closed in my face.
The Sailmaker was still barren of customers as I peered through the glass door, and Jimmy Jewel was still seated on the same stool at the bar, but there were now papers scattered before him, and he was checking figures on a desk calculator.
The light was constantly changing in the bar. Shards of sunlight broke the murk only to be swallowed up again by the movement of the clouds, like shoals of silver fish disappearing into the ocean’s darkness. Although the Sailmaker should have been open for business by now, Jimmy had stopped Earle from unlocking the door. The Sailmaker had inherited some of the habits of the Blue Moon: it might be open before midday, or at five in the afternoon, but it might not. The regulars knew better than to go knocking on the door seeking entry. There’d be a place for them when Jimmy and Earle were ready, and once they were settled in nobody would bother them unless they fell on the floor and made a mess.
But I wasn’t a regular, and so I knocked. Jimmy looked up, considered me for a time while he debated whether or not he could get away with telling me to go play with the white lines on I-95, then gestured to Earle to let me in. Earle did so, then went back to filling the coolers, which didn’t present too much of a challenge since the bar didn’t stock anything that might have counted as exotic when it came to beers. You could still order a Miller High Life at the Sailmaker, and PBR was drunk without a shot of irony on the side.
I took a seat at the bar, and Earle departed to grab a fresh pot of coffee for Jimmy. If I’d drunk as much coffee every day as Jimmy did, I wouldn’t be able to write my name without trembling. On Jimmy, though, it seemed to have no effect. Maybe he had vast reservoirs of calm on which to draw.
‘You know, it seems like only moments since you were last here,’ said Jimmy. ‘Either time is passing more quickly than it should, or you’re just not giving me enough time to start missing you.’
‘Tobias is on the road again, as the song goes,’ I said.
Jimmy kept his eyes on his papers, adding figures and making notes in the margins. ‘Why is this such a beef with you? You work for the government now?’
‘No, I prefer a private pension. As for why this is a beef, I made some new friends last night.’
‘Really? You must be pleased. Strikes me that you could use all the friends that you can get.’
‘These ones tried drowning me until I told them what they wanted to know. Friends like them I can do without.’