Читать книгу Some Choose Darkness - Charlie Donlea - Страница 19

CHICAGO

August 1979

FOUR OF THEM—ANGELA AND CATHERINE, ALONG WITH THEIR HUSBANDS—SAT around the dinner table. Thomas, Angela’s husband, had finished grilling chicken and vegetables, and they settled for the air-conditioned safety of their dining room rather than the original plan of eating on the back patio. The summer heat was stifling, the humidity thick, and the mosquitoes unrelenting.

“Sorry to spend another summer night inside,” Thomas said. “We wait all year for winter to leave, and still find ourselves stuck inside.”

“I’ve been spending all my days outside lately,” Bill Blackwell, Catherine’s husband, said. “One of our foremen quit a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running his crews, so a break from the heat is fine with me.”

“We haven’t hired anyone to replace him yet?” Thomas asked. Thomas and Bill were partners in their concrete business, pouring foundations for new homes, paving industrial parking lots and indoor garages. Their business, started when they were both twenty years old, had grown to a midsized company with a unionized labor force.

“I’ve got a request in to Local 255. They’re working on it, but until we hire someone I’m running the crews, which means I’m outside all day. And with temperatures in the midnineties, I’m very happy to be sitting inside tonight.”

“If it helps,” Thomas said, “I had to work the Bobcat when one of our guys was sick this week.”

“That doesn’t help,” Bill said. “Driving a Cat is not the same as running the crews. If I get any more mosquito bites, I’ll contract malaria.”

“Should we be more sympathetic toward our hardworking men, Angela?” Catherine asked.

Angela stared at her plate, a detached look on her face.

“Angela,” Thomas said.

When she didn’t respond, he reached out and touched her shoulder, startling her. Angela looked up suddenly. The expression on her face made it seem like she was surprised to see others in the room.

“Bill was just saying how bad the mosquitoes are,” Thomas said in an encouraging voice. “And that he’s working harder than I am down at the shop. I need my wife to defend me here.”

Angela tried to smile, but ended up simply nodding at Thomas.

“Anyway,” Catherine said, pointing at her husband’s neck, “if you get any more bug bites, you’ll not have to worry about malaria as much as needing a blood transfusion. It looks like Dracula got to you.”

Bill put his hand to his neck. “I had an allergic reaction to the bug spray,” he said.

Thomas kept his hand on Angela’s shoulder, an attempt to coax her into the conversation. She put her hand on top of his, and offered another false smile.

“I’m not sure insect repellent works on vampires,” Angela said.

This brought chuckles from the group. Angela tried to engage in the dinner conversation, but all she could see was the afterimage of the television reporter still burned in her mind, and all she could concentrate on were the women who had gone missing this summer.