Читать книгу Sunset People - Herbert Kastle - Страница 17

Mel awoke, twitching, trying to shove that long gun aside, cursing the fat man for what he’d done to Beth-Anne.

And the fat man was gone. The car was gone. There was a milky haze. And a heavy, deeply felt drumming sound.

And a smell. Like his mother’s room after a customer had left and she’d been cleaning up. A medicinal douche.

No. It was more like her room at the hospital when she’d been dying. . .

He remembered then! He’d grabbed at the gun in the window and felt a sledgehammer blow to the head.

He’d been shot. Like Beth-Ann.

He moved his head, trying to see beyond the milky haze.

Oh, God, the granddaddy of all headaches!

He tried calling for help: “Someone, anyone, come here!” And realized that while he was thinking words, and while his vocal chords were thrumming under the correct thrust of air from the lungs, his mouth wasn’t moving.

Slowly, to avoid pain, he reached for his lips.

At least he thought to move his right hand up to his mouth.

And couldn’t feel his right hand. Or left hand. Or legs. Christ, he couldn’t even feel his cock and he’d never ever lost awareness of that!

The heavy, drumming sound increased. He thanked God for it. At least there was something getting through to him. Rock music, maybe. Or machinery . . .

But then he listened more carefully, and recognized the sound. His own heart, pounding away. The only sound in all the world.

Why couldn’t he see clearly?

The panic came then, so quickly he couldn’t fight it. The hysteria and insanity caught him and tried to overwhelm him and he jerked his head back and forth and pain joined horror.

He’d been shot in the head like Beth-Anne, and hadn’t been lucky enough to die like Beth-Anne. He was paralyzed and he was deaf and he was dumb and he was blind except for a milky white haze.

He shrieked his horror, his pain.

And heard the shriek. It was blocked at the mouth, it was held inside, but he heard it.

So he wasn’t deaf. And he wasn’t dumb, just unable to speak words.

Beats a blank, baby. Now wait for someone to come. Wait for input, information, salvation.

But his eyes. Christ, he could take almost anything if he could only see. A pretty chick. A newspaper. A TV screen.

And he saw. A gorgeous chick! Who was really a chunky, middle-aged nurse who lifted what he now saw was a plastic oxygen tent off him—removing the milky haze—but who looked like Monroe and Farrah and Beth-Anne put together, because he wasn’t blind!

He wasn’t deaf or dumb or blind, and he laughed and opened his mouth to say, “Hey, hon, when do I get outta here?”

And said nothing, grunting instead, because his mouth still wouldn’t work. And neither would his arms or legs.

He looked at her, trying to thank her with his eyes for coming to him.

She said, “You’re in Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Mr. Crane. You’ve been shot in the face. Your head and jaw are bandaged, so you can’t speak. But you’re all right.”

He flickered his eyes at her.

“Are you thirsty? Hungry? We can give you nourishment through a tube. Or do you need a bedpan?”

He shook his head, even though it made him groan.

“Please don’t move,” she said. And then she looked at his body, at his arms and legs. Because he hadn’t moved them, not even a little bit. Because he lay there like a stone, except for his bandaged head.

He saw the understanding cross her face, and she said, “I’ll get the doctor. Just remember you’ve suffered severe shock. Just remember that it takes time . . .” She ran out of comforting things to say, and hurried from the room.

He waited. He tried to hold onto the joy he’d felt at having eyes and ears and vocal chords. He tried not to think of anything else.

But he did think of Beth-Anne falling over against the door, and of the fat white face in the window. The fat white face belonging to the fat white fuck . . .

Incredibly, in the midst of so much hatred, he felt himself losing thought, drifting away, being enveloped by heavy sleep.

And gave himself to it gratefully.

Sleep might be the best thing left in his life.

At nine a.m., Frank and Lila were at the hospital, waiting to be admitted into the Intensive Care section. His mother was being cleaned up now, the nurse at the desk explained. She was doing well, “though she might be a little fuzzy, you know.” He nodded and asked for a phone and was directed down the hall.

He was in a state of shock . . . and not just because of his mother. On the way over to Cedars-Sinai, he’d turned on the car radio, tuned to the all-news station, and learned that the black was alive. And somewhere in this very hospital.

The man had seen him. The man could describe him.

He fumbled for a dime, hands sweaty, and dialed the store. He told Martin he wouldn’t be in until later, and hunff up. He tried to think of what to do.

Get rid of the gun; that was the first thing. Maybe, somehow, get rid of the black . . . if he didn’t die on his own.

He was in “a deep coma,” the radio said. “In critical condition.”

He began walking back to Intensive Care. He walked slowly. What if the black was in one of those rooms? What if he regained consciousness and saw Frank?

He was sweating heavily now. He paused to wipe his face and neck with his handkerchief.

He should run from this place, go home, get rid of the gun.

Lila was waving at him from the desk. He went over, reluctantly. “We can go in now,” she murmured.

He walked behind her and a nurse. The rooms in Intensive Care had their doors closed, but the walls facing the nurses’ station had clear glass panels so that these critically ill patients could be under constant surveillance.

Frank took one look at all that glass, and dropped his head. And kept it down. Until they entered a room and he was able to relax a little.

If you could call talking to a woman who didn’t remember her own son relaxing.

“I know you,” she said, propped up in bed, her body bulky under the blankets (due, the nurse explained, to a hip cast), her head bandaged. “I’m sure I do. But I can’t quite remember who you are.”

Lila said, “It’s Frank, Mother. Your Frank.”

“My Frank?” Her voice was weak, uncertain. “But we had a funeral, didn’t we? Though he does keep singing ‘Red Sails . . “

“Your son,” Lila said impatiently.

Frank chuckled a little. “It confuses everyone when you name a child after his father.”

His explanation had no effect whatsoever. His mother continued to blink puzzled eyes at him.

Lila sighed, pulled up a chair, and plumped herself down.

His mother looked at her. “Lila? What are you doing here? I thought you were in Los Angeles.”

Frank said, We’re all in Los Angeles, Mom. You moved from Agoura when Dad died. You live with Lila and me now. You’ll be getting better and coming home soon.”

“You’re married to Lila? My memory . . She closed her eyes and began to weep. “The car hit me. It’s terrible being old. So humiliating . . . a sandwich . . . not even a sandwich . . .”

Lila began to say something. Frank said, “That’s all right, Mom. Things will be different when you come home. You’ll see.”

She opened her eyes; her red, weak, streaming eyes. “I know you. I’m sure I know you.”

The nurse must have been right outside, because she stepped in and said they’d better leave. “Give her at last one full day before your next visit. She’ll remember much more then.”

When they reached the front desk, Frank said to the nurse, “Oh, forgot my sunglasses,” and turned back. He’d left them, deliberately, on the bedside table.

The nurse said, “I’ll have to go with you.”

Lila said she’d wait in the hall.

In his mother’s room, he got the glasses; then bent over the old lady and kissed her cheek, which he somehow hadn’t been able to do a moment ago with all the confusion, and with Lila present. “Love you, Mommy,” he whispered, as he had as a child.

“Frankie,” she said, and touched his face. “Of course, my little Frankie.”

He turned quickly away so as not to cry.

The nurse smiled. “There. Clearing up by the minute.”

He nodded and said, “I heard that the Negro who was shot last night is here.”

They were walking into the U-shaped room that was the nerve-center of this Intensive Care Unit. The open end of the U wasn’t open at all—a wall with a counter and a door, facing the hall where relatives waited to be admitted. Rooms opened off each of the three sides of the U; his mother’s was the second of four on the first side; the glass panels looked out on a nurses’ station dead center of the room.

“Yes,” the nurse said. “The woman with him died.” She pointed at the central section of the U, at the first door of three. “But he regained consciousness a short while ago.”

“Ah,” Frank said, and followed her, face averted from that one glass panel.

As he was opening the door to join Lila in the hall, he heard a man at the counter identify himself as a police lieutenant and ask to see Melvin Crane.

Frank thanked the nurse. She said, “Not at all,” and turned to listen as the nurse at the desk answered the officer:

“He can’t speak, Lieutenant. We haven’t allowed newspersons in . . .” She pointed down the hall to where a cluster of people, one wearing camera and harness, was just entering an elevator, “and we can’t allow you . . .”

Lila was waving her hand. “Frank!” she whispered.

He stepped through the door.

“I have to go grocery shopping,” she said, “and you have to get to work!”

He said, “Yes,” and they went to the elevators.

He parked his Chevy on the street in front of the house and went inside, ostensibly to use the bathroom. And stayed there until he heard her back her Plymouth down the driveway. Then he came out, in time to let her see him entering his car.

As soon as she turned the corner, he got out, carrying his briefcase, and hurried to the back yard.

Where with repeated glances around to make sure no one could see him, he put the plastic bag into the case and started for his car. He could go to the shore, to a pier, and dump it in the water. Or to one of the more remote canyons, like Latigo.

He turned into the house. He sat at the kitchen table and took the gun out of the bag. He held it, stroked it, marveled at the precision of it, the beauty of it. He sniffed it—smelled the oil, the gunpowder, the marvelous odor of a killing machine. He remembered what it could do.

And knew that risk or no, he couldn’t throw it away.

Not until it was empty.

Because without it, he was empty . . . of purpose, of pleasure, of power.

He put it in his case and carried it out to his car. He drove down the street.

He could find another hiding place for it, far from his home, his business. So that the connection would be severed as completely as if he’d tossed it into the sea. And he would wait before using it again. Wait and see what developed with that black animal.

He reached Sunset and stopped for a traffic light.

A young woman, nineteen or twenty, in tight blue jeans and tee shirt, strolled lazily across in front of him. At the corner behind her, two young men were laughing and making loud comments. Frank heard “. . . enough for both of us, man!”

The girl turned her head at that. But instead of being outraged, she was smiling.

The light changed. Frank began to move forward. The two youths ran out in front of him, following the girl. Frank slammed his brakes, and his horn. One boy stopped in front of the car and jerked his finger up and down obscenely, saying, “You got objections, step out here, turkey.”

Frank didn’t answer, but heard his breath rasping.

“Hal, c’mon!” the other youth called.

The one in front of the car sneered, and ran to join his friend, who was standing with the girl. Then all three strolled away together.

Frank was trembling and sweating. He had his hand on his briefcase, at the clasp.

A horn sounded behind him. He realized he was blocking traffic, and turned east on Sunset.

He put his hand back on the briefcase, and grew calmer. It was better than Valium. Even if he couldn’t use it, he had to keep it close by him. And he might have to use it. . . on the Negro.

Larry Admer finally got in to see the victim, but it was a real hassle. He’d kept his temper, and his smile, but inside he was seething. It was getting worse and worse, the way people looked at police in this town. Especially blacks and Hispanics. Even the Orientals were beginning to lose respect.

Just another sign of the disintegration of American society. Let them lose sufficient respect, and restraint, and the wise-guy liberal middle class, blacks and Hispanics included, would find out what it meant to have the shit of the world come down on them. Then they’d be yelling for the National Guard.

He said, “Thank you,” oh-so-sweetly to the nurse who’d given him such a tough time at the counter, and followed another nurse, Chicano and with a great ass, but with hard eyes for him, to the room.

“We told you he was sleeping,” she whispered.

“So he is,” he said in his normal voice—which was loud and clear.

Before she could shush him, the man in the bed opened his eyes. He was bandaged about the head, and bandaged over some sort of metal brace about the jaw. His eyes and nostrils showed, as did a small hole where his mouth would be. Except for the eyes, he was absolutely still.

Larry said, “I’m Lieutenant Admer, L.A.P.D.” He brought his credentials in front of the man’s eyes. “Congratulations on fooling that bastard who shot you. Was the woman your wife?”

“He can’t speak,” the nurse said. “And he can’t write, as we told you. She spoke to the man in bed. “The doctor will be back late this afternoon, Mr. Crane. He’ll have the results of those X-rays and tests we took earlier.”

“You can blink your eyes, Mel. One for yes, two for no.”

The man’s eyes blinked once. And he grunted.

“Or grunt once for yes, twice for no.”

The grunt was loud and clear.

“Fine. Was the woman your wife?”

One grunt, and the eyes closed. Larry murmured,

“Sorry,” and waited for them to open.

“Did you see your attacker?”

A pause, and a sigh.

“Saw him but not clearly?”

One grunt.

“Clearly enough to give a description?”

Long pause. Two grunts.

Larry couldn’t hide his disappointment, and a muttered, “Damn.” Then he said, “Well, when you’re able to talk, we’ll get more from you than you think you know. You’ll remember more as you recover.”

A little nod, and a groan.

“Let’s get some basics. It was a male, right?”

One grunt.

“White?”

One grunt.

“Young? Say twenty?”

Two grunts.

“Middle-aged? About forty?”

A pause, then one grunt.

“Facial hair? Like a mustache or beard?”

A pause, and a faint grunt.

“Not sure? Face in the dark, in shadows, or made you turn from him?”

One grunt, then a sigh and the eyes closed.

“He’s not ready for this,” the nurse said.

Larry spoke quickly. “The gun, you saw it, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Just tell me if it had a silencer at the end.”

Crane didn’t open his eyes, didn’t answer.

“An extension, thicker than the barrel. You know—you’ve seen them in movies.”

One weak grunt.

“Did the hand holding the gun have any special characteristics? Like a scar, a deformity, missing fingers?”

No response.

“A ring?”

“I really must insist!” the nurse said, voice climbing.

Larry said, “All right; sorry.” And to Crane, “Take it easy, Melvin. I know you want that creep, and we’re going to get him for you. And don’t worry about your money.” The eyes flew open. Larry smiled. “Safe, the whole five thousand. And your other possessions.”

The eyes stayed on him.

‘I’ve been a police officer for some time, Melvin, and I’ve never met a man, a real man, who didn’t want to avenge a loved one’s death himself. We all know how lousy the court system is, and how light the sentences are, even for murder. But the police and the courts are all you’ve got. Remember that. And remember that we’ll not only help you nail that killer, but we’ll be grateful if you really extend yourself, if you push yourself to remember every last bit of information that might be hiding in your memory. Grateful enough, Melvin, so that one of your possessions, in a bag, might get misplaced.”

The eyes closed. Larry turned to the door. He’d gotten a feeling about Crane while questioning him: halfway through the interview there’d been a change, a holding back. Sometimes rage and hatred made citizens, especially men, feel they could do the law’s job themselves. It usually didn’t last long, a few days after the tragedy, but in this case he didn’t want to waste a single hour. And in this case the bag of dusted pot would provide leverage.

If his instinct about Crane holding back was correct. If he wasn’t getting paranoid about being a cop!

A sharp dude, the lieutenant, Mel thought. Because sometime during the questioning, Mel had decided not to give everything he knew on the fat white fuck. Had actually given some misinformation. And the cop’s expression showed he had guessed Mel was holding back.

Because the courts did stink, and even when they convicted murderers they let them off easy, out of jail and on parole in seven to ten years. And Beth-Anne would get no parole from her hole in the ground; and old black Melvin might get no parole from this bed or, at best, a wheelchair.

So he’d made a quick decision and grunted “Yes” when Admer had said middle-aged and forty; and the fat white fuck was younger. And said yes to facial hair when that fat white face was baby clean and baby smooth. And wouldn’t be able to say it was a fat white face; would claim he’d barely glimpsed it.

But Admer had a lid of marijuana treated with angel dust. The PCP made that a heavier rap than usual for three ounces of pot, which could be a good rap anyway if they nailed him for pushing, for dealing. And the five grand made it a natural for dealing.

Still, the least of his worries. What the doctor had to say was the main event. What he’d already said was no Bob Hope special—fragments of bone had “touched” the brain; “minute fragments” that might not be removable. Sometimes such fragments “ceased being a problem” with the passage of time. Then came the bad news: “Sometimes, however, they continue to cause problems, with the motor centers for example, as in your case.”

Which meant paralysis, baby. Which meant being dead from the neck down.

Though he thought he’d felt something when the doctor had jabbed his upper right arm with a pin. Nothing anywhere else, but something, maybe, in the upper right arm, like a grain of sand falling there.

They’d wheeled in machinery and taken more X-rays in addition to those taken while he was out cold. And taken blood and made other tests, “Now that you’re conscious and strong enough to withstand them.”

He didn’t know how conscious he was. He kept falling asleep every ten or fifteen minutes. And didn’t mind.

But he got the idea that the doctor minded; that the doctor was worried he might fall asleep and not wake up, ever.

If it meant death, Mel wasn’t afraid of it. He didn’t want it, but he wasn’t afraid of it. In his condition, it wasn’t that big a deal.

But if it meant being a vegetable, lying here for months and years, like that girl in New Jersey who’d been plugged into a machine, “fear” was a weak word for his reaction.

Or if it meant waking up for a few minutes each day and being out the rest of the time and having his body wither, shrivel, rot . . .

There was much to be afraid of, and he breathed heavily and told himself not to think of those things, to think only of finding the fat white fuck.

He could do it, too, even from here.

He closed his eyes. He ran names, faces through his mind. Dangerous people whom he’d hoped never to have to see again. People who could be his arms and legs. And fists. People who would see to it that the fat white fuck didn’t live to go to court.

If he could keep from helping Admer.

Which might not be too easy.

Mel Crane knew when someone was good at his job. And this cop was good.

He waited for sleep, which was overdue according to the every-ten-or-fifteen-minutes schedule. And it wouldn’t come.

He thought of when he himself had been good at a job. For a short while, true, but that was because pimping was a lot harder than popular myth and rumor had it, especially in little old New York. And after his year in Ossining, up the Hudson—his “easy dozen” that had shown him exactly who he was, and wasn’t—his days of imitating Iceberg Slim were numbered.

After the slammer, the only part of pimping he’d liked was breaking in a new chick. Holding them in line and knocking them around wore him down, and he’d left Manhattan and his East Side clientele at age twenty-nine and fled the width of the country to get away. And gone from well-heeled but miserable user to broke but contented john. Not exactly in one easy lesson, since he’d been in L.A. some twenty years.

Twenty-one years, he calculated, his mind clear and unclouded. Twenty-one years since he’d run that string of hard-as-nails broads in Manhattan. But every so often there’d be a cutie, a softie, a girl bound to be a loser at that tough trade in the long run. He would be touched and try to help her, because he knew they had something in common. And they would make beautiful music together for a brief time.

In fact, it was one of these he had helped to escape, a little Italian knockout named Anna, innocent deep down where it counted despite falling for the scum who’d sold her to Pell-Mel. That was how he had been known in those long-ago days, the nickname coming from his crazy way of fighting when he was forced to, a mad confused attack (covering his fear, his distaste for his way of life). Anna, with bright eyes that believed too much, whose light would be extinguished, he was sure, trying to survive in a world without tenderness—Anna had touched him so deeply he had taken her with him when he’d run from the trade, the racket overlords, the goddam ugliness. Dropped her off at her brother’s in Cleveland and told her, “No more pills and no more bums, got it?” and hoped she could make it in the straight world.

As he himself hadn’t been able to, becoming a smalltime bum himself. But one who’d never hurt people.

And now someone had hurt him.

And now look at yourself, nigger . . .

He didn’t have time to hit bottom again, because sleep grabbed him.

At eleven, Cloris left English class, but didn’t go to study hall in the auditorium. Instead, she left the school and walked to the shopping center, about ten minutes in the Valley heat, and met Verna Tomlinson and her boyfriend Buddy at the coffee shop. Verna and Buddy were both drop-outs from Granada High. They were secretly married, but the secret wouldn’t hold too much longer. Verna was pregnant, and so she and Buddy had decided to leave Granada Hills for Los Angeles. And Cloris had decided to join them.

It wasn’t a long trip, maybe fifteen, twenty miles (she was lousy at geography and maps), but the San Fernando Valley suburb and the Big Town were worlds apart in the things that counted to Cloris. A movie career. Discos. Roller boogie rinks. Lots of dates. And no mother and no Uncle Bert!

They had burgers and fries and coffee, and relaxed over cigarettes. Verna was a chunky brunette, pretty face but much too heavy. Still, Buddy seemed happy enough, and with his slouchy, skinny build and bad skin he was no bargain himself.

Cloris wouldn’t have dated him in a million years, though she’d been curious after Verna had said, “His thing’s a foot long and thick as my arm!” So at the party in Christofer Bayshore’s house, when Buddy got drunk and grabbed her playfully in the kitchen, she’d unzipped him and made it hard with her hand. And discovered Verna had been bragging about nothing. Then she’d had a job calming him down.

“You sure, Cloris?” Verna asked, leaning across the table conspiratorially. “You know Buddy and me can’t put you up or anything. We’re staying with his cousin Elma and her husband, and they only got two rooms in Echo Park.”

Cloris said she had a hundred sixty dollars saved from her part-time job at the supermarket checkout, “and before that’s gone I’ll have a job and I’ll move from the motel to a good apartment. I’m going to dramatic school and modeling school. Maybe take voice lessons too. I want a career in film”

“You got the looks all right,” Verna said. “Don’t she, Buddy?”

He nodded. “Sure do.”

Cloris said, “Thank you, thank you,” bowing her head as if on a stage, and they all laughed together, but she didn’t need them telling her what she had. She’d looked in the mirror a few times. “A teenaged American Charo,” that football player had called her.

Well, maybe, though she felt she had more class than cootchie-coo. But she was blonde with long hair and she was built on top and all the rest of it. And she had the sexy moves.

She smiled to herself, thinking how worked up the football player had been when she’d left him in his car in the drive-in movie to go to the bathroom. Instead, she’d gone to the snack-bar and called Freddy and said, “I can’t handle him, honey! Please come and get me,” and made crying sounds.

Freddy had raced over and she’d hopped into his car and they’d had a beautiful time that night.

Her smile faded.

He’d gone East to college last fall and hadn’t called or written since, and one of the kids said he was home on vacation but she’d heard nothing. Mom said he’d “used” her, and Uncle Bert nodded with that Holy-Roller look on his face, the bastard! He was jumping Mom twice a night in the bedroom just across the hall from Cloris in the small condo that had been fine when it was just Mom and Cloris and had become awful when Bert moved in.

Mom said he was going to marry her “soon.” That was nine months ago, and he’d never marry her and maybe she was lucky he wouldn’t. Because with all his lectures about “late hours” and “saving yourself for some fine boy” and “wearing less-revealing clothing,” just two weeks ago he’d shown what he really was. He’d come home early and Mom wasn’t back from work yet and Clois had been watching TV. It was hot; she hadn’t expected anyone; she’d been in her panties and bra. And there he’d stood, hands on his hips, face sour, eyes stern behind those teacher-like glasses.

But then, when she’d gotten up to go to her room for clothes, he’d suddenly grabbed her! What a shock, and she’d screamed, but it hadn’t stopped him. He’d been a wild man and she’d had to hit him in the face three times before he’d gained control of himself. By then, her pants and bra had been torn off and she’d backed away, naked. He’d stared and spoken in a hoarse, shaky voice: “A hundred dollars for what you give every schoolboy . . .”

She’d locked herself in her room. Later, he’d come to the door and said he’d “gone beserk” and begged her not to tell her mother. “It would only hurt her,” he’d pleaded.

It would also get him out of here, Cloris had reasoned.

She’d been wrong. Mom had slapped her, accused her of tempting him—”I’ve seen how you flaunt yourself, you little slut!”—then burst into tears. They hadn’t talked much since then. And things were cool between Bert and Mom too, with Bert sleeping on the couch. So that the apartment was like a penitentiary, with everyone in a separate cell. Cloris couldn’t take it anymore. Nor could she take school, which she’d always hated!

“Let’s get going,” she said to Verna and Buddy.

Behind a locked door she’d packed two bags last night, moving quietly so as not to be heard. They would drive by the house to pick them up now . . . then onto the freeway and off to Hollywood! She had made a reservation at a motel on Sunset Boulevard; picked it out of the Yellow Pages. The rates were low compared to places like Holiday Inns or Howard Johnsons or other big chains.

Sunset Boulevard! Tonight she’d be walking along Sunset Boulevard! On her own! With the whole world opening up before her!

She jumped up. “We’re off to see the wizard!” she sang, and ran to the door, her long yellow hair swirling, her ripe figure rippling inside the tight white linen pants and tighter blouse. So that the counterman paused to stare and wet his lips. So that Verna and Buddy laughed and ran after her.

Later, half-dozing in the back seat of the car, her luggage jamming her into one corner, she thought of how someday Freddy would go to the movies in Massachusetts where his college was, and he’d see her dancing and singing and acting. Then he’d come home on vacation and try to visit her at the studio where she’d be working, but her agent wouldn’t let him get near her dressing room. Her famous actor sweetheart, or maybe a rock star like Rod Stewart, would walk out with her, past Freddy, who would look at her, tears streaming down his face, and whisper. “I’ve always loved you, Cloris darling, you know that. My parents forced me to go to school so far away, and forbid me to write or call you. I meant all those things I said on your Sweet Sixteenth, when you gave your virgin self to me. I want to marry you, if you’ll only accept me.”

She would turn to her famous escort and say, “Did you hear that, Rod honey?” and walk off, pealing laughter.

Or maybe she would forgive him, a little, and allow him to date her once in a while.

She remembered her Freddy. She remembered loving him. And her seventeen-year-old heart ached and she wanted him more than Rod Stewart or Burt Reynolds or anyone on God’s earth. Wanted him as she had once wanted the father who had used his officer’s status in the Army Reserve to run away from a marriage that had stifled him to a “small war” that had killed him.

She put her head down in the seat so neither Verna nor Buddy could see and cried very quietly.