“Her head? Her pretty little head?” Not just asperity now; outright anger. It made me feel small and mean. “George, I have a stack of folders a mile high in front of me, and I need to get to them. You cannot psychoanalyze Sadie Dunhill at long distance, and I cannot help you with your love life. The only thing I can do is to advise you to come clean if you care for her. Sooner rather than later.”
“You haven’t seen her husband around, I suppose?”
“
For the second time that night, a woman I cared about hung up on me. That was a new personal record.
I went into the bedroom and began to undress.
An unpleasant thought occurred to me: maybe she was drinking. A lot. Secretly. Wasn’t it possible? My wife had been a secret heavy drinker for years — before I married her, in fact — and the past harmonizes with itself. It would be easy to dismiss that, to say that Miz Ellie would have spotted the signs, but drunks can be clever. Sometimes it’s years before people start to get wise. If Sadie was showing up for work on time, Ellie might not notice that she was doing so with bloodshot eyes and mints on her breath.
The idea was probably ridiculous. All my suppositions were suspect, each one colored by how much I still cared for Sadie.
I lay back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. In the living room, the oil stove gurgled — it was another cool night.
The girl, the gold watch, and everything. Yeah, Al, got it.
More than just one, actually, and it was a long time before I fell asleep.
The following Monday, when I made one of my regular drive-bys of 214 West Neely Street in Dallas, I observed a long gray funeral hack parked in the driveway. The two fat ladies were standing on the porch, watching a couple of men in dark suits lift a stretcher into the rear. On it was a sheeted form. On the tottery-looking balcony above the porch, the young couple from the upstairs apartment was also watching. Their youngest child was sleeping in his mother’s arms.
The wheelchair with the ashtray clamped to the arm stood orphaned under the tree where the old man had spent most of his days last summer.
I pulled over and stood by my car until the hearse left. Then (although I realized the timing was rather, shall we say, crass) I crossed the street and walked up the path to the porch. At the foot of the stairs, I tipped my hat. “Ladies, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
The older of the two — the wife who was now a widow, I assumed — said: “You’ve been here before.”
“He saw you.” Not accusing; just stating a fact.
“I’ve been looking for an apartment in this neighborhood. Will you be keeping this one?”
“No,” the younger one said. “He had some
“He said you was a ghost,” the widow told me. “He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida’s goin back to Oklahoma.”
“What do you want?” the younger one asked. “We got to take him a suit on down to the funeary home.”
“I’d like the number of your landlord,” I said.
The widow’s eyes gleamed. “What’d it be worth to you, mister?”
“I’ll give it to you for free!” said the young woman on the second-floor balcony.
The bereaved daughter looked up and told her to shut her fucking mouth. That was the thing about Dallas. Derry, too.
Neighborly.
George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song. With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn’t — a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who’s spent a good deal of time in the military and is still happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed to get the distance mike.
