Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“You’re going to schlepp some shrink to my house in the middle of the night?”

“This is in the dream,” Hackett told him. “We’ll come over, and you’ll make love to one of the girls, whichever one you choose, and I’ll take one, and my friend’ll take one. And after you’re done with your girl you can go to sleep, and you’ll be perfectly well rested in the morning. And we can do this every night you have the dream. All you have to do is call me and we’ll show up and help you out.”

Feverell stared at him. “If only it would work.”

“It will.”

“There was a Chinese girl the other night who was just plain out of this world,” Feverell said. “But I couldn’t really relax and enjoy her, because the Jamaican and the Norwegian girls were in the other room and, well—”

Hackett clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Call me,” he said. “Your troubles are over.”

The following morning,on his way to work, Hackett gave himself up to a feeling of supreme well-being. He had repaid Krull’s kindness to him in the best way possible, by passing on the favor to another. At his desk that morning, he waited for the phone to ring with a report from Feverell.

But Feverell didn’t call. Not that morning, not the next morning, not all week. And something kept Hackett from calling Feverell.

Until finally he ran into him on the street during the noon hour — and Feverell looked terrible! Bags under his eyes, deeper than ever. Sallow skin, trembling hands. “Mike!” he said. “Mike, are you all right?”

“Do I look all right?”

“No, you don’t,” Hackett said honestly. “You look awful.”

“Well, I feel awful,” Feverell said savagely. “And I don’t feel a whole lot better for being told how terrible I look, but thanks all the same.”

“Mike, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? You know damned well what’s wrong. It’s this dream I’ve been having. I told you the whole story. Or did it slip your mind?”

Hackett sighed. “You’re still having the dream?”

“Of course I’m still having the dream.”

“Mike,” Hackett said, “when the doorbell rings, before you do anything else, you were going to call me, remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“So?”

“So I’ve called you. Every night I call you, for all the good it does.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do, every goddamned night.”

“And then I come over? And I bring my friend?”

“Oh, right,” said Feverell. “Your famous friend, the clean-cut psychiatrist. Whom I’ve yet to meet, because he doesn’t come over and neither do you. Every night I call you, and every night you hang up on me.”

“I hang up on you?” Hackett stared. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Feverell. “I don’t have the slightest idea. But every night I call you and you don’t even let me get a word in edgewise. ‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘but I can’t talk to you now, I’m on my way to Cleveland.’ Cleveland yet! And you hang up on me!”

It was lateafternoon by the time Dandridge got back to the lodge. The mountain air was as crisp as the fallen leaves that crunched under his heavy boots. He turned for a last look at the western sky, then hurried up the steps and into the massive building. In his room he paused only long enough to drop his gear onto a chair and hang his bright orange cap on a peg. Then he strode to the lobby and through it to the taproom.

He bellied up to the bar, a big, thick-bodied man. “Afternoon, Eddie,” he said to the barman. “The usual poison.”

Dandridge’s usual poison was sour mash whiskey. The barman poured a generous double into a tumbler and stood, bottle in hand, while Dandridge knocked the drink back in a single swallow. “First of the day,” he announced, “and God willing it won’t be the last.”

Both the Lord and the barman were willing. This time Eddie added ice and a splash of soda. Dandridge accepted the drink, took a small sip of it, nodded his approval, and turned to regard the only other man present at the bar, a smaller, less obtrusive man who regarded Dandridge in turn.

“Afternoon,” Dandridge said.

“Good afternoon,” said the other man. He was smoking a filtered cigarette and drinking a vodka martini. He looked Dandridge over thoroughly, from the rugged face weathered by sun and wind down over the heavy red and black checked jacket and wool pants to the knee-high leather boots. “If I were to guess,” the man said, “I’d say you’ve been out hunting.”

Dandridge smiled. “Well, you’d be right,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.”

“ ‘In a manner of speaking,’ ” the smaller man echoed. “I like the phrase. I’d guess further that you had a good day.”

“A damn good day. Hard not to on a day like this. When it’s this kind of a day, the air just the right temperature and so fresh you know it was just made this morning, and the sun comes through the trees and casts a dappled pattern on the ground, and you’ve got a spring in your step that makes you positive you’re younger than the calendar tells you, well hell, sir, you could never set eyes on bird or beast and you’d still have to call it a good day.”

“You speak like a poet.”

“Afraid I’m nothing of the sort. I’m in insurance, fire and casualty and the like, and let me tell you there’s nothing the least bit poetic about it. But when I get out here the woods and the mountains do their best to make a poet out of me.”

The smaller man smiled, raised his glass, took a small sip. “I would guess,” he said, “that today wasn’t a day in which you failed to — how did you put it? To set eyes on bird or beast.”

“No, you’d be right. I had good hunting.”

“Then let me congratulate you,” the man said. He raised his glass to Dandridge, who raised his in return.

“Dandridge,” said Dandridge. “Homer Dandridge.”

“Roger Krull,” said the other man.

“A pleasure, Mr. Krull.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Dandridge.”

They drank, and both of their glasses stood empty. Dandridge motioned to the barman, his hand indicating both glasses. “On me,” he said. “Mr. Krull, would I be wrong in guessing you’re a hunter yourself?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Oh?”

Krull glanced down into his newly freshened drink. “I’ve hunted for years,” he said. “And I still hunt. I haven’t given it up, not by any means. But—”

“It’s not the same, is it?”

Krull looked up. “That’s absolutely right,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Go on,” Dandridge urged. “Tell me how it’s different.”

Krull thought a moment. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “Of course the novelty’s gone, but hell, the novelty wore off years ago. The thing about any first-time thrill is it’s only really present the first time, and eventually it’s all gone. But there’s something else. The stalking is still exciting, the pursuit, all of that, and there’s still that instant of triumph when the prey is in your sights, and then the gun bucks, and then—”

“Yes?”

“Then you stand there, deafened for a moment by the roar of the gun, and you watch your prey gather and fall, and then—” He shrugged heavily. “Then it’s a letdown. It even feels like—”

“Yes? Go on, Mr. Krull. Go on, sir.”

“Well, I hope you won’t take offense,” Krull said. “It feels like a waste, a waste of life. Here I’ve taken life away from another creature, but I don’t own that life. It’s just... gone.”

Dandridge was silent for a moment. He sipped his drink, made circles on the bar with the glass. He said, “You didn’t feel this way in the past, I take it.”