David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

He studied her. “You look fabulous, incidentally.”

She felt her lips break into a weak and childlike smile. She wanted, again, a kiss from him. “It’s the light,” she said. “It’s kind.”

“No. I’m aware of the light. I know what light can and can’t do. That’s one thing I do know.”

The corners of his mouth softened into a forgiving smile. She found herself gratified to see he was still a handsome man. Overall, despite the desert, he looked trim and sturdy and free of serious defect. The hair was shorter, with bristlings of gray. He looked stronger, bigger in the neck and chest and arms. She longed to hear his stories about the Safford weight room. He could be such an achingly funny man.

“Do you believe in echo?” he asked her suddenly.

The question roused her. “Come again?”

“Echo,” he said.

She stared.

“ ‘Who can believe in echo, when day and night he lives in urban confusion?’ It’s a question posed by Kierkegaard.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Danish philosopher.” After a moment, he added: “You get a lot of time to read in the desert.”

“No fooling.”

“This particular line, the one about echo, it stuck with me,” he said. He offered a mischievous smile. “The point, as I understood it, is that it’s hard, believing in echo, given how confused life is. Modern life.”

“Echo,” Shel said.

“In context, it has Christian implications. God’s grace bestowed on virtuous men. The good guys.”

“Oh man,” she murmured, shaking her head.

“Bear with me. Now I, like you, have serious doubts about the grace of God. Let alone the good guys.”

“Well, hey.”

“So I read this particular line a bit differently. Echo is simply a voice like my voice, in a sense. Someone like me, out in the world somewhere. She exists. Not a wish. A fact. She’s there. And her existence, it creates a sort of echo.”

He gazed at her, his face full of: Pick it up. She expected him to grab her wrists, shake them. And, in no small way, she wanted him to.

“Sounds a little to me like long-lost love,” she said.

“Not lost,” he said. “Come on. A soul like your soul. Calling out somewhere. What do you think? You believe in that or not?”

She tried to work up the nerve to respond. Yes, she’d tell him. She believed, somewhat, sure. So? Sensing his impatience, she resorted merely to, “I’m having fun.”

“That’s good.”

“No. It’s not. Not at all.”

He started leaning toward her. His kiss found the corner of her mouth, gentle and dry. He touched her arm and she found herself closing her eyes. Their lips parted with the next kiss and she felt a dizziness with their mingling saliva. She clutched the bar for balance and pulled away gently.

“People know me here.”

“No they don’t. Just Pete, remember? And he’s cursed.”

“Don’t be flip.” She clutched the lapels of his jacket and shook him with an intensity half-comic, half-heartbroken. “Why don’t you hate me?” she said. “I walked. When it was easy, you were helpless, in the middle of nowhere, what could you do to stop me? It was chickenshit. So why are you being so nice?”

Abatangelo reached for her hands and gently removed them from his jacket. He enclosed them in his. “I got over it,” he said.

“That’s not fair.”

Abatangelo laughed. “I beg your pardon?”

“I didn’t do anything to earn this,” Shel said. “Forgive somebody who’s earned it, all right? Forgive Eddy. Don’t go easy on me. It’ll just come back to haunt me.”

She withdrew her hands from Abatangelo’s hold and drank long from her Bloody Mary. It had acquired a watery flatness. Pepper grains fastened to her teeth, she had to work them loose with her tongue.

“How perfectly quaint of you,” he said.

“Don’t get snide, Danny, please. Okay?”

“I’m sorry if I sound snide. That wasn’t my intent.”

“It’s okay.”

“But forgiveness is seldom earned, you realize. Trust me, this is an area I’ve considered with some interest. You can reach a point where you tell yourself, ‘I’ve done enough, if that isn’t good enough for the bastards, fuck ’em. But that doesn’t mean you’ve earned their forgiveness. Even if they turn around and give it to you.”

Shel flagged her hands in the air, as though in mock surrender.

“Forgiveness comes or it doesn’t come,” Abatangelo went on. “Right? It’s a gift. In this particular case, a gift from me.”

Averting her eyes, she toyed with her glass. Abatangelo, discovering he’d drained his own, thrummed his fingers on the bar, trying to get Pete’s attention. Pete was not there. A plume of smoke was all that was visible through a storeroom door.

“How can you forgive me,” Shel said finally, “when you don’t even know all the facts?”

“I know enough.”

“Hardly.”

“Your letter- ”

“Doesn’t tell half.”

“Don’t tell me you’re happy. Like he’s good to you.”

This one hit. Shel drifted back a little on her stool.

“He’s the beating you deserve, right? Let me guess, your being with him, it’s all the work of Fate. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Shel waved him off. “I can’t make sense out of what you’re saying.”

“My apologies. Been alone with my thoughts for a while.”

“Danny, I’m sorry.”

“I’m tired of you being sorry, frankly. Why are you shacked up with some cranker lowlife? You hear a lot about speed sex in the joint, that what we’re talking here? How bad does he knock you around?”

“I’m not getting into this.”

“And on the other hand, why, just for conversation’s sake, why-oh-why are you here with me?”

“Auld lang syne.”

“You’re a liar.”

“You came looking for me, not the other way around.”

“And you’re going to make me work, right? You’re going to make sure I bust my hump to prove I really mean it, I’m not bitter, I miss you, always have. Always will. You’re the one thing I was looking forward to. All those years, ten of them, remember that part, ten goddamn years, the last few in particular, all I thought about at night, and you know what goes on in a cell block at night. I closed my eyes and wished hard. You were all I wanted. It was my antidote to bitter. I’m a sentimentalist, I’ve got a long memory and I’m loyal as a dog at dinner. There. That enough? What’s it going to take? Want me to spill some blood?”

Shel said, “Please don’t.”

Pete the bartender reappeared. After a quick survey of the room he pulled a flyer from a cabinet behind the bar and hurried toward Shel. He set the flyer down so she could read it and said, “You seen these around?”

The flyer bore the picture of the Briscoe twins. Across the heading, it read: “Murdered: Ryan and Bryan Briscoe.” Shel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

“The woman who’s been passing them out,” Pete said, removing the flyer from sight, “she just pulled up in the lot outside.”

Shel flinched. Why did Pete suspect she’d have any concerns about the twins? Working up a tone of nonchalance, she said, “Time to settle up, I guess.”

“Forget it,” Pete said. “Go on.”

Shel started searching for her keys, slipping off her stool and watching the door. As she did, a plain-featured woman in her mid-thirties entered the bar. She wore slacks and flats, a sport jacket with a white blouse underneath, carrying herself with an air of studied tact. A crook in her nose suggested a break, and she wore squarish gold-rimmed glasses. Beyond a wristwatch she wore no jewelry. Freckles clouded each cheek and her short-cut hair was the color of wet straw.