Richard Burgin - The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

“Why do you?” I asked with sudden earnestness. The question seemed to exasperate him more than anything I’d said yet.

“Because you’re part of my life,” said Elstner. “How many people do we get in a lifetime? And I’m loyal. I’m a loyal person. Loyalty is an undervalued virtue these days. Besides, I have too much respect for myself to think I wasted twenty-five years on you. Or that I just figured you out. You’ve always been trying to find the Holy Grail with women. You haven’t changed either.”

“Well, apparently then, I expected better from her.”

“Don’t laugh, pal.” My sarcasm had provoked Elstner to point a finger. “The older I get, the more I’m just watching the same movie. He’s and she’s, the attraction is that they’re different, right? Everybody’s looking for the other piece. And then nothing makes them crazier. She’s upset because he’s not like she is, or vice versa, and then there are nimrods like you who actually think different oughta mean better, all the time hoping that will make you better, too. Grow up.”

With that blow delivered, he did not speak until we reached his house. I was furious, but also aware that I was due a lashing of some kind. A client, a trader from the exchange, had given me a couple of Cubans. I’d left them on the dashboard for Paul and remembered them now, fortuitous timing. Elstner studied the label with appreciation.

“Smoke one with me,” he said.

Hanging around with Paul, I’d puffed on a short cigar now and then and saw the wisdom of a peace pipe. I rolled down all the windows. It was a fairly mild night for mid-March, and we lit up the Cubans and reclined the front seats and talked in a dreamy reconciled way, reviewing the season. The Hands, who’d been a Final Four team within the last decade, were not even going to the Big Dance this season. We tried at great length to discern the ephemeral difference between winning and losing, how coaching and spirit contribute to talent. We talked about great teams we’d seen and, by contrast, recollected our own failed careers as high school athletes.

Finally, Elstner decided it was time for him to get inside. I watched as Paul, with his sloppy loping stride, made his way to the house he’d lived in for decades. From the door, he gave an elaborate wave, like a campaigning politician. I thought he was marking the end of the season or the peace reestablished between us, but over time the image of him there on his stoop, grandly flagging his hand, has returned to me often, and with it the suspicion that he meant to acknowledge more. An intuitive creature like Elstner probably knew before I did that I was headed back to Clarissa, that she and I would find a new mercy with each other and make better of it, and that, as a result, I would see him less. Paul never required any explanation. In fact, I had no doubt that reviving my marriage was what he would have counseled, if I’d ever allowed him to lift his embargo on advice.

I remember all this because we lost Paul Elstner last week. He developed cancer of the liver and slipped off in a matter of months. I saw him often during his illness. One day he cataloged all the other ways he’d worried he might die — an extensive list with Maurie Moleva still on it — but he spoke the name without rancor. It turns out that there are far too many ironies as one’s life draws to a close to linger much with a small one like that.

It was Paul’s wish, another of his harmless eccentricities, to be buried in cigar ash. On a bitterly cold day, with the graveyard mounded with snow, the casket was lowered and the entire burial procession was presented with lighted Coronas. Paul had many friends, of course, and we formed a long, moving circle around the open grave, each person approaching to tamp whatever ash had developed since the last time she or he had gone past. The proceedings had all the comic elements Elstner would have savored, with designated puffers to keep the cigars going for the nonsmokers and many mourners making smart comments about the smell, which they figured would linger in their clothing forever, Paul’s unwelcome ghost. This rite continued for more than half an hour, with the group dwindling in the cold. I was among the last. The ember by now was near the fingertips of my gloves. Before surrendering the last bit to the earth, I stood above the casket, desperate to speak, but able to summon only a few fragments to mind. All our longings, I thought. All our futility. The comfort we can be to each other. Then Clarissa and I went home.

From plotswithguns.com

the bag of clear liquid hung suspended above me, hooked lo a metal pole, and ran into my right arm through a clear plastic tube. A nurse came in and looked at me, adjusted the flow of my drugs, and left. There were two other beds in the room, one empty and tightly made. The other bed had an old guy in it, rigged up to more bags and machines than me.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Paul,” I lied.

“Paul, you’re in a bad way, but you’re going to make it.”

“I’m hurt,” I agreed.

“Pain is just weakness leaving the body,” the old guy said. “Learned that in the service.”

I was silent.

The old guy indicated the empty bed. Next to it was a table full of surgical tools, bright and shiny stainless steel. I saw the raw rows of teeth of what I took to be a bone saw.

“There was a cop in that bed five hours ago,” the old guy said. “Had some emergency operation, right there on the spot.”

“Really,” I listened. The bed was freshly made with clean white sheets pulled back and a white pillow. It looked as if nobody had ever been in that bed, ever.

The old guy kept going. “He had gray hair and didn’t want to tell me he’d been a cop, when he first came in. I introduced myself and he didn’t say anything, really, so then I heard the nurse taking insurance information from him and when she left I said ‘Insurance? That must be nice,’ and he said ‘Well I earned it.’ I said ‘What did you used to do?’ tryin’ to be friendly, get a little conversation going while I’m waitin’ to kick off and he didn’t answer, so I said it louder, ‘Hey, what do you do?’ and he says ‘Private security,’ and that put me onto it, right there.”

“Really,” I said.

“I said to him ‘That’s a job they give off-duty cops. You a cop?’ and he mumbled some shit about being an MP in the service and coming out and getting a job as a radio patrol car officer years ago, in Jersey, and then coming up here and being a uniformed cop up here for thirty years.”

“Sounds personal,” I said. “On your end.”

The old guy didn’t let up. “Don’t give me that crap, that you like cops. Come in here beat the hell up like you are and tell me you haven’t been around.” He moved to one side of the bed. “When I came out of the service, I got a job making parts on an assembly line. I got in a couple scrapes, more than I should have, but I worked there till I retired and I’m lucky I got a pension. The collection agency still calls all the time from when I was in the hospital four years ago. And don’t tell me somebody didn’t take a tire iron to you. I know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “This was a work accident.”

The old guy raised himself up on one elbow and looked over at me. “I’ve been around,” the old man said. “You look like you’ve been around.”

“Sure,” I said. To shut him up.

“Don’t kid yourself,” the old guy said. “You’re always all the men you’ve ever been.” He quieted down as a nurse came in to check on him. She fed him some pills and water and left. The old guy pointed at the surgical tools on the metal table by the empty bed.