Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

“Your house. Uh-huh. You live alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re willing to take me there, a complete stranger — just like that. No worries I might tie you up and steal the silverware? Or cut you up into little pieces, maybe?”

I felt another frisson. “I don’t believe you’re that kind of man.”

“But you don’t know that I’m not, do you?”

“Are you trying to frighten me?”

“No, lady,” he said slowly and distinctly, as if he were attempting to reason with a child, “I’m trying to get rid of you.” He put the bottle down and swung away from me, onto his feet. “Good night and happy hunting.”

“Wait...”

He didn’t wait. He went away into the dark.

I nearly chased after him. But it wouldn’t have done any good and I didn’t care to make a public scene; I have very little pride left, but there is just enough to dictate a certain decorum. Neal taught me so many things; a sense of propriety was one of them.

I took a moment to compose myself and then returned to my original seat. Mike Gunderson smirked at me dourly as I sat down. He’d been watching the stranger and me, but at a discreet distance; eavesdropping wasn’t one of his faults. He had been a friend of Neal’s and he neither liked the widow nor approved of her behavior. One of many Storm-haters in Pomo, not that I or the Hunger cared. If he hadn’t had an inordinate fondness for the almighty dollar he would have declared me persona non grata long ago.

“No luck tonight, Mrs. Carey?” he said. He refused any longer to call me by my first name. “Too bad.”

“I’ll have another martini, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. I guess you need it.”

For the first time I noticed that Doug was still absent, his place at the bar cleared away. “Did Mr. Kent leave?”

“While you were having your... conversation.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No. He just left.”

Poor Doug. I liked him, I truly did, and I felt sorry for him. Not a day or night goes by now that I don’t despise myself, but my self-loathing is nothing compared to his. His is long-nurtured and has to do with weakness and failure — part of the reason he wants me so desperately, because he knows he can’t have me and the knowledge fuels his destructive impulses. If it were up to me I’d take him to bed, but it’s not up to me. The Hunger doesn’t want him. Many men, yes, some men, no, and I’m not involved in the selection process. No mercy fucks for the Hunger. It knows exactly what it craves, and what it craved tonight was the hulking animal presence that had rejected it, me, both of us.

The demands of the mouth, lips, tongue, fire breath were still intense. Feed me, feed me ... like the plant creature in Little Shop of Horrors. And I would have to feed it, and soon, or it would give me no peace through the long, long night. In my mind we opened the file of men the Hunger had chosen in the past; one of them would have to do. We flipped through the names, looking for one the Hunger considered suitable, one who could be induced to come to us on short notice. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Yes.

Mike set the fresh martini in front of me, turned away without speaking. One sip, another, a third. Then, with the Hunger prodding me, I went to the public telephone near the rest rooms and made my siren’s call.

I couldn’t seem to sit still tonight. No particular reason, unless it was a residue of the uneasiness the stranger in the Porsche had built in me. A combination of things piling up over a period of time. Tonight wasn’t the first that I’d felt restless, dissatisfied; too often lately my life seemed empty on the one hand, overburdened and loaded with frustrations on the other. It needed something, some kind of shift or change or sense of purpose. But I couldn’t seem to make up my mind what it could or should be.

Part of the problem was the daily grind of my job. There was little enough felony crime in Pomo, but as if to make up for that we had more than our fair share of the other kinds, particularly those that plague economically depressed rural towns with a population in the ten-thousand range — domestic violence and abuse, belligerent drunks and drunk driving, kids on drugs, adults on drugs, automobile theft, and vandalism. All of this on a continuing basis, and just me and ten full-time and four part-time male and female officers to handle it. The county sheriff’s office is supposed to provide assistance and backup, but they have their hands full elsewhere; the Southport area, which is loaded with welfare cases and homeless people, has the highest crime rate in the county. Besides, Sheriff Leo Thayer is a political hack who doesn’t know his ass from a tree stump, and more often than not we ended up at loggerheads on even petty law-enforcement issues. There was no money in the city or county treasuries for more manpower or modern equipment or new patrol cars; we had to make do with what we had, and with underpaid civilians in dispatcher and clerk and other positions that should’ve been filed by professionals. Even absolute necessities such as weapons and shortwave-radio repairs couldn’t be gotten or gotten done without a hassle. I spent too much time playing politics — Pomo’s mayor, Burton Seeley, is also top dog in the machine that runs the county — and begging favors. And on top of that I had to indulge Seeley and the city council by attending civic functions at an average of one a week in order to “maintain a high standard of community relations,” one of the top dog’s pet policies. Half the time I was in uniform I felt harried, bullied, short-tempered, and hamstrung — and wishing I’d stayed in law enforcement in Monterey County and worked my way up through the ranks toward a captaincy, instead of jumping at the first police chief’s job that was offered to me seven years ago. If I had, maybe Eva and I—

No. Moving to Pomo hadn’t finished us. The miscarriage had done that. The miscarriage and the part of Eva I’d never been able to reach.

The women in and out of my life — that was another reason for the restlessness, the dissatisfaction. Eva. And Storm after Eva was gone. And the hollow series of brief flings and one-night stands after it ended with Storm. And now Audrey and the uncertain feelings I had for her. Once I’d been so sure of what I wanted from a woman and a relationship. Not anymore. I wasn’t sure of much of anything anymore.

Midlife crisis? Call it that, or whatever. At thirty-seven I was starting to drift, to go through the motions. If I didn’t do something about it, get down inside myself and find some direction again, I’d wind up a nonalcoholic version of Douglas Kent — a scooped-out, burned-out mass filling up time and space while he waited for the hearse to come and haul him away.

After supper I tried reading and I tried watching TV. Mack whining to go out gave me something else to do for a while. I put the leash on him and walked him down by the lake, a good, long, brisk walk even though the temperature had dropped into the forties. Mack liked the cold; it made him frisky. Big old black Lab with a sweet disposition — a better friend than any human I knew in Pomo, with the possible exception of Audrey. I’d bought him for Eva after the miscarriage, a misguided attempt to fill some of the emptiness. Instead, she’d resented him — he was alive and her baby wasn’t — and had refused to have anything to do with him. Tried to get me to give him away, and when I wouldn’t do it, because I needed Mack even if she didn’t, she withdrew even more.

Withdrawal was her way of coping. From me, from the life we’d had, from the fact that she couldn’t have any more children. When her body was healed she wouldn’t let me touch her. Couldn’t stand to have me touch her anymore, she said. She’d always been religious; she withdrew into religion. Hours spent reading the Bible, praying aloud. Two, three, four days a week away from home doing church work. Six months of this, and then one day she was gone — moved out, moved back to Monterey to live with her mother. Saved herself and left me alone to find some other way to save myself. It hurt then and it still hurt now, after four years — a dull ache that came and went, came and went. The last I’d heard, five months ago through an old family friend, she was in a religious retreat somewhere near San Luis Obispo. One of us, at least, had found an answer.