Chuck Logan - After the Rain

“He’s a tricky guy, Nina; and he’s got some social skills and maybe even some depth of character. But so did Darth Vader.”

“I hear you. So far he hasn’t discussed his business.”

Hollywood came on the phone. “We can’t cover you all the time, Nina. Not in a small town. We talked about this. If you go forward you’re on your own.”

“Understood.”

“We need some idea of his pattern, his contacts, any sign he’s anticipating something big.”

“I got it, Holly.”

“Okay. And we set the ball rolling. Jane has the local cop hunting down your husband.”

Great, Nina thought, but said nothing.

“I said…”

“I heard you.”

“Okay. Here’s Kit.”

Nina shut her eyes. The bathroom smelled of cheap disinfectant on monotonous yellow linoleum. The walls and floor closed in; claustrophobic. She was quick to fight it off. It’s not a question of one kid; thousands of kids out there could be potential victims… Still, she had used her daughter, like a private soldier, to gain position.

“Hi, Mom.”

“You did great, honey. Thanks.”

“Are you done working yet?”

“No, I got to keep going a little while longer. But, hey, Dad’s on his way to pick you up and take you home. What are you and Auntie Jane going to do tomorrow?”

“She said there’s an outside pool, in a park.”

“Remember, you need lots of lotion even if it’s cloudy.”

“I know.” Then Kit’s voice quavered. “Are you going to come home, too?”

“C’mon, honey, we talked about this.” Nina tapped her teeth together.

“Fine,” Kit said sharply. “I know-don’t quit, don’t cry unless you’re bleeding.” Kit had obviously mastered Jane’s cell phone because suddenly the call was over. The connection went dead: she had hung up on her mother. Nina couldn’t afford the luxury of remorse when she was working, but she couldn’t stop a memory. Eight years old, about Kit’s age. An elementary school in Ann Arbor. A one-page story assignment: What I did this weekend. “My mom and I went to the VA Medical Center to help the wounded soldiers…” The teacher, in beads and a peasant skirt, had said, “That’s okay, Nina, it doesn’t mean you’re for the war…”

Focused now, she finished up in the bathroom and washed her hands. She regarded herself in the mirror. The alcohol she’d consumed dragged on her, like the middle of a Ranger run wearing full equipment. Deliberately, to test her timing and reflexes she applied fresh lipstick, taking pains to perfectly match the line of her lips.

She blotted her lips on a paper towel and surveyed her makeup. So far so good, you floozy.

Well, this is what she wanted. To be a D-girl and hang it way out there, going after something big. On her own.

Which brought her to the subject of what was going to happen tonight. Nothing in her training had exactly prepared her for this assignment.

Would Ace change his story when they were alone and expect to sleep with her tonight? Would he get rough? She took a fast inventory of the men she’d gone to bed with in her life. More than half of them had been a waste of time.

This was the first time she’d had to evaluate a potential sexual encounter professionally. Like a hooker or a particularly calculating trophy wife.

She squared her shoulders, grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. Hu-ah.

She walked back to the table, sat down, and said, totally spontaneously: “I’m a lousy mother.”

“You’ll live. C’mon,” Ace said, standing up.

“Where to?” Nina said.

“Take a ride. Eat supper. Get you a toothbrush.”

“Big of you.”

“Got nothing else going,” Ace said.

An hour later they were in another bar and Ace was still playing Dr. Phil. “I mean,” he said, “we only got a few more years of this.”

Nina screwed up her face. “What do you mean, this? ”

“I mean, what are you-thirty-five, thirty-six? ’Bout the same as me. We ain’t like wine, you know. We don’t get better as we age. Like, right now-today-bang,” he snapped his fingers, “you can walk into any bar, anywhere, and make something happen because you got some looks and a body. But in five years…”

Nina slouched in the booth and held up her glass in a grudging salute. “Forty,” she said glumly. She didn’t have to fake this conversation. Uh-uh. This was a subject she thought about all the time.

“And you know what the stats are on divorced women over forty getting remarried. Ain’t pretty, sweetheart. Us boys definitely got more shelf life.”

“You’re depressing the shit out of me. No wonder the population of North Dakota is rock bottom, if this is the way you court your women.”

Ace shrugged. “Just saying, you should probably give the marriage a little more work, that’s all. Bird in the hand.”

Nina leaned forward. “A bird in the hand bites. My husband is a total asshole .”

They stared into their empty glasses. Nina had switched to vodka sevens. She’d had a lot of success drinking vodka with a crazy bunch of Russian paratroopers in Kosovo. A new round of drinks arrived. The way Ace spread his hands before he spoke, Nina could see him behind a pulpit.

“Okay. It’s like this,” he said. “You’re strung out. Strung out means you talk a little too fast. And there’s off-the-wall thoughts come out of nowhere and bash through the conversation at random times. Like just now.”

“You know this for a fact?” Nina said.

“Sure. I’m strung out, too. But mine is more long haul, more like holding off deep space. Mine’s sadder. Yours is madder.”

“So what do we do?”

“Drink. Booze tames down the brightness and buffs the edges off so it don’t make the air bleed.”

“Jesus. You been thinking about this stuff way too long, Ace.”

“I’ll say.”

And that’s the way the afternoon went into sunset: the ironies of marriage counseling, Ace’s slow-hand seduction and booze. One bar, two bar, red bar, blue bar. Not quite a blur. Maintaining. Hey. They were both obviously competent folks.

They drove east out of town and he got her talking. About growing up an Army brat, schools on bases all over the South. How she’d gone into the Army, served in the Gulf War in a signal company, and moved to Minnesota after discharge. How she was tending bar in this joint called the Caboose by the U of M when she met her husband.

They stopped, gassed the Tahoe at a Super Pumper. Ace made good on his promise and bought her a toothbrush. They went to dinner in Cavalier, the next town east, and she talked about having a kid, thinking it would improve the marriage.

They drove back to Langdon in the dark.

Then Ace suddenly switched off the headlights and the night outside Nina’s open window jumped up so black and shot with stars it took her breath. “God- damn .”

Stars like she’d seen on night patrols in remote stretches of Bosnia. But more of them here. More sky.

“Welcome to the prairie, gateway to the Great Plains,” Ace said.

But then the grandeur plummeted as she looked north. Anything could come across the border and filter down through the empty grid of back roads, run this deserted highway. The interstate just an hour away. Then she looked at Ace Shuster, who was good with women, but who might do anything for money. Him and his pal Gordy.

He switched the lights back on and drove into town, slowed in front of the Motor Inn, and turned to her.

“You want to see your daughter? Say anything?”

Nina shook her head.

“You sure?”

“Look. I thought about this a lot. I need a clean break or it’ll be a tar baby, I’ll get stuck in it all over again. Jane. My old man probably coming to pick up Kit. I mean, I took her and didn’t tell him face-to-face. Just left a note, for Christ’s sake. I just need some…time.”