Ed Gorman - Save The Last Dance For Me

They looked alike, too. Quiet beauty all the richer the longer you studied it.

“Hi, Sara, I wondered if I could call you this afternoon.”

“Get in the car, Dierdre.”

“Mom, didn’t you hear him?”

“Didn’t you hear me, Dierdre? I said to get in the car.”

“Sara, we really do need to sit down and talk.”

“Mom, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is? Why don’t you at least answer him?”

“I’ll answer him when you get in the car.”

“This is very embarrassing, Mr.

McCain. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Your mom’s obviously having a bad day.”

“My mom’s always having a bad day.”

Dierdre got in the car. Crossed her arms across her chest.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Sara Hall said to me.

“I’m trying to help you, Sara.”

“How noble.”

“Would you prefer if I just started talking right here? In front of your daughter?”

“Yes, Mother,” Dierdre said. “That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”

“I resent this,” Sara Hall said.

“So do I. You owe me some answers.”

“I don’t owe you anything. And I plan to take this up with Judge Whitney, believe me.”

I knew better than to say that the Judge already knew I’d be talking to Sara. “I’d appreciate it if you’d be at my office at four o’clock.”

“If she isn’t there, I will be, Mr.

McCain.”

That was another point I’d make on my list.

Muldaur’s daughter and Hall’s daughter offering to cooperate even though their mothers refused to.

“I’ll see you at four,” Sara Hall said, and got into her car.

I could see them pantomiming an argument as the swept-fin convertible swept away. I had the sense that it was an argument they’d had many times. I wondered what it was about. I felt sure it had some bearing on the murders.

“Ah,” I said, sitting down next to Kylie on the bench again and picking up my lunch. “Just the way I like it. My cheeseburger’s cold and my iced tea’s hot.”

“I’m now a black-belt in fly-shooing. It looked like Pearl Harbor on your burger.” She sipped her iced tea. “So, did you learn anything?”

“Just that Sara and Dierdre Hall don’t seem to get along very well.”

“Any idea why?”

“Not yet.”

“Meaning you plan to find out?”

“Of course. Before Richard Milhous

Nixon gets here and finds out that we have murders just like everybody else.”

“He says he’s not sure if he loves her.”

“I take it we’re not talking about Nixon anymore.”

“He says he knows he’s being unfair to me and he wouldn’t blame me if I just walked out.

We really got into a terrible argument-the people downstairs were banging on the wall and everything-and then we ended up making love practically all night. And then when he was leaving for school this morning-even though he doesn’t have any classes today-I asked him if I’d see him tonight and he said that he had a date with her.”

“Ah.”

“That’s all you’re going to say? Ah? What kind of comment is that?”

“A non-comment. I’m staying out of this, remember?”

“Well, pretend it’s you and not me. What would you do, then?”

“That’s how it sorta was at the end with Pamela. We finally made love one night and as soon as we were finished the phone rang. It was good ole Stu and she went rushing off to him.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you take her back?”

“She never came back. Not really, anyway.

She snuck away a few days later because Stu was having second thoughts about dumping his wife and family and the governorship.”

“What governorship?”

“Everybody figured it was his turn to be governor.”

“But he’s here now.”

“Yes, he is. Rebuilding his image after running away with a hussy.”

“And where’s Pamela?”

“Hiding somewhere. I’m not sure where, exactly.”

“What if she called and asked you to get married?”

“I don’t know. That’s the only answer I can give you.”

“She walked all over you.”

“Yes.”

“And ditched you for somebody else.”

“Yes.”

“And you’d still consider taking her back.”

“I’d consider it, I suppose.”

“Well, that’s exactly how I’d feel, McCain. I’d consider it.”

“We’re a couple of fools,” I said, “is what we are.”

“Damned fools.”

“Double-damned fools.”

“We’re really pathetic, you know that?”

“Do I know it? Do I know it? I make myself sick I know it so much.”

And that’s when I saw this guy working his way up the street, slipping leaflets under windshield wipers.

“I’ll call you at work this afternoon,” I said.

“I’m really going to need you tonight, McCain.”

“Good. Because I’m really going to need you, too.”

She grabbed my hand. “You are?”

“Sure I am.” And then I did something I really shouldn’t ought to have done. I leaned over and gave her a kiss right on the mouth. A married woman-well, a somewhat married woman-right on the mouth.

Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you, I could hear my ninth-grade nun, Sister Mary Florence, saying. Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you.

John Parnell was a chunky guy with a limp that resulted from a grade-school tractor accident. He wore a lime-colored

T-shirt and jeans and sandals. He was bending over a Ford station wagon to slap a leaflet beneath its windshield.

“Hi, John.”

He backed himself off the car hood he’d been bent over and said, “Hey, McCain, how ya doin’?”

“Fine. Or I was till I saw you putting those leaflets on car windows.”

He grinned. “Yeah, that’d make the nuns mad, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded to the stack of leaflets in his car.

He was still the freckled, snub-nosed guy I’d always known. I couldn’t connect him to the leaflets.

“You printed them and now you’re distributing them?”

“Yep. That’s what God wants me to do, McCain.”

“He told you that?”

“Now you’re being blasphemous, Sam.”

Maybe this wasn’t the old Parnell I’d known.

“You’re a Catholic, Parnell, and you’re handing this stuff out?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore I’m not.

A Catholic, I mean.”

“Since when?”

He shrugged. “Well, the wife-I’m not sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship up there-anyway, she was raised as an evangelical. And what with one thing and another she kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She always says you should feel bad when you go to church.

And I tried ‘em all-Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you feel good. But bad’s the only way you know your religion’s workin’ for you. When you feel terrible.

And that’s what we both liked about Reverend Muldaur. His whole deal was how unworthy we all are. And I believe that, McCain. You might believe something else-but that’s what I believe, McCain.”

“But the snakes-”

“That’s what people don’t understand.”

“What don’t people understand?”

“They’re not snakes.”

“They sure looked like it to me.”

“They’re devils. Really and truly.

Devils. Evil spirits. I’ve held them. I can feel their evil. I truly can. But they didn’t bite me because Reverend Muldaur cleansed my soul before he handed me the snakes.”

“But all this bullshit about Jews and Catholics-”

“I don’t use words like bdds. anymore, Sam. But I’ll tell you, they’re both out to conquer the world. They know they can’t do it alone, so they’ve joined forces. And the only people who can stop them are people like me.” He leaned forward confidentially. He smelled of sweat and onions.