Dave Zeltserman - Fast Lane

“I’d feel lousy about it,” I said. “I’d hate to think I let you down.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Don’t. I know you’ve done everything you could.”

“Mary,” I said, “I’ll work on it for free. If I don’t find your birth parents for you in two weeks I’ll give you back everything you’ve already paid me. Then you can hire yourself another detective if you need to.”

“I don’t know.” Doubt creased her brow, making her at that instant more beautiful than ever. I wanted to reach over and kiss her, but I didn’t think she’d understand the reason for it.

“It will all be over in two weeks. I promise.”

“I think it would be better if-” Indecision slowed her. Almost involuntarily, she nodded. “Okay.”

It was said so softly I almost didn’t hear it. She tried working a weak smile onto her face, but it just wouldn’t stick. “Johnny,” she said, “I’m sorry if I-”

I held up my hand to stop her. “You’ve got every right to be angry with me. There’s just no excuse for the mistake I made. But, darling, I promise it won’t happen again.”

The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “I believe you.” She fumbled a little with her pocketbook. “I’ve got to go to class. I’m late as it is.”

Keeping her eyes glued to the ground, she headed towards the door. When she got there, she glanced over at me. For a second I thought she was going to say something, and I think she did too, but she left without saying a word.

At first I couldn’t think of anything, and then all of a sudden I started daydreaming about fishing. It’s funny. Fishing is something I’ve never done but always wanted to. I wondered how it would feel to do nothing more than float on a crystal clear lake, the only struggle being the one with your fishing pole. No worries trying to pull your nerves apart. I wondered if the last was possible.

Even though I tried to keep my thoughts on fishing, they drifted back to my childhood. To my momma, and poppa. And then to people I met later in my life. Walt Murphy. Rose.

The waitress planted herself in front of me, hands on hips, and snarled, “Hey, look. You bought some coffee, not the table. You gonna stay here all day?”

I looked up at her. I tried to smile, I really did, but the way she jumped back, I doubt if it came out that way. She mumbled something, but her words died before they got to me. She looked as if she’d fall over if I so much as snapped my fingers. For the hell of it I snapped them, but all she did was stumble as she walked away.

It didn’t look as if I had any choice but to talk with Rose, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Last time I met with her she promised to give me a shotgun enema if she ever saw me again. Maybe those weren’t her exact words, but that was the gist of it.

And I had no reason to doubt she meant it.

I took the first plane I could to Oklahoma City. It was almost twenty years since I’d last talked with Rose, and I tried to play that occasion back in my mind.

It all seemed pretty distant at first, but slowly I began to remember how it was that time when Rose came to see me. It was about a month after her husband died. I had tried explaining how things stood but she wouldn’t listen.

“Rosie, you know we can’t keep seeing each other. Don’t you think it would look damn funny after what happened? How long do you think it would take them to put a rope around my neck?”

“Why can’t we just pack up and leave Denver? We can start over someplace else, Johnny, someplace no one knows us. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

I had tried telling her over the phone how things had changed. I had talked myself blue in the face telling her what the situation was. She should have been able to see how it had to be. She should have thanked her maker I didn’t crack her thick skull open that day. How difficult was it to understand? The press had eaten up the whole crazy business and I was a hero, and people want to hire heroes.

I had shown Rose the offers I had gotten, a stack thick enough to choke a bull. If you’d taken all my offers from the previous year it wouldn’t have been enough to paper a birdcage. It was just plain selfish of her to think I would give up what the good Lord had just delivered to me. And for what, to start over again as a nickel and dime dick so I could get my brains beaten out every day? Now that I was finally rolling sevens she wanted me to crap out. Hell, if the woman really loved me she’d have understood and wanted to give me that chance. But I guess it was just a lot of steam.

I tried explaining it to her backwards and sideways and upside down. And a hell of a lot of good it did me. After a while she stopped her complaining and got quiet. Then she got mean.

“Why did you have to say I was cheating on him? Everywhere I go people whisper things. I’ve started getting obscene phone calls.”

“I wasn’t lying, was I? Honey, I guess sometimes the truth hurts. If you didn’t want to be known as a whore, you shouldn’t have been banging behind your husband’s back.”

“You bastard. You dirty stinking bastard. Why did you have to kill him? It wasn’t for us and you’re a goddamned fucking liar if you try to say so.”

“I don’t really know why it happened, honey, but I do honestly think I did it for you.”

“You’re unbelievable! You’re a monster! What if I told the police you were lying?”

“Well now, I wouldn’t recommend that. Right now we’re both safe. The police believe every God-fearing thing I say. But if you were to change that out of pure selfishness, I would have to tell them we worked the deal together. I would hate to put the rope around your neck, too, but what choice would I have?”

“That’s a lie!”

“Rosie, I’m not going to disagree with you. The police would have to be goddamned fools to believe me. But you just never know about these things.”

“You . . . you dirty bastard!”

“You know, darling, if I were you, I’d be worried living here in Denver. I wouldn’t think you’d be too safe here, what with all the stories going around, and folks feeling the way they do about you.”

At that moment my little Rose would have sent me straight to hell if she could have. I couldn’t blame her for spitting in my face. Life was dealing the two of us some lousy cards.

When she started making her wild accusations, I shrugged them off and tried my best to console her in her misery. But when she started calling me those names, well, even though I knew she was saying those things out of anger and she’d regret it later, I couldn’t let those names slide. Some things a man just shouldn’t take.

I do regret slapping her as much as I did, but not a single damned one of those names were true. Not one. Sometimes your luck stinks. Sometimes things happen that you don’t have any control over. But that doesn’t mean you don’t feel bad about it. None of those names related to me.

* * * * *

You’re probably thinking, now wait a minute, that doesn’t agree with my earlier confession. I can’t argue with you on that point. Before, I just wasn’t quite telling the whole truth about the way it happened with Walter Murphy. Not all of it anyway. I guess I try to think of it as the way everyone knows it. And when I can’t, I don’t really like thinking of it exactly like it was. Some of it, I just don’t like admitting to.

So it’s no surprise to any of you that sweet little Rose was really cheating on her husband. And it’s also no surprise that I knew all about it before I ever met him. You see, Rose was crazy about me and you could hardly blame her for that. There’s something about me woman grab onto and don’t like letting go of. It’s just a shame I usually end up having to pry their fingers loose. And sometimes I’m forced to do quite a bit more than that.