Bill Pronzini - Bleeders

“More effective the way you handled it.”

“More dramatic anyway. Looking for a little drama and excitement to spice up my mundane life.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“I meant my professional life.” I reached over and patted one of the curves outlined by the bedclothes. “I’ve got all the personal drama and excitement I can handle right here.”

“Uh-huh. Sweet talk doesn’t feed the bulldog, mister.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t have a clue. I heard somebody say it in a meeting the other day... you know how advertising people talk. I like the way it sounds, even if it doesn’t make much sense.”

I struggled out of my shoes and socks, massaged one foot and then the other; my feet have a tendency to swell when I do a lot of sitting around. “Emily okay? I was going to look in on her, but I didn’t want to chance waking her up.”

“I talked her into playing a couple of games of Scrabble before she went to sleep,” Kerry said. “She seemed to enjoy that. But she’s still so quiet and withdrawn... it hurts me to see her like that.”

“Me, too. I’ve been thinking that I need to make more time for her.”

“So have I. The same thing.”

“Well, I’ve got tomorrow afternoon free. I thought maybe I’d take her to the zoo or the aquarium after school, just the two of us.”

“She’d love that. You know she idolizes you.”

“I don’t want to be idolized. Too much responsibility.”

“I idolize you.”

“Sweet talk doesn’t feed the bulldog, lady.”

She laughed. “How about the three of us doing something together on the weekend, both days? We could take Emily up to the Delta — I haven’t been to the Delta in years, and I don’t know that she’s ever been there. I’m supposed to attend a conference Saturday morning, but she’s more important. The agency won’t lose any business just because I’m not there to offer my usual brilliant suggestions.”

“That’s a plan, then.”

“And we don’t let anything prevent us from following through. Pact?”

“Pact.”

I pulled on my pajama bottoms and got into bed. Kerry had her book fanned open on her belly, a slender trade paperback with a picture of what looked like an Egyptian sarcophagus on the front cover. The title was Forever Lasting; there was a subtitle to go with it, but I couldn’t make it out.

“What’s that you’re reading?”

“A book Paula loaned me.”

“Paula Hanley?”

“Do we know any other Paulas?”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Lady Crackpot.”

“She is not a crackpot.”

“No? That woman’s pot is so cracked you couldn’t fix it with a kilo of Crazy Glue.”

She let me hear one of her little warning growls. “This book,” she said, “is actually very interesting. It’s all about—”

“I don’t want to hear what it’s all about.”

“That’s the trouble with you. You have a closed mind sometimes.”

“Where Paula and her ideas are concerned, that’s right. Closed in self-defense.”

“Forever Lasting is not only a fascinating history, it offers a whole new—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it. Turn out the light.”

“No. I’m going to read a while longer.”

I slid my hand over onto her bare thigh.

Pretty soon she said, “Well, maybe I won’t read any more tonight,” and turned out the light.

Everybody has some sort of curse in his life, large or small. Mine is Kerry’s friend, Paula Hanley. Paula is one of San Francisco’s highest paid interior decorators. An article Kerry showed me in one of those Beautiful Homes magazines said she had “exquisite taste.” Maybe so, where her business was concerned, but she dresses like a Technicolor nightmare; whenever I see her I have an urge to put on very dark sunglasses. She bickered incessantly with her rabbity chiropractor husband, drank too much, prosletyzed too much on any subject of interest to her, and worst of all, she was a magnet for and a repository of Weird with a capital W. Fads and fancies were her specialty. She’d been into Esalen, primal scream therapy, channeling and past life regression, rolfing, tantric sex, acupuncture, and a great many others I’d mercifully forgotten about. Whatever this lastest folly, contained in that ominous little book titled Forever Lasting, I wanted nothing to do with in any way, shape, or form.

So naturally Kerry had to tell me all about it over breakfast. I tried to stop her, but she has a blind spot where La Hanley is concerned; she seldom buys into Paula’s Weird, but she does listen to it and think about it and every now and then one of these wacko concepts strikes a responsive chord in her. I live in mild dread of those times — and it looked and sounded as though this was one of them. As she explained in chilling detail the screwball concept of Forever Lasting, her cheeks took on a faint flush, and her eyes got bright and just a bit dreamy. And I sat there with my appetite waning and all sorts of impure thoughts about Paula Hanley dancing in my head.

When Kerry was done explaining, she said, “Now really, isn’t that interesting? What do you think?”

If I’d answered that question truthfully, she might have decided to divorce me. I was trying to think of a tactful, noncommittal answer when Emily walked into the dining room. Little pitchers, by God. I said to Kerry, “We’ll talk about it later,” and she nodded. Even a short reprieve is better than no reprieve at all.

Emily was dressed in the uniform white blouse and dark skirt they make the kids wear in her private school. She hated the outfit, that was plain, but she’d made no more than a token complaint about it. All her complaints were token: briefly expressed and seldom repeated. That was another thing that made communication with her difficult. If she’d gotten angry now and then, thrown a tantrum like most other ten year olds, we’d have had a better psychological understanding of her. But she guarded her emotions, kept them locked away inside; faint glimpses, like subliminal messages, were all you ever got to see of them.

Part of it was genetic; part of it was learned behavior. She was her mother’s child in too many ways. Shiela Hunter had been closed-off, secretive, self-involved, fear-ridden — anything but a nurturing parent. She and Emily’s father, Jack Hunter, had structured their lives and Emily’s life as a tightly knit, rigidly controlled unit, permitting only superficial relationships with others. They’d done it for selfish reasons, because they were afraid of their past transgressions catching up with them, and with no thought to the effects this would have on their daughter. Two separate, bitter tragedies had destroyed the closed unit and left Emily more alone than ever. She seemed on the surface to have handled the loss of her parents as well as any child could; she was a strong, resilient, and very intelligent little girl. But on the inside? That was what worried us, that and the long-range effects. She looked like her mother, the same dark-haired, luminous-eyed, willowy beauty; suppose she grew up to be like her mother — closed-off, secretive, self-involved, fear-ridden?

This morning she was her usual quiet, polite self, until I asked her if she’d like to spend the afternoon at the zoo. Then she perked up some. The prospect of the three of us spending the weekend together brightened her smile even more. The one thing Kerry and I had no doubt about was that Emily liked and trusted us, wanted to be with us. It was not only because we were surrogate parents; she seemed to genuinely care for us as individuals. The source of worry here was that she viewed and would keep on viewing the relationship as the same kind of tightly knit unit she’d had with her natural parents. Kerry and I had leanings in that direction; neither of us had a lot of friends or outside interests. Had Emily sensed that in us, responded to us in part for that reason? And if she had, what could we do about it?