John Lutz - Ride the lightning

"Were you planning to bring him back here after dinner?" he asked.

"Not dinner," she said, "a concert in the park." She was defying him now, angry. And building on her anger. What right had Nudger to barge into her home and interrogate her, she was thinking, and she was close to saying it.

"Biff Archway?" Nudger asked.

She didn't answer, letting him know with her silence that, whomever she was going out with, it was none of his business. This was her apartment, her life. Her own.

"I thought we were honest with each other," Nudger said. He felt his stomach knotting up, twisting, twisting.

Claudia slapped her hands lightly against her thighs. She was tense, drawn tight, not liking what was going on here any more than Nudger liked it. An ugly scene getting uglier. Only she hadn't forced a confrontation; he had.

"You knew about Biff," she told him.

Nudger looked glumly at her, nodded. True enough.

Claudia swallowed, then breathed out hard through her nose. "Look, Nudger, I'm going to ask you for something. It's something that isn't going to be easy for you; I realize that."

He waited, then finally asked, "What is it?"

"Understanding," Claudia said simply.

Nudger gave her a to-hell-with-it shrug he didn't feel. "I'll make an effort."

"I do love you," Claudia said. "Or I think I do. Which is why I'm being honest with you. I don't talk about Ralph or the girls much… about what happened. But I still think about it too much."

Nudger understood that. Thinking about Ralph just a little was thinking about him too much.

"You helped me when I needed it," Claudia said. "I'm grateful, and I'd be lying if I said that had nothing to do with why I'm fond of you."

"If you're fond of me, why go out with Biff Archway?"

She moved closer, her dark eyes pleading with him to see her point of view. Her lips twitched nervously before she spoke. "After my marriage to Ralph, even though I love you, I feel that to fully regain my identity, my wholeness, I need to see other men. I've felt that way for quite a while, but I didn't say anything about it." She flexed her long-nailed fingers, eventually working them into tight, pale fists.

He stared at her. "What is this? Kick Nudger therapy? Did Doctor Oliver put you up to this?"

"It was my decision."

"Well, I don't agree with it."

A few seconds passed. Something bright seemed to go out of her. She seemed to have made some decision about Nudger, to have withdrawn to a place behind some barrier in her mind where he couldn't hurt her. Then she shrugged as if to say the hell with what he thought. She seemed to mean it.

"We had what the books and talk shows call a relationship," Nudger pointed out.

"We still do. Only it's changed somewhat."

"Like the atomic bomb changed Hiroshima somewhat."

She stepped over to stand next to him, rested a hand on his shoulder. He could feel a vibration running through her fingers. She was wearing his favorite perfume. Biff's, too? "Don't feel that way, please!" she said softly. She wanted to come out from where Nudger had forced her.

He moved away from her hand and walked toward the door.

She let her arm fall limp. "Nudger!"

"You wouldn't want me here when Biff arrives," he said.

"I asked for understanding," she told him, as if she were disappointed in him.

"Can't give it to you," he said. "I'm feeling too sorry for myself."

"Damn you!" she said, turning unexpectedly angry. "Don't you lay a load of guilt on me! Not you, too!"

"Maybe Ralph-"

"What?" she interrupted, furious and afraid. She stood waiting for him to finish what he'd begun to say, close to tears, close to something else. Scary.

"Forget it," Nudger said, and went out the door.

His heart was pumping and his stomach was churning. He didn't feel at all tired going down the stairs.

He sensed that Claudia had followed him out into the hall and was standing above at the railing, watching him leave. That she might shout something after him.

But when he turned at the bottom of the stairs to look up at her, she wasn't there.

Nudger didn't feel like going home to his empty apartment and trying to tune out the silence. He didn't want to find out how sorry for himself he could feel.

His side was aching, throbbing with his heartbeat. First he'd been kicked around physically, then he'd taken his licks mentally. Some life. Maybe the TV evangelists were right and he was involved in some sort of celestial test. Maybe boils and locusts were next.

Women were certainly one of his life's tribulations.

No, not women generally. Claudia. She was primarily his woman trouble of the moment. It wasn't wise to generalize about people. About anything. Thinking that way could lead in wrong directions, and to more problems.

Eileen, for instance. Eileen was a problem and a wrong direction in Nudger's life. But she was hardly similar to Claudia.

Eileen was a problem from which he longed to escape, Claudia one he longed to solve. But he sensed that any solution was beyond him for now, and possibly forever. Maybe it had to be that way. Fate. Fate was always jerking around people who loved each other. Fate had a sense of humor that wasn't very nice.

Nudger chewed antacid tablets and drove around the city for a while, down South Grand with it's odd assortment of little shops and struggling businesses, along side streets lined with solid brick flats and houses lived in by solid German families, then west on Chippewa, past the array of cars and people at Ted Drewes' frozen custard stand, along Resurrection Cemetery with its neat rows of flower-decorated graves. Traffic was heavy despite the late hour, and some of the cars had their hoods unlatched the first few inches to prevent boiling radiators in the relentless heat. Summer in the Gateway City. Sizzle, sizzle.

Nudger listened to the Cardinals game on the car radio. The Cards were winning ten to nothing in the fourth inning. He was glad somebody was having a good night; he knew he wasn't. If only the Cardinals' luck would rub off on him and he could win five in a row of something. Anything.

Finally he decided to go to his office and examine his mail, see if he'd won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

Relieved to have a sense of direction, however brief and insignificant, he stepped down on the Volkswagen's accelerator and wished other drivers would get out of his way.

When he pulled to the curb in front of his office, a set of headlights swerved in behind him, then brightened as the car parked with its nose to the back bumper of the Volkswagen. Nudger looked in his rearview mirror. Too bright to see anything; like a damned Steven Spielberg movie. He winced from the glare. Whoever was back there didn't turn the car's headlights off, and left the engine running.

Nudger thought about driving away, but maybe there was no need for that. It could be that the car behind him was a police cruiser, and he was about to get a ticket for a burned-out taillight or a faulty muffler. The old Volkswagen provided a wide range of targets for a nit-picking cop.

Then a chill hit him. Maybe whoever was behind him wasn't a cop. Maybe it was-

"Hi, Nudge."

Danny. Whew!

He had walked up beside Nudger on the street side. Now he moved over where Nudger could see him better, stooping slightly on creaky legs so Nudger wouldn't have to crane his neck to stare up at him.

"I seen you turn onto Manchester," Danny said. "I been trying to get in touch with you since late this afternoon. Called at Claudia's, but she said you'd left over an hour ago."

Nudger got out of the car, leaned against the warm metal in the bright wash of the headlights, and listened to the idling engine in Danny's Plymouth tick-tick-tick. Heat was rolling out from beneath the Volkswagen, finding its way up Nudger's pant legs and making him uncomfortable. He shifted position but it didn't help.