Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

“A goddamn mailman,” Angie said.

The door to the vet’s office opened, and I saw Vanessa lean against the doorjamb, listen to something the doctor said.

“I gotta go,” I told Angie. “See you in a bit.”

Vanessa’s bruised face was blank, her steps stiff as she walked out into the waiting room.

“Strychnine,” she said as I approached. “Injected into chunks of prime rib. That’s how they think he killed my dog.”

I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

“Strychnine,” she said again and walked toward the exit. “He killed my dog with poison.”

“I’m close,” I said as we stepped outside. “I’m going to get him.”

She stood on the stone steps, looked up at me with a ghost’s smile-weightless and floating. “Good for you, Patrick, because I got nothing left for him to take. Mention that to him the next time you two chat, would you? I got nothing left.”

“A mailman,” Bubba said.

“Think about it,” I said. “We give him credit for being practically omnipotent, but he’s actually limited. Files he had access to through Diane Bourne and Miles Lovell only, and the correspondence of people who lived in Back Bay. He fucked with Karen’s mail and Vanessa’s and made sure the money drops went through Back Bay mailboxes. That means he’s either Central Post Office in the sorting department-in which case he’s gotta sort through a few hundred thousand pieces of mail a night to find the right ones, or-”

“It’s his route,” Bubba said.

I shook my head. “No. He’d have to stand around in public going through the mail. That doesn’t work.”

“He drives the pickup route,” Angie said.

I nodded. “Drives around in a truck, empties the blue mailboxes, fills the green ones. Yup. That’s our boy.”

“I hate mailmen,” Bubba said.

“That’s because they hate your dogs,” Angie said.

“Maybe it’s time to teach the dogs to hate ’em back,” I said.

Bubba shook his head. “He poisoned the fucking dog?”

I nodded. “I’ve seen humans die, and it still got to me.”

“Humans don’t love like dogs,” Bubba said. “Shit. Dogs?” His voice was as close to tender as I’d ever heard it. “All they know how to do if they’re treated right is love you.”

Angie reached out and patted his hand and he gave her that soft, disarming smile of his.

Then he looked at me and the smile turned mean and he chuckled. “Oh boy oh boy oh boy. How many ways we gonna fuck Wesley up, my brutha?” He held up his hand.

I high-fived him. “Couple thousand,” I said. “For starters.”

You can sit on one of the prettiest streets in the country, and if you’ve been sitting long enough, it begins to look ugly. Angie and I had been sitting on Beacon Street, halfway between Exeter and Fairfield, for two hours, the mailboxes fifty yards up on our right, and in that time I’d had plenty of opportunity to appreciate the dusky charcoal town houses and black wrought-iron trellises hanging beneath bright white dormer windows. I’d enjoyed the sharp summer smell of abundant flora in the air and the way the fat raindrops dripped through the trees and clattered on the pavement like coins. I could tell you how many of the buildings had roof gardens or just flower boxes jutting from windowsills, which were occupied by businessmen and -women, tennis players, joggers, pet owners, and artists running out with paint-splattered shirts only to return ten minutes later with Charrette bags filled with sable brushes.

Unfortunately, after about twenty minutes, I didn’t really care.

A mailman passed us, bulging bag bouncing off his outer thigh, shrouded in rain gear, and Angie said, “Hell with it. Let’s just get out and ask him.”

“Sure,” I said. “Not like he’d mention to Wesley that people were asking about him.”

The mailman climbed some slick stairs with careful steps, reached the landing, and swung his bag around to the front of his thighs and dug into it.

“His name’s not Wesley,” Angie reminded me.

“It’s the only name I got right now,” I said. “You know how much I hate change.”

Angie drummed her fingers on the dashboard, then said, “Shit, and I hate waiting,” and tipped her head out the window, let the rain fall on her face.

The serpentine twist of her legs and waist coupled with the arch of her back as she did so made me recall images of her from our days as lovers that made the car seem about four times as small, and I turned my head and stared back through the windshield at the street.

When she pulled herself back in, she said, “When’s the last time we had a sunny day?”

“July,” I said.

“El Niño, you think?”

“Global warming.”

“Signs of a second shift in the polar ice caps,” she offered.

“Beginnings of a biblical flood. Break out the ark.”

“If you were Noah and God gave you the head’s up, what would you bring?”

“On said ark?”

“ Sí.”

“A VCR and all my Marx Brothers movies. Couldn’t survive long without my Stones or Nirvana CDs, I suppose.”

“It’s an ark ,” she said. “Where you going to get electricity at the end of the world?”

“Portable generators aren’t an option?”

She shook her head.

“Shit,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d want to live then.”

“People,” she said wearily. “Who would you take?”

“Oh, people ,” I said. “You should have made that clear. Without the Marx Brothers tapes and the tunes? They’d have to be people who knew how to party.”

“Goes without saying.”

“Let’s see,” I said. “Chris Rock to keep me laughing. Shirley Manson to sing…”

“Not Jagger?”

I shook my head hard. “No way. He’s too good-looking. He’d hurt my chances with the chicks.”

“Oh, there’ll be chicks?”

“Gotta be chicks,” I said.

“And you the only guy?”

“I’m going to share?” I frowned.

“Men.” She shook her head.

“What? It’s my ark. I built the damn thing.”

“I’ve seen your carpentry skills. It won’t get out of the harbor.” She chuckled, turned on the seat. “So what about me? What about Bubba and Devin and Oscar and Richie and Sherilynn? You’re just going to leave us to drown while you play Robinson Crusoe with the bimbos?”

I turned, caught the malicious gaiety in her eyes. Here we were stuck on a grindingly boring stakeout, having one of our more inane conversations, and suddenly the job was fun again.

“I didn’t realize you wanted to come along for the ride,” I said.

“I’m going to drown?”

“So,” I said, and shifted on the seat, brought one leg up off the floor, and our knees touched. “You’re saying if I was one of the last guys on the planet…”

She laughed. “You still wouldn’t have a chance with me.”

But she didn’t pull away when she said it. She moved her head in another inch.

I could suddenly feel it in my chest, a cool funnel of air that loosened as it twirled-loosened everything that had been clenched and sore since Angie walked out of my apartment with the last of her suitcases in hand.

The gaiety left her eyes and was replaced by something warmer, but unsettled, still questioning.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What?”

“About what happened in the woods last year. About that child.”

She held my eyes. “I’m not sure any longer that I was right.”

“Why’s that?”

“Maybe nobody has the right to play God. Look at the Dawes.”

I smiled.

“What’s funny?”

“Just…” I took the fingers of her right hand in mine, and she blinked, but didn’t pull them away. “Just that over the last nine months I’ve been seeing it more your way. Maybe it was a relative situation. Maybe we should have left her there. Five years old, and she was happy.”