Эд Горман - Blood Moon

I didn’t know what to say so I immediately went to the inane. “You’ve really got a great view from here.”

“I’m sorry to put all that on you.”

I looked at her. “I don’t mind. I just wasn’t sure what to say.”

She shrugged. “We used to be a matched set, my husband and I. Six years ago we were Zelda and Scott, the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most sought after. Then about five years ago, my face— Well, you see what happened. Tried everything. Nothing helped. The dermatologists call it solar elastosis. Did it to myself. Too much sunlight, too many cigarettes.”

She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down. A bright red canoe with two blonde girls paddled past.

I walked up next to her.

“He was always unfaithful — he really is quite handsome — but after my face started to go... Well, I don’t suppose I blame him, really. We were both very vain people when we met. I was a real heartbreaker, very shallow and insincere, just as much as he was. The only difference is that with my face this way—”

She looked at me and smiled. “Well, now I’ve been forced to look at life the way mere mortals do. You know, walk into a room and have men be courteous but not interested in me in the slightest bit. Or see the pity and the horror in the eyes of beautiful women who worry that this may happen to them someday.”

“He’s gone now?”

She nodded, staring at the river again, down the brambly hill and past the sandy shore to the sunlight-painted water and the occasional splashing fish.

“He’ll be back tonight. You can call him around eight if you want to catch him.”

“I’ll set up a time for an interview tomorrow.”

She eased her arm through mine, led me back toward the beautiful Victorian.

“Are you married, Jim?”

“Not anymore.”

“Divorce?”

“She died.”

“Lord.”

When we reached the sidewalk, she slid her arm out from mine and said, “Maybe I’ll use you to make him jealous. You’re a nice-looking man.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you mind?”

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Not if it’ll make you feel better.”

“For a little while it would.”

“Then go ahead and do it.”

“I’ll tell him that you took me to lunch and that we spent the afternoon walking in the woods. God, it’s been so long since he was jealous.” She laughed suddenly, heartily. It was good to hear. “God, you probably think you stepped into a local production of Sunset Boulevard , some nutty old broad carrying on this way. Do you know Sunset Boulevard? ”

“One of my wife’s favorites.”

“I’ll bet you were faithful.”

“I was.”

“And I’ll bet she was faithful, too.”

“Far as I know.”

This time, she kissed me on the cheek. “I think I’ll go inside and lie down and have a fantasy about you, Jim.”

I smiled. “That’s when I’m at my best. In somebody else’s fantasies.”

I gave her arm a squeeze and walked back to town.

He found out soon enough that cons like to brag about crimes they’d never been charged for.

Dumb goddamned cops this, dumb goddamned cops that.

You know. That sort of thing.

His second cellmate went by the name of Shay. Decent enough guy. Kept to himself. Didn’t ask all sorts of questions. Kept his part of the cell clean. Was as discreet as he could be, given the circumstances, using the toilet. Was even known to read a book or two.

But sometimes he couldn’t help himself, Shay couldn’t. He’d give in to the con habit of bragging about himself and his criminal past.

“Eight burglaries in the same three-block area in the same two-week period, and they didn’t catch me. Can you believe it?”

Or:

“Man, did I have to hightail it out of that town, believe me. That cute little waitress I said gave such great head? Guess how old she turned out to be? Fourteen years old, man. Fourteen. Her old man told the cops and then came after me himself with a couple of these jerks from the bowling alley. Man, they would’ve torn me limb from limb. Fourteen years old!”

Or:

“I bet this other guy, see, bet him I could do it with the cops sittin’ right across the street in a squad car. And I did it, too. I mean, the place is all lit up and everything, and I just kind’ve stroll real casual-like onto the lot, and I get in this red Plymouth convertible — I figure I may as well steal a car that’s got some style — and I slide behind the wheel and I hot-wire the sonofabitch right across the street from the cops, and then I pull off the lot. And they don’t do anything — not a goddamned thing — till it’s way too late! I took that baby for a joyride and then ditched it. They never caught me!”

A guy can’t keep hearing and hearing about how smart and cool and gifted his cellmate is without feeling a little bit competitive.

Isn’t he also smart and cool and gifted?

Hasn’t he himself pulled off a couple of stunts that would make his cellmate’s pale by comparison?

So, knowing that his cellmate will never believe his tale, putting it down to standard jailhouse fantasy, he decides to tell his cellmate about one night outside Miami, Florida.

The speedboat he’s using overturns — he’s probably had a little too much vino to manipulate such a craft in the stormy waters, a downpour having started an hour earlier — and damned if he doesn’t wash up like a castaway in an old silent movie.

Now what?

Starts walking. All he’s wearing is a pair of swimming trunks. Even left his Rolex behind.

Walks through the night and the rain for half an hour before he sees this little cabin down in a wash of white sand, meager little light showing.

Walks down there. Knocks.

Lady answers. Forty-fiveish. Bit overweight. But dressed in a bikini and an open man’s shirt, she has a voluptuous quality that is undeniably sexy.

Tells her his dilemma, she invites him in.

Which is when he meets the husband, chunky guy with balding gray dome and so much gray hair on his barrel chest that he looks like he’s training to become a bear. Unfriendly as hell. Can tell right away this is one very possessive guy. Doesn’t appreciate your eyes on his wife’s breasts. No, sir.

They’re drinking some kind of A&P generic beer and are actually pretty wasted on it. And listening to some Cuban station. Now that he gets a longer look at her, she looks a little Cuban as a matter of fact. As for the guy, what he has on the wall is a bunch of Hemingway kitsch, this stuffed marlin that he probably didn’t catch personally and this big color photo of himself in battle gear in what looks to be Vietnam.

Far as he can see, the place has three rooms and a bath. She suggests that he can sleep on the floor with some blankets she’ll give him, then in the morning her husband can give him a ride into town. Husband doesn’t look all that happy about it. Keeps glowering at him.

They drink until two, and by then he knows what he’s going to do.

Really crazy idea. Dangerous idea. Absurd idea.

But of course he’s going to do it anyway.

He’s worked up so much hate for her swaggering abusive macho husband — the kind of guy he really loathes, kind of guy who was always picking on him when he was growing up — that he knows he’ll go through with it.

He gets up and pretends he’s going to go to the bathroom, carrying his beer bottle to set in a cardboard box along with the empties.