Frederick Busch - Girls

The door closed. I kept circling. She was wearing the other set of matching panties and brassiere because she was going to meet the boy, or go someplace with the boy, and he was going to take her clothing off and see what she wore for him.

Or man, I thought.

I thought of Rosalie Piri.

A man like me, I thought. I was going to wipe at the sweat on my face with her panties, when I stopped myself. I put the clothes back in the package inside the brown paper bag, and I replaced it in the drawer.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

I stopped and looked at the books again, running my finger from poetry to the thing about the caged bird and on through her school-books. I was on my knees, holding on to the edge of the bookshelf.

I said, “Sorry.”

Then I stood. It took me a long time. I tried to make the room look like I hadn’t been there. The cops might as well not have been. They’d assumed, as I had, that she had run away or been taken and that no clues were going to help. Probably, I thought, they were right. Unless what they wanted was to find the guy and kill him or break his body up. I thought I might be close to wanting that. I thought I might be close to doing it.

When I came into the living room, the reverend said, “She’s asleep.”

“Would you say good-bye for me, please?”

He looked as pleasant as he had when he was making his terrible jokes. But he said, “I really can’t. I can’t bring myself to use that word with her.”

“Would you tell her, then, I sent my best?”

“You’re very decent to us,” he said.

I could only think to thank him, and I did.

I had bought a small bag of kibble for the dog, and Rosalie put out water for him in a thick white bowl. He wagged as he ate to show he knew he was with company. I went outside with him and he checked out her little yard, then climbed through sparse hedges into the neighboring yard to pee and snoop. When we went back inside, Rosalie had changed into her terrible outfit of boxer shorts and flannel shirt. She was wearing ankle-high fleece-lined soft leather cabin boots, and I admired the hard muscle in her calves.

“I feel you looking at my legs,” she said from the stove, parting them.

I went over to her and was compelled to reach down and stroke her inside the back of the shorts. I felt her harden the muscle and then relax it. The way she trusted me with who she was when she relaxed it was as exciting to me as the skin I stroked.

“Do you want pubic hair or anything with your scrambled eggs?”

“Everything,” I said.

“Good. That was the right answer.” She shut the burner off and turned from the stove to stick her hand out. Her eyes were closed. I took her hand and shut my eyes to join her, and we led each other to the bedroom. “Stay,” she called to the dog, “if you don’t mind.”

I loved the darkness, and I loved the feel of her skin. I kept denying that we made my ribs hurt, or my fingers burn, and we made love with her riding me, her hands, at the end, in my hair and her body on top of me, bandages and ribs and all. It hadn’t taken long, because I was filled with urgency and hungry for as much sensation of her, inside and out, as I could have. It occurred to me to ask if we should do it differently to be better for her, but I was led to be quiet by the way she pulled the covers up and rolled to the side of the healthy ribs, wrapping her legs around my left thigh, rubbing her toes on my right calf. I heard the dog sigh and lie against her bedroom door.

I came out of the sleep because I’d heard a question, but not its words.

“Hmm?”

“The little girl.”

I thought of Professor Rosalie Piri, her small body under and around my own, which was big and ugly and busted.

I made more noises and touched her tight skin where I could.

“Tell me what you saw in Janice’s room,” she said.

“Stuff.”

“Cops know how to brief one another,” she said. “Come on.”

I sighed. I wanted to sleep beneath her and above her and smell her breath and kiss her stomach and make love again.

“Brief me,” she said.

I recited the room. I told her about the sexy underwear and the coronet and the books and Heisenberg and Mrs. Tanner.

“So all we really know,” I said, “is she went voluntarily.”

“So we have to backtrack. Boyfriends, teammates, the girls she might have confided in.”

“No, the state police are good at that. They’ll be doing that anyway. They always look for boyfriends. So we don’t have anything much, except it wasn’t, probably, a stranger who killed her.”

“You should always try and get killed by a friend.”

“I’m your friend.”

“And you wouldn’t hurt me. You adore me, Jack.”

“I do?”

“Tell me how much you adore me or I’ll crush your balls.”

“Your hand’s too small.”

“I warned you.” But her hand on me was gentle and then very exciting.

“Oh dear,” I said.

“I warned you,” she said, moving on me. And then she said, “You don’t have to love me. It’s all right if you can barely tolerate me.”

“I can barely tolerate you,” I said.

“I can stand you, too. About this much. About this far. Well, no. Maybe, oh my, maybe we can— this far. Yes, I can stand you this far.”

SCUTTLING IN Janice Tanner’s room hadn’t done my ribs any good, nor my fingers. Neither had scuttling under Rosalie Piri. Because it felt too good with her. Because it all led to seeing Fanny’s face. Fanny when our baby died. Fanny feeling old because Rosalie wasn’t. Fanny needing to lift me and shake me, Jesus Christ, and get me well. Fanny moving out to make me move.

I said to the dog, “Sometimes they take these things and climb up into the upper floors on college campuses and they take out targets of opportunity.” I made sure the safety was on and then I put it in the pocket of my coat. The problem was its front sight, which was too high for easy working in and out of coat pockets. A belly gun is supposed to clear for action without getting caught on clothing or equipment. That, and a size that makes for hiding it, are its excuses for existing. Otherwise, nobody needs a.32-caliber piece. And this one was too broad and too heavy. It was guaranteed to do nothing much for anyone unless you were ten or twelve yards, at most, from your target, and you put a cluster into him — all, or most, of the cylinder. In the service, I had refused to carry the standard issue to the military police for close-in combat. I’d taken the idea from pilots who wouldn’t carry their standard-issue.38 in its shoulder holster. Like them, I lugged the World War I.45-caliber Colt with its horrendous kick that made for buck fever and that tended to intimidate more people than it wounded. You looked into its bore, and you obeyed. I didn’t know what the.32 would do if I fired it in anger, because I’d never wanted to. Now I did.

I fed the dog and let him out to run a while. I filled his plastic jug and stuck a bottle of aspirin in my other coat pocket. I swallowed a couple of the remaining codeine jobs to convince my ribs I’d enjoy bending myself behind the wheel. In the refrigerator I saw margarine and peanut butter I could spread on toast, but I couldn’t imagine who would eat it beside the dog. I swallowed a little orange juice from the carton. The carton flap was pulpy and most of the juice was gone. “Bachelor kitchen,” I said, making a face, but I didn’t think me funny and I didn’t reply.

I drove to work slowly, and I squinted into a white sky. The sun was strong behind it. My eyes felt sore from not enough sleep, and I thought of lying someplace with my hands on them to keep the sun out. Which reminded me, of course, of Rosalie, and how she’d shielded or shut her eyes like a child and how, later on, I had shielded my eyes like a grown-up under the covers with a child.