Frederick Busch - Girls

“Terrible,” he said. “I’m over there a couple of times a day. Terrible.”

“I didn’t give them the news they wanted,” I said.

He sat forward, pushed his glasses up, probably smearing them a little more. The way he looked at me, I thought I understood why his students liked him. They probably didn’t buy half of his absent-minded professor act, or the local guy of good heart number. But when he listened to you, he really listened. Someone could do a lot worse than listen like that, I thought with what I would have called professional admiration. His big, strong face was set, and his bright eyes were wide and locked. His hands, I saw, were clasped at the edge of the table. He looked like a giant joke about a good boy in school.

“Then what kind of news, Jack?”

I shook my head. “Gas. Wind. Noises.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said.

“I think you came up with the wrong man, Randy. You should have looked for a real detective. Or advertised, I don’t know, in Soldier of Fortune or someplace. You know? A real damned cop. All I do, I wander around, I get into trouble, I make people sad, and I bring that woman nothing.”

He leaned in, shaking his head. His loud, hard voice got softer. “You’re the man,” he said. “I knew you. You were the guy I wanted from the beginning.” He leaned back. “Jack, think of it this way. They have all those professional cops. They’re already working on it. I wanted a man with brains who knows the community, who has a heart. ”

“You’re a gent to say it.”

“Really,” he said.

“No lie?”

He said, “Come on, Jack. For chrissakes.”

I sipped some more beer. I knew it cost about seven dollars a six-pack in the market, when you could find it. I thought I might buy some one day if there was something to celebrate.

Name it, I thought.

“Well,” I said, “you got me, I’m afraid. I didn’t help Janice, and I didn’t help her parents, and I surely didn’t help you,”

He watched me again, all eyes and brain.

He said, “I’m a man whose family left early in the morning while I was at school. My wife and my son and my daughter. In the car I’m still paying off in installments. One of those big Buick station wagons nobody needs unless they have to run errands before the country club dance. You know the kind of shit I mean? I know about screwing up so they never forgive you. I’m saying never. They never will.”

I wanted him to tell me what he’d done. We can sit here, I thought, and drink designer beer and tell each other how much of other people we broke.

He said, “So I know about fucking up, I’m saying. You didn’t.”

I said, “Randy, I couldn’t have done less if you went from town to town and took a collection up and paid me to fuck it up.”

“You want another beer, guy?”

“I have to feed the dog.”

“Bring him in,” he said. “We’ll all three of us have some sausage and peppers and beer. Your dog drink beer?”

“Not this kind, that’s for sure.” I had to be in the car, driving home with windows open for me and the dog. I had to feel cool. My armpits and crotch felt clammy, and the ribs underneath the bandages were just broken in two and the parts bumping into each other, it felt like. I’d had enough. I’d done enough. And none of it was any use.

Strodemaster said, “You feel all right, Jack? You’re pale as hell.”

“Gotta sleep, Randy.”

“Want to sleep here? I meant it about staying for dinner.”

“You take good care of your detectives,” I said. “Thank you. No. Gotta get home.”

“You want a ride? You look peaked. You look like about a yard of shit in a pickup, Jack.”

“Considering how I feel, that’s a compliment.”

He got up when I did, but he did it more smoothly. My right side felt like it moved in several sections. I leaned on the chair, then pushed myself off.

He told me, “You stay in touch, pal.”

I swore to him I would, so he let my shoulders go and I worked my way down off the porch. It was a long trip to the car. It was a long time getting my legs under the wheel and the rest of me straight up, more or less. I couldn’t tell you now whether I drove home or the dog did.

I don’t remember a lot of the dream. It had to do with pieces of girl. I knew in the dream they were all over the floor and I had to keep from stepping on them. I ran down the stairs; I almost jumped them, getting away from the crudely cut wet bits that made the noise of soaked washcloths hitting a floor when I couldn’t help stepping on them. They were the consistency of old, soft fruit. I was on my way down when the pain in my knees and then ribs woke me up. I was on the floor beside the bed in our bedroom, and I knew I was awake, because the dog thought we were playing a game. He had his face in mine and he was nipping gently to show me he understood the rules.

It took me a while to stand. I settled for sponging at myself from a basin of soapy lukewarm water. I did brush my teeth, and not in the same water. I don’t remember what clothes I put on. It was dark and it was five in the morning, almost. When I was dressed, I let the dog out and then in and fed him. I figured on breakfast at the Blue Bird, coffee at least, so I filled his water jug and told him he could come in the car. Outside, he did his circling around himself, then got to the car ahead of me in case I needed reminding.

We were in town before quarter to six. I drove to the hospital, told him to stay, and went in. They were beginning to make noises in the hall outside the ER, just in case the patients in the adult ward were sleeping. In the emergency room, a woman who was not Virginia sat at the desk to the left of the door, typing at a word processor. In the little rooms down the small corridor from her, just off where they stopped the bleeding or set the bone, I heard the scrape of a chair against the linoleum floor. The bright lights bouncing their glare off aluminum equipment hurt my eyes the way the oncoming lights of a couple of trucks and some cars on Route 8 had hurt them. I wondered if I’d hit my head against the floor or bureau while running the stairway out of my dream.

The woman at the desk said, “Yes,” which sounded like No. I pointed past her and nodded, the way I would if I agreed with her. She made some wait-a-minute sounds, but I was past her and into the office I thought I’d heard her in.

I was right. She was sitting on a high table with paper stretched out from a roller at the top that covered it. Her face was down; her arms were holding the edge of the table at either side of her legs. She didn’t swing them. They hung straight down from the knee. I thought she was asleep sitting up.

I said, “Fanny.”

She jumped or winced, and she knew it was me by the time her face was level. Her eyes looked awful.

She said, “Since when don’t you shave?”

I asked if she could get away a little early. “Maybe we could have some breakfast at the Blue Bird,” I said.

She said, “Why?” She looked at my face and I guess she saw me looking at hers. I didn’t know how to walk closer to her. I wanted to. I hoped she would see that along with whatever else she was seeing. “Is something wrong? I mean — something else?”

I said, “Did any more posters go up that you noticed? Did you hear anything from any cops coming in about more girls missing?”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t a serial thing, I think. Mass killings or just a girl for every phase of the moon. I think it’s a guy — I’m talking about Janice Tanner — I think it’s a guy who snapped one time. The others — Christ, I don’t know. I don’t know. It isn’t fair. You’re a small person, a little girl person, and you go outside of your house but where it’s supposed to be safe. It’s supposed to be safe! And people come and they hunt you. They pull up next to you in a car and the back door opens and your nose is peeling off and they’re fucking you to death or making soup from your brains. It isn’t fair. Christ. Listen to it, huh? I don’t — I got involved here a little, I think. I shouldn’t have done it, but they knew I would. I was a natural to get into this up over my head and drown inside of it.”