Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

“I never saw the man but there’s a dog like that who comes around our street sometimes.”

“It’s probably the same dog. The dog looks okay but the man really looks stupid running around like an idiot. But it must be good for his heart.”

“I guess so.”

He looked at her. He had taken off his glasses, and without them his eyes looked normal, even attractive. “Anyway,” he said, “anybody could pop off any minute. You could be lying in bed and a tree could fall on your house and crush you. Not you in particular, but you know what I mean.”

She thought of Caleb.

“So if you want to screw I guess I’ll take my chances, Ariel.”

She gazed steadily at him. He blinked, started to avert his eyes, then met her stare.

“I was adopted,” she said.

“You’re late,” Roberta said. “Dinner’s almost ready. I was starting to worry about you.”

Sure, she thought.

“Go wash your hands and get ready. Where were you?”

“Erskine’s house.”

“Do I know who that is? Is it the odd-looking little boy I’ve seen you walking with?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen him before. Of course. He was at the funeral, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Erskine Wold.”

Roberta looked at her. “Well, at least you have a friend,” she said at length.

Ariel went to the lavatory, ran water, washed her hands and face. Well, at least you have a friend, an odd-looking little friend. If Erskine didn’t like adults in general, he’d really get a bang out of Roberta.

She thought of the conversation they’d had in his third-floor room. She could have gone on talking for another hour or more. She had told him things she’d never said to anyone but herself.

She still wasn’t sure if she liked him. There were things about him that bothered her, and getting to know him didn’t make him any less weird. Not that the weirdness bothered her, necessarily. But the grossness did, and all the sex talk. She was pretty sure he just did it for effect, and maybe he’d stop it as they got to know each other better.

Well, she thought, echoing Roberta, at least you have a friend.

David sat in his ground-floor study, smoking a lovat-shaped Barling and watching the blue smoke rise to fill the little room. There was a bottle of brandy on one shelf of the built-in chestnut bookcases, and his eyes fixed on the bottle as they had done every few moments since he had entered the room. He wanted a drink, longed for a drink, but he had made the decision earlier not to have one. Not tonight, anyway.

It was his nighttime drinking that was becoming a problem. He never drank in the morning — only alcoholics, for God’s sake, drank in the morning. He was apt to order a drink at lunch — a Bloody Mary generally, occasionally a martini — but he never had more than one drink at that time, and frequently had a sandwich at his desk or a quick bite at the Greek place down the street and passed up his noon drink without giving it a thought.

He always had a drink after work. That was ritual. His after-work drink was scotch on the rocks with a twist of lemon, Teacher’s if he remembered to ask for it by brand name, otherwise whatever the bartender poured. At the Blueprint Room, just around the corner from Ashley-Cooper Home Products, the barman knew him and he didn’t have to specify his brand. He’d have one drink there, or at the Cliquot Club, or at Hardesty’s. Once in a while, on a Friday, say, he might have a second. Never a third.

He’d have another drink upon arriving home. Sometimes he and Roberta would have a drink together in the front room, but if she was busy or not in the mood he’d have it himself. Teacher’s on the rocks, but no twist of lemon this time. And only the one drink.

And that would be it for him until after dinner. A total of three drinks, four on exceptional occasions, sometimes only two if he missed his lunchtime cocktail. Some years ago, he recalled, he and Roberta had gotten briefly into the habit of wine with dinner. They made a mini-hobby out of it, trying different wines, reading books on the subject, drinking from elegant Waterford stemware. They’d given it up because neither of them had really liked wine all that much, and he had especially disliked the way it made him sleepy. Whenever they shared a bottle he was apt to doze off in front of the television set.

Now, curiously, he drank brandy after dinner to help him get to sleep. And brandy was the worst choice for that particular purpose, as he well knew. There was something distinctly stimulating about it, and on the one occasion when he’d taken it on an empty stomach he’d been rewarded with palpitations and jangling coffee nerves. It didn’t really make him sleepy; enough of it, though, and it would knock him out.

Yet it was what he wanted after dinner. Pipes to smoke and books to read (or at least turn the pages of) and brandy to sip, here in this little room that was solely his.

Well, tonight he was breaking the pattern. He’d had his Bloody Mary at lunch, his scotch at the Blueprint Room, a second scotch while he read the evening paper in the front room. And that was enough. He didn’t need any more. Hell, he didn’t even want any more.

His eyes rose again to the brandy bottle. Force of habit, he told himself, drawing on his pipe, watching the smoke rise. Force of habit, ritual, routine. It was that simple. And he would break the habit, the ritual, the routine, just as simply — by not taking the drink.

Because he felt he had the opportunity to take charge of his life, to grab hold of it and turn it around. His life, his marriage, his household — he sensed that everything was at some sort of crossroads. Things had been proceeding in a certain direction, and then Caleb had died abruptly, and now—

His pipe had gone out. He tried to relight it but there was nothing left to relight. He knocked out the dottle, ran a pipecleaner through the stem and shank. He returned the pipe to the rack, selected another one automatically, then put it back and left the little room.

In the doorway, he paused automatically for a glance at the brandy bottle, then turned his back on it and headed for the kitchen.

She was standing at the sink, a glass in her hand. Turning at his approach, she extended the glass to him and ordered him to look at it.

“What is it?”

“Just look at it.”

He took it from her hand, looked down into a glass half full of a cloudy brown liquid.

“Smell it.”

He did, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. It smelled of the bottom of a swamp, of something equally foul.

“It came out of the tap,” she explained. “I wanted a glass of water and that’s what came out of the tap. This house is driving me crazy.”

He reached to turn on the taps, the cold and then the hot. The water ran clear.

“I know,” she said. “It’s crystal clear now. But that’s what I got a minute ago.”

“Well, it’s an old house. Old plumbing.”

“I know it’s an old house.”

“And maybe it has nothing to do with the house. Maybe it’s the water supply. There was something in the paper not long ago, they were getting little red worms in their water up around Race and Rutledge. Maybe it’d be a good idea to let it run awhile before drinking, but—”

She shuddered, took the glass from him, poured its contents down the sink. “It’s this house,” she said. “And that stove, with the pilot lights going out all the damned time, and I’m forever smelling gas.”

“It’s not dangerous, you know.”

“So I’m told, but—”

He put an arm around her, rested his hand on her shoulder. She stiffened under his touch but he left his hand there. “You’re under a strain,” he said.