Bill Pronzini: With an Extreme Burning

There was no one he cared to talk to. And condolence-bearers and misguided Samaritans bent on easing his sorrow by inviting him to lunch, dinner, or some little get-together depressed him. He'd tried to make it clear at the funeral, politely but firmly, that for the time being he didn't want visitors or callers; he wanted to deal with his grief in his own way. Most of his family and friends respected that, but a few were tenacious because they thought they knew better than he did what was good for him. Mrs. Tarcher, down the hill, for one. Jerry Whittington. His sister Claudia …

Still ringing. Let it ring, he thought. But he was one of the breed who is constitutionally incapable of ignoring a ringing phone, and the noise was becoming an irritant. “All right,” he said aloud, “ okay .” He went to pick up the receiver. “Yes? Hello?”

Somebody breathed at him. That was all.

Oh Christ. This bastard again.

He said hello twice more; the line stayed open on the other end, the breathing slow and steady, just loud enough to be audible. “Let me tell you something,” Dix said. It was an effort to control his anger, keep it out of his voice. “You're committing a crime, do you know that? You can go to jail. Understand? Jail.”

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Dix hung up. Gently, curbing an impulse to jam the receiver back into its cradle.

Disturbed personality, probably sociopathic. Read in the Herald about the accident, was getting his kicks by tormenting the recently bereaved husband. It had started too soon afterward, the day after the funeral, for it to be a random thing, coincidental. There was no other purpose to it that he could see, this continued calling; four times now that he knew about, when he'd picked up the phone, and God knew how many hang-ups when the machine had been on. It certainly wasn't sexual. He'd never heard of gay men playing sick telephone games, and it was not that sort of breathing anyway. What was it that Burke, up at the university, had called this type of head case in that psych book of his? Tormentors, that was it. One of the chapters had been titled “The Age of the Tormentor.”

Well, if it happened one more time, he'd get the number changed and keep the new one unlisted. Enough was enough. He had already suffered more torment than any man ought to have to endure.

Elliot invited him to his home in Brookside Park for drinks that evening. He didn't want to accept, but he couldn't think of a way to refuse gracefully. He was asking for a favor, and Elliot meant well, and there was a certain amount of protocol that had to be observed when you were dealing with your department chair. At least Elliot didn't offer any advice on how to cope with his loss or his life; judiciously refrained from mentioning Katy or the accident. Besides, he liked the man. They weren't exactly friends—too many attitude and lifestyle differences—but they were friendly, and Elliot could be stimulating company when he was in an expansive mood. So Dix said yes, he'd come, and five o'clock would be fine.

He spent most of the morning in the garage, working on the white oak sideboard. He'd always liked to noodle with wood, and a few years ago he had decided to take up furniture-making. He'd made the mahogany armoire that was in the bedroom and then started on the sideboard for the dining room. Six months of intensive work. But the sideboard hadn't been turning out the way he'd envisioned it, and finally he'd lost interest and abandoned it. It had sat in a corner of the garage, hidden away under a tarp, until two weeks ago. He'd been out there looking for something to occupy his time, and found and uncovered it, and saw immediately where he'd gone wrong in its original design. He'd worked on the sideboard every day since, sometimes for five and six hours at a time. It was nearly finished. Laboring with wood was the only activity he'd been able to sit still for. He couldn't write, or read, for more than a few minutes; his normal powers of concentration were nil. When he was working with table saw and jigsaw and planer and sander, he could shut his mind down. His hands became independent entities, performing their appointed tasks with skill and precision. They didn't even seem part of him at times.

Shortly before noon he ran out of fine-grade sandpaper for the mortise and tenon joints he was fitting. He didn't mind; it gave him something else to do. He got into the Buick and drove downtown to Ace Hardware.

There was not much traffic on Main Street—officially Los Alegres Boulevard for the past twenty-odd years, but only newcomers and visitors called it anything but Main Street. Not many residents traded downtown these days; most preferred the air-conditioned malls on the east and north sides. There were more antique shops and trendy restaurants on Main than anything else, and they catered to the tourists who came to gawk at the Italianate Victorian buildings—wood, brick, and ironfront, most of which were well over a century old—and to walk along or ride on the river. Dix shopped here because he always had and because he preferred the old to the new in most ways and things. Katy had told him once that he was inclined to be stuffy on the subject of the past. His standard comeback was that he'd made his living for nearly twenty years on the study and analysis of American history and was entitled to wallow in the past if he felt like it. Besides, he said, dead people were a hell of a lot more interesting than most live ones he knew.

Not so funny, that remark, even then. Unfunny now.

He lingered in Ace, though he bought nothing more than a new supply of sandpaper. Outside again, he was approaching the Buick when a woman's voice called his name. He relaxed when he saw that it was Cecca. Francesca Bellini, Cecca to her friends. Pronounced “Cheka,” like the old Russian secret police—an Italian diminutive that had survived the transition from girlhood to adulthood. One of Katy's closest friends, one of his favorite people.

“Dix, hi,” she said. She caught both his hands in her small ones. “I thought it was you.”

“Out on an errand,” he said.

“That's good. That you're getting out, I mean.”

“About time I did.”

“It's good to hear you say that. Good to see you. You know, I almost called you on Thursday. I was showing a house on the Ridge and I thought, well, maybe you wouldn't mind if I stopped by for a minute or two.”

“I wouldn't have minded. Thursday was one of my better days.”

“Then I'm sorry I didn't call.”

Her eyes probed his face, as if trying to read it by the lines and creases. She had wonderful eyes—round, luminous, so black they were like polished opals. Her own face was unlined, even though they were the same age. He'd thought, when they were both seventeen, that she resembled a pocket-size version of Annette Funicello, and for most of that year he'd been passionately in love with her. Chet Bracco would no doubt have broken his jaw if he'd tried to do anything about it. Chet and Cecca: They were planning marriage even then.

“Dix,” she said, and stopped, and then said, “I wish I knew how to say how sorry I am.”

“You've already said it. And I really am okay, or will be pretty soon. As soon as school starts.”

She squeezed his hands. “I'm on my way to the Mill to meet Eileen—lunch at Romeo's. Why don't you join us?”

He wasn't ready for that. Eileen Harrell was a determinedly cheerful woman, another of Katy's close friends, and the restaurant would be crowded … no, not yet. “Raincheck, okay? I've got a nearly finished sideboard waiting for me.”

“You're working on that again?”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad. That armoire you made is lovely.”

He smiled and nodded.

“Well,” Cecca said, “I'd better run. Let's not be strangers.”