Rescue (10 page)

All Webster could hear was Burrows’s voice in his ear, warning him months ago:
Never approach a guy with a gun. Even if he’s hurt. He’s hurt, too bad for him. Nine times out of ten, you approach, he’ll
shoot you.

“She’s a squirrely little hustler,” the cop said, looking in Sheila’s direction and then back at Webster. “She hustling you?”

“I’ll say it one more time,” Webster said, enunciating each word. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

“Or what?” the cop asked. “You’ll call the cops?” The guy grinned.

Webster pictured Nye and McGill arriving at the apartment. Looking from Webster to the cop and back again.

“What did she tell you?” the cop asked. “She tell you everything?”

Sheila twisted out of her chair, walked to the stove, kept her back to the two men.

“Like how she used to be standing at the top of the stairs in her nothing at all when I got off my shift? All pink and rosy
from her bath? Me with the bottle of Maker’s Mark in my hand? She tell you I saved her from a life on the streets?” The cop
turned to look at Sheila’s back. “You’d think she’d be more grateful. An apartment? A car to tool around in? I guess she likes
guys who save her.”

“Sheila,” Webster said. “Get your jacket. We’re leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” the cop said. “I got business here.”

Webster was silent.

The cop hitched himself forward in his chair, the seat barely
containing his thighs. “Well, empt, I’ll tell you what. I’m hungry. So I’m going to go to that diner you mentioned and have
a big meal. And when I’ve finished with my coffee, I want Sheila to be sitting on a stool next to me with the money in large
bills inside an envelope.”

The cop stood.

“Don’t go to the diner,” Webster said, hating that he had to speak at all. But he couldn’t have the guy at Geezer’s. “Go to
the pub at the inn.”

The cop grinned again. “You’re a stand-up guy, you know that? But you’re an idiot. Don’t waste your time on that fucking whore.”

Never had Webster wanted to throw a punch more than he did at that moment. With every muscle screaming, he moved to one side.

The cop put on his cap, completing the uniform more than a hat ought to.

“You wouldn’t last ten minutes in Chelsea,” the cop said.

Sheila turned to Webster the moment the door was closed. “I’m sorry,” she said, pressing her eyes with her fingers, as if
she wanted to blot out the image of the cop.

“Why did you let him in?”

“I didn’t. I heard footsteps on the stairs. I opened the door, thinking it was you, and then he was inside.”

Webster’s legs shook. He put his coat over a chair and sat down. “How’d he find you?” Webster asked.

“Is that a serious question?”

“I fucking wanted to cream the guy.”

“I was terrified you were going to do something.”

“Come over here,” he said. He patted the chair beside him.
Not the one the cop’s ass had filled. “He’s one dangerous son of a bitch.”

“Unless I pay him, he won’t go away,” she said in a small voice.

“What are you going to pay him with?” Webster asked.

“I’ll think of something.”

“How much have you got saved?”

“Two hundred? I was saving to buy the Buick.”

“Why do you owe him eight fifty?”

“He staked me.”

“To what?”

“Pool.”

“What happened?”

“I had some nights I shouldn’t have been playing.”

Webster let out a forceful breath. “You actually
lived
with this guy?” he asked.

Sheila abruptly got up from the chair.

“Fuck.” Webster stood. “I’ll get the money and take it to him.”

Sheila walked into the bedroom, lifted the mattress, and gave Webster her two hundred. “It should be me that goes.”

“Yeah, well, it isn’t going to be.”

“Wait, let’s think.”

Webster waited. “There’s nothing to think about,” he said. “I either give him the money or I call the cops. If I call the
cops, which is ludicrous, he’s only going to come back another day, and he isn’t going to be as congenial.”

Sheila was silent.

Webster would never be able to rid himself of the image of Sheila, rosy and pink, waiting at the top of the stairs.

*    *    *

Webster drove to the bank and made a withdrawal. He ignored the questioning eyes of Steph, the teller, who would wonder what
he was buying. From the bank, Webster walked to the pub, knowing with every step that he shouldn’t be giving money to an extortionist.
But if he didn’t give the guy the money? Webster didn’t want to think about it.

He entered the gloom of the pub. The cop was finishing a piece of lemon meringue pie. From the back, the man looked even bigger
than he had in the apartment. Webster put the envelope on the stool beside him.

The man turned. “I said Sheila, dickhead.”

“You want this or not?” Webster asked in a steady voice.

The cop stuck his jaw out and thought for a second. Then he gave a cold laugh.

“Don’t ever come back here,” Webster warned.

“Or
what?
”

“I’ll kill you,” Webster promised.

He turned before he could see the smirk on the cop from Chelsea’s face.

When he entered the kitchen, Sheila was sitting at the table. It appeared she hadn’t moved since Webster had left. All the
color had gone from her face.

“What happened?” she asked.

Webster whirled and punched the wall. He made a sound of frustration mixed with pain. He couldn’t feel the full extent of
the hurt yet, but he knew he would.

He could hear Sheila getting up, putting ice into a dishcloth.

Webster turned. “There’s so much I don’t know about you,” he said.

Sheila, with the bundle in her hand, was silent.

“I think you need to tell me everything,” Webster said.

When Sheila finished talking, it was nearly dusk outside the window. She had held the ice to Webster’s hand. She had smoked
two of her three allotted cigarettes, but she hadn’t poured herself a drink. She had paced and sat down and paced again. She
had put more ice on Webster’s hand. She had stood and walked through the tiny living area. Webster had listened to every word.

By the time she was done, she’d told him about the father who drank, who’d spent her seventh birthday in a city jail and shortly
after had left the house. She described the mother who worked as a seamstress and behind the register at J. J. Newberry’s,
who tried her best but was never home. Who died too young of colon cancer when Sheila was thirteen. She told Webster about
how she and her older sister, Nancy, had been taken in by their aunt and uncle, who lived three streets over. The aunt wanted
them, the uncle didn’t. He punished them with a belt. Nancy got the worst of it. She was a good student, but Sheila wasn’t.
She didn’t care, she said.

When she finished with that story, she told Webster about what it was like to be a waitress in Chelsea, a city rife with gangs
and drugs and crime. About how the streets were dangerous, especially at night when she got off work late. About how she was
constantly approached and threatened or approached and hit on. About the cop who came into the Italian restaurant where she
worked and walked her to her car one night, and how after that no one ever hassled her again. And about how the cop had set
her up in a cheap apartment that had rats, but a place that
finally got her away from the aunt and uncle. About how she’d foolishly traded one nightmare for another. She left out the
parts that had led to the bruises Webster had seen, but by the time the sun was beginning to set, Webster wanted to smash
in the man’s face and break all his teeth.

“He’s married,” Sheila said. “He has kids. When he called me a whore, he meant it.”

She never wept. She never indicated she felt sorry for herself.

She held Webster’s hand between her own and gently massaged it. She told him about the night she knew the cop was coming over,
and she’d heard from a girlfriend that he’d been drinking since noon. She put a few things into a bag, got into the Cadillac,
and drove. When she reached the New Hampshire border, she stopped and peed and ate and had a couple of drinks. An hour later,
she stopped and peed and had a few more drinks. The alcohol helped with the fear. She was terrified the whole drive that he
was right behind her.

“You were headed to New York,” Webster said.

“I was going to go as far as I could go.”

“And you ended up on my stretch of road.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

For a long time, Webster sat with her story while Sheila made dinner. He hated her history, but he didn’t hate her. He decided
to think of her past as “the time before Vermont,” and the tree against which her Cadillac had come to rest as the dividing
line between “then and now.” He decided he could live with that.

They ate, and she washed the dishes. After all the talk, she was silent, as if she had no more words. When she was through
with the dishes, he took her to the couch and held her and waited for all the poisonous spores to leave the apartment.

S
heila entered the apartment announcing she needed a shower straightaway. She shed her uniform as she walked, as if she couldn’t
get it off fast enough. After the shower, in reverse, she collected the bits and threw them in the washing machine before
she presented herself to Webster—wet hair and clean skin.

She glowed. Though she was doctor-phobic right from the get-go, he made sure she kept her monthly appointments and took her
hefty vitamins.

“Why were you so eager to get your clothes off?” he asked when they sat down to a London broil he had just grilled. “My amazing
charm?”

“Geezer rubbed my belly. Usually I don’t care. My body’s not my own anymore, and that’s fine. But it made my skin crawl when
he did it.”

Webster had bought candles and a tablecloth. Sheila seemed not to notice.

“Well, you can rest now.” He took a bite of steak.

For a minute, she looked around the room as if searching for something. Then she was silent. She picked up her fork but didn’t
touch the meat or the baked potato or green beans.

“I thought maybe I’d paint the bedroom tomorrow,” Webster said.

Sheila lifted her glass of water and drank it straight down. She set the glass on the tablecloth. He reached for her hand
and startled her.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” Webster said, and grinned.

Sheila was wary. Not smiling.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

Sheila paused, fork in midair. She put her fork down.

“What?” she asked.

Webster was silent.

“This is kind of a surprise,” she said.

“Sheila.”

“Do we have to do this now?”

Webster let her hand go. “Do what now?” he asked.

“Talk. Make plans.”

“We make plans all the time,” he said.

“We don’t make concrete plans.”

“Yeah, we do. We’re having a baby. That’s a pretty concrete plan.”

She pressed her lips together.

“What the hell, Sheila?” he said, sitting back. “This isn’t your average plan. I’m proposing to you.”

Sheila rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “It’s so good the way it is,” she said wearily. “Let’s not mess it up.”

Sheila’s skin was pink from the hot water, and her hair was flowing damp and straight behind her ears. She wore no makeup,
as she did when she went out, and he felt, when he saw her naked face, that he was seeing the real Sheila.

“I’m not asking you just because you’re pregnant,” he explained.

“I know.”

“Then what is it?”

“Why formalize everything?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.

He stared at her.

“See?” she said. “You want me to put this out.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Sheila, you know why.”

“That’s just it! I don’t want all these fucking rules. You’re smothering me.”

She wants a drink.

Knowing that, Webster couldn’t argue further. There was no persuading Sheila that she didn’t want a drink or that the reason
she was picking a fight was her need for the booze. As much as he wanted to remind her that it was dangerous to drink with
a sprout the size of his pinky growing inside her, she wouldn’t listen to him. All he could do was distract her, the way he
dealt with alcoholics on tours.

“I take it back,” he said. “I don’t want to marry you.”

She glanced up. “Make up your mind.”

“I did want to, but now I don’t.”

“You teasing with me?”

“Do I look like I’m teasing with you?”

She stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her fork, and ate a bite of the green beans. Behind her head, an empty bottle of
Dawn rested on a sill under a window. The dirty pots from the meal listed in the sink.

“I’ve got a tour,” he said, checking his watch.

“What? It’s Friday night.”

“A probie called in sick.”

“You mean there’s someone greener than you?”

Webster pushed his chair back. He felt something drain from his chest as he did so.

“You’re lying,” she said.

He was but said nothing.

“It’s because I don’t want to talk about getting married, isn’t it?” she asked, sipping her water.

The sight of the candles made Webster sad. Why play house?

He went into the bedroom to change. He had nowhere to go, but he put on his uniform anyway. He grabbed his radio and his utility
belt.

When he emerged from the bedroom, she was blocking the front door. In her hand, she held a Tupperware container in which she’d
put the rest of his dinner.

He stood ten feet from her.

“You need a fork and knife?” she asked.

“They’ve got forks and knives at Rescue.”

“Will you marry me?” she asked.

“No.”

“Please?”

“What about all the rules?” he asked. “And the smothering?”

“Fuck the rules,” she said. “We’ll make our own rules.”

“Such as?”

“We could get married on that piece of land of yours with just a few dogs for witnesses.”

“The land’s not mine.”

“Details,” she said, though he could see in the way she turned her gaze aside that she was just this minute registering the
results of an equation Webster had solved weeks ago. Webster + Sheila + Baby = No Land. The land by itself was meaningless
without Sheila and the baby. And he would need whatever was left of his
savings to help support the three of them when the baby came. He would take twenty-four-hour shifts if he had to.