The Losers (33 page)

They went in, she put the pot on, and they sat down.

“I made a fool of myself that night,” she told him, “and I’m sorry. I was stupid and thoughtless. My silly little jealousy forced you to tell me something no man ought to be forced to admit.”

“Have you got that out of your system now?”

She looked at him sharply.

“Why do you continually beat yourself over the head? There’s no need for it. We had a misunderstanding—that’s all. It’s no big thing. We were both embarrassed by it, but nobody dies from embarrassment, and it’s not important enough to make the two of us spend the rest of our lives not talking to each other, is it?”

“I wanted to speak,” she objected, “but you wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Okay. I’m looking at you right now—right straight at you. Speak, Denise, speak.”

“Woof-woof,” she said flatly. And then she smiled, and everything was suddenly all right.

And then the words that had been dammed up in those weeks of silence came pouring out. They talked until very late, their hands frequently touching across the table.

About eleven she reached across the table and took his hand. “Stay with me tonight,” she said simply.

“All right.” He didn’t even hesitate.

And so they got up and turned out the lights and went to bed.

Raphael woke early the next morning, coming from sleep into wakefulness without moving. Denise lay quietly beside him, her arm across his chest and her face burrowed into her pillow. Her skin was pale and very soft, and she smelled faintly of wildflowers.

In the close and friendly darkness of the night before, they had lain very close together and had talked drowsily until long after midnight. There had been no hint of sexuality in their contact, merely comfort and the sense of being together. They had said things to each other in the darkness that would have been impossible to say in the light, and Raphael was content.

In the steely, dim light of dawn filtering through the curtains, he was surprised to discover how content he really was. The closeness, the simple thing of holding each other, the affection, had produced in him an aftermath of feeling not significantly unlike that which he remembered from times before his accident when the other had been involved also. Idly, he wondered how much of the afterglow of sex was related to sex itself and how much was merely this warm euphoria of closeness—and naturally, in all honesty, he realized that he was to some degree rationalizing away his incapacity; but he felt much too good to worry about it all that much.

She stirred in her sleep and nestled closer to him. Then, startled, she awoke. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, blushing furiously and covering herself quickly with the blanket.

“ ‘Oh, my goodness’?”

“Don’t look at me.” She blushed even more. “What?”

“Don’t look at me.”

He laughed and lay looking at the ceiling.

“Rafe,” she said finally, “you don’t think I’m terrible or cheap or anything because of this, do you?” “Of course not. Are you sorry?”

In answer she reached out and pulled him to her, making small, contented noises into his shoulder. Her tiny, misshapen hand gently caressed his neck. “Oh dear,” she said after a moment.

“What?”

“We have a problem.” “What’s that?”

“Do you realize that we’re both stark naked?” “So?”

“So who gets up first?” He laughed. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s like a cold shower. After the initial jolt it’s not so bad.”

“Oh, no. You’re not going to catch
me
parading around in the altogether. My whole body would go into shock. I’d absolutely
die.
I’d blush myself to death right on the spot.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“Come on, Rafe,” she pleaded. “We have to get up. I have to be at work.”

“All right,” he relented. “I’ll turn over and cover my head with a pillow. Would that be okay?” “You won’t peek?” “Would I do that?”

“How should I know what you’d do? If you peek, I’ll die.”

“You won’t die, but I won’t peek.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. He felt the bed quiver as she slipped out and then heard the quick scurrying as she gathered up her clothes and dashed into the bathroom.

Later, over breakfast, she would not look at him.

“Hey,” he said finally.

“What?” She still did not look at him.

“I’m here.” “I know that.”

He reached across the table and lifted her chin with his hand. “If you don’t look at me, I’ll tell everybody at work that we slept together last night.”

“You
wouldn’t’”

“Oh yes, I would.” And then he laughed.

“You’re not a nice person,” she accused, and then she also laughed, and everything was all right again.

Before they left for work, he kissed her, and she sighed deeply. “I love you, Rafe,” she said. “It’s stupid and useless and probably a little grotesque, but I love you anyway.”

“And I love you, Denise, and that’s even stupider and probably a whole lot more grotesque, but that’s the way it is.”

“We’ll work it out.” She squeezed his hand. “What we feel about each other is
our
business, right?”

“Right,” he agreed, kissing her again. And then they opened the door and went out together into the hallway and down the stairs and on out into the bright morning sunlight.

Raphael finished work about noon, turned off his machine, and went over to the desk where Denise was intent on some papers. “Hey you.”

“What, hey?” She looked up at him. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, and her face glowed. He was startled to realize how pretty she was, and wondered why he had never seen it before.

“I’m going to take off now. I’ll give you a call when you get off work.”

“Do.” She smiled at him.

“Maybe we can go to dinner or something.”

“Are you asking?”

“All right, I’m asking.”

“Let me check my appointment schedule—see if I can fit you in.”

“Funny.”

Billy, a retarded boy, was standing nearby, concentrating very hard on some clothing he was unfolding and putting on hangers. He looked up at them. “Rafe,” he said, his thick tongue slurring the word.

“Yes, Billy?”

“You an’ Denise ain’t mad at each other no more, huh?” “No, Billy,” Raphael said gently. “We’re not mad at each other anymore.”

“I’m real glad. I din’t like it when you was mad at each other. It made me real sad.”

“It made us sad, too, Billy. That’s why we decided not to be mad anymore.”

“I’m real glad,” Billy said again. “Please don’t be mad at each other no more.”

“We won’t, Billy,” Raphael promised.

Denise reached out and squeezed his hand.

Raphael went outside, crossed the street to the graveled parking lot, and opened his car doors to let the blast-furnace heat out. After a few minutes he climbed in, opened the front windows, and started the car.

He drove down to Sprague, went west to Lincoln, and then over to Main. He followed Main along behind the Chamber of Commerce and the Masonic Temple and then down the hill into Peaceful Valley. If he could catch Flood before he went over to the house on Dalton, before, by his arrival and his presence, he committed himself to another of Heintzie’s “last and final wars,” he might be able to talk him out of the ultimate idiocy.

But Flood was gone. The shabby house where he had a second-floor apartment sagged on its patch of sun-destroyed grass, its paint peeling and its cracked windows patched with cardboard and masking tape, and Flood’s red sports car was nowhere in sight.

The little red car was not parked in front of the house where Heck’s Angels lived either, and Raphael wondered if perhaps Flood had perceived on his own how truly stupid the whole affair was and had found other diversions to fill his day.

Raphael parked his car and went up to his apartment. He bathed and shaved and put on clean clothes. He set the scanner in the window and went out onto the rooftop.

“District One,” the scanner said.

“One.”

“We have a report of a subject sleeping in a Dumpster in the alley behind the Saint Cloud Hotel.” “I’ll drop by and wake him up.”

Raphael looked down at his street. It seemed somehow alien now. The familiar faces were all gone, and he realized that there was no longer any real reason to stay. For the first time since he had come here, he began to think about moving.

“This is District One,” the scanner said. “This subject in the Dumpster is DOA. Gunshot wound to the head.”

Raphael felt suddenly very cold. He had heard about it. Everyone hears stories about gangsters and the like. The Mafia is as much a preoccupation of Americans as are cowboys and Indians. Someone had once told him that young men of Sicilian background who aspire to membership in the family test their nerve in this precise manner. Nobody really investigates the death of a wino in an alley. It is a safe way for a young hoodlum to get his first killing behind him so that his nerve won’t falter when the
real
shooting starts. Almost without realizing what he was doing, he went over to the window and turned off the scanner. He did not want to hear any more, and he did not want to think about it. He returned to his chair and sat in silence, looking down at the shabby street.

Up the block Big Heintz sat alone on the porch, his booted feet up on the rail and his purple helmet pulled down low over his eyes.

Marvin drove up in his car, closely followed by Little Hider on his motorcycle. They stopped in front of the house and pulled several bags and blanket-wrapped objects from the backseat of Marvin’s car. They went up onto the porch. “We got ‘em,” Marvin said, “lotsa good stuff—chains, baseball bats, stuff like that.”

“Baseball bats?” Heintz scoffed.

“We took ‘em over an’ had Leon drill ‘em out for us,” Little Hider explained. “Then he poured lead in ‘em.”

“Now
you’re talkin’.” Heintz grinned. “Where’s that fuckin’ Jimmy?”

“He’s over talkin’ to Occult,” Marvin replied, “seein’ if they wanna go with us when we go to have it out with the Dragons.”

“Goddamn that little shithead!” Heintz exploded. “He’s gonna screw it up. Occult ain’t gonna take a scrawny little bastard like Jimmy serious. They’re gonna just think he’s runnin’ his fuckin’ mouth. That’s the kinda thing I oughta handle myself-—
me
—or maybe Jake. Fuckin’ Jimmy ain’t got no sense.”

“Have you seen Jake?” Little Hider asked.

“He’ll be here,” Heintz assured them. “Ain’t
nothin’
gonna keep ol’ Jake away from what’s goin’ down.”

Marvin had pulled one of the baseball bats out of a blanket and was tapping it solidly on the porch railing.

“Don’t be wavin’ that fuckin’ thing around,” Heintz ordered. “Like Jake says, we gotta cool it. One of the neighbors sees it, and they’ll call the pigs on us again. We don’t want no hassles with the fuckin’ pigs today.”

“Sorry.” Marvin quickly wrapped the bat again.

“Better lug all that shit inside,” Heintz told him. “Get it outta sight. Like I say, we don’t want no hassles with the fuckin’ pigs today.”

Marvin and Little Hider took their bundles into the house, and Big Heintz sat in menacing splendor on the porch, glowering at the street.

About four o’clock Jimmy arrived, breathless as always. “They’re in!” he announced excitedly as he got out of his car. “Who’s in?” Heintz demanded.

“Occult. I talked to the Hog, an’ he says to count ‘em in.” “Jesus Christ! You ain’t got no fuckin’ sense at all, Jimmy.” “What’s the matter?”

“It ain’t
done
like that, you dumb little fucker. You don’t just go

runnin’ off to somebody like the Hog and spillin’ your guts like that. This ain’t no fuckin’ tea party we’re talkin’ about—it’s a fuckin’ war.”

“I don’t see what the difference is,” Jimmy objected.

“If you’re too dumb to understand, I sure as shit ain’t gonna try to explain it to you. It’s
courtesy,
you dumb shit. You ain’t got no fuckin’ manners, Jimmy.
Me.”
Heintz stabbed himself in the chest with his thumb. “Me—
I’m
the one that shoulda talked with the Hog. That way he’s got my word it ain’t no setup—that we ain’t gonna be waitin’ out there to jump
them.
But you ain’t smart enough to see that, are you?”

“Sorry,” Jimmy said sullenly.

“Sorry don’t cut it, shithead. Now I’m gonna have to apologize to the fuckin’ Hog. This is
serious,
man—serious.
You
don’t invite fuckin’ Occult to a war,
I
do. That’s somethin’ that’s gotta be settled between the
leaders
—me an’ the Hog. From now on you keep your fuckin’ nose outta stuff like this. You just do what I tell you to, an’ don’t get fuckin’
creative
on me. You got it?”

Jimmy sulked into the house, once again leaving Heintz sitting in sour imperial solitude on the front porch.

At five Flood showed up, and Raphael felt suddenly sick.

“Hey, Jake,” Heintz called in a relieved tone. He got up and swaggered down off the porch. “Where you been all day?”

“Here and there,” Flood said with a shrug. “I drifted down to People’s Park to get the lay of the land.”

“Shit, man!” Heintz stared at him. “That’s dangerous. Were the Dragons there?”

“Some of them.”

“They mighta jumped you.”

“Why would they do that? Look at me, Heintzie. Do I look like a biker?”

“Well …” Heintz still looked dubious.

“I look like a tourist. They didn’t even pay any attention to

me.”

“You got balls, Jake—real balls.”

Flood shrugged. “I wanted to see the ground, that’s all. Now I know the way in and the way out. There won’t be any surprises—not for me, anyway. The Dragons might be in for a shock or two, though.”

Heintz gurgled with laughter. “You slay me, Jake. You absolutely fuckin’ slay me.”

“Are we all set for tonight?” Flood asked.

“All set. Fuckin’ Jimmy even went and talked to Occult. The Hog musta been drunk or stoned outta his mind to take the little fucker serious, but Occult’s in.”

“Good enough.”

Raphael was stunned. The plan had obviously changed. He had thought that he would have more time. Tonight was supposed to be the council-of-war-cum-beer-bust out on the Newport highway, but those festivities appeared to have been scratched. Talking to Flood had been something fairly serious before, but now it was a matter of urgency.