Good Neighbors (11 page)

Peter raises his whiskey and they tap glasses.

‘Cheers.’

Peter drains his and pours himself another.

Ron laughs.

‘I guess you worked up a thirst.’

‘Something like that,’ Peter says.

Then each of them grabs a glass of white wine from the counter and they head out to the living room where their women await them.

Peter walks to the ladies sitting on the couch and hands a glass of wine to Bettie.

‘Here you go.’

‘Thank you,’ Bettie says, smiling.

But Ron isn’t smiling, not anymore. He stands in the middle of the living room, unmoving.

‘That was for Anne,’ he says.

‘There’s two glasses of wine,’ Peter says, realizing that he’s made a mistake – he knew he made a mistake, in fact, since the second he held the glass out to Bettie and saw Anne reach for it, then pull back, a hurt expression passing quickly across her face – but defending himself all the same, ‘does it matter who gets which?’

‘No,’ Ron says.

‘All right, then.’

‘Except why wouldn’t you hand it to your wife?’

‘Bettie was closer.’

‘They’re sitting right next to each other!’

‘Why are you making a thing out of this?’

‘Because,’ Ron says, ‘it just dawned on me what you were saying in the kitchen.’

Anne looks from Ron to Peter, her eyes shining with questions, but she doesn’t ask Peter anything. Instead, she turns back to Ron.

‘What,’ she says, ‘was he saying in the kitchen?’

‘Honey,’ Peter says.

‘I’d like to know, too,’ Bettie says before sipping her wine.

Peter looks from Ron to Anne to Bettie. He feels trapped. How did this happen? All he did was hand a glass of wine to the wrong person.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ he says.

‘Apparently you did,’ Anne says.

‘You’re not in love with my wife,’ Ron says.

‘You told him you were in love with Bettie?’

‘No.’

‘Peter,’ Ron says, ‘you’re not.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Peter.’

‘I . . .’

He feels lost.

‘Trust me,’ Ron says.

‘I . . .’

‘How long have you and Anne been together?’

Peter is too flustered to answer. He still doesn’t know how this happened. Forty-five minutes ago he was thinking this was one of the best nights of his life, and now he’s standing here surrounded – feeling surrounded, anyway – thinking the night might well be going in the opposite direction, thinking it’s well on its way.

‘Ten years,’ Anne says. Then she looks to Peter. ‘We’ve been together for ten years.’

‘I . . .’ He looks at Anne. ‘I know that,’ he says, finally able to get words out in sentence form. ‘I know we’ve been together for ten years. We met on Valentine’s Day, 1954. I know that.’

But Anne only looks away.

‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into it.’

‘Ten years,’ Ron says. ‘And how long was it before you knew you loved her?’

‘Why are you interrogating me?’

‘I’m not. I’m trying to make a point.’

‘Then make your fucking point and stop asking me questions.’

‘I’m almost there. How long before you knew you loved Anne?’

‘I don’t know,’ Peter says. ‘Four or five months.’

‘You’ve known me, what,’ Ron says, ‘a year? You talked to Bettie twice in that time, both times at work functions. You don’t fall in love with someone like that.’

Peter looks to Anne. Her eyes are welling with tears, welling and about to overflow with them, and goddamn it, he does not want to see that.

‘Anne,’ he says, ‘I didn’t tell Ron I was in love with Bettie.’

‘Sex can confuse people,’ Ron says.

‘I didn’t tell Ron that I was in love with Bettie,’ he says again, as if that will be enough to make everything better.

‘But you’re not saying you’re not,’ Anne says, and the tears finally overflow and roll down her cheeks.

Peter only looks back at her, not knowing what to say. He does not want to see this. He does not want this to be happening.

‘Peter?’ Anne says.

‘Sex can make people think things that aren’t true,’ Ron says. ‘Don’t let this confuse things between you and your wife.’

‘Will you shut the fuck up? This was your fucking idea,’ Peter says, turning and glaring at Ron. ‘It was your fucking idea.’

‘I thought you could handle it.’

‘You wanted to fuck my wife,’ Peter says. ‘That’s what you thought. You saw my wife and you thought, I’d like to fuck her. That’s all there was to it. You thought I could handle it? Fuck you.’

‘And you didn’t want to fuck my wife?’

‘Say you’re not in love with Bettie,’ Anne says. ‘Just say it, Peter.’

Peter swallows. ‘I’m sorry, Anne. It’s just . . . and I’m sorry, Ron . . . it’s, Bettie and I, we . . . we shared . . .’

‘Peter,’ Bettie says.

‘What?’

He turns to look at her, feeling his stomach drop with fear, suddenly remembering that another person is here who has a say in this – whatever this is.

She shakes her head.

‘What?’ he says again.

‘We shared sex,’ she says. ‘That’s it.’

He licks his lips. Oh, God.

‘But – but you don’t understand,’ he says.

‘It was sex,’ she says. ‘That’s it. That was the point.’

‘You’re lying,’ he says. ‘You’re lying to spare Ron’s feelings.’

‘No.’ She shakes her head.

‘Oh, goddamn it,’ Anne says.

‘But—’ Peter turns back to Ron. ‘This was your fucking idea.’

‘But it was your mistake,’ Ron says.

‘I can’t believe I was stupid enough to let you talk me into this.’

Anne gets to her feet and disappears into the dark hallway.

A moment later, there is the slam of a door.

Peter walks to the couch and falls into it.

He puts his head into his hands.

‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Fuck.’

18

‘Um. Let’s see,’ David White says, looking through the glass front of a case which holds dozens of donuts. He ate before he started his shift but he’s hungry again.

‘Take your time,’ the cop standing behind him says. ‘It’s not like anyone’s waiting.’

Then there’s a yelp of sirens and a brief flash of light from the ambulance on the other side of the window. He probably shouldn’t be stuffing himself with donuts anyway.

‘Guess that’s it,’ he says. ‘How much?’

‘On the house,’ the man behind the counter says. ‘Go save some lives.’

‘Thanks,’ David says. ‘’Preciate it.’

Then he turns away and heads for the front door, kicking it open since his hands are full, and then slipping through before it has a chance to swing shut. As he nears the ambulance, John reaches over the width of the cab and shoves open the passenger’s door for him.

‘Thanks,’ he says, getting into the ambulance, handing John his coffee, pulling shut his door. ‘What do we got?’

‘Car accident,’ John says.

David nods, tries to take a sip of his coffee, but just as the cup touches his lip, John puts the ambulance in gear, it lurches forward, and coffee spills down the front of David’s uniform.

‘Shit.’

John glances over. ‘Sorry.’

David nods but waits until the ambulance is up to speed before attempting a second sip.

He looks out the window at the blur of night as they head toward whatever carnage awaits them. He is tired. He is always tired. He just can’t seem to sleep. Part of it, he thinks, is this job. The graveyard shift is a brutal shift no matter how long you’ve been working it. He gets off work and drives home in a half-dream, exhausted, at a time when the day is just beginning to gain speed. The sun is up, evaporating the last of the midnight dew. People are showering and shaving and eating eggs and driving to work and he is headed in the opposite direction toward home. But not toward bed. Never toward bed – not immediately. The noise – of traffic and talking and life – keeps him awake. He pushes through the front door and walks straight to his couch and sits down. His dog Sarah greets him, licks his hand, curls up against his leg, and he pets her absently. For the next hour or two, he stares. That’s all. He simply stares at his reflection in the gray television screen, stares at the wall, stares at his waking dreams in the corners of the room. Sometimes he talks to Sarah. Sometimes he tells her about his night. ‘Tonight was rough,’ he’ll say. ‘Got called to a shooting. Man was shot in the head, directly between the eyes, but he didn’t die. So the gunman shot him again and ran, but he still didn’t die. When we pulled up, he was sitting on the curb. Just sitting there. Arms resting on his knees. He looked at us and smiled. Raised an arm in greeting. “Hello,” he said. If it wasn’t for the two dots on his forehead, he could have been anybody. Two red dots. One right in the middle of the forehead, the other above his left eyebrow. They were both oozing a little bit of blood, but they weren’t bleeding bad. Just big enough to poke a finger into. For a minute, I thought, this is one tough motherfucker. He took two bullets to the brain and doesn’t seem phased. Then I saw the back of his head. The exit wounds were big enough to shove baseballs into. Tangerines, anyway. Then I saw ten feet to his left where most of the contents of his head had splattered. He was just a zombie. “How you doing, sir?” I said. “Hello,” he said again. Just a zombie, Sarah. That’s all. And he wouldn’t die. We got him to the hospital. He could have walked, but we didn’t let him. We rolled him into the emergency room, and every time he saw someone he would say it. “Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.” It was unnerving. Doctors say he’ll probably be dead by the end of the week if he’s actually gonna go – but he may live. If he’s not dead by then, he’ll probably live. They’re cleaning up the wounds as if he’s gonna live. If he does, he’ll just be able to walk around and say “Hello.” He’ll just be a zombie with half a head. “Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.” I asked a friend of mine who’s a cop if there’s any leads. He seems to think they’ll never catch the guy who did it. No one’s talking. Even the woman who called the police, she says she only heard the shots. The first one, she just thought it was car backfire or something. By the time she got to the window after the second shot, the shooter was gone, leaving behind the zombie, leaving behind this guy with a wife and a daughter, this guy who can walk and say “Hello” but can’t do nothing else.’ Sometimes he’ll talk to Sarah and sometimes he’ll just sit and stare. But he never sleeps when he gets home. Around ten o’clock in the morning, once everyone who’s going to work has gone, it’s a bit quieter and he’s had time to flush work from his body – it’s drained down and leaked from the soles of his feet – so he walks to the bedroom and lays himself on the bed and stares at his closet door. After a while, he gets up and opens it. David does not like closed doors. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t. He hates not being able to see exactly what’s on the other side. When he moves into an apartment, the first thing he does is get out a screwdriver and a hammer and start removing hinge-pins and the doors that separate rooms. He leaves on the closet door and the bathroom door. Closets sometimes get cluttered, and though he almost never has company, the bathroom door is necessary when he does. But he can’t sleep with the closet door closed. So he opens it – even though it means Sarah may run off with a shoe – then he walks back to bed and lays down again. Around eleven he’ll finally get to sleep. But by two or three, the heat will wake him up, the heat and the afternoon sunlight, and he’ll be up for good. The rest of the day he’ll just spend wandering around, a zombie himself, grocery shopping, doing laundry, vacuuming the carpet, washing the dishes he’s let pile up in the sink. Sometimes he goes to a massage parlor. He always feels guilty about it afterwards – those girls who don’t speak English and have few other options – but he does it anyway. Sometimes he just needs to get it out of his system, to have physical contact with another human being, physical contact of any kind.

And then, eventually, it’s time for work again.

There are already two police cars parked on the side of the road with their lights flashing when David and John arrive in their ambulance. Flares blaze, and one uniformed cop who David doesn’t recognize is standing in the street to make sure looky loos keep their distance. David can’t imagine there’ve been too many at this time of night – but who knows?

John parks the ambulance on the wrong side of the street, in front of one of the police cars, killing the sirens while the lights continue to bleed the night.

‘Looks pretty ugly,’ he says.

David nods in agreement, and then pushes open his door and steps outside. He walks toward the upended Fiat and looks inside through the bloody side window. The car is empty.

‘He’s over there,’ the policeman he doesn’t recognize says.

David looks up and sees the guy pointing to his right. He follows the finger to a storefront with a shattered window. Behind the shattered glass, David can see several fallen bicycles and flashlight beams shifting around, crossing one another. Other cops, he assumes.

‘Inside,’ the cop says. ‘He’s unconscious.’

David nods and walks back to the ambulance.

He grabs a scoop stretcher from the back and heads toward the building. John follows.

‘Son of a bitch,’ David says. ‘You son of a bitch.’

He stares down at Mr. Vacanti lying unconscious behind the counter of this night-dark bicycle shop. He’s flat on his back, one arm folded underneath his body, the other angled up, bent at the elbow, touching the top of his head with the thumb, shaping the number four. There is a six-inch shard of glass jutting from his forehead, a shelf of glass, and he’s lying in a pool of his own blood.

For a brief moment – just for a second – David considers simply reaching down and twisting that shard of glass, shoving it in further, as far as he can, until it hits bone on the other side, at the back of the head, and then giving it one last push, till it scars the vinyl floor beneath. He thinks there’d be a sense of satisfaction as he felt the spongy brain being sliced through, as he heard the pop of bone giving way.