Night Kills (2 page)

    "You remember that woman?" Foster asked.

    "From last night?"

    "Right."

    "Uh-huh. Sort of, anyway."

    "What the hell was it all about?"

    "One of us must have said something."

    "You remember saying anything nasty?"

    "Huh-uh."

    "Neither do I. Boy, that was spooky," Foster said. "Throwing that drink in your face."

    "No shit."

    The previous night they'd gone out celebrating by themselves. Though Foster's wife, Dana, had wanted to go along, Foster convinced her this was kind of a 'guy' thing and that the next night, at a dinner party the agency was hurling together, she'd have her fun.

    Both Brolan and Foster had grown up in Minneapolis, Brolan going to Washburn High and Foster to Southwest, and both graduating from the University of Minnesota, so they knew a lot of places to hit.

    Around midnight they ended up in one of those little hotel piano bars where salesmen always try to put the expense account hustle on divorced secretaries who are just starting to look matronly. They'd been standing at the bar quietly having one or two final drinks for the evening, talking about all the plans they had for the agency, when a beautiful woman in a simple white blouse and floor-length dark skirt bumped against Brolan, spilling his drink all over the arm of his sport coat.

    Being drunk, and having something of a temper anyway, Brolan started to swear, not at the lady particularly, just swear in general at whatever dopey god permitted such little irritating accidents to happen.

    The woman said, "That's not the sort of language a gentleman should use in front of a lady."

    Brolan, angry with her contemptuous tone-had she ever thought of apologizing for dumping the drink?-started to tell her that despite her beauty he was not necessarily going to act like a gentleman.

    Which was when she threw her drink in his face.

    It was one of those terrible moments when everything seems to freeze, when everything seems to become hushed, when everything about the knowable universe becomes irrational and spooky. One moment you're having a quiet drink with your best friend and partner, and the next you're in some insane kind of confrontation with a great-looking woman who appears to have been sired by the same man who gave the world Richard Speck.

    Irrationally Brolan had swung his arm out, not to strike her, just to claim some space for himself that he didn't want her to invade. The bartender, having misinterpreted the gesture, jumped over the bar and got Brolan in a hammerlock. "We don't hit broads in this place, ya got me, pal?" the beefy guy had shouted into Brolan's face.

    Brolan spluttered that he'd had no intention of hitting this "broad," but it did no good. Other eyes were on him now, watching, disapproving. Some drunk asshole trying to cream a broad. Hate guys like that.

    The woman was gone. Vanished.

    "Let's go, Frank," Foster had said gently.

    "Lucky I didn't call the freakin' cops," the bartender said. He was still mad. To Foster he said, "Get your pal outta here right now."

    As they stood talking about what had happened the night before, Foster said, "I kept waking up all night and thinking about it. It was really crazy."

    "Tell me about it" Brolan shuddered. He had always worried that he drank too much. At least that's what his ex-wife had told him. Things had been so out of control with that woman in the bar. He kept seeing and hearing fragments of the incident. Total loss of control. Scary shit. No doubt about it

    "Hey," Foster said.

    "What?"

    "Look at your hand."

    Brolan looked down at his hand. Twitching. Lordy.

    "It's past, my friend. Last night. The woman and all that Past."

    "Yeah. I know that, but my nervous system doesn't seem to have gotten the message."

    "God, Frank," Foster said, putting a heavy arm on his partner's shoulder. "We deserve to have a good time. Am I right?"

    "You're right. When you're right, you're right."

    "For six years we bust our asses, and people laugh at us-those little piss-ants, they'll never amount to anything-and finally we make it big. And, in the meantime, we finally get even with our old boss." He hoisted his glass, spilling rum-and-Coke all over his wide hand. "To the two most wonderful guys in the world!"

    "Us," Brolan said, hoisting his own glass.

    "You're goddamn right, us," Foster said, shouting over the din of disco music and the sweet seductive lies of adultery. "You're goddamn right."

    By midnight the place resembled a high school prom. The men had all ripped away their bow ties and cummerbunds, the women had dashed all their corsages and no longer worried about their hair, and most of them danced in their stocking feet, having kicked off their shoes an hour before. It wasn't just the young people dancing, either. The grey-hairs from the accounting department were out there, too. The mood was melancholy but in a nice way, couples holding each other tight, dancing to slow music there in the darkness, lit only by the lights behind the bar. Every once in a while somebody would jump up on a chair and shout out another toast to the Brolan-Foster Agency, but mostly there was just the slow dancing. If anybody remembered, or cared, that the next day was a workday, nobody let on.

    Kathleen Logan showed up at twenty minutes to midnight. She wore a white sheath that emphasised both her height and the perfect curves of her body. She threw back her long mane of ash-blonde hair as she stood on the edge of the dance floor looking as if she were trying to figure out whom to attack. When she saw Brolan, she smirked. He was dancing with a plump but very nice secretary named Joyce Conover. Kathleen's smirk said she was amused by his choice of dance partners.

    Abruptly the music became rock again. Catcalls went up, but a few of the more energetic couples pleaded for just one or two fast songs. One of the couples fancied itself quite the dance duo. They loved to show off. They jumped out on to the floor, holding hands, and proceeded to do some serious showing off. The other couples were good enough sports to stand around and clap for them. It was sort of like a dance number from a 1956 Bill Haley rock'n'roll movie.

    Brolan was back at the bar with Foster when Kathleen came over. It was late, and he was getting drunk, and he didn't want Kathleen to be as beautiful as she was. God, she was beautiful.

    He'd always sensed that she'd destroy him in some profound and irreparable way.

    She first addressed Foster. "You look nice in a dinner jacket." What should have been a compliment sounded more perfunctory than sincere. Foster was something of a chauvinist. He didn't unduly care for aggressive or successful women. But because of modern business mores he had no choice but to accept them. Kathleen had long sensed "Foster's displeasure," as she called it whenever Brolan and she were alone. Foster and Kathleen were famous for not getting along.

    Foster flushed slightly, even drunk as he was, obviously sensing Kathleen's ironic tone. Ordinarily Foster would be out on the dance floor with his wife, but she was home with the flu. She'd already called three times to tell him how much she missed being at the party.

    "Thank you, Kathleen. You know how much respect I have for your sincerity," Foster said. He grinned at Brolan.

    But Brolan was watching Kathleen and thinking back on their affair. He should have known better than to try an office romance. They'd hired her after a look at her unimpressive resume-two junior account executive jobs in minor Chicago agencies-and one hour in her thrall. She surprised both of them by being (a) intelligent, (b) organized, and (c) inventive where working with clients was concerned. Her first job was keeping happy, strictly in the business sense, of course, a man who manufactured watering systems for livestock confinement (this was the Midwest, after all). In six months she showed the man how to develop his product to work for other species, forge a new distribution deal, and triple his business. Subsequently he tripled his billings with the agency. She asked, and reasonably enough, for a promotion to full account executive. Brolan-Foster gladly gave it to her, along with her own office and a parking space with her name on it in the ramp adjacent to their building. It was around this time that Brolan first slept with her. From that point on he had feared her as he had never feared any other woman. He couldn't even tell you why exactly. Not exactly.

    "I'm sorry I'm late," Kathleen said, her blue eyes smiling. But

    of course she wasn't sorry, Brolan thought. She was always late, and she never offered any explanations. He assumed there was another man somewhere. Brolan was getting less and less good at handling the whole thing.

    The music slow once more, she stretched out her hands and moved toward the bar. "Would you like to dance?"

    Foster nodded to Brolan and walked away.

    Instinctively, and hating himself for it, Brolan started to push away from the bar and into Kathleen's arms.

    On the floor they held each other at a respectable distance, not wanting gossip to start. Even in the shadows her blue eyes were starting in their clarity and inscrutable beauty. All you could ever know for sure about Kathleen was that something was going on with her, something you would never find out about. It wasn't only lust he felt for her; there was real esteem and respect, too. She'd come from a difficult childhood, one of both poverty and violence, and had through sheer willpower bettered her lot in the world. On those long snowy weekends when their affair had first started, he'd gotten to know a very different Kathleen-a sweet, gentle, wry spirit with whom he felt real kinship. He couldn't recall ever being happier, feeling more loved or needed or protected. How pure his love for her felt. And then it changed. She began showing up late for dates; taking mysterious weekend trips; answering her phone secretively in the other room. He wanted her to be the Kathleen she'd once been, back there at the tender outset. But he sensed that those had been the golden days, and that only darkness lay ahead.

    "Foster's sure in a good mood," she said sarcastically.

    "He thinks you hate him."

    She laughed. "He's right. I do."

    They danced a while longer. He was surprised that he felt even worse with her than he'd felt without her. He was afraid he was going to go through it all again-how afraid he was, how lonely he was-reduce himself to an undignified whiner and complainer. In a way he preferred his old reputation with women-volatile and decisive, willing to leave when things went badly.

    At this moment he was the sort of man he despised, the self-absorbed romantic.
Spare me, O Lord.

    "Would you like to come over tonight?" she said.

    "I'd better not."

    "Really? Why not?"

    He tried a smile. "I want to spare us both the soap opera."

    She smiled back. "Gee, Brolan, do you get into soap operas? I'd hardly noticed."

    "Right."

    "Maybe things'll work out for us," she said.

    "And if they don't-"

    She shrugged her lovely shoulders. "If they don't, we can always be good friends."

    "Ah, friendship," he said.

    "It's better than being enemies."

    "Not always," he said. "Sometimes it hurts more to be a friend than an enemy."

    "You take it all too seriously."

    "Yeah, I guess I do, don't I?"

    "You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"

    "Yes."

    "I think we learn from each relationship. Each one makes us better."

    "You and Oprah."

    "You're getting serious again."

    "Heaven forbid."

    So, they danced. They didn't talk. There was nothing to say. Brolan looked around. People were starting to pick up all the dinner jackets and cummerbunds and high heels they'd tossed so carelessly into the shadows. Lights were coming on. Nothing was more depressing than bars at closing time. You got a hard, clean look at the ravages of liquor and age and loneliness. He knew he would look like shit, an ageing man trying to stay young. But she would look beautiful. She always did. Even at dawn, in need of a toothbrush and a hairbrush and a shower, she somehow managed still to look beautiful.

    "Could I ask you a question?" he said.

    "The other-man question?"

    His cheeks grew hot. He felt like a fumbling teenager. "Yeah, the other-man question."

    "I've tried to be polite."

    "In other words, none of my business."

    "In other words, none of your fucking business." And with that she jerked herself from his arms and walked quickly across the dance floor and into the shadows.

    But before he could go after her, Foster was there and slapping him on the back. All the house lights were up. You could see the cracks and the water stains in the decor. You could see the age and the alcohol on faces. Everybody looked blown out now and long past the joy of winning the account. There was even a certain sadness, and Brolan felt it especially.

    "You're driving, my friend."

    "What?" Brolan said, forcing himself to look away from Kathleen, who was turning toward the front of the place, hurrying.

    Foster dangled the keys to his Jag in front of Brolan's face. "Walk a line, my friend."

    "Oh, shit."

    "C'mon. This is serious business."

    They went through this every time they drank. Who should be driving. Brolan tended to hold his liquor a little better, so usually he drove. He walked a straight line across the dance floor. He had no problem. Earlier he had felt he was getting drunk. By this time he felt sober in an empty, almost cold way.