Set This House In Order Part 50

"Nah, not me. I mean, I f.u.c.k around -- performance art, that kind of s.h.i.+t -- but Sam's the real f.u.c.king talent. I'm more like the business end of it. She paints, I take care of the f.u.c.king money."

"And you live together."

"Yeah," she says, then realizes what he's really asking. "Oh, Christ, not like that! We're not d.y.k.es, for f.u.c.k's sake."

"OK," says Officer Cahill, trying to come off like that wasn't what he meant at all.

"We're f.u.c.king friends," Maledicta emphasizes. "Good friends, best friends, but not --"

"OK, OK. . ." He's clearly relieved, despite his effort to hide it. "So Sam, she's not involved with anybody right now?"

Up in the cave mouth, Mouse is making an enormous fuss, shouting that this is wrong, that Maledicta mustn't do this. But it's Maledicta's happy hour, so of course she's going to do it. "Not involved? Oh, I didn't say that. . . the truth is, she's married. . ."

The look on his face when he hears this -- it's f.u.c.king priceless! "Married. . ." The blood starts to drain from his cheeks again. "But you said she lives with you. . . so you live with Sam and her husband?"

"Well, it's a complicated f.u.c.king situation. . ." Just then she has another inspiration. She holds out her shot gla.s.s. "Get me another vodka."

He just stares, blinking.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to f.u.c.king throw it at you," Maledicta says. "But I came in here to drink and unwind, and if you're going to make me answer f.u.c.king questions then you're f.u.c.king well buying, too."

Officer Cahill hesitates. He's not a complete idiot, and some part of him must suspect that he's being f.u.c.ked with. But at the end of the day, unrequited love swings more weight than good sense: he sits down on the stool to Maledicta's right, and signals the bartender. "Two more vodkas."

"And cigarettes," Maledicta adds. "I need some f.u.c.king smokes."

"How spicy do you like your chili?" Chief Bradley asked.

"I'm not sure," I told him. "I don't think I've ever eaten chili."

"Never?"

"Not that I remember."

"Not too spicy, then," Chief Bradley said, and went back to banging pots. What was supposed to be a simple, quick lunch was turning into a major cooking operation, at least judging by the noise level.

The front of Chief Bradley's house was built on an open plan. Coming off the deck through the sliding gla.s.s doors, you entered a high-ceilinged, U-shaped s.p.a.ce. The left arm of the U was the kitchen; the right arm, the living room; and connecting them, a dining room with a view. At first I sat at the dining table looking out over the deck towards the distant pond, but as Chief Bradley went on banging pots and it became clear that the chili was going to take a while, I got up and wandered into the living room.

The room was a mix of spa.r.s.eness and clutter: there wasn't much furniture, but the walls were crowded. There was a lot of artwork -- mostly paint-by-numbers but also some cross-st.i.tch -- and a couple of hanging shelves that held old sports trophies; there were also lots and lots of photographs. One wall in particular was covered with them, as if the contents of two or three photo alb.u.ms had been hung up for easy viewing. At first glance this photo array seemed totally chaotic, but on closer inspection I saw that the photos were grouped by subject into rough constellations or cl.u.s.ters.

One cl.u.s.ter featured a young Gordon Bradley and a friend who, it slowly dawned on me, was Andy Gage's biological father, Silas Gage. It took time for me to recognize him because I'd only ever seen one picture of him before -- a wedding portrait that my own father had managed to preserve -- and in many of these pictures he was still in his teens: here he and Chief Bradley were posing in front of an old car that looked a lot like Julie Sivik's Cadillac; here they were in a high school band (Chief Bradley with a trombone, Silas Gage with a saxophone); here they were on a football field, half-covered in mud; here -- getting a little older -- they were standing at attention with a dozen other men, all in uniform; here they were in uniform again, but clowning now, Chief Bradley covering his ears while Silas Gage aimed a hammer at the nose of an artillery sh.e.l.l.

And here they were at a wedding, standing beside a woman in a bridal gown whose face I knew well: Althea Gage. That was the last picture in which Silas Gage appeared, but there were a couple of other snapshots of Althea: one with her and Chief Bradley together at a party, and another of her in front of the cottage -- still level, then -- gesturing at it with obvious pride. That picture made me wish I could borrow the artillery sh.e.l.l from the army photo.

"Chili's on simmer," Chief Bradley said, coming to join me. "Should be ready in about twenty minutes. You thirsty? I know it's a little early, but. . ." He held out a bottle of beer.

"No thank you," I said. I nodded at the pictures: "I didn't know that you and. . . my father, were so close."

"Close as brothers, from the day we met. Well. . . second day, actually."

I shook my head, not knowing what he meant.

"I'm from Peoria, originally," Chief Bradley explained. "But my momma ran out when I was thirteen, and my dad wasn't up to raising me on his own, so he sent me up here to live with his sister and her husband." He indicated some photos of an older couple I'd a.s.sumed were his parents. "Coming here, I was the new kid in a small school, and on my first day, your father got it into his head to pick a fight with me -- and since I was angry about all kinds of things right then, I was more than happy to oblige him. . ." He hooked a finger in the corner of his mouth and pulled his lip up, exposing a gap in the line of his molars.

"My father knocked your tooth out?" I said.

"Nope," he replied, letting his mouth snap back into shape. "I knocked one of his teeth out. He knocked one of mine loose, but it didn't fall out till later." He chuckled. "Next day, we both came into school wondering whether there was going to be a rematch, but he took one look at me, and I took one look at him, and we both saw. . . I don't know, something." He shrugged, looking mildly embarra.s.sed.

"From that moment on, we were the best of friends."

"Huh," I said, not understanding how best friends.h.i.+p would follow from a fistfight. I turned back to the photos and pointed to another group that showed Chief Bradley with a pretty but mostly unsmiling blond woman. "Is this your wife?"

"It was." I couldn't tell if that meant he was widowed or divorced, but then he added: "She left me."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Ellen was a decent woman but the two of us tying the knot was a mistake. Not the marriage I wanted." He took a swig of beer. "What about yourself?"

"Myself?"

"You're an attractive young lady. Are you married?"

I'd begun to get used to him referring to me as "Andrea," but being called an "attractive young lady" threw me -- all the more so because he wasn't just being kind, but actually seemed to mean it.

"I-I. . . no," I said. "I'm not married."

He smiled. "But with prospects, surely."

"No, not even that. I mean there was one person who I. . . but sh -- they didn't feel the same way about me."

"That can be hard," Chief Bradley said. He glanced up at the photo array. Then he asked: "Did you ever get that program I sent you?"

"What program?"

"From your mother's funeral. I know you said you didn't want it, but I thought you should have it."

"Oh," I said. "That was from you?. . . I mean yes, we got it." I started to add a perfunctory "thank you," but just then my mouth went dry. Without thinking, I raised the bottle -- the bottle that was, after all and somehow, in my hand -- and took a swallow of beer.

"I'm only sorry you couldn't attend the ceremony," Chief Bradley said. "It was sad, but it was beautiful. . . she was a good woman, your mother. . ."

"If you say so," I muttered. I took another swallow of beer, and another. The bottle was nearly empty by the time I noticed what I was doing -- and by then, it was already too late.

". . . so the two kids are living with her husband now, in Seattle," Maledicta says. "Which is where we were visiting just before we came here."

"So Sam and her husband," says Officer Cahill, "her husband. . ."

"Dennis," Maledicta says, and has to pinch the inside of her wrist to keep from laughing. She's been doing this almost constantly, but it's becoming less effective -- the more she drinks, the less she can feel the pinches. She's on her seventh vodka now.

"Dennis, right -- they're separated?"

"Not legally. And don't get your f.u.c.king hopes up. It's just f.u.c.king temporary -- he'll come to his f.u.c.king senses one of these days, move down to Santa Fe to be with her. No f.u.c.king doubt about it."

Officer Cahill sips his own vodka as if it were castor oil or some other foul-tasting medicine. It's his third gla.s.s, though, and that as much as anything tells Maledicta that he's buying her story. Officer Cahill is still on duty, and meant to limit himself to one drink -- he said as much earlier -- but when Maledicta told him that Sam had kids (twins!), that limit went out the f.u.c.king window.

"So if all this is going on with her husband," he wants to know next, "what's Sam doing back in Seven Lakes? And what the heck was that about this morning, with Sam saying she thought she might have killed Horace?"

"Oh that." Maledicta waves a hand and sways a little on her barstool. "Well, you know, a lot of Sam's problems, like with her f.u.c.king husband and all, that all goes back to, to what her f.u.c.king stepfather did to her. You know."

"No, I don't. What --"

"Oh give me a f.u.c.king break. You're the f.u.c.king ex, the guy she was going to f.u.c.king run away with. Don't tell me you didn't f.u.c.king know about it."

"I know Sam and Horace didn't get on well --"

With a snort: "'Didn't get on well.'"

"All right, Sam hated him. But --"

"She hated him because he was f.u.c.king her, a.s.shole!" At the other end of the bar, one of the geezer-clones twitches, and Maledicta feels a flash of embarra.s.sment. She'd meant to tell only lies here, and now she's gone and blurted out the truth.

Well, f.u.c.k it.

"He was what?" Officer Cahill says. "Excuse me?"

"You f.u.c.king heard me." Maledicta raps her shot gla.s.s on the bar to signal for another refill, but Officer Cahill grabs her arm. "Hey!" Maledicta objects. "What the f.u.c.k?"

"Is this a joke?" Officer Cahill demands. "Are you making this up to, to I don't know what. . ."

"No, it's not a f.u.c.king joke! f.u.c.k you! You don't believe me, go ask your f.u.c.king boss."

"Chief Bradley knows about this?"

"Yeah, he f.u.c.king knows about it. A day late, but. . ." She jerks her arm free and draws back, p.i.s.sed off but curious. "You really didn't know? Sam never told you?"

"No! No, Sam never said any --" He stops suddenly, and Maledicta can almost hear the memory falling into place, like a dropped brick. "No, that couldn't have been what she meant. . ."

"Right," says Maledicta. "So she did f.u.c.king tell you -- you just didn't f.u.c.king get it. Par for the f.u.c.king course."

"Oh G.o.d. Oh Sam. . ."

"Oh please. f.u.c.king spare me." Maledicta knocks a cigarette loose from the pack in front of her and lights it.

"So Chief Bradley knew about it?" Officer Cahill says. "He found out?"

"Not in time to do any f.u.c.king good, but yeah."

"G.o.d. That must have nearly killed him."

"Oh yeah," says Maledicta. "He was really f.u.c.king dying when we talked to him."

The officer looks at her coldly. "I'm sure Chief Bradley was mortified when he found out about that. G.o.d, and not just for Sam's sake -- for himself, too."

"For himself? Why? Because he f.u.c.ked up?"

"For not stopping it, sure. And also. . ."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Bulls.h.i.+t, nothing. Why else would he feel bad for himself?"

Now it's Officer Cahill who looks embarra.s.sed, like he's the one about to reveal a confidence.

But Maledicta stares at him until he tells her.

"It's just," he says, "that it must be bad enough to lose out to a good man, let alone one who's. . .

like that."

"What do you mean, lose out? Lose out at what?" A light goes on: "Oh, f.u.c.k."

"Sam's mother," Officer Cahill says. "The chief and Sam's father -- her real father, Silas -- both courted the same woman. Silas won: he married her. But then not long afterwards he died, and Chief Bradley --"

"Oh f.u.c.king nice," says Maledicta. "What'd he do, propose to her at the f.u.c.king funeral?"

Officer Cahill gives her another frosty look. "I'm sure it wasn't like that. But Althea was fond of him, and she had a new baby to think of, and I guess she gave indications that she might be interested -- but then before anything really happened, she turned around and took up with Horace."

"And how the f.u.c.k do you know about this? You must have been a f.u.c.king baby yourself at the time, right?"

"Chief Bradley told me." Officer Cahill taps a finger against the rim of his shot gla.s.s. "We were drinking up at the cottage one time about a year ago --"

"What, is that your private f.u.c.king clubhouse now?"

"No, but -- the chief, you know, he's been trying to keep the place in shape since Althea died.

One evening I found him up there, not doing any work, just sitting in the kitchen with a bottle. So I sat down with him, and he started talking about how he'd been in love all those years. . .

"So that would have been hard enough," the officer concludes, "feeling that way and being rejected, not just once but twice. But to find out on top of that that you'd lost out to a, a child molester. .

. I can't imagine." He adds hastily: "Not that that compares to what Sam went through, of course. . ."

Maledicta would like to hit Officer Cahill now, but instead she looks at the bartender -- who's hovering right on top of them, pretending not to listen -- and holds up her empty gla.s.s. "One more for the road."

"Don't you think you've had enough?" Officer Cahill says.

"Don't you think you should mind your own f.u.c.king business?" Maledicta retorts.

Officer Cahill sighs. "All right," he says, "it's your liver -- it's my tab, but it's your liver." He pulls out his wallet and checks to make sure he actually has the money to pay for all these drinks. "Just tell me one last thing. When you said Sam was on her way home to Santa Fe already, that wasn't true, was it?