Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

One of Those Days, One of Those Nights by Ed Gorman

© 1994 by Ed Gorman

In 1994, the second year in which the British Crime Writers Association offered an award for Best Short Story, an American appeared on the list with a story published only in the U.K., in the anthology Crime Yellow. The story was “One of Those Days, One of Those Nights,” the author Ed Gorman. EQMM is pleased to be publishing the story for the first time in the United States.

The thing you have to understand is that I found it by accident. I was looking for a place to hide the birthday gift I’d bought Laura — a string of pearls she’d been wanting to wear with the new black dress she’d bought for herself — and all I was going to do was lay the gift-wrapped box in the second drawer of her bureau...

... and there it was.

A plain number-ten envelope with her name written across the middle in a big manly scrawl and a canceled Elvis Presley stamp up in the comer. Postmarked two days ago.

Just as I spotted it, Laura called from the living room, “Bye, honey, see you at six.” The last two years we’ve been saving to buy a house so we have only the one car. Laura goes an hour earlier than I do, so she rides with a woman who lives a few blocks over. Then I pick her up at six after somebody relieves me at the computer store where I work. For what it’s worth, I have an M.A. in English Literature but with the economy being what it is, it hasn’t done me much good.

I saw a sci-fi movie once where a guy could set something on fire simply by staring at it intently enough. That’s what I was trying to do with this letter my wife got. Burn it so that I wouldn’t have to read what it said inside and get my heart broken.

I closed the drawer.

Could be completely harmless. Her fifteenth high-school reunion was coming up this spring. Maybe it was from one of her old classmates. And maybe the manly scrawl wasn’t so manly after all. Maybe it was from a woman who wrote in a rolling dramatic hand.

Laura always said that I was the jealous type and this was certainly proof. A harmless letter tucked harmlessly in a bureau drawer. And here my heart was pounding, and fine cold sweat slicked my face, and my fingers were trembling.

God, wasn’t I a pitiful guy? Shouldn’t I be ashamed of myself?

I went into the bathroom and lathered up and did my usual relentless fifteen-minute morning regimen of shaving, showering, and shining up my apple-cheeked Irish face and my thinning Irish hair, if hair follicles can have a nationality, that is.

Then I went back into our bedroom and took down a white shirt, blue necktie, navy blazer, and tan slacks. All dressed, I looked just like seventy or eighty million other men getting ready for work this particular sunny April morning.

Then I stood very still in the middle of the bedroom and stared at Laura’s bureau. Maybe I wasn’t simply going to set the letter on fire. Maybe I was going to ignite the entire bureau.

The grandfather clock in the living room tolled eight-thirty. If I didn’t leave now I would be late, and if you were late you inevitably got a chewing-out from Ms. Sanders, the boss. Anybody who believes that women would run a more benign world than men needs only to spend five minutes with Ms. Sanders. Hitler would have used her as a pin-up girl.

The bureau. The letter. The manly scrawl.

What was I going to do?

Only one thing I could think of, since I hadn’t made a decision about reading the letter or not. I’d simply take it with me to work. If I decided to read it, I’d give it a quick scan over my lunch hour.

But probably I wouldn’t read it at all. I had a lot of faith where Laura was concerned. And I didn’t like to think of myself as the sort of possessive guy who snuck around reading his wife’s mail.

I reached into the bureau drawer.

My fingers touched the letter.

I was almost certain I wasn’t going to read it. Hell, I’d probably get so busy at work that I’d forget all about it.

But just in case I decided to...

I grabbed the letter and stuffed it into my blazer pocket, and closed the drawer. In the kitchen I had a final cup of coffee and read my newspaper horoscope. Bad news, as always. I should never read the damn things... Then I hurried out of the apartment to the little Toyota parked at the curb.

Six blocks away, it stalled. Our friendly mechanic said that moisture seemed to get in the fuel pump a lot. He’s not sure why. We’ve run it in three times but it still stalls several times a week.

Around ten o’clock, hurrying into a sales meeting that Ms. Sanders had decided to call, I dropped my pen. And when I bent over to pick it up, my glasses fell out of my pocket, and when I moved to pick them up, I took one step too many and put all 175 pounds of my body directly onto them. I heard something snap.

By the time I retrieved both pen and glasses, Ms. Sanders was closing the door and calling the meeting to order. I hurried down the hall, trying to see how much damage I’d done. I held the glasses up to the light. A major fissure snaked down the center of the right lens. I slipped them on. The crack was even more difficult to see through than I’d thought.

Ms. Sanders, a very attractive fiftyish woman given to sleek gray suits and burning blue gazes, warned us as usual that if sales of our computers didn’t pick up, two or three people in this room would likely be looking for jobs. Soon. And just as she finished saying this, her eyes met mine. “For instance, Donaldson, what kind of month are you having?”

“What kind of month am I having?”

“Do I hear a parrot in here?” Ms. Sanders said, and several of the salespeople laughed.

“I’m not having too bad a month.”

Ms. Sanders nodded wearily and looked around the room. “Do we have to ask Donaldson here any more questions? Isn’t he telling us everything we need to know when he says, I’m not having too bad a month’? What’re we hearing when Donaldson says that?”

I hadn’t noticed till this morning how much Ms. Sanders reminded me of Miss Hutchison, my fourth-grade teacher. Her favorite weapon had also been humiliation.

Dick Weybright raised his hand. Dick Weybright always raises his hand, especially when he gets to help Ms. Sanders humiliate somebody.

“We hear defeatism when he says that,” Dick said. “We hear defeatism and a serious lack of self-esteem.”

Twice a week, Ms. Sanders made us listen to motivational tapes. You know, “I upped my income, up yours,” that sort of thing. And nobody took those tapes more seriously than Dick Weybright.

“Very good, Dick,” Ms. Sanders said. “Defeatism and lack of self-esteem. That tells us all we need to know about Donaldson here. Just as the fact that he’s got a crack in his glasses tells us something else about him, doesn’t it?”

Dick Weybright waggled his hand again. “Lack of self-respect.”

“Exactly,” Ms. Sanders said, smiling coldly at me. “Lack of self-respect.”

She didn’t address me again until I was leaving the sales room. I’d knocked some of my papers on the floor. By the time I got them picked up, I was alone with Ms. Sanders. I heard her come up behind me as I pointed myself toward the door.

“You missed something, Donaldson.”

I turned. “Oh?”

She waved Laura’s envelope in the air. Then her blue eyes showed curiosity as they read the name on the envelope. “You’re not one of those, are you, Donaldson?”

“One of those?”

“Men who read their wives’ mail?”

“Oh. One of those. I see.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then what’re you doing with this?”

“What am I doing with that?”

“That parrot’s in here again.”

“I must’ve picked it up off the table by mistake.”

“The table?”

“The little Edwardian table under the mirror in the foyer. Where we always set the mail.”

She shook her head again. She shook her head a lot. “You are one of those, aren’t you, Donaldson? So were my first three husbands, the bastards.”

She handed me the envelope, brushed past me, and disappeared down the hall.

There’s a park near the river where I usually eat lunch when I’m downtown for the day. I spend most of the time feeding the pigeons.

Today I spent most of my time staring at the envelope laid next to me on the park bench. There was a warm spring breeze and I half-hoped it would lift up the envelope and carry it away.

Now I wished I’d left the number-ten with the manly scrawl right where I’d found it because it was getting harder and harder to resist lifting the letter from inside and giving it a quick read.

I checked my watch. Twenty minutes to go before I needed to be back at work. Twenty minutes to stare at the letter. Twenty minutes to resist temptation.

Twenty minutes — and how’s this for cheap symbolism? — during which the sky went from cloudless blue to dark and ominous.

By now, I’d pretty much decided that the letter had to be from a man. Otherwise, why would Laura have hidden it in her drawer? I’d also decided that it must contain something pretty incriminating.

Had she been having an affair with somebody? Was she thinking of running away with somebody?

On the way back to the office, I carefully slipped the letter from the envelope and read it. Read it four times, as a matter of fact. And felt worse every time I did.

So Chris Tomlin, her ridiculously handsome, ridiculously wealthy, ridiculously slick college boyfriend was back in her life.

I can’t tell you much about the rest of the afternoon. It’s all very vague: Voices spoke to me, phones rang at me, computer printers spat things at me — but I didn’t respond. I felt as if I were scuttling across the floor of an ocean so deep that neither light nor sound could penetrate it.

Chris Tomlin. My God.

I kept reading the letter, stopping only when I’d memorized it entirely and could keep rerunning it in my mind without any visual aid.

Not even good old Ms. Sanders could penetrate my stupor. I know she charged into my office a few times and made some nasty threats — something about my not returning the call of one of our most important customers — but I honestly couldn’t tell you who she wanted me to call or what she wanted me to say.

About all I can remember is that it got very dark and cold suddenly. The lights blinked on and off a few times. We were having a terrible rainstorm. Somebody came in soaked and said that the storm sewers were backing up and that downtown was a mess.

Not that I paid this information any particular heed.

I was wondering if she’d call him Thursday night. I took it as a foregone conclusion that she would have lunch with him on Friday. But how about Thursday night?

Would she visit him in his hotel room?

And come to think of it, why had she chosen me over Chris Tomlin? I mean, while I may not be a nerd, I’m not exactly a movie star, either. And with Chris Tomlin, there wouldn’t have been any penny-pinching for a down payment on a house, either.

With his daddy’s millions in pharmaceuticals, good ol’ Chris would have bought her a manse as a wedding present.

The workday ended. The usual number of people peeked into my office to say the usual number of good nights. The usual cleaning crew, high-school kids in gray uniforms, appeared to start hauling out trash and run roaring vacuum cleaners. And I went through my usual process of staying at my desk until it was time to pick up Laura.

I was just about to walk out the front door when I noticed in the gloom that Ms. Sanders’s light was still on.

She had good ears. Even above the vacuum cleaner roaring its way down the hall to her left, she heard me leaving and looked up.

She waved me into her office.

When I reached her desk, she handed me a slip of paper with some typing on it.

“How does that read to you, Donaldson?”

“Uh, what is it?”

“A Help Wanted ad I may be running tomorrow.”

That was another thing Miss Hutchison, my fourth-grade teacher, had been good at — indirect torture.

Ms. Sanders wanted me to read the ad she’d be running for my replacement.

I scanned it and handed it back.

“Nice.”

“Is that all you have to say? Nice?”

“I guess so.”

“You realize that this means I’m going to fire you?”

“That’s what I took it to mean.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Donaldson? Usually you’d be groveling and sniveling by now.”

“I’ve got some — personal problems.”

A smirk. “That’s what you get for reading your wife’s mail.” Then a scowl. “When you come in tomorrow morning, you come straight to my office, you understand?”

I nodded. “All right.”

“And be prepared to do some groveling and sniveling. You’re going to need it.”

Why don’t I just make a list of the things I found wrong with my Toyota after I slammed the door and belted myself in.

A) The motor wouldn’t turn over. Remember what I said about moisture and the fuel pump?

B) The roof had sprung a new leak. This was different from the old leak, which dribbled rain down onto the passenger seat. The new one dribbled rain down onto the driver’s seat.

C) The turn-signal arm had come loose again and was hanging down from naked wires like a half-amputated limb. Apparently, after finding the letter this morning, I was in so much of a fog I hadn’t noticed that it was broken again.

I can’t tell you how dark and cold and lonely I felt just then. Bereft of wife. Bereft of automobile. Bereft of — dare I say it? — self-esteem and self-respect. And, on top of it, I was a disciple of defeatism. Just ask my co-worker Dick Weybright.

The goddamned car finally started and I drove off to pick up my goddamned wife.

The city was a mess.

Lashing winds and lashing rains — both of which were still lashing merrily along — had uprooted trees in the park, smashed out store windows here and there, and had apparently caused a power outage that shut down all the automatic traffic signals.

I wanted to be home and I wanted to be dry and I wanted to be in my jammies. But most of all I wanted to be loved by the one woman I had ever really and truly loved.

If only I hadn’t opened her bureau drawer to hide her pearls...

She was standing behind the glass door in the entrance to the art-deco building where she works as a market researcher for a mutual-fund company. When I saw her, I felt all sorts of things at once — love, anger, shame, terror — and all I wanted to do was park the car and run up to her and take her in my arms and give her the tenderest kiss I was capable of.

But then I remembered the letter and...

Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about jealousy. There’s nothing worse to carry around in your stony little heart. All that rage and self-righteousness and self-pity. It begins to smother you and...

By the time Laura climbed into the car, it was smothering me. She smelled of rain and perfume and her sweet tender body.

“Hi,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet.”

Then, closing the door, she gave me a long, long look. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“Then why did you say, ‘Yeah. I’ll bet’?”

“Just being funny.”

She gave me another stare. I tried to look regular and normal. You know, not on the verge of whipping the letter out and shoving it in her face.

“Boy, this is really leaking.”

I just drove. There was a burly traffic cop out in the middle of a busy intersection directing traffic with two flashlights in the rain and gloom.

“Did you hear me, Rich? I said this is really leaking.”

“I know it’s really leaking.”

“What’s up with you, anyway? What’re you so mad about? Did Sanders give you a hard time today?”

“No — other than telling me that she may fire me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“But why?”

Because while I was going through your bureau, I found a letter from your ex-lover and I know all about the tryst you’re planning to set up.

That’s what I wanted to say.

What I said was: “I guess I wasn’t paying proper attention during another one of her goddamned sales meetings.”

“But Rich, if you get fired—”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence. If I got fired, we’d never get the house we’d been saving for.

“She told me that when I came in tomorrow morning, I should be prepared to grovel and snivel. And she wasn’t kidding.”

“She actually said that?”

“She actually said that.”

“What a bitch.”

“Boss’s daughter. You know how this city is. The last frontier for hard-core nepotism.”

We drove on several more blocks, stopping every quarter-block or so to pull out around somebody whose car had stalled in the dirty water backing up from the sewers.

“So is that why you’re so down?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

“Usually, about Sanders, I mean, you get mad. You don’t get depressed.”

“Well, Sanders chews me out but she doesn’t usually threaten to fire me.”

“That’s true. But—”

“But what?”

“It just seems that there’s — something else.” Then, “Where’re you going?”

My mind had been on the letter tucked inside my blazer. In the meantime, the Toyota had been guiding itself into the most violent neighborhood in the city. Not even the cops wanted to come here.

“God, can you turn around?” Laura said. “I’d sure hate to get stuck here.”

“We’ll be all right. I’ll hang a left at the next corner and then we’ll drive back to Marymount Avenue.”

“I wondered where you were going. I should have said something.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

That boil of feelings, of profound tenderness and profound rage, churned up inside of me again.

“Things’ll work out with Sanders,” she said, and then smiled. “Maybe she just hasn’t been sleeping well lately. You know her and her insomniac jags.”

I looked over at her and I couldn’t help it. The rage was gone, replaced by pure and total love. This was my friend, my bride, my lover. There had to be a reasonable and innocent explanation for the letter. There had to.

I started hanging the left and that’s when it happened. The fuel pump. Rain.

The Toyota stopped dead.

“Oh no,” she said, glancing out the windshield at the forbidding blocks of falling-down houses and dark, condemned buildings.

Beyond the wind, beyond the rain, you could* hear sirens. There were always sirens in neighborhoods like these.

“Maybe I can fix it,” I said.

“But honey, you don’t know anything about cars.”

“Well, I watched him make that adjustment last time.”

“I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “Besides, you’ll just get wet.”

“I’ll be fine.”

I knew why I was doing this, of course. In addition to being rich, powerful, and handsome, Chris Tomlin was also one of those men who could fix practically anything. I remembered her telling me how he’d fixed a refrigerator at an old cabin they’d once stayed in.

I opened the door. A wave of rain washed over me. But I was determined to act like the kind of guy who could walk through a meteor storm and laugh it off. Maybe that’s why Laura was considering a rendezvous with Chris. Maybe she was sick of my whining. A macho man, I’m not.

“Just be careful,” she said.

“Be right back.”

I eased out of the car and then realized I hadn’t used the hood latch inside. I leaned in and popped the latch and gave Laura a quick smile.

And then I went back outside into the storm.

I was soaked completely in less than a minute, my shoes soggy, my clothes drenched and cold and clinging. Even my raincoat.

But I figured this would help my image as a take-charge sort of guy. I even gave Laura a little half-salute before I raised the hood. She smiled at me. God, I wanted to forget all about the letter and be happily in love again.

Any vague hopes I’d had of starting the car were soon forgotten as I gaped at the motor and realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.

The mechanic in the shop had made it look very simple. You raised the hood, you leaned in and snatched off the oil filter and then did a couple of quick things to it and put it back. And voilà, your car was running again.

I got the hood open all right, and I leaned in just fine, and I even took the oil filter off with no problem.

But when it came to doing a couple of quick things to it, my brain was as dead as the motor. That was the part I hadn’t picked up from the mechanic. Those couple of quick things.

I started shaking the oil filter. Don’t ask me why. I had it under the protection of the hood to keep it dry and shook it left and shook it right and shook it high and shook it low. I figured that maybe some kind of invisible cosmic forces would come into play here and the engine would start as soon as I gave the ignition key a little turn.

I closed the hood and ran back through the slashing rain, opened the door, and crawled inside.

“God, it’s incredible out there.”

Only then did I get a real good look at Laura and only then did I see that she looked sick, like the time we both picked up a slight case of ptomaine poisoning at her friend Susan’s wedding.

Except now she looked a lot sicker.

And then I saw the guy.

In the backseat.

“Who the hell are you?”

But he had questions of his own. “Your wife won’t tell me if you’ve got an ATM card.”

So it had finally happened. Our little city turned violent about fifteen years ago, during which time most honest working folks had to take their turns getting mugged, sort of like a rite of passage. But as time wore on, the muggers weren’t satisfied with simply robbing their victims. Now they beat them up. And sometimes, for no reason at all, they killed them.

This guy was white, chunky, with a ragged scar on his left cheek, stupid dark eyes, a dark turtleneck sweater, and a large and formidable gun. He smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, beer, and a high, sweet, unclean tang.

“How much can you get with your card?”

“Couple hundred.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Couple hundred. I mean, we’re not exactly rich people. Look at this car.”

He turned to Laura. “How much can he get, babe?”

“He told you. A couple of hundred.” She sounded surprisingly calm.

“One more time.” He had turned back to me. “How much can you get with that card of yours?”

“I told you,” I said.

You know how movie thugs are always slugging people with gun butts? Well, let me tell you something. It hurts. He hit me hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to fill my sight with darkness and blinking stars, like a planetarium ceiling, and hard enough to lay my forehead against the steering wheel.

Laura didn’t scream.

She just leaned over and touched my head with her long, gentle fingers. And you know what? Even then, even suffering from what might be a concussion, I had this image of Laura’s fingers touching Chris Tomlin’s head this way. Ain’t jealousy grand?

“Now,” said the voice in the backseat, “let’s talk.”

Neither of us paid him much attention for a minute or so. Laura helped me sit back in the seat. She took her handkerchief and daubed it against the back of my head.

“You didn’t have to hit him.”

“Now maybe he’ll tell me the truth.”

“Four or five hundred,” she said. “That’s how much we can get. And don’t hit him again. Don’t lay a finger on him.”

“The mama lion fights for her little cub. That’s nice.” He leaned forward and put the end of the gun directly against my ear. “You’re gonna have to go back out in that nasty ol’ rain. There’s an ATM machine down at the west end of this block and around the corner. You go down there and get me five hundred dollars and then you haul your ass right back. I’ll be waiting right here with your exceedingly good-looking wife. And with my gun.”

“Where did you ever learn a word like exceedingly?” I said.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was just curious.”

“If it’s any of your goddamned business, my cellmate had one of them improve-your-vocabulary books.”

I glanced at Laura. She still looked scared but she also looked a little bit angry. For us, five hundred dollars was a lot of money.

And now a robber who used the word “exceedingly” was going to take every last dime of it.

“Go get it,” he said.

I reached over to touch Laura’s hand as reassuringly as possible, and that was when I noticed it.

The white number-ten envelope.

The one Chris had sent her.

I stared at it a long moment and then raised my eyes to meet hers.

“I was going to tell you about it.”

I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have looked in your drawer.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But I still owe you an explanation.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?”

“Nothing that’s exceedingly interesting,” I said, and opened the door and dangled a leg out and then had the rest of my body follow the leg.

“You got five minutes, you understand?” the man said.

I nodded and glanced at Laura. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry about the letter.”

“You know the funny thing? I was hiding your present, that’s how I found it. I was going to tuck it in your underwear drawer and have you find them. You know, the pearls.”

“You got me the pearl necklace?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, honey, that’s so sweet.”

“Go get the goddamned money,” the man said, “and get it fast.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Laura and blew her a little kiss.

If I hadn’t been sodden before, I certainly was now.

There were two brick buildings facing each other across a narrow alley. Most people drove up to this particular ATM machine because it was housed in a deep indentation that faced the alley. It could also accommodate foot traffic.

What it didn’t do was give you much protection from the storm.

By now, I was sneezing and feeling a scratchiness in my throat. Bad sinuses. My whole family.

I walked up to the oasis of light and technology in this ancient and wild neighborhood, took out my wallet, and inserted my ATM card.

It was all very casual, especially considering the fact that Laura was being held hostage.

The card would go in. The money would come out. The thief would get his loot. Laura and I would dash to the nearest phone and call the police.

Except I couldn’t remember my secret pin number.

If I had to estimate how many times I’d used this card, I’d put it at probably a thousand or so.

So how, after all those times, could I now forget the pin number?

Panic. That’s what was wrong. I was so scared that Laura would be hurt that I couldn’t think clearly.

Deep breaths. There.

Now. Think. Clearly.

Just relax and your pin number will come back to you. No problem.

That was when I noticed the slight black man in the rain parka standing just to the left of me. In the rain. With a gun in his hand.

“You wanna die?”

“Oh, shit. You’ve got to be kidding. You’re a goddamned thief?”

“Yes, and I ain’t ashamed of it either, man.”

I thought of explaining it to him, explaining that another thief already had first dibs on the proceeds of my bank account — that is, if I could ever remember the pin number — but he didn’t seem to be the understanding type at all. In fact, he looked even more desperate and crazy than the man who was holding Laura.

“How much can you take out?”

“I can’t give it to you.”

“You see this gun, man?”

“Yeah. I see it.”

“You know what happens if you don’t crank some serious money out for me?”

I had to explain after all. “... so, you see, I can’t give it to you.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Somebody’s already got dibs on it.”

“Dibs? What the hell does ‘dibs’ mean?”

“It means another robber has already spoken for this money.”

He looked at me carefully. “You’re crazy, man. You really are. But that don’t mean I won’t shoot you.”

“And there’s one more thing.”

“What?”

“I can’t remember my pin number.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true. That’s why I’ve been standing here. My mind’s a blank.”

“You gotta relax, man.”

“I know that. But it’s kind of hard. You’ve got a gun and so does the other guy.”

“There’s really some other dude holdin’ your old lady?”

“Right.”

He grinned with exceedingly bad teeth. “You got yourself a real problem, dude.”

I closed my eyes.

I must have spent my five minutes already.

Would he really kill Laura?

“You tried deep breathin’?”

“Yeah.”

“And that didn’t work?”

“Huh-uh.”

“You tried makin’ your mind go blank for a little bit?”

“That didn’t work, either.”

He pushed the gun right into my face. “I ain’t got much time, man.”

“I can’t give you the money, anyway.”

“You ain’t gonna be much use to your old lady if you got six or seven bullet holes in you.”

“God!”

“What’s wrong?”

My pin number had popped into my head.

Nothing like a gun in your face to jog your memory.

I dove for the ATM machine.

And started punching buttons.

The right buttons.

“Listen,” I said as I cranked away, “I really can’t give you this money.”

“Right.”

“I mean, I would if I could but the guy would never believe me if I told him some other crook had taken it. No offense, ‘crook,’ I mean.”

“Here it comes.”

“I’m serious. You can’t have it.”

“Pretty, pretty Yankee dollars. Praise the Lord.”

The plastic cover opened and the machine began spitting out green Yankee dollars.

And that’s when he slugged me on the back of the head.

The guy back in the car had hit me but it had been nothing like this.

This time, the field of black floating in front of my eyes didn’t even have stars. This time, hot shooting pain traveled from the point of impact near the top of my skull all the way down into my neck and shoulders. This time, my knees gave out immediately.

Pavement. Hard. Wet. Smelling of cold rain. And still the darkness. Total darkness. I had a moment of panic. Had I been blinded for life? I wanted to be angry but I was too disoriented. Pain. Cold. Darkness.

And then I felt his hands tearing the money from mine.

I had to hold on to it. Had to. Otherwise Laura would be injured. Or killed.

The kick landed hard just above my sternum. Stars suddenly appeared in the field of black. His foot seemed to have jarred them loose.

More pain. But now there was anger. I blindly lashed out and grabbed his trouser leg, clung to it, forcing him to drag me down the sidewalk as he tried to get away. I don’t know how many names I called him, some of them probably didn’t even make sense, I just clung to his leg, exulting in his rage, in his inability to get rid of me.

Then he leaned down and grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled so hard I screamed. And inadvertently let go of his leg.

And then I heard his footsteps, retreating, retreating, and felt the rain start slashing at me again. He had dragged me out from beneath the protection of the ATM overhang.

I struggled to get up. It wasn’t easy. I still couldn’t see. And every time I tried to stand, I was overcome by dizziness and a faint nausea.

But I kept thinking of Laura. And kept pushing myself to my feet, no matter how much pain pounded in my head, no matter how I started to pitch forward and collapse again.

By the time I got to my feet, and fell against the rough brick of the building for support, my eyesight was back. Funny how much you take it for granted. It’s terrifying when it’s gone.

I looked at the oasis of light in the gloom. At the foot of the ATM was my bank card. I wobbled over and picked it up. I knew that I’d taken out my allotted amount for the day but I decided to try and see if the cosmic forces were with me for once.

They weren’t.

The only thing I got from the machine was a snotty little note saying that I’d have to contact my personal banker if I wanted to receive more money.

A) I had no idea who this personal banker was, and

B) I doubted that he would be happy if I called him at home on such a rainy night even if I did have his name and number.

Then I did what any red-blooded American would do. I started kicking the machine. Kicking hard. Kicking obsessively. Until my toes started to hurt.

I stood for a long moment in the rain, letting it pour down on me, feeling as if I were melting like a wax statue in the hot sun. I became one with the drumming and thrumming and pounding of it all.

There was only one thing I could do now.

I took off running back to the car. To Laura. And the man with the gun.

I broke into a crazy grin when I saw the car. I could see Laura’s profile in the gloom. She was still alive.

I reached the driver’s door, opened it up, and pitched myself inside.

“My God, what happened to you?” Laura said. “Did somebody beat you up?”

The man with the gun was a little less sympathetic. “Where the hell’s the money?”

I decided to answer both questions at once. “I couldn’t remember my pin number so I had to stand there for a while. And then this guy — this black guy — he came out of nowhere and he had a gun and then he made me give him the money.” I looked back at the man with the gun. “I couldn’t help it. I told him that you had first dibs on the money but he didn’t care.”

“You expect me to believe that crap?”

“Honest to God. That’s what happened.”

He looked at me and smiled. And then put the gun right up against Laura’s head. “You want me to show you what’s gonna happen here if you’re not back in five minutes with the money?”

I looked at Laura. “God, honey, I’m telling the truth. About the guy with the gun.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” I glanced forlornly out the window at the rain filling the curbs. “I’ll get the money. Somehow.”

I opened the door again. And then noticed the white envelope still sitting on her lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, sweetheart.”

She was scared, that was easy enough to see, but she forced herself to focus and smile at me. “I love you, honey.”

“Get out of here and get that money,” said the man with the gun.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You heard what I said. Get going.”

I reached over and took Laura’s hand gently. “I’ll get the money, sweetheart. I promise.”

I got out of the car and started walking again. Then trotting. Then flat-out running. My head was still pounding with pain but I didn’t care. I had to get the money. Somehow. Somewhere.

I didn’t even know where I was going. I was just — running. It was better than standing still and contemplating what the guy with the gun might do.

I reached the corner and looked down the block where the ATM was located.

A car came from behind me, its headlights stabbing through the silver sheets of night rain. It moved on past me. When it came even with the lights of the ATM machine, it turned an abrupt left and headed for the machine.

Guy inside his car. Nice and warm and dry. Inserts his card, gets all the money he wants, and then drives on to do a lot of fun things with his nice and warm and dry evening.

While I stood out here in the soaking rain and—

Of course, I thought.

Of course.

There was only one thing I could do.

I started running, really running, splashing through puddles and tripping and nearly falling down. But nothing could stop me.

The bald man had parked too far away from the ATM to do his banking from the car. He backed up and gave it another try. He was concentrating on backing up so I didn’t have much trouble opening the passenger door and slipping in.

“What the—” he started to say as he became aware of me.

“Stickup.”

“What?”

“I’m robbing you.”

“Oh, man, that’s all I need. I’ve had a really crummy day today, mister,” he said. “I knew I never should’ve come in this neighborhood but I was in a hurry and—”

“You want to hear about my bad day, mister? Huh?”

I raised the pocket of my raincoat, hoping he would think that I was pointing a gun at him.

He looked down at my coat-draped fist and said, “You can’t get a whole hell of a lotta money out of these ATM machines.”

“You can get three hundred and that’s good enough.”

“What if I don’t have three hundred?”

“New car. Nice new suit. Maybe twenty CDs in that box there. You’ve got three hundred. Easy.”

“I work hard for my money.”

“So do I.”

“What if I told you I don’t believe you’ve got a gun in there?”

“Then I’d say fine. And then I’d kill you.”

“You don’t look like a stickup guy.”

“And you don’t look like a guy who’s stupid enough to get himself shot over three hundred dollars.”

“I have to back up again. So I can get close.”

“Back up. But go easy.”

“Some birthday this is.”

“It’s your birthday?”

“Yeah. Ain’t that a bitch?”

He backed up, pulled forward again, got right up next to the ATM, pulled out his card, and went to work.

The money came out with no problem. He handed it over to me.

“You have a pencil and paper?”

“What?”

“Something you can write with?”

“Oh. Yeah. Why?”

“I want you to write down your name and address.”

“For what?”

“Because tomorrow morning I’m going to put three hundred dollars in an envelope and mail it to you.”

“Are you some kind of crazy drug addict or what?”

“Just write down your name and address.”

He shook his head. “Not only do I get robbed, I get robbed by some goddamned fruitcake.”

But he wrote down his name and address, probably thinking I’d shoot him if he didn’t.

“I appreciate the loan,” I said, getting out of his car.

“Loan? You tell the cops it was a ‘loan’ and see what they say.”

“Hope the rest of your day goes better,” I said, and slammed the door.

And I hope the rest of my day goes better, too, I thought.

“Good thing you got back here when you did,” the man with the gun said. “I was just about to waste her.”

“Spare me the macho crap, all right?” I said. I was getting cranky. The rain. The cold. The fear. And then having to commit a felony to get the cash I needed — and putting fear into a perfectly decent citizen who’d been having a very bad day himself.

I handed the money over to him. “Now you can go,” I said.

He counted it in hard, harsh grunts, like a pig rutting in the mud.

“Three hundred. It was supposed to be four. Or five.”

“I guess you’ll just have to shoot us, then, huh?”

Laura gave me a frantic look and then dug her nails into my hands. Obviously, like the man I’d just left at the ATM, she thought I had lost what little of my senses I had left.

“I wouldn’t push it, punk,” the man with the gun said. “Because I just might shoot you yet.”

He leaned forward from the backseat and said, “Lemme see your purse, babe.”

Laura looked at me. I nodded. She handed him her purse. More rutting sounds as he went through it.

“Twenty-six bucks?”

“I’m sorry,” Laura said.

“Where’re your credit cards?”

“We don’t have credit cards. It’s too tempting to use them. We’re saving for a house.”

“Ain’t that sweet!”

He pitched the purse over the front seat and opened the back door.

Chill. Fog. Rain.

“You got a jerk for a husband, babe, I mean, just in case you haven’t figured that out already.”

Then he slammed the door and was gone.

“You were really going to tear it up?”

“Or let you tear it up. Whichever you preferred. I mean, I know you think I still have this thing for Chris but I really don’t. I was going to prove it to you by showing you the letter tonight and letting you do whatever you wanted with it.”

We were in bed, three hours after getting our car towed to a station, the tow truck giving us a ride home.

The rain had quit an hour ago. Now there were just icy winds. But it was snug and warm in the bed of my one true love and icy winds didn’t bother me at all.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “about being so jealous.”

“And I’m sorry about hiding the letter. It made you think I was going to take him up on his offer. But I really don’t have any desire to see him at all.”

Then we kind of just laid back and listened to the wind for a time.

And she started getting affectionate, her foot rubbing my foot, her hand taking my hand.

And then in the darkness, she said, “Would you like to make love?”

“Would I?” I laughed. “Would I?”

And then I rolled over and we began kissing and then I began running my fingers through her long dark hair and then I suddenly realized that—

“What’s wrong?” she said, as I rolled away from her, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling.

“Let’s just go to sleep.”

“God, honey, I want to know what’s going on. Here we are making out and then all of a sudden you stop.”

“Oh God,” I said. “What a day this has been.” I sighed and prepared myself for the ultimate in manly humiliation. “Remember that time when Rick’s sister got married?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I got real drunk?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that night we tried — well, we tried to make love but I couldn’t?”

“Uh-huh.” She was silent a long moment. Then, “Oh God, you mean, the same thing happened to you just now?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

“The perfect ending to the perfect day,” I said.

“First you find that letter from Chris—”

“And then I can’t concentrate on my job—”

“And then Ms. Sanders threatens to fire you—”

“And then a man sticks us up—”

“And then you have to stick up another man—”

“And then we come home and go to bed and—” I sighed. “I think I’ll just roll over and go to sleep.”

“Good idea, honey. That’s what we both need. A good night’s sleep.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to... well, you know.”

“It’s fine, sweetie. It happens to every man once in a while.”

“It’s just one of those days,” I said.

“And one of those nights,” she said.

But you know what? Some time later the grandfather clock in the living room woke me as it tolled twelve midnight, and when I rolled over to see how Laura was doing, she was wide awake and took me in her sweet warm arms, and I didn’t have any trouble at all showing her how grateful I was.

It was a brand-new day... and when I finally got around to breakfast, the first thing I did was lift the horoscope section from the paper... and drop it, unread, into the wastebasket.

No more snooping in drawers... and no more bad-luck horoscopes.