Everybody's Fool

Embers

RAYMER AWOKE TO a sensation he remembered both vividly and fondly, Becka running her fingers lightly through his thinning hair, barely touching his scalp, mere proximity causing the hair to lift in yearning toward her touch. He smiled, enjoying the feeling, unwilling to open his eyes. There’s something I need to tell you, she murmured.

I know, he told her. I’m going bald.

Because this had been her favorite thing to inform him about in moments of intimacy back when they were still in love, as if the shower drain hadn’t already eloquently confirmed that diagnosis. How am I going to do this when you don’t have hair?

There’ll be plenty on the sides, he always assured her. I’ll comb it over.

You will not.

I’ll get implants.

Negative.

Then you’ll just have to—

Find another man — this one with hair. Yes, that’s what I’ll have to do.

This was how he expected the conversation to go now, so he was surprised when her tone grew serious. No, something else.

What? he said, and when she didn’t immediately respond, he added, You can tell me.

Then listen.

Of course neither Becka nor anyone else was actually speaking to him. Becka had come down the stairs like a Slinky and was dead. His hair was just stirring in the lovely breeze. When at last he opened his eyes, he saw the truth of this. There was no Becka. He was alone in the dark. Unable to accept this truth, he closed his eyes again, willing her return, because in addition to running her fingers through his hair, she’d whispered something to him, something he hadn’t quite caught but that seemed important.

Whatever she’d wanted him to know, it was gone and so was she. Opening his eyes again, he saw he was being observed by a single red eye, something that, before he could bring it into focus, then closed. Did cobras have red eyes, he wondered. Was it coiled there at the foot of his bed? He realized he should care, but somehow couldn’t rouse any sense of urgency. Had it already bitten him? Was that why he was having so much trouble waking up, its lethal venom already coursing through his veins? Was his death approaching? Was that what Becka had needed him to know? Was that why she’d visited him? If so, fine. All he wanted, really, was to lie here awhile in this delicious breeze. When his hair stirred again, he saw that the snake had reopened its red eye. In fact, a second eye winked open to stare at him until the breeze died and both eyes closed. Then they were open again, glowing a deeper red this time, though when a third eye opened, Raymer came fully awake. He didn’t know much about cobras, but he was pretty sure they didn’t have three eyes.

Then all at once reality returned in a rush of sensory data and memory. In the dream he’d been home in bed, but in reality he was out on Charice’s back porch — it’d been too hot to eat indoors — where he’d fallen asleep when she went inside to fetch dessert. Full of delicious grilled lamb and red wine, he’d meant to just rest his eyes for a minute. God, those lamb chops! How many had he devoured? Seven? Could he really have eaten so many? Why hadn’t he stopped at…Jesus, even four was probably too many. Because they were so delicious. That’s why. There’d been a lovely bottle of red wine as well — no, wait — two bottles. He’d been tipsy even before they’d started to eat.

Dear God, what a day! That afternoon at Gert’s he’d rediscovered beer and now, tonight, red wine. Delicious. As thick and bloody and textured as the lamb. Becka preferred white wine, so they’d drunk that, but red…wow! Why had he stopped drinking red wine? But on this particular evening the better question was, why hadn’t he stopped? Had he swilled an expensive bottle of red wine that was meant to be sipped? How much had the meal cost her? Loin lamb chops, over ten bucks a pound, easy. Why hadn’t he asked Charice to stop at the liquor store on the way so he could contribute something to their feast?

And just that quickly, misgiving morphed into full-blown panic. What had he done? At what point had the whole evening gone south? Idiocy, after the fact, resisted precision. That he’d somehow managed to ruin a perfectly wonderful evening was obvious. Why hadn’t he seen that wreck coming? The overwhelming sense of well-being that had come over him sitting there on a hot summer night in the company of an attractive young woman really should have been a dead giveaway. When in his entire life had such profound contentment ever presaged anything but catastrophe? The very fact that at some point in the evening he’d stopped being scared shitless of Charice should have been a further tip-off. Because Charice was a scary woman. If you weren’t scared of her, you weren’t paying attention.

And speaking of…where was she? What had happened to her? She’d gathered up their greasy plates, his piled high with those little Gothic T-bones — had he actually picked them up with his fingers and gnawed on them? really done that? — and brought them into the kitchen. Had he offered to help, or even stood up to open the screen door? He couldn’t remember, so probably not. No, he’d just sat there like a lump, sated, drunk, beached, his chin glistening. The kitchen phone had rung, he remembered that, and Charice had answered it, taking the receiver on its long cord into the next room. It was her receding voice (No, it’s okay…listen to me…it’s just like I said…as usual, you’re getting all worked up over nothing) that had led him to think that it wouldn’t hurt to close his eyes for just a minute. When she returned to the kitchen and hung up the phone, he’d hear her, surely. He’d fallen asleep to the sound of fat bugs pinging against the screen door, the kitchen lights blazing.

Now that same kitchen was ominously dark.

Off to the south, the sky lit up, briefly illuminating the low clouds, then darkened. Low rumbling followed, a thunderstorm tracking up the Northway. Still a ways off, but Raymer could already feel the electricity in the air. When the breeze came up again, stronger this time, the coals at the bottom of the Weber kettle — what was left of them — glowed red, snake eyes again. Wondering what time it was, he consulted his wrist, which was bare. He could picture the watch he’d hoped to find there on his desk at the station. Why hadn’t he put it back on when they left? Why had he taken it off in the first place? Could he guess at the time by the coals in the Weber? When he’d fallen asleep the briquettes were still pulsing angrily. All that remained now were a few marble-sized embers about to expire. How long did it take for coals to completely burn down? A couple hours? More? The street was pitch dark. Was that because it was three in the morning, or had the downtown power outage spread? For some reason it seemed vital to ascertain how much time had elapsed, as if that would clarify how much trouble he was in.

Why hadn’t Charice come out, jostled him awake and sent him the fuck home? Had she tried and been unable to rouse him? What if he hadn’t just been dozing? What if he’d passed out? Given the day he’d had and the fact that he’d gone nearly twenty-four hours without food, it was possible. He had, he knew, no head for alcohol. Back when he was married and had too much to drink, Becka had complained bitterly that it was impossible to wake him once he’d fallen asleep. Which meant that Charice had to be beyond pissed off, and who could blame her? He’d devoured her lamb chops and guzzled her expensive red wine and passed out before she could bring out dessert. Served him right to wake up alone and befuddled in the dark. Tomorrow, down at the station, Charice would no doubt add tonight’s boorish, unforgivable behavior to her long grievance list.

Rising, he tried the screen door, which didn’t budge. Seriously? He was locked out? The breeze came up again, chilling him this time. He knocked softly. No answer. Louder. “Charice?”

Silence.

Wow. Was she really angry enough to lock the door on him? Why would she do that? Immediately, he had the answer. A man who would behave as he had tonight might just be capable of even worse behavior. When he awoke from his drunken stupor, he might come into her bedroom in the middle of the night, determined to take advantage of her. Which was ridiculous. He’d never do such a thing, but how was she to know that?

“Charice?” he called again, surprised by the desperation that had crept into his voice. “Please?”

More silence. To this point he’d been proceeding under the assumption that she’d gone to bed, but another, even more ghastly possibility now occurred to him. Maybe she was sitting in the dark of the front room, enjoying his suffering. If so, calling her name would do no good. And even if she was asleep, did he really want to wake her? No, but guess what? He didn’t want to be outside during an electrical storm, either. The porch was covered, but the sloping roof had to be twelve feet above him. Wind would drive the rain horizontally, and he’d be drenched to the skin in short order. Lightning would probably locate the metal dome of the Weber grill and then look for other grounding opportunities, which Raymer himself, soaking wet, would provide.

“Charice?” he called, louder now, cupping his hands, trying to direct the sound inside so as not to wake the neighbors. “I’m really sorry, okay? I don’t blame you for being upset. But could you let me in? All I want is to go home.”

Was this an insulting thing to say? Probably. He half expected to see a yellow ribbon of light come on under her bedroom door, followed immediately by an angry woman pulling on a bathrobe. What’s that supposed to mean? All you want is to go home. Now you’re full of lamb chops and Cabernet, you got no further use for me? Is that what you’re sayin’? ’Cause, I’ma add that to my list.

Strange that in his imagination Charice should again be speaking in her teasing “black” voice, the one she used with him on the radio. During the course of the evening the syntax and vocal inflections that seemed to place her in a geographical and racial context had melted away. She’d sounded more like her brother, minus Jerome’s inflated diction. Or was he just making that up? At one point he’d almost asked, but the subject had then turned to Jerome and how he’d come so completely unglued over the attack on the ’Stang. Though loyal to her brother, she’d admitted to being concerned about his state of mind. He’d always been high strung, she said, and obsessive, as Raymer had observed. Apparently, he’d been employing a come-hither-leave-me-alone strategy with people since he was a boy. He’d always wanted friends, and later lovers, but also was repelled by intimacy and, at times, even proximity. Careful to cultivate an air of strident self-sufficiency, he was, according to Charice, extremely vulnerable. Raymer had taken all of this in, but was unsure how much to believe. Jerome had, on various occasions, given him to understand that Charice had moved to upstate New York so he’d be close by if she needed him, but tonight she’d hinted that the opposite was true — Jerome being comforted to have her close by. He’d been in therapy, she confided, for more than a decade. He took antianxiety medications that sometimes worked as intended but at other times made him even more anxious.

“Yeah, sure, okay,” Raymer said, more than willing to grant her general diagnosis, as well as the symbiotic nature of their relationship as twins, but he was still puzzled by the particulars of what he’d witnessed that afternoon. “Why would he think I’d ever do something like keying his car? And not just key it. Shred its canvas top and leather seats. Pee in it.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she assured him. “If I’d been there, it would’ve been me he suspected. And believe me. I have been there.”

Raymer must’ve looked dubious, because she’d continued. “You know your problem?” she said, pointing a glistening steak knife at him. It was a question she asked him at least once a day, which annoyed him less than the fact that every day she provided a different answer. “You think you’re the only one who’s messed up.”

“Yeah?” he’d replied, unsure why having her point out yet another human failing of his should be so pleasurable. Maybe it was because tonight her tone was not only nonjudgmental but almost, well, affectionate. For a moment he nearly expected her to put down her steak knife, reach across the table and take his hand.

“Whereas,” she told him, “everybody’s messed up.”

“Even you?”

“Okay, not everybody,” she conceded. She’d smiled then, and he must have smiled as well, because she said, “I know it’s been a rough year since…but you’re going to be okay, you know. If you just let yourself.”

It had been, now that he thought about it, the very nicest moment in a thoroughly wonderful evening. How was it even possible for things to devolve so quickly? How would he ever make it up to her?

“Charice?” he said. “I want to pay you for the lamb chops. Is that okay? And the wine? That was expensive, wasn’t it? I know your salary. I mean, I know everybody’s salary, not just yours. But I had a really nice time. I want to make sure you know that. I don’t blame you for being mad. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Or passed out. Whatever I did. But I’m really sorry, so would you please, please, let me in so I can go home?”

In the silence that followed, Raymer could feel himself slipping into one of his maudlin fugue states.

“I’m thinking about resigning, Charice,” he heard himself say. “Did you know that? I know you’re keeping a list of all the things I do wrong, so I guess I don’t have to explain why. I wish I was better at my job. I do. I wish I was better at everything. Anyway, I just want you to know…”

He stopped. What did he want her to know?

“Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the station, then.”

Her apartment was on the top floor of an old two-family house, the residences configured, as near as Raymer could tell, identically. Directly below her second-story porch was another just like it. Peering over the railing into the darkness below, he tried as best he could to gauge the distance to the ground, impossible to do except when the sky lit up again, providing him with the briefest of snapshots. The problem was that the land the house sat on sloped downward from the street — sharply at the rear of the house — toward a dry creek bed. The shortest distance to the ground was at the front of the porch, but there he’d be dropping onto either a sidewalk that ran alongside the house or the neighbor’s paved driveway. A kid could probably do it, might even enjoy the thrill, while Raymer would probably break a femur. The ground would be softer off the rear of the porch, but the drop was an additional three or four feet there, and given the slope he might land awkwardly and tumble into the ravine below. Better to climb down, surely, than to leap.

The porch was supported, front and back, by two sturdy-looking columns. Would it be possible for a man his size to shinny down one of these? Maybe, if he absolutely had to. Which he did. He decided against the front column because, if he lost his grip, it would be unforgiving concrete he’d land on, though from the rear he’d most likely drop into a large hedge, where he might well become entrapped or even impaled. No doubt about it: a smart man would stay right where he was, curl up into a ball and ride out the storm on the porch. Deal with Charice’s wrath in the morning. The sky lit up again, the storm closer now. He swung one leg over the railing.

Rotten wood, even when painted over, has the soft, porous feel of a badly told lie, and as Raymer began his cautious descent, his brain registered this alarming development even before the column, when he wrapped his legs around it, began to pull away from the porch floor it supported. In that instant a number of things ran through his mind, among them the realization that the last twenty-four hours were providing him with a graduate seminar in floors and ceilings and roofs and load-bearing support, an education that might very well be the death of him. Knowing that the column he was clinging to was no longer tethered securely to anything, he immediately felt the wisdom of clambering back up top. He still had one hand on the porch floor, but to haul his carcass over its lip he would need both hands, and even then he wasn’t sure he was strong enough. Still, what other choice did he have? He couldn’t very well just let go. When he reached up with his free hand and grabbed hold of a plank, however, it had the same punky feel as the column, and a split second later the handful of rotten floorboard came away in his hand, and the moment after that he lost his grip with his other hand, which meant he was now connected to the house by his legs alone. So, he thought, this is how it ends.

Except somehow it didn’t. The column, instead of wrenching completely free of the upstairs porch, as he might’ve expected, pulled away from the house a groaning inch at a time, allowing Raymer to wrap his arms around it and hang on for dear life. Then, amazingly, given that the post was no longer attached to the porch it was supposedly supporting, it stopped moving altogether. For the moment, though fifteen feet off the ground, he was stable. Unfortunately, the upstairs porch, at least to judge by the grinding sounds above, was not. Looking up, he saw the structure begin to sag. After which he saw nothing at all, because there was suddenly a blinding flash of light, incredibly close, that Raymer’s brain decoded as lightning, so he shut his eyes tight, bracing for the inevitable sizzle and thunderclap. This never came, but what did, again from above, was a rapid-fire crackling sound, the spindles of the upstairs railing snapping like twigs while the entire structure slumped even more dramatically. Having no desire to see all that come crashing down on him, Raymer kept his eyes sealed tightly shut and waited for the impact, but this didn’t come, either. It was as if the world’s effects had been abruptly hewn from their causes. When he finally did open his eyes, he discovered that his circumstance was far less perilous than he’d imagined. Yes, the column had completely detached from the upstairs porch, but it remained affixed, somehow, to the downstairs one, forming a radical V. By loosening his grip, he was able to slide right down it, then gently drop those last few harmless feet to the ground.

His mistake was remaining on the spot to marvel at the geometry of the column and the fact that the upstairs porch, despite its now-treacherous slope, somehow remained aloft. He heard the rattle of plastic wheels but didn’t put two and two together until the Weber kettle hit the splintered section of railing and capsized. As often happens in such situations, luck was on Raymer’s side until it wasn’t. The kettle’s dome, which might’ve killed him, landed with a dull thud behind him, then rolled down into the ravine. Even the rain of ashes and the last of the burning embers wouldn’t have been terribly problematic if he hadn’t been looking up.

But of course he was.

—

RAYMER HAD GONE only a couple blocks when he heard the familiar burp of a police siren. Turning, he made out one of North Bath’s three squad cars inching along behind him, close to the curb. Then the spotlight came on, finishing the job of blinding him that the falling ash had begun. He figured it had to be Miller at the wheel. Who else would be dumb enough to treat the boss like a common perp?

“That you, Chief?”

Sure enough, it was Miller’s voice. “Turn that fucking thing off,” Raymer told him, hands up to shield his burning eyes.

When blessed darkness returned, he went over to the vehicle, and the passenger window rolled down. “Why are you still on duty?” he asked Miller.

“Pulling a double,” he explained. The look on his face was astonishment bordering on, for some reason, fear. “What’s that you got all over you?”

Raymer ignored this. “Why are you here?”

“Like I said—”

“No, I mean here. On this street…this block. As opposed to anywhere else.”

“Responding to a call. Guy reported seeing a heavyset Caucasian man attempting to—”

“That was me.”

Miller nodded but was clearly troubled. “Actually, Chief? Right now you look more like…”

“Like what?”

“Like, well, a Negro-type individual.”

“You mean a black man?”

Miller sighed deeply. “Chief?” he said. “I’m not really understanding any of this. Am I supposed to?”

“Go on back to the station, okay? Forget this ever happened.”

When the window rolled back up, Raymer returned to the sidewalk and resumed walking, his eyes still smarting from the ash. At the end of the block he realized the cruiser was still creeping along the curb behind him. Again the window rolled down.

“Chief?”

“What, Miller?”

“Is this some kind of test? If the call that came into the station was about you, shouldn’t I be, like, questioning you?”

A fat drop of rain hit Raymer in the forehead, then another. There was an odd odor in the air. Strong. Nauseating. More thunder rumbled, very close now. “Instead of the station, how about driving me out to Hilldale,” he suggested. “I left my car there this morning. You can interrogate me on the way.”

“Sure, Chief,” Miller said, clearly excited by this opportunity.

Raymer had no sooner gotten in than the heavens opened with astonishing fury. “Wow,” Miller said, impressed by how the wind-driven torrents of rain rattled on the roof of the squad car and streamed down the windshield in wavy sheets. From outside the car there came a hissing sound, followed instantly by a clap of thunder so loud that Miller hit his head on the roof of the car when he levitated. “That was close,” he said. They both tried to peer out the back window, but with the rain you couldn’t see much. Raymer agreed, though. The lightning strike had to have been very close.

Miller took his hands off the metal steering wheel and made no move to put the vehicle in gear. When the rain finally let up enough to be heard, he said, like a man pretending that a thought had just occurred to him when in reality it’d been troubling him for a while, “Hey, doesn’t Charice, you know, Officer Bond, live around here somewhere?”

“If you say so,” said Raymer, who was about as good as Miller was at pretending not to know something.

Miller nodded, then went back to staring at the water streaming down the windshield.

“Look,” Raymer said, relenting a little. “Officer Bond invited me over for dinner, okay?”

Unless Raymer was mistaken, it certainly wasn’t okay with Miller. “Isn’t that—”

“Against the rules? Probably. That’s all, though. We just had dinner out on her back porch.”

Miller was sniffing. “What’s that smell?”

Raymer was wondering the same thing. The nauseating odor was stronger in the car than it had been in the street. Different from the Great Bath Stench, but right up there on the unpleasantness meter.

“Chief?”

“What?”

“Are you on fire?”

“Why would I be—”

“Look that way a sec.”

When Raymer turned his head, Miller yelped, grabbed a rolled-up magazine from the dash and commenced swatting the back of his head and neck with it, hard. Finally recognizing the smell as his own burning hair, Raymer let the other man have at him, though the blows rained down with such surprising ferocity that he had to wonder if his officer wasn’t driven by more than one motive.

“Am I out?” Raymer inquired, when the hitting finally stopped.

“I think so,” Miller told him. He cracked the door open enough for the dome light to come on, then used the end of the magazine to investigate Raymer’s hair where it was longish and thick and curled up in the back. “Something might’ve gone down the back of your shirt, though.”

Raymer leaned back against the seat and immediately felt a burning sensation between his shoulder blades, as if somebody’d just stubbed out a cigarette there.

The odor of burning hair was still thick in the car. “Didn’t you feel it?” Miller wanted to know.

“No, I didn’t. A man who knows he’s on fire will take steps.”

Miller nodded thoughtfully. “So what’d you have?”

“I’m sorry?”

“For dinner. You and Officer Bond.”

“Lamb chops.”

“Wow. What else?”

“Asparagus.”

“Mmmmm. Just the two of you?”

“Just us two.”

“So, are you—”

“No.”

“You’re just good—”

“Not even.”

“Because you sounded like you were having a good time. You were both laughing and all.”

Raymer was glad to have Miller confirm that things had been going well until they went badly, but the comment begged a couple fairly obvious questions. “Miller?”

“Yeah, Chief?”

“Do you have a crush on Officer Bond?”

Miller looked away, guilty. Even with only the dome on, Raymer could see that he was glowing red with embarrassment. “Me?”

“If you heard us laughing out on the porch, then you were there, which means you already knew where she lived when you asked me just now. Also, it was only a minute or two between when I climbed down from that porch and you showed up. Which means you were already in the neighborhood when the call came in.”

Miller stared at the still-streaming windshield. “God, I hate myself,” he said miserably. “Sometimes I drive by. Just to make sure she’s okay, you know?”

“Does she know about this?”

He shook his head. “Please don’t tell her?”

“Why don’t you just ask her out sometime?”

“Scared, I guess.”

“Well, she is pretty terrifying,” Raymer agreed.

“Plus I don’t think she likes me.”

“Don’t you want to find out?”

“Only if she does,” he said. “And there’s the…other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“It’s not that I’m prejudiced. It’s just that…”

“She’s a Negro-type individual?”

Miller closed the car door, probably so the dome light would go out and Raymer wouldn’t see the tears spill over, which he did anyway. “Seeing the two of you together, laughing and having such a great time, it made me realize I didn’t care. That could’ve been me up there eating lamb chops if I wasn’t such a…”

He was so clearly in distress that Raymer couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “Miller,” he began.

“So it doesn’t bother you? Her not being…like us?”

“Do you mean her being a woman or being black?”

“Yeah,” he said. Both. “But aren’t you afraid people will make jokes?”

“People make jokes about me already. I’m used to it.”

Miller nodded soberly.

“Anyway, it’s not like that between Officer Bond and me, so there’s nothing to make jokes about. Okay? Everything clear now?”

“Except the part about why you climbed down off her porch,” he said. “Was that some kind of…wager?”

“Yes,” Raymer told him, “it was.”

Miller looked uneasy about this explanation, though he himself had advanced it. “And why do you look like a Negro? Was that a wager, too?”

“No, this was an accident involving a Weber grill.” He started to explain further but decided against it. “And now I think you’ve investigated the incident fully. Good work.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.” The rain was finally letting up. “Can we go to the cemetery now?”

Miller put the car in gear, made a three-point turn and headed back up the street. In the distance, there were fire sirens. When they passed Charice’s, Raymer said, “Hold on a second.”

Miller stopped.

“Point your spotlight up there.”

Miller did as he was told, and Raymer couldn’t believe his eyes. In addition to the impressive damage he himself had caused, the porch was now scorched black and smoldering.

“Must be where that lightning hit,” Miller said. When his boss didn’t respond, he regarded him strangely. “Chief? You don’t look so good.”

In truth, he didn’t feel so good, either. His sense that Becka had visited him on that porch was still strong. He could still feel her fingers on his scalp, her whispering there was something she needed to tell him. If he hadn’t awakened when he did? And if he hadn’t climbed down from up there? He might be a toast-type individual.

—

BY THE TIME they arrived at Hilldale the rain had stopped, but there was more heat lightning to the south, and once again the rumble of distant thunder, another storm tracking in their direction. In the summer they sometimes bore down like this, relentless, one after the other, all night long.

The cemetery’s lot was a muddy lake, in the middle of which sat Raymer’s Jetta. When Miller pulled up next to it, he thanked him for the lift and instructed him to use the rest of his shift to stake out the Morrison Arms on the off chance that William Smith might return, though Raymer would’ve bet his life they’d seen the last of him.

“Chief?” Miller said, when he started to get out of the cruiser. “You gonna be all right?”

Raymer was touched by his concern. “I’ll be fine after I get some sleep.”

“Okay, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

“You look kind of…”

While he searched for the right word, Raymer considered the possibilities: Dispirited? Rode hard and put up wet? Chewed up and spit out? Or did Miller just mean to reiterate that, covered in ash as he was, he still resembled a Negro-type individual?

“Sad,” Miller finally said.

“Sad as in pathetic, or sad as in sorrowful?”

“Sad as in unhappy.”

“Oh.”

“Are you? Sad?”

Raymer wasn’t sure how to respond. There was a dim-witted earnestness about Miller that he found both endearing and infuriating, kind of like coming across an old photo of yourself, smiling ear to ear, happy as a pig in shit. The possibility that such happiness won’t and can’t last, that its source is genetic foolishness, hasn’t occurred to you yet, but it will.

“Because you shouldn’t be,” Miller said, an out-of-character confidence creeping into his voice.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the chief.”

For the moment that was true, though Raymer felt certain the question that had been dogging him of late — whether to resign — would soon be moot. When it became widely known that someone trafficking in lethal reptiles, handguns and drugs (yes, Justin had been right; weed, methamphetamine and prescription painkillers had indeed been found in 107’s bathroom) had been living for months in the Morrison Arms, where the chief of police also lived, that would be that.

“Look, Miller, I appreciate—”

“You’re the chief,” Miller repeated, downright adamant now. “Everybody’s got to do what you say.” Clearly, giving orders was the end Miller desperately hoped to achieve without first understanding the means. Had Raymer himself ever wanted that? To tell people what to do?

“Nobody does what I say, actually,” Raymer assured him. Charice routinely ignored his orders if she considered them unwise. Likewise, her brother. Even old Mr. Hynes felt free to ignore his advice. When an armed white man in a position of authority couldn’t even get black people to take him seriously, well, it said something, didn’t it?

“I do,” Miller said. Which was true. Until he learned to think, Miller had little choice but to remain a model of literal-minded obedience.

“And I appreciate it,” Raymer said, anxious to draw this conversation to a close. “Well, good night, then.”

“Chief?” said Miller, evidently just as anxious to prolong it.

“What, Miller?”

“Am I going to get fired?”

Raymer paused, unsure what he was asking: if the day would ever come when Raymer would have to terminate him, or if plans to do so were already afoot? “Why do you ask?”

“I knew it,” Miller said, dropping his head miserably. “It’s Officer Bond’s brother, isn’t it?”

“Jerome?”

“He’s coming to work for us?”

“No.”

Miller looked dubious. “Then why’s he always hanging around?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question,” Raymer admitted, recalling that afternoon’s conversation between Gus and Jerome at the mill. Was Jerome considering some sort of offer? The mayor pressing him for an answer? At the time Raymer, his head throbbing mercilessly, hadn’t given the matter much thought. Gus always had something going on. But maybe Miller was onto something. Was Raymer to be replaced — by Jerome? Had Jerome surmised that Raymer had found out about the plot against him and keyed the ’Stang in retaliation? If so, what part had Charice played in all this? Had she invited him to dinner in the hopes of figuring out what, if anything, he knew? That phone call she’d received just as he was drifting off on the back porch? Her casual tone had suggested she was talking to a girlfriend with boy trouble. (What had she said? As usual, you’re getting all worked up over nothing.) But what if it was Jerome who’d called, wanting to know what she’d learned? That made a kind of sense, except that Charice hadn’t seemed particularly curious during dinner. She’d spent more time trying to explain her brother’s bizarre behavior than questioning Raymer about his own.

“I wonder where she went?” Miller said, what seemed to Raymer a completely out-of-left-field question.

“Who?”

“Charice. Officer Bond.”

“She went somewhere?”

“Her car wasn’t in the drive just now.”

This was true, Raymer realized. Her Civic hadn’t been there. He’d been so focused on her destroyed porch he hadn’t really taken in the car’s absence and what that might mean. A wave of relief washed over him then, because among other things it meant that when he’d been pleading with Charice to let him back in the house, she hadn’t even been there. Nor had she heard his truly lame offer to reimburse her for the lamb chops or his pitiful admission that he was a terrible cop and a worse chief of police. She must’ve left shortly after receiving that phone call. Maybe she’d come to the screen door to explain that she’d be back shortly, seen him blissfully asleep and switched off the kitchen light so as not to disturb him. Maybe she’d locked the screen door to indicate he wasn’t supposed to leave until she returned. Okay, that last part made no sense, but maybe there was still some small piece of the puzzle he was missing. The important thing was that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t pissed at him after all — although it was also true that in this same scenario she didn’t know he’d managed to ruin her landlord’s porch totally. Maybe, he thought happily, they’d conclude it had been destroyed by that lightning strike.

“Miller,” Raymer said, impressed that the man had actually noticed the missing car. “You may make a cop yet.”

“Really?”

“You should stop stalking Officer Bond, though.”

“I know,” he said. “You probably think I’m a creep.”

“No, but she would.”

He nodded sadly. “Chief?” he said. “You think she’d go out with somebody like me?”

Not really wanting to answer this question, Raymer sought clarification. “You or somebody like you?” Because Raymer himself, he had to admit, was “like” Miller: perpetually bewildered and self-conscious and full of self-loathing. So yeah, it would’ve been nice to be able to say that Charice could conceivably fall for somebody like Miller, if not Miller himself.

The breeze came up just then, lifting Raymer’s hair as it had done on Charice’s porch, and yet again he felt, or imagined he did, Becka’s proximity, her need to communicate something to him. He even had a glimmer of what it might be.

Miller was looking glum. “Would I get fired? If I asked her out and she said yes?”

“It’s against the rules for me to date her, not you. I’m her boss. Whereas you…” Raymer struggled to locate the exact language needed to describe a relationship between Charice and Miller that didn’t exist and hopefully never would.

“I’m nothing,” he said, finally putting the cruiser in gear. “I know.”