Summer Cool

15

Paine knew the place. There had been barbecues a long time ago, in another world, when Paine had been a rookie cop and Bob and Terry Petty had first been married, when Coleman had no lines on his face and didn't sweat, and all the other young and old cops had smiled and drunk beer and cooked hot dogs and the smell of hamburgers, which is like no other smell in the summer, filled the big backyard and drifted like smoke over them all, the young and the old cops, and up into the late summer afternoons. Paine remembered it well. He had enjoyed himself here, in the beginning, which was all there was, really, and later, after he was gone from the police, he had heard from Bob Petty that they still had their barbecues at this place but that it wasn't the same. There was no Paine and no Bob and Terry Petty, and Coleman had newer friends then and from what Petty had said they didn't laugh so much, and there was a lot of talk about who was making how much money and where he was getting it. These were the times before Bryers was brought in, and, for a time, there were cops who met at this place who thought they were God, but discovered otherwise.

Paine parked his car not in the empty lot, but around the corner. He had cruised past first, looking for a car that might be Coleman's but there were no cars in the empty lot and the club itself looked deserted, and the picnic tables on the roughly cut lawn sloping down to the railroad embankment, where the trains went by to New York City, were empty and forlorn looking. Beyond the railroad tracks was the Hudson River, and once, at one of those parties in that first and last summer, on the Fourth of July, Paine had sat on one of those picnic tables with Ginny, and watched the fireworks that the river towns sent up, and it had been hot but he had liked the heat, and he had sat with his arm around his wife and, being so young, had thought that this was as good as it got. Later that same night he had gotten very drunk, and tried to kiss Terry Petty.

The clubhouse was a building out in the open near the parking lot, with a bar and locker rooms inside. Paine approached it cautiously. There were no windows open, and Paine used the few trees nearby as cover.

The door was closed, but when Paine tried it, it opened inward into darkness. Paine stepped in and to the side, closing the door behind him.

The bar was deserted, chairs upended onto tables, cords from the bowling machine and the light above the shuffleboard table pulled from their sockets.

Paine moved to the bar and looked behind it. The lights over the mirror behind the bar were off, but he could see that there was no one there.

Paine crossed to the opening of the locker room, and called into the dark opening, "Coleman?"

There was no answer.

Paine moved around the opening into the locker room, snapping on the light switch.

A bank of overhead fluorescents went on, one after another. One rogue lamp began to blink fitfully.

The place smelled of men, and disinfectant, and powdered soap. The floor was tiled white, the walls painted a hearty green that had bleached with time.

"Coleman?"

No sound-not the breath of fear, the cock of the hammer of a.38 Special. Nothing.

Paine moved through the dressing area, past a row of urinals and wall-mounted white sinks. He checked the stalls behind the urinals, pushing the doors slowly back. They were empty.

"Coleman?"

Still no sound, but a coppery smell now, afresh, hard smell that overwhelmed the disinfectant and powdered soap from the teardrop dispensers on the walls over the sinks.

Paine moved into the shower area.

It was a large room, bleached green walls, gray-enameled cement floors, shower heads at head height in the walls, floor funneling gently to a drain in the center of the room. Something very red had ceased raining into the opening, and was beginning to dry up the slope of the gray floor to the shower wall.

Coleman's torso had been butchered like an ox. The bright smell of blood made Paine gag, but he saw enough of human organs in the split and opened thoracic cavity to fully illustrate a medical textbook. The limbs had been cleanly severed, and lay stacked against the wall. Coleman's head, showing grotesque surprise, had been mounted on one of the shower heads, looking down at the remains of the rest of the body.

Paine's legs grew weak. He turned and walked out, making it almost to the lockers before his stomach emptied. He stood under the flickering neon tube, and there was nothing but the sickening sound of vomitus hitting ceramic until his stomach was dry. It had been that look on Coleman's face, that grotesque look of surprise that said, "Is this how I go?" that did it.

After awhile, Paine stood, and pushed himself away from the lockers. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

He went back out into the barroom, and went behind the bar. There was a water tap over a deep rectangular aluminum sink, and he turned it on and took a glass from behind the bar and drank. He drank until the taste of vomit and copper receded from his mouth. The water got colder as it ran, and he continued to drink but the taste would not go away.

He left, finally, making his way cautiously back to his car, the taste of death still in his mouth.