Four
Dave napped until dusk Saturday evening. He put on
his drinking clothes, denim pants and a dark T-shirt. Lori confronted him
at the front door when he tried to sneak out unseen. "You're going to
leave us," she said softly, careful not to alert the children to their
confrontation. Wendy was safely tucked away in her room, and Leslie out
of earshot in front of the television. "I know there's another woman. I
think we should talk about it."
"Me and a few of the boys from the department are
going looking for Bill Cornell," Dave said in his most somber tone of
voice. "He took off with his truck and his shotgun. We think he might
try to kill himself."
Which was undoubtedly a partial truth. "But we have
to talk. This can't go on indefinitely."
He looked away guiltily. "We'll talk, but stay away
from Karen Radcliff until the sheriff finds out what happened at the
farm. It's not likely it was any kind of an accident."
It felt strange to have Dave think her life to be in
danger, although it wasn't going to keep him home for the night. She
followed him out the front door and sat on the porch steps, watching the
truck drive away. Stoplights flashed bright crimson at the highway.
Tires squealed, and Dave accelerated hard toward town.
Carol crossed the street to investigate. She had
thrown a light robe over her bikini and carried two cans of beer. "You
look so forlorn, Hon." She popped the tabs and handed Lori one of the
beers. "You're going to have to do something about it."
"What am I supposed to do, may I ask?" She thought
of Amy asking the very same question just moments ago. Still, she
couldn’t resist the temptation to retaliate. “What are you going to do
about Ruben? He's not a good choice of bedmates, Carol."
Carol frowned, not at all offended by Lori's
counterattack. "He's everything I ever wanted in a man, the bastard."
Ruben made Lori's skin crawl. He kept his black hair
slicked back and with his receding chin and prominent nose, he reminded
her of a rat. She had only seen him at a distance to date, but any
distance at all was too close for her liking.
It had already occurred to her that Ruben might be
the source of the glass eye of her recurring nightmare. She assumed the
glass eye of the dream to be a camera, but Ruben actually had a
glass eye, his left one. What else could the dream be but her petty fears
getting all mixed up in usual dream-like fashion that never made a whole
lot of sense anyhow?
Carol glanced at her in sudden worry. "Keep it to
yourself what I said about the drug-running. I confided in you."
"I won't say anything."
"He brags about it," Carol said. "He says he has
bank accounts in five states. I'm not so sure he's lying."
"Get rid of him. Take my advice and I’ll take any
you have to offer. Have you heard about the plant closing?"
"It been a rumor for a few weeks now."
"Nobody told me about it."
"Nobody wanted to. I sure didn't."
"I feel like I've been struck by lightning," Lori
said. "I can't even imagine what's going to happen to us. Ralph got
fired today. How’s Amy going to cope with that man?"
"Things always seem to work out," Carol assured her.
"They never get much better, but what the hell.”
Lori eyed the cold beer in her hand. She took a sip
and grimaced. She didn't like the taste of beer, but it quenched her
thirst.
"Want me to bring over my VCR and a Chippendale tape
after the kids go to bed?" Carol said with a hopeful grin. “It would give
you something nice to dream about."
Lori looked away, her mood darkened by the subject of
dreams.
Carol wrinkled her nose. "Something from one of
those slasher movies the kids are always watching, do you suppose?"
Lori shook her head. The recurring dream associated
with absolutely nothing of her waking existence. She had absolutely no
idea where it came from or what it meant. A wash of panic swept over
her. Her chest ached with the effort to contain all the hurt and fear she
was feeling. "Why us? Why all these terrible things happening all at
once?"
Carol shrugged stoically. "You don't read bumper
stickers. Shit happens. There’s one or two things about Virginia Cornell
I think you should know. She drank too much and she could be really
obnoxious. Except for Karen, I don't think she had any friends.
Everybody is figuring that Karen dropped her off at the house and that she
drank a few too many and then went out to the pig sty to do a chore or
something and just fell in."
Lori shook her head. "She left the water in the tub
running, and her clothes and the phone were on the floor. She called
Karen and said there was a prowler."
"Well, then she went out to check out a figment of
her own drunken imagination and just fell in anyhow. People do stupid
things when they drink."
"I don't know why they drink to begin with," Lori
said in a petulant whisper.
Carol guzzled what was left of her beer, crushed the
aluminum can in her fist, and rose nervously to her feet. "I'm getting a
chill, something the Chippendales can help with. If you care to join me,
we'll have a shot of something stronger and I'll introduce you to the
rationale of grain alcohol. I think you'll like the way it disables the
brain cells that do most of the worrying. Okay?"
Lori flashed a smile back up at the woman. "Okay."
Carol's smile faded. "If Dave leaves, it won't be
the end of the world, Hon."
"I know."
Carol sashayed back across the street. Lori watched
her go with a twinge of pity. Greg provided her with the three-room house
rent-free, but Gregg was in his late fifties and more in need of a
companion and nurse-maid than a bed partner. Ruben had apparently
succeeded in reigniting Carol's waning passions, but Greg was her only
real future. If Carol held too stubbornly to the illusion of her
vanishing youth, she stood to loose more than just a job.
Lori wondered if she could be as objective and
cold-blooded about herself and Dave. They had started out with such
promise. Dave had graduated from an electronics trade school, but had
gone to work in the new factory for more money and the family health
insurance when she had gotten
pregnant with Wendy. They thought they had chosen their lifestyle of
their own free will, but she could see now how they both had been born and
raised to a blue-collar, dead-end, middle-class existence, blind to their
unworkable dreams and unsustainable passions of youth. Or was Dave still
blind, looking elsewhere for the fulfillment of dreams he would never
outgrow?
The madcap day refused her a moment's respite. A
piercing shriek of sounded from inside the house. Lori was on her feet
and in headlong flight through the front door in an instant, letting out a
resonant cry of her own of unbearable frustration.
