“Jeepers, Ralph, look at her! Did he really beat her up because she signed some stupid patition?”

“I guess so,” Ralph said. The conversation made perfect sense to him, but it was coming in long distance. His rage was closer; it had its hot arms locked around his neck, it seemed. He wished he were forty again, even fifty, so he could give Ed a taste of his own medicine. And he had an idea he might try doing that anyway.

He was turning the thumb-bolt of the door when McGovern grabbed his shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to see Ed.”

“Are you kidding? He’ll take you apart if you get in his face.

Didn’t you see what he did to her.

“You bet I did,” Ralph replied. The words weren’t quite a snarl, but close enough to make McGovern drop his hand.

“You’re seventy fucking years old, Ralph, in case you forgot. And Helen needs a friend right now, not some busted-up antique she cat visit because her hospital room is three doors down from hers.”

Bill was right, of course, but that only made Ralph angrier, He supposed the insomnia was at work in this, too, stoking his anger that made no difference. In a way, and blurring his judgment, buly, than drifting through the anger was a relief. It was better, certain of dark gray. A world where everything had turned shade some Demerol “if he beats me up bad enough, they’ll give me the kid. “Now leave me alone, and I can get a decent night’s sleep,” he said Bill.” parking lot at a brisk walk. A police He crossed the Red Apple Questionshing with its blue grille flashers pulsing. car was approaching. She okay?-were thrown at him, but Ralph ignored What happened? He waited for the police car to swing them. He paused on the side venue at that same brisk into the parking lot, then crossed Harris Avenue at a prudent walk, with McGovern trailing anxiously after him in the distance.

CHAPTER 3

Ed and Helen Deepneau lived in a small Cape Cod-chocolatebrown, whipped-cream trim, the kind of house which older women often call “darling”-four houses up from the one Ralph and Bill McGovern shared.

Carolyn had liked to say the Deepneaus belonged to “the Church of the Latter-Day Yuppies,” although her genuine liking for them had robbed the phrase of any real bite. They were laissez-faire vegetarians who considered both fish and dairy products okay, they had worked for Clinton in the last election, and the car in the driveway-not a Datsun now but one of the new mini-vanswas wearing bumper stickers which said SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS and FUR ON ANIMALS, NOT PEOPLE.

The Deepneaus had also apparently kept every album they had ever purchased during the sixties-Carolyn had found this one of their most endearing characteristics-and now, as Ralph approached the Cape Cod with his hands curled into fists at his sides, he heard Grace Slick wailing one of those old San Francisco anthems:

“One pill makes you bigger,

One pill makes you small,

And the others that Mother give, you

Don’t do anything at all,

Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall”.

The music was coming from a boombox on the Cape Cod’s postage stamp sized porch. A sprinkler twirled on the lawn, making a shisha-bisha-hisha sound as it cast rainbows in the air and deposited a shiny wet patch on the sidewalk. Ed Deepneau, shirtless, was sitting in a lawn-chair to the left of the concrete walk with his legs crossed, looking up at the sky with the bemused expression of a man trying to decide if the cloud passing overhead looks more like a horse or a unicorn. One bare foot bopped up and down in time to the music. The book lying open and face-down in his lap went perfectly with the music pouring from the boombox. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins.

An all but perfect summer vignette; a scene of small-town serenity Norman Rockwell might have painted and then titled Afternoon Off.

All you had to overlook was the blood on Ed’s knuckles and the drop on the left lens of his round John Lennon specs.

“Ralph, for God’s sake don’t get into a fight with him!” McGovern hissed as Ralph left the sidewalk and cut across the lawn. He walked through the lawn sprinkler’s fine cold spray almost without feeling it.

Ed turned, saw him, and broke into a sunny grin. “Hey, Ralph!” he said. “Good to see you, man!”

In his mind’s eye, Ralph saw himself reaching out and shoving Ed’s chair, pushing him over and spilling him onto his lawn. He saw Ed’s eyes widen with shock and surprise behind the lenses of his glasses.

This vision was so real he even saw the way the sun reflected on the face of Ed’s watch as he tried to sit up.

“Grab yourself a beer and drag up a rock,” Ed, was saying. “if you feel like a game of chess-”

“Beer? A game of chess? Christ Jesus, Ed, what’s wrong with you?”

Ed didn’t answer immediately, only looked at Ralph with an expression that was both frightening and infuriating. It was a mixture of amusement and shame, the look of a man who’s getting ready to say Aw, shit, honey-did I forget to put out the trash again?

Ralph pointed down the hill, past McGovern, who was standing-he would have been lurking if there had been something to lurk behind-near the wet patch the sprinkler had put on the sidewalk, watching them nervously. The first police car had been joined by a second, and Ralph could faintly hear the crackle of radio calls through the open windows.

The crowd had gotten quite a bit bigger.

“The police are there because of Helen.” he said, telling himself not to shout, it would do no good to shout, and shouting an as, “They’re there because you beat up your wife, is that getting through to youp”

“Oh,” Ed said, and rubbed his cheek ruefully. “That.”

“Yes, that,” Ralph said. He now felt almost stupefied with rage.

Ed peered past him at the police cars, at the crowd standing around the Red Apple… and then he saw McGovern.

“Bill!” he cried. McGovern recoiled. Ed either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Hey, man! Drag up a rock! Want a beer.

That was when Ralph knew he was going to hit Ed, break his stupid little round-lensed spectacles, drive a splinter of glass into his eye, maybe. He was going to do it, nothing on earth could stop him from doing it, except at the last moment something did. It was carolyn’s voice he heard inside his head most frequently these days When he wasn’t just muttering along to himself, that was-but this wasn’t Carolyn’s voice; this one, as unlikely as it seemed, belonged to Trigger Vachon, whom he’d seen only once or twice since the day Trig had saved him from the thunderstorm, the day Carolyn had had her first seizure.

A-11, Ralph.” Be damn careful, you.” Div one crazy like a fox.

Maybe he wanted you to hit him.

Yes, he decided. Maybe that was just what Ed wanted. Why? Who knew? Maybe to muddy the waters up a little bit, maybe just because he was crazy.

“Cut the shit,” he said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper.

He was gratified to see Ed’s attention snap back to him in a hurry, and even more pleased to see Ed’s pleasantly vague expression of rueful amusement disappear. It was replaced by a narrow, watchful expression.

It was, Ralph thought, the look of a dangerous animal with its wind up.

Ralph hunkered down so he could look directly at Ed, “Vlas it Susan Day?” he asked in the same soft voice. “Susan Day and the abortion business? Something about dead babies? Is that why you unloaded on Helen?”

There was another question on his mind-who are you really, Ed?-but before he could ask it, Ed reached out, placed a hand in the center of Ralph’s chest, and pushed. Ralph fell backward onto the damp grass, catching himself on his elbows and shoulders. He lay there with his feet flat on the ground and his knees up, watching as Ed suddenly sprang out of his lawn-chair.