The Last Good Kiss

  Usually, on those sleepless nighttime trips to the bathroom, I had to take a long look at my own battered, whiskey-worn face, searching it for a glimpse of the face it might have been but for the wasted years, the bars, the long nights. But this night, I rubbed my thumb over the faces locked beneath the brown translucent glaze, all the weeping women, and I had no pity left for myself.

  I had made my own bed and went to it to sleep, then to rise and do what I knew I had to do, to pay what I owed the women.

  9••••

  AN OLD DRINKING BUDDY OF MINE HAD COME HOME FROM a two-week binge with a rose tattooed on his arm. Around the blossom was written Fuck ‘em all/and sleep till noon. His wife made him have it surgically removed, but she hated the scar even more. Every time he touched it, he grinned. Some years later she tried to remove the grin with a wine bottle, but she only knocked out a couple of teeth, which made the grin even more like a sneer. The part that I don’t understand, though, is that they are still married. He is still grinning and she is still hating it.

  I didn’t have any tattoos or any marriages, but the morning after I brought Traheame home I slept until noon anyway. When I woke, I knew that I had to roll out of the sack and shuffle into my sweat suit and jogging shoes. I had been on the road too long, and I could hear various invaluable parts of my body whine for exercise. Maybe it would clear my mind. Maybe I would break my leg and have to forget about driving to Oregon.

  Eventually, I did just that, dressed in tired athletic gear and strolled outside into the noon sunlight. I sat down in a deck chair to survey the landscape.

  Trahearne’s mother owned a half section of land northwest of the small town of Cauldron Springs. Her land lay in a shallow valley between two low ridges. At their highest elevations, the ridges were timbered, but on the lower slopes they were covered with sagebrush scrub. Between the houses and-the highway, she kept a few head of cattle in a small pasture. Cold Spring Creek ambled between the ridges to the pasture, where it broke into a series of long smooth willow-choked bends, then it flowed alongside the highway until it joined the warm mineral waters of Cauldron Springs Creek east of the smail town. Traheame’s house sat on the east side of the creek, his mother’s on the west. Her house looked like something off the Great Plains, a square and sturdy farmhouse, its only decoration a porch across the front, and it seemed to stare down upon the small town with the austere gaze of a wheat farmer driven mad by the whims of the weather.

  The town had grown up around a hot spring that bubbled up in a limestone cup the size and shape of a washtub. An old man who had made his fortune in silver and tin mines had built the hotel and the bathhouse, claiming great curative properties for the spring waters. He had sunk his fortune into the project, built a huge wedding cake of a spa around the spring, then settled back to enjoy his declining years, but he had built his spa too far from the people, and the flow from the spring didn’t have enough volume to keep his pools and baths hot enough to please those few who came. When he died, he was the only guest in his hotel, the only bather.

  Traheame’s mother had reopened the bathhouse and one floor of the hotel, but only as a courtesy to the town, like the tennis courts she built behind the bathhouse, a reminder of her money. She wouldn’t have the buildings repainted, though. She let them fade and weather from white to an ashen gray as dull as raw silver.

  As I jogged slowly down the gravel road toward the highway, Melinda ran past me like a deer. Six seasons of Army football and four at various junior colleges had left me with legs that only remembered running swiftly, and I envied Melinda’s easy, quick pace. She ran as nicely as she walked but she still kept her body bundled, hidden now beneath a loose sweat suit. She reached the highway and turned west up the long rise toward the end of the pavement. When I got to the highway, I followed her briefly, then slowed to a walk as she topped the rise and turned back. I waited where I stood, and when she came back, I swung alongside her, and we jogged back to the gravel road.

  “You’ll never get in shape that way,” she said, breathing slow and easy.

  “This is penance,” I puffed, “not physical therapy.”

  She laughed, then ran away from me, dust spurting from beneath her tennis shoes with each powerful stroke of her legs, her short hair bouncing ragged in the sunlight.

  When I finally reached the house, she was standing up on the deck watching me, her fists on her hips, her legs spread in a wide, strong stance. I limped up the steps and fell into a redwood lounger.

  “I wish I could get Trahearne to exercise,” she said.

  “I wish you could get me to stop,” I huffed.

  “Don’t you just love to run?” she asked.

  “It’s not as bad as getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick,” I said, “but at least that’s a quick pain.”

  “Exactly,” Trahearne boomed as he stepped out the front door. “How about a Bloody Mary?” he asked as he rattled a pitcher at me as if it were magic charm.

  “Only because it’s before breakfast,” I said as he poured me a drink.

  “Around here, this is breakfast most days,” Melinda said.

  I turned around to study her face for some evidence of wifely irony, but she was smiling, almost prettily, and patting Trahearne on his plump cheek. Whatever the shouting had been about during the night, they both seemed to have forgotten it, or had chosen to act as if they had. Melinda kissed him lightly on the comer of his mouth, then stepped inside. Traheame settled into a lounge chair beside me.

  “That’s an exceptional woman,” I said, “for a wife.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he said, then blushed. I grinned at his blush, but he didn’t smile back. He just filled up my glass again, saying, “Drink this, my boy, and then I’ll show you what real people do with their hangovers.”

  “So this is what taking the waters is aU about?” I said as Trahearne and I lowered ourselves into the warm waters of the hotel’s main pool. He just grunted and sank to his shoulders. His white T-shirt, which he had insisted upon wearing, billowed briefly with trapped air, then burped under his neck. After we had finished the Bloody Marys, Traheame had forced me to drive him to town to take the waters. He had a key to the back door and to a private dressing room, where we changed, and we had the pool to ourselves except for an old couple from Oklahoma. They had left as we climbed in, on their way to a hot mud bath for their feet, behind a door appropriately labeled The Com

  Hole.

  “How do you like it?” Traheame sighed.

  “It’s okay,” I said, lying to be polite. The water, which stank faintly of sulphur and other minerals my nose refused to identify, was tepid rather than hot and it seemed slimy like a fever sweat.

  “It beats the hell out of running around,” he said, “and I guess it works. My mother swears by it—she’s down here every morning at six—and Melinda comes down late at night to swim laps after she’s been working.”

  “And what do you do?” I asked.

  “I come down for hangovers,” he said, “and sit around until I break a sweat.” Then he ducked his head under the water and stood up. “Am I sweating?” he asked, then smiled. “I feel like I’m sweating.”

  “You’re certainly all wet,” I said, trying not to look at the maze of purple scars glowing across his chest through the wet T-shirt. He lowered himself into the water again.

  “Anytime you’re ready to go, let me know,” he said.

  “This wasn’t my idea,” I said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, “this place always stinks like a hospital.” Then he stood up and lumbered toward the steps. He had even more scars on his back. They looked like the deep painful gouges of shrapnel wounds, reminders etched into his flesh of a long-forgotten war. I followed him out of the waters to the dressing room.

  As we changed clothes, he said, “Okay, so I’m bashful about my scars.”

  “They’re not that bad,” I said.

  “Bad enough,” he answered. “H
urry up,” he added, “I think I may be sober enough to try to write this afternoon.”

  “I know I’m sober enough to drive back to Meri-wether,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” Trahearne commanded. “Melinda’s got a steak thawing for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, then walked with him out to the car, which was parked between the back of the pool house and the tennis courts. An elderly man was bouncing balls off a backboard, and two teenaged girls were engaged in a furiously contested point.

  “Don’t watch,” Trahearne said as he climbed into the passenger seat. “AH that nubile flesh will drive you mad.”

  “It already has,” I said as I drove us away.

  Later that afternoon, after a short nap in the sun, a shower, and a light lunch, I called Trahearne’s mother’s house to let Catherine Trahearne know that I hadn’t forgotten who had hired me. She said that she was on her way to town to play tennis, but she told me to come over for a drink before dinner, and I accepted. Trahearne was ensconced in a large study off the living room, rattling papers and ice cubes and cursing loudly, and Melinda had gone up the hill to her studio, so I fixed a drink and wandered along the graveled footpath toward the creek and a narrow wooden bridge across it. The creek was small and choked with rocks and brush, but it picked its way energetically through the clutter, pausing occasionally in a shallow pool. Creek-watching is a patient art, and I leaned on the bridge rail and practiced, sniffing the cool riffles of breeze over the creek, watching the pan-sized trout shimmer in the crystal water, their gills fanning like vestigial wings as they waited for dusk and whatever fly hatch the day demanded.

  “You must be the detective,” a gruff woman’s voice said from the shadowy willows beside the pool, and I nearly jumped into the creek. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you but I was having an unplanned nap when you got here.”

  “That’s all right,” I said as she stepped out of the shade.

  She was a tall, angular woman with short gray hair, wearing a worn red flannel shirt, Malone pants, and a pair of battered Bean’s hunting boots. She carried a knotty cane and leaned on it heavily as she limped along the creek side to the path.

  “I’m Edna Trahearne,” she said as she offered me a gnarled hand to shake. She had to be in her late seventies, but her eyes were clear, her handshake firm in spite of the twisted fingers. Deep wrinkles had eroded the strong features of her face, and her heavy but withered breasts, hung loose beneath the flannel shirt like useless flaps of flesh. “And you’re that

  Sughrue fella.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How’s my son?” she asked.

  “A little tired,” I said, “but he’s got the constitution of an ox.”

  “He comes by it naturally,” she said, “but someday he’s going to tie one on and there won’t be anybody around to untie the knot. I told Catherine not to send anybody after him this time—a waste of money and effort—but of course she refused to listen to me. I don’t know what that slut he lives with does to him— I haven’t spoken to him since she arrived—but his binges come on the heels of each other now, and he hasn’t written in over two years. If he doesn’t rid himself of her, he’ll be in his grave before me.” Then she paused to stare at me with a look that almost seemed coy. “You don’t agree?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She seems to love him,” I added lamely.

  “He doesn’t need love, young man, it confuses him,” she said. “He needs tending like a child. From what I can tell, my son’s young wife makes the mistake of thinking he’s a man. He’s an artist, and all artists are children.”

  It’s true, I thought, some men do need tending, but it’s degrading to talk about it to strangers. I decided to see if the old woman was as tough as she acted. “I understand that you once wrote,” I said.

  “It was the only way for a woman alone to work at anything besides serving men, and as soon as I had the money to afford this place, I stopped.”

  “You weren’t dedicated to the art?” I said.

  “If you’ve read my two novels, then you know what sort of fairy tales they are,” she said, “and if you’ve talked to my son, you know the truth of my life here. I took money from fools, boy, and I earned it, but don’t give me any bullshit about art.”

  “All right,” I said. She was as tough as she seemed to be, so I went back to watching the little creek.

  “Are you a fisherman?” she asked suddenly. “Or just another dude with a fancy fly rod?”

  “I’m not much of a fisherman, no, but I have caught a few trout.”

  “If I were to loan you my fly rod, do you think you could catch half a dozen of those little trout?” she said. “I can’t see well enough to tie a leader anymore,” she added, “even if I had the hands for it, and I would dearly love a mess of pan-fried trout tonight.”

  “I’ve got my fly rod in the pickup,” I said, then sat my drink down and trotted toward it as obedient as a son.

  The creek hadn’t been fished in some time, and the trout rose to whatever fly I offered them, but I caught more willow branches and wind-tangles than trout, and it took me an hour to get a stringer of small cutthroat trout. The old woman watched me like a fish hawk, but she didn’t offer any snide suggestions or sage advice about my back-casting. I cleaned the fish in the creek, then followed her to the back door of her house and into the kitchen. While I washed my hands, she got me a beer and asked me to join her on the front porch.

  We walked through the living room slowly, as if through a museum. A war museum. The walls and tables were covered with mementos of Trahearne’s war: framed pictures of young, freshly commissioned Marine officers, a thinner Trahearne standing tall among his contemporaries; the same faces during the jungle campaigns, hollowed-eyed and worn among the gray rain-forest debris after the fire storm of battle; Japanese battle flags, a .25 Nambu automatic pistol, and an officer’s Samurai sword hanging crossed with Trahearne’s Marine officer dress sword; and embroidered pillows and shell necklaces and bone earrings— all the random junk they brought back from the islands. One of the photographs was a wedding picture, Tra-hearne in dress blues beneath wind-twisted Monterey pine with white beaches and a phony blue ocean tinted into the background, but the attractive woman holding the white bouquet beside him was dressed in black. It was odd, as if he had been killed in the war. Nothing of his life after the war was in the living room, and I half expected to see a faded gold star hanging in the front window. When I looked, though, the old woman was waiting at the front door, looking irritated. I shook off the chill the room filled me with and followed her outside, where I took a deep breath, the air in the living room too old and bloody to breathe.

  “Were you in the war?” she asked politely.

  “Not that one,” I said. She shook her head and smiled as if I had given the wrong answer. I stepped around her, careful not to touch her, to introduce myself to the handsome woman sitting in a rocker on the front porch.

  She was dressed in white today instead of black, a short tennis dress, with a racket and ball bag set beside her chair. Beads of sweat sparkled across her forehead and up into the hairline of her tied-back copper hair. The years hadn’t hurt her at all. If anything, she was even more lovely now, her complexion smooth and tanned, her flesh firm and elastic.

  “I’m Catherine Trahearne,” she said unnecessarily as she stood up. “I’ve been playing tennis in town, and I haven’t had a chance to clean up, so you will have to excuse me.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been fishing.”

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “Enough for our dinner,” the old woman said, “but just barely.” It sounded like both a rebuke and a command, but for what and to do what escaped me.

  “Every one I catch is luck,” I said.

  “You found Trahearne,” Catherine said, “so I choose to believe that you fish with skill rather than luck.”

  “Ha,” the old woman snorted. “A complete w
aste.” I didn’t know if she meant my fishing or my hunting.

  “Whatever, thanks for bringing him home in one piece,” Catherine said. “I’m certain that it was no easy

  task.”

  “It wasn’t all that hard,” I said.

  “Ha,” the old lady added.

  “Mother Trahearne, may I get your glass of wine?” Catherine asked.

  “I think I’ll wait until I go to bed,” the old woman said “Maybe I’ll sleep tonight if I wait.”

  “Of course,” Catherine said, then to me she added, “I would ask you to stay for dinner but I’m sure that you have other plans. You must excuse me now, though. I must shower before dinner.” I had the uneasy impression that she had told me she was going to shower not out of politeness but rather so I would think of her tanned and naked body standing under the rush of hot sudsy water. “If you will send my your bill, Mr. Sughrue, I’ll see that it is taken care of immediately. And let me thank you once again. It has been a pleasure meeting you.” She shook my hand and went

  inside the house, the fiat, smooth muscles of her thighs rippling in the afternoon sunlight.

  “How my son could give up a woman like that, I’ll never understand,” Edna Trahearne said.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t be such a twit,” the old woman chided me. “I appreciate the trout, son, but not enough to allow you to be a twit on my front porch.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t appologize, either,” she said.

  I picked up my rod and said goodbye. As I walked back to Traheame’s house, I was convinced that I had been manipulated in ways I didn’t even begin to understand, for reasons way beyond me. Maybe I was just a convenient target. Or maybe I had wandered into a loony bin. They all had to be slightly crazy to live so close to one another, but I didn’t know what was going on. My job was over anyway. All I had to know was that Melinda had promised steaks for dinner. I wanted red meat, two drinks of good whiskey, a sober night’s sleep, and then I wanted to get the hell away from all of them.