“You all done with your holiday shoppin’, Phil?” Henry asked as the elevator climbed.
“Yep. You?”
“Oh, no, suh. Come this payday Friday, Ol’ Henry’ll have enough to finish up real nice, though.”
“That’s great.”
Neither of us spoke again on the ride, but we shared wide holiday grins. Henry stopped us perfectly on floor three.
“Oh, almost forgot.” I reached into my coat pocket and handed Henry three plump, Cuban Presidente cigars, held together with a red ribbon and a ten dollar bill. “Merry Christmas, Henry.”
“And to you and yours, Phil.”
I limped down the hall feeling good. The time of year could do that. The Holloway dough was almost gone, but I enjoyed spending on others at Christmastime.
A few weeks ago, a comment like Henry’s “you and yours” might stick with me, set me to feeling sorry for myself. Long ago I had partitioned off feelings about the deaths of my parents. Now I was working on a new partition a little bit more each day. But there’d be no dwelling on shadows that day. Holiday spirit captivated, and I was its willing captive.
Jill had placed a spruce garland wreath on our office door. The scent of conifer permeated the hallway. I took a big sniff as I turned the knob.
“Morning, Jill.”
“Morning, Boss.” A small Christmas tree adorned the corner file cabinet, complete with tiny packages underneath. She had a vase of poinsettias on her desk, compliments of Rusty. And Jill had made spiced cider. She sipped at a mug. It smelled good.
“Rusty in yet?”
After the case last fall, Rusty and I had decided to combine our agencies. Rusty finally got Jill as his secretary. As a team, with reduced overhead, we could even offer her a nice raise. During an initial disagreement over whose name should come first, Jill had piped in, “How about Two Gimps Detective Agency?”
T.G. Agency, Private Investigators was born.
“Rusty’s in and gone,” Jill said. “He’s following up on the Northtown mortgage scam case.”
“I thought that was all wrapped up.”
Jill shook her head. “Rusty says it’s deeper than we think.”
“I think Rusty’s deeper than we think. He’s in deep up there chasing some skirt.” I sat at my desk crammed in next to Rusty’s. We’d need bigger digs once we dug ourselves out financially.
Rusty had a bevy of women in his life. He reveled in them collectively. Jill and I teased him about it.
Someday I’ll meet a woman and feel something again. I smiled at the thought. These days I no longer chase skirts, but still, somehow I’ll find her. On a crowded street, in a jazz club, I’ll find her, someone who will close the hollow longing in my life. She’ll love dogs, and even love me. We’ll marry, and have kids, and live in a nice bungalow near Swope Park.
I shook my head. Who was I kidding? Though I longed for such a love, a life like that was not to be for me. Girls enjoyed having a good time with me. In many ways, some even fell for me. But I wasn’t the kind of Joe a girl takes home to meet Mom and Dad. Even if one wanted me in that way, I remember the emptiness that colored my mother’s life after my father was murdered. How could I pass on that legacy to a woman I loved? And I couldn’t bear to think of my own son, or worse, my daughter, living with the news that their father had been popped by some button man.
I’d chosen a different road, and I’d live just fine with that hollowness, that longing. I always have.
I leaned back and swiveled to and fro, but didn’t reach for the Jim Beam drawer—nothing there anymore but a telephone book. I’d been off the Beam since October twelfth. It hadn’t been easy.
“Jill?”
“Yeah?”
“Got any more of that cider?”
“Sure do, Boss. And you can have a mug right after you take one to Henry.”
Sounded like a good plan.