Bryan sliced into the second kielbasa link. A little jet of fat shot out and landed on the back of his thumb. It was hot, but not enough to burn. He grabbed a slice of rye bread, dabbed up the fat with it and shoved it into his mouth.
“Glad to see your manners haven’t changed much, Son.”
Bryan smiled despite a mouth full of food. Considering his dad had a bottle of Bud Light in one hand, a Marlboro in the other, and was sitting at the table in a threadbare T-shirt, white boxers and black socks, he wasn’t exactly the poster boy for social protocol.
Bryan didn’t care that his throbbing body and sour stomach told him this meal was coming up later. The food tasted amazing. It tasted like home. He scooped up a forkful of sauerkraut. “Dad, when you write your book on etiquette? I’ll be first in line to buy it.”
His dad laughed. That was what Bryan needed, some normalcy — Mike Clauser in a T-shirt and boxers, drinking beer and feeding Bryan kielbasa and sauerkraut at 7:00 A.M. because that was the only thing Mike knew how to cook. When Bryan had been a little kid, he’d sat with his father at this same chipped Formica table. Breakfast with his dad was a giant step away from the insanity of psycho dreams, burning kids and dealing with butchered bodies.
“So, my boy, want to tell me what’s going on? You’re wound up pretty tight. I know the job is hard and all, but … well … you kind of look like shit. You feeling okay?”
“Been a little sick,” Bryan said. He couldn’t tell his father any of it. Mike wasn’t a cop and he just wouldn’t understand. “And some stuff at work is getting to me, stuff I don’t really want to talk about.”
Another kielbasa quarter went under the knife and into his mouth.
“Work,” Mike said. “Sure it’s not girl troubles?”
Oh, man, were they going to go over this for the umpteenth time? “Leave it alone, Dad.”
“When are you bringing Robin over for dinner again? I’ll order Chinese.”
“You know damn well I moved out of her place.”
Mike Clauser waved the Marlboro-holding hand in front of him as if his son had just cut a nasty fart. “Son, I love you to death, but no way you can do better than that girl.”
“Gee, thanks for the compliment.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What am I supposed to do? She told me to move out.”
“Why? Did you cheat on her?”
Bryan tossed his fork and knife onto the plate. He wasn’t going to talk about this, either. Why had she told him to move out? Because she’d wanted to hear the words I love you, Robin, and Bryan hadn’t been able to say them.
“Son, I grew up with your mother. I asked her out in grade school and she said no. I asked her out in junior high and she said no. I asked her out in high school and she said no. That’s when I started calling her Stubborn Starla Hutchon.” Mike jabbed out his cigarette in an overfull ashtray, then slid his hand under his shirt to scratch his hairy belly. “I bet she turned me down ten times, at least, but I didn’t care. I asked her to our senior prom, and she said yes. The rest is history.”
Bryan nodded at his father’s gut. “How could she possibly resist the physical specimen I see before me?”
Mike laughed. “Exactly!” he said, then lit another smoke. “Just remember, Son, women are basically retarded. It’s not their fault. It’s genetic. They have no idea what they want when Madison Avenue spins their little heads around.”
“A more rousing endorsement of women’s rights I’ve never heard.”
“What can I say? You can listen to Doctor Phil or those stupid broads that tell women to be strong and be independent and all that crap, or you can listen to a man who’s been happily married for forty years.”
“Thirty, Dad. Mom’s been gone ten years now.”
Mike waved away another imaginary fart, then pointed to his chest. “I’m still married right here. She loved me like nobody’s business. I know you’re a skeptic, or whatever you Godless heathens call yourselves these days, but when I kick off and leave this splendor behind, I know I’ll be with her. Someday you will, too — she loved you so much.”
When Mike talked about his wife, that ever-present light in his eyes faded, dulled. It was hard to see him so sad. Her death had left a deep hole in the man.
“I miss her too, Dad.”
Mike stared off for a few moments, then the shit-eating grin returned. “Robin reminds me of your mother. She’s got that spark, one of those broads that laughs before she stops to think about if she should laugh or not, you know?”
Troubles with his love life weren’t high on Bryan’s current list of priorities. The more he avoided Robin, the better. He felt like he was already dooming Pookie, somehow — he didn’t need to spread his poison to her.
“I know, Dad, Robin is great. But let it go. It’s over.”
“So what now? You going to go find someone else?”
Bryan sagged back in his chair. He wasn’t going to find someone else, because he didn’t want to find someone else. If it couldn’t work with Robin, it wasn’t going to work with anyone.
Mike leaned across the table. For just a second, Bryan had a flashback to the look his dad gave him back in the day, when Bryan came home from yet another fistfight.
“You’re not hearing me, Son. So she booted your ass to the curb. Get over it. Forget your pride. You only have so many days to spend with a woman like your Robin or my Starla, and no matter how many days you get, they aren’t enough. So you’re going to promise me, right now, that you’ll start up with Robin again.”
“Dad, I’m a grown—”
Mike slapped the table, making Bryan jump.
“Don’t Dad me, boy. You’re too focused on your work, and what horrible work it is. You need something else in your life before this crap eats you alive. You promise me, now.”
The look on his father’s face made it clear they’d talk about this, and nothing else, until Bryan conceded.
Bryan was dealing with a probable serial killer, psychic dreams of murder that made his dick hard, strange symbols drawn in human blood, and it was all he could do to coax his agony-filled body through the day — yet despite these things, he still had room to feel guilty because his dad was mad at him?
Maybe thirty-five years old wasn’t really all that far from thirteen.
“Okay, Dad. I’ll talk to her.”
Mike’s face relaxed. He nodded. “Fine. Now that I’ve won that battle, you want to tell me what’s going on at work? No offense, Son, but I know twenty-four-hour hookers that look like they get more beauty rest than you.”
Bryan picked up his fork. He stabbed a piece of kielbasa, then absently moved it around the plate in a slow circle.
“Bryan, I know I’m not a cop, but I can still listen.”
His father had always been able to read his mind a little bit. It was spooky.
“The stuff I’m seeing now, it’s …” Bryan’s voice trailed off. Maybe he couldn’t tell his dad everything, at least not yet, but it would feel good to share some of this burden. “It’s pretty bad. I kind of have some … thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
Bryan stopped his kielbasa circle, then reversed it the other way. “Like that there are certain people who deserve to die.”
“There are,” Mike said. “Fuckin-A right there are. This about that gangbanger you killed in the restaurant? Pookie called me about that, you know.”
“You don’t say.”
“Don’t go busting his chops about it,” Mike said. “If your partner didn’t call me once a week, I wouldn’t have any idea what was going on in your life. It’s not like it would hurt you to pick up the phone once in a while.”
“Who is this little Jewish grandmother before me and where did she hide my manly-man father?”
“Fuck you,” Mike said. “Know how your mother is gone forever? I’m not that far behind her. You don’t stop by enough.”
There was no smart-ass answer for that. Bryan was lucky enough to have his father in the same city, yet he stopped by Mike’s place maybe twice a month at most.
“Sorry,” Bryan said. “I’ll do better at that. But it’s not about that gangster in the restaurant. This is something … something else.”
“Son, just remember that you’re a Clauser. I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to do what you do for a living. But at the end of the day, you’re a good man. You walk a line so that fat slobs like me can live in all this splendor. You have to weigh these bad thoughts against all the good that you do. Understand?”
His father had no idea what he was talking about. And yet, in a misguided way, the words made sense.
“Yeah, Dad. I understand. Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you mind if we just talk about the ’Niners?”
Mike Clauser leaned back in his chair, tilted his head back and wrinkled his face like someone had not only farted this time but also crammed a turd nugget up his left nostril.
“The ’Niners? Good God, Son, don’t get me started!”
The next thirty minutes rolled by without one thought of bodies, dreams, symbols or death as Mike Clauser effortlessly solved all of the San Francisco 49ers’ problems and guided them to Super Bowl glory the following season.
Goddamn Pookie. He’d known just what Bryan needed. Most of the time it sucked having a partner who thought he knew everything. But sometimes? Sometimes, it was fantastic.