27

THE DAY NOW has a curious splintered feel to it. Every time a call comes through, Fisher starts to sweat and a tense ache runs through his butt, and his hand goes to the gun tucked between his legs. But so far all he’s had has been a fare from the supermarket to the apartment complex down by the hospital—a young woman who tried to chat, like maybe he needed conversation—and another out to the airport, a smooth-faced older guy in a pricy wool coat who didn’t say a word the whole way, and a few shorter rides from a box store to a nearby housing development and another from the university to a Thai restaurant just down the hill. Through the window he glimpses people chatting and smiling and lifting forkfuls of steaming food to their mouths. His own lunch is fries already gone cold and a soggy burger. Down the front of his parka cling limp strands of lettuce and drips of sauce he wipes at with the wrapper. His belly doesn’t feel full, just less empty than before.

He turns up the radio for the hourly news, but there’s nothing about a body being pulled from the river, or a teenager being kidnapped; nothing except a repeat of the news about the dead cop, and a car wreck out on the highway, then the weather forecast that says the cold’s not going to let up for another couple days.

No wonder Fisher feels out of sorts. It’s not just what’s happened, or that sense of waiting when nothing out of the ordinary’s going on, but the fact that Reggie didn’t let him take the Ford he usually drives, said the brake drums need replacing. He’s mad at Fisher for calling in sick, and madder at him for showing up hours late, so he’s given him the rest of Gabe’s shift, because Gabe didn’t show up either. Reggie’s a big enough jerk that he insisted Fisher take the Plymouth Villager because, Christ, it’s no-smoking isn’t it? And it’s just come out of the shop with a new transmission.

So this afternoon Fisher’s driving the Barf Mobile. It’s no one’s favorite. A minivan means kids yelling or crying or throwing things, or a carload of drunks in suits staggering after lunch at some fancy restaurant who want you to drop them all over downtown, who fight over paying or try to stiff you because hey, didn’t Bob or Pete or whoever the hell else pay the fare before they got out? As for a tip, forget it.

The reek of vanilla air-freshener’s almost too much. Fisher tries not to breathe it in, but why resist? He’s going to have to put up with it until he gets off shift at six. But better that sweet stink than what it’s hiding.

At least the fog’s mostly gone, just a few pockets here and there like wind-blown snow caught in corners. He drives up Airport Road and turns onto Fifth. The air has a crystalline quality to it and everything’s bronzed by the setting sun. How about that, he thinks, sundown already, and the sun’s so far away there’s no warmth to it. Instead it casts a syrupy glow over the snow along the road, and the exhaust lingering in the air, and the frost bearding road signs and fences and heating vents.

A little after two thirty and Fisher’s given up any hope of finding Bree today. She vanished and all he could think of to do was go to work and hope she found him, or the militia found him, or someone who knows what the hell’s going on found him. So here he is driving round and thinking up excuses for when she asks him what the fuck he was thinking: is he really so useless, so lacking in imagination?

To which the answer is yes, he decides. He’s that useless, and he’s that lacking in imagination. Words her mother used against him. Funny that, how he’s putting them in their daughter’s mouth. As for Jan, he wonders where she is. At the police station? After all, she hasn’t called him back. He pictures her distraught, the way her mouth goes slack and her eyes empty, and he feels a twinge of pity. Except she doesn’t know the worst yet. That their daughter’s shot her husband dead and he’s lying in the river and might not be found for months.

Poor Jan, he hears himself think. Her world’s coming apart. Then a meaner part of him decides she deserves to know what it’s like, because isn’t that pretty much what she did to him when she left and took Bree with her? No warning, no explanation. He’d been driving a truck route to Prudhoe Bay and got home to find her stuff gone and Bree’s too. It took him three days to find where she’d moved to. He stood on the doorstep of her apartment and asked, what did I do? She’d kept the door half-closed so Bree couldn’t run out to him and said, if you don’t know, there’s no point explaining it, is there?

He’s wearied by it all, by what happened long ago and his own still sore resentment. Be better than that, he tells himself, but he knows he can’t be, and that’s been the trouble all along.

He glances at the clock on the dash. Still just after two thirty. Three more hours to go, unless he quits early. Fuck Reggie if he doesn’t like it and goes on about Bear Cabs’ reputation, and needing to have cabs at the ready and all that crap, when he should wake up and see that Bear Cabs is on the way out.

He’s got a pick up at Fifth and Dunkel. On the corner sits a low square building housing a bar on the ground floor and a pool hall upstairs. He pulls up just past the entrance and checks his mirrors: some guy leaving the doorway with his shoulders hunched against the cold. A black down jacket. A black knitted hat. Fisher snaps on the radio while he waits, finds his hands rubbing the steering wheel and his breath whistling through his teeth with the music.

He lets his eyes close and thinks about how Bree was when she was small. How she’d sit on his knee and plant kiss after kiss on his jaw, very intently, and hold his head if he tried to turn away. The first few times after he and Jan split up, when he went to fetch her for a day out together, she’d throw herself at him in joy. That joy had quickly evaporated. Soon he had to go into the apartment to carry her out and she’d cry and hit him, even if he told her his plans for the day, made up on the spot: ice cream and a train ride at the park, wouldn’t that be fun? No, no it wouldn’t, she hated him, she hated train rides at the park. It was like she’d soaked up every drop of her mom’s bitterness at having once loved him when he’d turned out to be a loser, a nothing. And what’s he done since except try to prove that wrong, and failing over and over?

The side door slides open, and he looks around. The guy’s not wearing a hat. He’s wearing a black ski mask. That’s not so unusual when it’s this cold, right? The guy has to duck to get into the minivan, and he only comes half in. It’s then that Fisher notices two things: the guy doesn’t shut the door, and when he straightens up there’s a gun in his hand.