Full Dark, No Stars

“Lucky for both of us,” Streeter said, smiling and putting a goo of Brie on a Triscuit. He popped it into his mouth.

“Does me good to see you eating, chum,” Goodhugh said. “Me n Norma were starting to wonder if there was something wrong with you.”

“Never better,” Streeter said, and drank some more of the tasty (and no doubt expensive) beer. “I’ve been losing my hair in front, though. Jan says it makes me look thinner.”

“That’s one thing the ladies don’t have to worry about,” Goodhugh said, and stroked a hand back through his own locks, which were as ful and rich as they had been at eighteen. Not a touch of gray in

them, either. Janet Streeter could stil look forty on a good day, but in the red light of the declining sun, the Garbage King looked thirty-five. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink to excess, and he worked out at a health club that did business with Streeter’s bank but which Streeter could not afford himself. His middle child, Carl, was currently doing the European thing with Justin Streeter, the two of them traveling on Carl Goodhugh’s dime. Which was, of course, actual y the Garbage King’s dime.

O man who has everything, thy name is Goodhugh, Streeter thought, and smiled at his old friend.

His old friend smiled back, and touched the neck of his beer bottle to Streeter’s. “Life is good, wouldn’t you say?”

“Very good,” Streeter agreed. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

Goodhugh raised his eyebrows. “Where’d you get that?”

“Made it up, I guess,” Streeter said. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“If it is, I owe a lot of my pleasant nights to you,” Goodhugh said. “It has crossed my mind, old buddy, that I owe you my life.” He toasted his insane backyard. “The tenderloin part of it, anyway.”

“Nah, you’re a self-made man.”

Goodhugh lowered his voice and spoke confidential y. “Want the truth? The woman made this man. The Bible says ‘Who can find a good woman? For her price is above rubies.’ Something like that,

anyway. And you introduced us. Don’t know if you remember that.”

Streeter felt a sudden and almost irresistible urge to smash his beer bottle on the patio bricks and shove the jagged and stil foaming neck into his old friend’s eyes. He smiled instead, sipped a little more beer, then stood up. “Think I need to pay a little visit to the facility.”

“You don’t buy beer, you only rent it,” Goodhugh said, then burst out laughing. As if he had invented this himself, right on the spot.

“Truer words, et cetera,” Streeter said. “Excuse me.”

“You real y are looking better,” Goodhugh cal ed after him as Streeter mounted the steps.

“Thanks,” Streeter said. “Old buddy.”

He closed the bathroom door, pushed in the locking button, turned on the lights, and—for the first time in his life—swung open the medicine cabinet door in another person’s house. The first thing his

eye lighted on cheered him immensely: a tube of Just For Men shampoo. There were also a few prescription bottles.

Streeter thought, People who leave their drugs in a bathroom the guests use are just asking for trouble. Not that there was anything sensational: Norma had asthma medicine; Tom was taking blood pressure medicine—Atenolol—and using some sort of skin cream.

The Atenolol bottle was half ful . Streeter took one of the tablets, tucked it into the watch-pocket of his jeans, and flushed the toilet. Then he left the bathroom, feeling like a man who has just snuck across the border of a strange country.

The fol owing evening was overcast, but George Elvid was stil sitting beneath the yel ow umbrel a and once again watching Inside Edition on his portable TV. The lead story had to do with Whitney Houston, who had lost a suspicious amount of weight shortly after signing a huge new recording contract. Elvid disposed of this rumor with a twist of his pudgy fingers and regarded Streeter with a smile.

“How have you been feeling, Dave?”

“Better.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Vomiting?”

“Not today.”

“Eating?”

“Like a horse.”

“And I’l bet you’ve had some medical tests.”

“How did you know?”

“I’d expect no less of a successful bank official. Did you bring me something?”

For a moment Streeter considered walking away. He real y did. Then he reached into the pocket of the light jacket he was wearing (the evening was chil y for August, and he was stil on the thin side)

and brought out a tiny square of Kleenex. He hesitated, then handed it across the table to Elvid, who unwrapped it.

“Ah, Atenolol,” Elvid said. He popped the pil into his mouth and swal owed.

Streeter’s mouth opened, then closed slowly.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Elvid said. “If you had a high-stress job like mine, you’d have blood pressure problems, too. And the reflux I suffer from, oy. You don’t want to know.”

“What happens now?” Streeter asked. Even in the jacket, he felt cold.