Small Town

And every medicine cabinet held pills. Valium and all its cousins, and no end of ups and downs, many of which he recognized of old — a few years in the trenches were a veritable college of pharmacological knowledge — and some of which were new to him, because the drug trade didn’t go into freeze-frame the day he stopped using. It evolved, everything evolved, and he might spot something new on the shelf next to the shaving cream and wonder where it would take him if the lid happened to pop off the little vial and if two (oh might as well make it three) pills leapt up and out and into his open-in-astonishment mouth and down his throat before he quite knew what was happening. I mean, it wasn’t a real slip, was it, if it just sort of took you by surprise like that?

Thoughts like that just helped him remember who he was. They didn’t really upset him, and weren’t cause for alarm. And if they kept him going to meetings, well, then they served a purpose, didn’t they?

So he wasn’t afraid of what was in Marilyn’s liquor bottle or medicine cabinet. Or, God help us, her undies drawer.

But really, now, couldn’t he just pack up and go? He’d cleaned everything but the bedroom, cleaned really quite thoroughly, and he couldn’t do any more without disturbing her sleep, and for all he knew she really needed her sleep, for all he knew she’d been up past dawn. Why, she could have been partying while he cleaned the bars and the whorehouse, and he might have been tucking into his omelet right around the time her companion thoughtfully closed the bedroom door and let himself out of her apartment, leaving her sleeping...

Sleeping?

If she was asleep, he told himself, then he would indeed just slip out and allow her to awaken on her own, and in her own good time. He’d leave a note — “I was fresh out of kisses and couldn’t figure out how to wake Sleeping Beauty. I’ll stop by tomorrow and do the bedroom. Love, Jerry.”

If she was asleep...

He paused at her bedroom door, took a deep breath, let it out, took another. He opened the door, let his eyes accustom themselves to the dimness.

There she was, just as he’d seen her earlier. Sprawled out on her bed, obviously in deep slumber. It looked as though she hadn’t stirred since he’d first looked in on her.

Room had an odor. Nothing too rank, but even if he was going to let her sleep he ought to open a window. Hard to sort out the smells. Sex, booze, cigarette smoke...

He walked over to the side of the bed, looked down at her. She was on her back, her head to one side. The sheet covered her just past her waist. He looked at her full breasts, willing them to rise and fall with her breathing, but they didn’t move, and he knew he hadn’t expected them to move, hadn’t expected her to be breathing, had known what he’d find before he opened the door.

He took another breath — yes, there were other elements in the room’s odor besides sex and booze and smoke, there was a bathroom smell and a meat-market smell — and he reached out a hand and touched the tips of two fingers to her forehead.

Like a priest, he thought, anointing the dead.

And of course her flesh was cool to the touch. He couldn’t will it into warmth, any more than he could make her chest rise and fall.

“Oh, Mairsie,” he said aloud. “Oh, baby, what the hell did you do to yourself?”

He reached for the bedside lamp, then drew his hand back. You weren’t supposed to touch anything, he knew that much, but wasn’t it permissible to turn on a light? Otherwise how could you know for sure what you were looking at?

He touched only the switch, turned it, blinked at the brightness. He looked at her and saw the marks on her throat and said, “Oh, God, somebody did this to you.” And covered you to the waist, he thought, and closed the door on his way out.

He reached for her wrist, felt for a pulse, but that was ridiculous, he wasn’t going to find one, she was dead, his friend Marilyn was dead. He didn’t want to touch her, hadn’t wanted to put his fingers to her forehead, but he did anyway, perhaps to make sure of what he already knew, perhaps to demonstrate to himself that he could do this if he had to. And her wrist was cold, lifeless, and there was no pulse, and he let go of her and took a step back from the bed.

Before he opened the door, he’d considered leaving. Now, though, it was no longer an option. He had a moral obligation, and a legal one as well, and he knew what he had to do, however little he looked forward to it.

There was a phone on the bedside table, but he stopped himself and used the one in her office instead. He dialed 911 and gave his own name and her address. Yes, he was certain she was dead. Yes, he would stay where he was until the officers arrived. No, he wouldn’t touch anything.