13
A hand touched Jamie Grant's shoulder and she started. A quick glance in the streaked mirror behind the Parthenon's bar showed it was only Timmy Ryan.
"Hey, jumpy tonight."
Jamie shrugged.
Timmy leaned in closer, elbows on the bar, and spoke in a low tone. "Listen, Schwartz's got his kid brother along tonight. In from Duluth. We figured we'd have the usual fun with him if you're up to it."
Jamie didn't move her head. Instead she fixed her eyes on Ryan's reflection in the mirror. He had a Jay Leno situation going with his chin; he wore a dark suit, wrinkled, a striped tie, loosened, and a toothy grin, capped. He spent his days as a copywriter and his nights as a Parthenon regular, like Jamie and Schwartz, and Cassie and Frank, and about half a dozen others.
She took a sip of her Dewar's and soda. "I don't know if I'm up to it, Timmy."
She was feeling edgy. She could have sworn she'd been followed here. This comfy little bar in the West Sixties had been a nightly refuge for years. Had it been invaded? Had some Dementedists infiltrated the irregulars?
She hated to think so. A good neighborhood tavern like the Parthenon was a place to be nurtured and cherished. She liked the feel of the bar's mahogany under her elbows, the give of the leather on the chairs and stools and booths, the drama and pageant of foam rising in a draft pint of lager or stout, the smell of what's been spilled, the rattle of the cocktail shaker, the murmur of conversation, the green glow of a football game on the TV screen.
Where everybody knows your name . . . more than a theme song, it was the foundation of what made a tavern work. But Jamie didn't need everybody knowing her name to feel at home here, just a nod or a wave from a few of the regulars as she stepped through the door sufficed. And few things were better than Louie timing the preparation of her Dewar's and soda—her "usual"—so that it was homing in for a three-point landing on the bar as she slid onto her usual stool.
Maybe she liked the place too much, maybe she spent too much time here. She definitely knew she drank too much.
Which always reminded her of an old Scottish proverb: They talk of my drinking but never my thirst.
And that pretty much nailed the situation. A thirst for something more than ethanol in all its various and wondrous permutations drew her to the Parthenon. If getting a load on were the sole objective, she could do it quicker and far cheaper by staying home with a bottle. She came for the embrace of kindred souls—who also just happened to like to consume ethanol in all its various and wondrous permutations—and for the camaraderie… a potion far more potent and alluring than distilled spirits.
Timmy draped an arm over her shoulders. It felt good, a spot of warmth on this chilly night. She and Timmy had had a fling a few years ago—Jamie had flung with a number of regulars at the Parthenon—but nothing serious, just someone to be with now and then. Some nights the thought of going home alone to an empty apartment was simply too much to bear.
"Come on, Jamie. Been a while since we heard a pinkie story. They're always good for a laugh."
"Tell you what," Jamie said, putting on a smile. "Pay my bar tab tonight and you've got a deal."
"You're on. After Frank finishes yakking about that new Lexus of his, I'll bring the kid over. So put on your thinking cap."
He gave her shoulder a squeeze and moved off, leaving her alone.
Alone…
She didn't want to be alone tonight, but not for the usual reasons. Those Dementedist threats—of course, they never said they were Dementedists, but who were they kidding—and now this feeling of being shadowed were getting to her. Maybe she and Timmy could hook up for the night… just for old time's sake.
She'd never liked the emptiness of her apartment—that was one of the reasons she spent so much time at the office—but she'd never feared being there. Maybe she'd just spend the night here at the Parthenon… entertaining the troops.
Always good for a laugh…
Yeah, that's me all right. Jamie the Joke Machine. Quick with the quip, the bon mot, the laugh-aloud girl, the—
Christ, I hate my life.
The Dementedism stories had been the first thing in years to fire her up, but now she sensed it turning on her. How could she enjoy writing pieces that kept her looking over her shoulder? She'd expected some negative fallout, but figured she could handle it.
Well, you're sure doing a bang-up job handling it tonight, Jamie.
She signaled Louie for another hit of Dewar's, then stared at the stub of her right pinkie. What tall tale could she come up with tonight? Yesterday she'd given that PI—what was his name? Robinson? Robertson? Something like that—the outboard motor story. But she'd already used that here at the Parthenon. Had to come up with something new.
Only Jamie knew the real story… how she'd lost most of that finger to the love of her life.
Never should have married Eddie Harrison. Her mother had known her college sweetheart was bad news and had warned her, but did she listen? No way. So right after she got her journalism degree she married him. It looked like a good situation at first, but it took him only a few years to morph from sweetheart to lushheart. And one night during year five he almost killed her.
Eddie was such a sweet guy when he was sober, but the booze did something to him, made him mean, frayed his temper. Jamie had been a stringer back then, doing most of her writing at home. On the fateful night, for some still-unknown reason, the clicking of her keyboard set him off and he demanded that Jamie stop typing. When she told him she had a morning deadline and had to finish, he flew into a rage, went to the kitchen, returned with a carving knife, and tried to cut off her hands. Lucky for her he was so drunk he couldn't manage it, but the slashing blade did manage to connect with her pinkie. As she knelt on the rug, bleeding and moaning and trying to dial 911, Eddie carried the severed end to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Then he passed out.
The next day he was all anguish and remorse and contrition and full of promises never ever to drink again. But Jamie was not getting on that merry-go-round. She packed up, moved out, pressed criminal charges, and filed for divorce—all in one day.
And hadn't had a long-term relationship since.
She'd seen enough depressed people in her forty-three years to know she fit the clinical picture. She spent every waking moment riding depression's ragged edge. But she wasn't into pills. Her self-prescribed therapy was work. Filling the hours with relentless activity staved off the down feelings. And she produced an amazing amount of copy—for The Light, for various magazines under a pseudonym, even a chapter in a soon-to-be-published journalism textbook. If she got into a pill situation—started on Prozac or Zoloft or one of those—and it did its job, would the lifting depression take the writing drive along with it?
She couldn't risk that. She'd found a formula that kept her from tumbling into the abyss: days spent either writing or researching; evenings here at the Pantheon, just a few blocks from her apartment, drinking and kibitzing with the regulars; and nights of exhausted sleep.
Jamie wasn't so sure about the sleep situation tonight, though.
She glanced around, looking for unfamiliar faces. There were always some. No secret that she was writing a derogatory series about the cult—she refused to call it a church—but did they have any idea that she might have discovered something that would embarrass the hell out of them and set their whole organization on its ear?
Might . . . that was the key word here. She hadn't confirmed her suspicions yet, and so far she'd been stymied in finding a way to do so.
But if the Dementedists knew of her suspicions, no telling what they might do. She'd have to—
She jumped as someone tapped her shoulder. Timmy again. Damn it, she was edgy.
Timmy introduced Schwartz's brother, who looked barely thirty and nothing like Schwartz. After a little small talk Timmy pointed out Jamie's short pinkie and said something about wait till you hear this… You just won't believe it. Schwartz and Cassie and Ralph and the others were gathered in a semicircle around her and Little Brother. She had an audience but no material.
What the hell, she thought. Wing it.
"Well, it was years ago, back in 1988, when I was in the Karakoram to—" She noticed the kid's perplexed expression, mirrored in the other listeners. Christ, was there anyone left who knew their geography? "That's a mountain range. I was in a mountain-climbing situation, preparing to tackle the Abruzzi ridge of K2—which the locals call Chogori—and I was looking for an ice ax…"