Last Call (Last Call 1)

Crane squinted out past the porch rail at the tower of the Fidelity Federal Savings building, silhouetted against the gray sky half a mile north on Main Street, but he couldn't focus on the flashing letters and numbers on its rooftop sign. The Norm's parking lot had enough cars in it to indicate the lunch crowd, though, and the daytime crows had replaced morning's wild parrots on the telephone lines. Mavranos was probably right.

"I brought your mail," Mavranos added, pulling a couple of envelopes out of his back pocket and dropping them onto the battered table.

Crane glanced at them. One was the long gray Bank of America envelope with the waxed paper address window—probably his statement. It was never current; if he wanted to know how much he still had in his savings account, he could just look at the slip that was spit out of the Versatel machine when it gave him his card back next time. He tossed the unopened envelope into the plastic trash can.

The other envelope was addressed in Susan's mother's handwriting. He tossed it away even faster.

"Just junk!" he said with a broad grin, draining the beer and getting up. He opened the door and went inside, and a few moments later was back in the chair with the half can of Budweiser that he had, in spite of himself, again left on the bedroom floor. "Wife off shopping?" asked Arky. Off shopping, Crane thought.

Susan loved those discount stores that were as big as airplane hangars. She always came home from them with bags of things like shark-shaped plastic clips to hold your beach towel down, and comical ceramic dogs, and spring-loaded devices you screwed onto your instant coffee jar that would, when you worked a lever on top, dispense a precise teaspoonful of powdered coffee. Her purchases had become a sort of joke among the neighbors.

Crane took a deep breath and then drained the Budweiser. This looked like being another serious drinking day. "Yeah," he answered, exhaling. "Potting soil, tomato cages … Spring's on us, gotta get stuff in the ground."

"She was up early."

Crane lowered his chin and stared at his neighbor expressionlessly.

After a pause he said, "Oh?"

"Sure was. I saw her out here watering the plants before the sun was even up."

Crane got dizzily to his feet and looked at the dirt in the nearest flower pot. It did look damp; had he watered the plants himself, yesterday or the day before? He couldn't remember.

"Back in a sec," he said evenly.

He went into the house again, and walked quickly down the hall to the kitchen. The kitchen was uncomfortably warm, as it had been for thirteen weeks now; but he didn't look at the oven—just opened the refrigerator and took out a cold can of Budweiser.

His heart was pounding again. Whom had Archimedes seen on the porch? Susan, as Crane could admit if he had a fresh beer in his hand and the alcohol was beginning to blunt his thoughts, was dead. She had died of a sudden heart attack—fibrillation—thirteen weeks ago.

She had been dead before the hastily summoned paramedics had even come sirening and flashing and squealing up to the curb out front. The medics had clomped into the house with their metal suitcases and their smells of rubber and disinfectants and after-shave and car exhaust, and they had used some kind of electric paddles to try to shock her heart into working again, but it had been too late.

After they had taken her body away, he had noticed her cup of coffee, still hot, on the table in front of the couch she'd died on—and he had numbly realized that he would not be able to bear it if the coffee were eventually to cool off, if it were to wind up as passively tepid as some careless guest's forgotten half can of soda pop.

He had carefully carried the cup down the hall to the kitchen and put it in the stove and turned the broiler on low. And he had told the concerned neighbors that Susan had fainted, and later in the day he had explained that she was back, but resting.

She had covered for him often enough, calling his boss and saying he had the flu when all he really had was a touch of "inebriadiation sickness," as he had called hangovers.

In the ninety-one days since her death, he had been making excuses—"She's visiting her mother," "She's in the tub," "She's asleep," "Her boss called her in to work early today"—to explain each instance of her absence. He had been drinking instead of going to work for a while, and so by mid-afternoon or so he often half believed the excuses himself, and when he left the house, he'd often find himself pausing before he locked the front door behind him, unthinkingly waiting for her to catch up, imagining her fumbling with her purse or giving her hair a couple of final brush strokes.

He had not looked in the stove, for he knew he wouldn't be able to stand the sight of the cup cooked dry.

This was only his third beer for today, and it was already after noon, so he took a deep gulp.