Last Call (Last Call 1)

"And you can sled all the way down the hill, right out of the sunlight—on good old Rosebud," said Susan's voice. Susan had always loved Citizen Kane. "This Bud's for you."

The cup of coffee still steamed on the table. Crane touched it. The handle was as hot as if it had been sitting in an oven, but an instant later it was damply cold, and the cup had become a bottle of Budweiser.

He picked it up curiously. It seemed to be a real beer.

"It's the only way you can reach me now."

One sip never hurt anybody, he thought. He tipped up the bottle, but paused with it still short of his lips.

"Go ahead," said the voice in the telephone. "They'll see only a coffee cup. Diana won't know about us. Who cares what hands go where?"

A drink, he thought, and sleep, and Susan in my dreams.

"You'll have two eyes again," she said. "Your father won't have hurt you, won't have left you. I won't have left you."

Crane could remember how he had worshiped his father when he was five years old, and how he had loved Susan. Those had been good things; nobody could claim they had not.

There was a knock at the hallway door, and Crane jumped, splashing cold beer out onto his wrist.

"Quick," said Susan.

Whoever it was out in the hall was calling, "Heidi, Heidi."

"It's just one of my drunks," said Susan urgently. "I'll send him away. Drink me!"

The wetness of the beer was cold on Crane's wrist. He remembered old Ozzie fixing bottles of formula for the infant Diana. Crane's foster father had heated the bottles in a pan of hot water and tested the temperature by shaking out drops onto his wrist. He wouldn't have let her have it as cold as this.

I can't let her have it as cold as this, he thought. My love for my father, my love for Susan were good things, but Diana loves me now. I love her now.

He wondered if, in the next room, Diana was sensing his temptation to embrace the dead.

"No," he said, all at once shivering in his flimsy cotton dress in the chill of the air conditioning, his voice finally breaking. "No, I—I won't, not—not me, not your husband. If you are any part of—my real wife, then you can't want me to, at this cost." He put the beer down.

"You think you can help your sister?" asked Susan, her voice shrill over the phone. "You can't help her. Oh, please, Scott, it's your wife you can help, and yourself! And your real father, whose feelings you haven't thought of once."

"Heidi, Heidi!" came the call again from the hallway.

"Oh, go and die!" wailed Susan. Crane thought she was probably talking to the man in the hall, but he chose, despairingly, to take it as addressed to himself.

"I'll go," said Crane, "and if I die, at least I'll—" What, he thought. Be aware of it. Still be the man Diana loves. He took the receiver away from his ear and swept it toward the phone cradle—and his fingers went numb and dropped it.

He reached for the receiver on the floor with his other hand, and it, too, went numb; he was only able to brush the plastic crescent with limp fingers.

"You love me!" cried the voice out of the receiver.

Gasping for breath, almost sobbing, Crane got down on his hands and knees and picked the thing up in his teeth. Susan's pleading voice was a buzzing in his jaw-muscles now, vibrating through his head. His vision blurred, and he felt his very consciousness fading, but he bit down harder and got up on his knees.

Tears and saliva were beaded on the receiver when he had dropped it at last into the cradle, silencing the voice, and his teeth had cut dents into the plastic.

He flopped back against the side of the bed and blurrily saw that the connecting door was open again; Diana and Dinh were staring at him in uncomprehending alarm, and Mavranos crossed to the hallway door and pulled it open.

Dondi Snayheever walked in on tiptoes, jerking his filthy bandaged hand up and down and smiling crazily with all his teeth. "Heidi Heidi ho," he said.

Mavranos had moved quickly back to the bed and slipped his hand into the canvas bag in which he kept his .38.

Crane wiped his face on the bedspread and stood up. "What do you want?" he asked Snayheever unsteadily; though he was still panting, he wearily tried to put authority into his voice.