Last Call (Last Call 1)

He was bleakly sure that he could stab himself again, in the other leg, or in the belly, and she wouldn't call again.

Tears of self-pity mingled with the sweat and saline solution on his face.

Forty-seven-year-old one-eyed gimp, he thought. He laughed through his tears. What made you imagine you could help anybody? She's smart to kiss you off. Any person would do the same. Any real person.

His leg seemed to have stopped actively bleeding, though it throbbed with pain, and the section of rug he was lying on was spongy and slick with cooling blood.

Eventually he reached out and picked up the glass of scotch.

For several minutes he just lay there and inhaled its heady fumes. If he was going to drink it, he was going to drink it, so there was no hurry. Anything that might be waiting in the bedroom could continue to wait. He'd probably have to get fairly drunk, anyway, to be fooled. To get the—the suspension of disbelief.

" 'And human love needs human meriting,' " he whispered, quoting Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven," which had been one of Susan's favorite poems. " 'How hast thou merited—Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?' " He laughed again, chokingly, and took a deep sniff of the smoky fumes. " 'Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me?' " The speaker in the poem had been God, but he supposed gods were relative.

He stared into the glass.

The telephone rang, and he didn't move. It rang again, and then he shook his head sharply and poured the liquor over his bandage. He hissed at the new pain as he grabbed the receiver. "Ahhh—you?"

"Right." Diana sniffed. "The only reason I'm doing this is that I think he would, if you'd got him. Do you remember where he used to take us for—for bodonuts, a lot of Sunday mornings?"

"Sure, sure." This is urgent, he told himself; you're back in the fight, pay attention.

"I'll call him and tell him you want to meet him there tomorrow at noon. I've met him there once or twice; it's the only place he'll agree to talk. Okay? He probably won't come at all. And listen, if"—she was crying, and he could hear fright in her voice when she spoke again—"if he does, and you've got bad friends, tell them he doesn't know where I am or how to reach me, will you? Make them believe it, I swear on my children it's the truth."

"Okay, I'll be there." He rubbed his face. "Diana, you have kids? Are you married? How long—"

"Scott, this isn't a social call!"

"Diana, I love you, too. I swear I'll kill myself before I let anybody use me to get at you." He laughed hoarsely. "I'm good at stabbing myself, I discover. God, kid, this is your brother, Scott, please tell me, where are you?"

He could hear her sniffling. "Where I am is, I'm flying in the grass."

The phrase meant nothing to Crane.

Again there was the click of a broken connection.

He rolled over gingerly and then got up on his hands and knees, sweating and cursing and wincing as he involuntarily flexed the torn muscles in his leg.

I can't leave by the front door, he thought. Even the back door is probably being viewed through the cross-hairs of a riflescope, according to Arky.

It's got to be the bedroom window.

And I've got to crawl, at least as far as the hallway, so as not to be seen from outside.

He knew there was no one else in the house … no other human. What the hell was the Susan thing? It was real enough for Arky to have seen it—and even spoken to it!—and substantial enough to have carried a bottle and glass into the living room.

The chair in front of him—Susan, the real Susan, had re-upholstered it a couple of summers ago. And she had moved the leaning bookcase against the wall corner so that it stood up straight, and she had painted the floors. Yesterday he had wondered if her imprint was so distinct on the place that it could project a tangible image of her.

Yesterday, somehow, he had not found the notion horrible.

Now he was trembling at the thought of meeting the thing in the hall, perhaps also on its hands and knees, face to fake face.

He imagined the face white, with solid white eyeballs like an old Greek statue. What might it say? Would its smile resemble Susan's remembered smile?

He shivered and blinked tears out of his eyes. Susan, Susan, he thought, why did you die? Why did you leave me here? How much of you is in this thing?

He began crawling toward the dark hallway arch. Ozzie had never taught him or Diana any prayers, so he whispered the words of religious Christmas carols … until he found himself reciting the lyrics of "Sonny Boy," and he closed his throat.

In the hall he stood up, putting his weight on his good leg. Through the open bedroom door he could see the gray rectangle that was the broken-out window, past the dark bulk of the bed, and he made himself walk forward, into the room.

The door of the closet was open, and she was in there, crouched on the pile of clothes that had been yanked off of the hangers.

"Leaving me to go off with your friends," she whispered.