Bloody Martini by William Kotzwinkle

Author:William Kotzwinkle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2022-12-01T20:13:23+00:00

23

I had last seen Shirley Kaminski on the Coalville football field, in a sweater with a big C on it. One of the Centralites, as they were called—a team of high school girls creating graceful formations on the fifty-yard line. Now she was working the bike lane in shiny black boots that went to the middle of her thighs, and beyond that was a skirt that could have passed as a handkerchief. “Shirley . . .” I couldn’t think of anything to say but her name.

“Tommy Martini,” she said quietly, and we just stared at each other. Then I put my arms around her.

“That costs money,” she said.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

“I don’t go anywhere till the sun comes up. Like Dracula.” And there was something ghoulish about her makeup—wildly overdone and completely unnecessary. She’d been an attractive girl and still was, but in the bike lane you had to have eyes like stoplights.

I said, “I remember you with a big C on your sweater.”

“Now it’s a big H.”

And then I saw, in the midst of all that eye makeup, her pupils were like pinholes.

“I’m a heroin misuser, Tommy,” she said with a sardonic smile. “Who woulda thunk it?”

“I’d like to help.”

She steered me along the bike lane. “I don’t want to be helped. Anyway, not by you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re from my other life.”

I stifled the impulse to play it my way, forcing her hand with offers of hotel, car, cash—whatever she needed to kick her habit. So I said, “You probably heard about Finn Sweeney getting killed.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t watch the news. I don’t watch anything except cars going by. But I remember him. Good-looking, talked a mile a minute. That’s a shame. Who killed him?”

“No idea.”

“I went to one of his parties in my previous lifetime. He threw great parties.”

“He married Bridget Breen.”

“That’s right, he did. Beautiful Bridget. She could’ve had anyone.”

“Including me.”

She looked away, back toward the cars. “Here comes my fancy man. Tommy, do me a favor and get lost.”

I turned away before he could see me, but I heard his voice, and every word was a display of his power over Shirley. I’d seen her on a football field on a fall day, when the air was crisp and her life was her own. Follow him. Crush him like a fucking bedbug, said my anger demon. But that wouldn’t help Shirley; some other fancy man would just latch on to her. I put the demon back in his bottle, where he grumbled a while but finally resumed just tending the eternal fire. I started asking people about Finn. He was remembered, the TV guy with the microphone, asking questions nobody wanted to answer, and at two in the morning I left the square. Misery lights started turning behind me, like bright evil bubblegum being chewed. I thought about making a run for it, but my Acura had a ten-year-old engine and was essentially a family car. The police cruiser was a Ford Interceptor—zero to sixty in six seconds.

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