Into Thin Air by Caroline Leavitt

Author:Caroline Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Into Thin Air
ISBN: 9781941088180
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1993-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

She slept through the nights now. He sat on his porch and listened restlessly to the night. Maureen was over less and less these days. She was learning to play tennis with Mel; she said it was better for her marriage to be a sport with Mel than to sit out on Jim’s porch with him so often.

Jim understood it. He didn’t blame her. He began to want to be central in the life of someone other than a child. He wanted someone of his own. He was suddenly, violently angry with Lee. He had a right to a life; he had a right to fill the endless time she had left him with some comfort.

Idly he began to look around. The women around there knew his reputation. He saw the way women looked at him at school, how all he had to do was walk by and the whispering would start. The only women who seemed to want him were the crazy ones, the ones who handwrote him letters telling him that all he needed was a little understanding, the ones who sent him smashed apple pies that he always threw out, because his detective had told him you never knew what might be in there.

The evening Jim would run into Lila again was one when he was looking for Lee. He had driven an hour away from his home to follow up a lead a phone caller had whispered to him. “A blondie is singing at the Sky Bar and Grill,” the voice rasped, so low he couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “I saw the pictures, I know who’s who. If I’m right, I want the reward.”

“Who is this?” Jim said.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the voice said, surprised, and then hung up.

Jim had driven to the Sky Bar. The worst moment for him was always right before he opened any door, that second when anything might be possible, when miracles could happen. He pushed at the door with the flat of his hand. The bar was brightly lit and half-empty, and in one corner a young woman with a long blond braid in a tight red sparkly dress was standing by a piano, a microphone in her hand, singing “Blue Bayou.” She belted it out, but no matter how she kept speeding her words, she was always a bar or two behind the man who was playing the piano, a lanky blond who kept glowering at her. She fanned long red fingernails into the air for emphasis, and she ignored Jim as much as she ignored the piano player and every other customer there, and finally he got up and left, swinging the door behind him. He had been too depressed to go right home, so he stopped at a Thrift-T-Mart to pick up some groceries, to wander the aisles a bit. He remembered when such a thing had made him miss his father, but now he found it a comfort.

He was buying baby food and cheese.

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