Prologue

A woman was usually a night to a week in Nolan’s life, yet this one had lasted a month and five days. But then, before it was different—before he’d never had so bad a need for one.

He sat up in bed, aware that the pain in his side was lessening, and scanned the room. He took in its drabness, and a slight smile came to his lips. Christ, had he really been staring at these four suffocating walls for over a month now? He closed his eyes, seeking not rest but relief from pink stucco walls and second-hand store furniture.

“Hi,” she said. She was in the doorway, bundled in a heavy coat, a sack of groceries filling her arms.

He nodded hello.

“I’ll just put these away,” she said.

He kept nodding, said, “Okay,” and watched her smile and leave the doorway.

He leaned back and reached out his arms while stretching his body. The pain didn’t increase at all from the movement; the place in his side where the bullet had gone in seemed completely healed over. Quite a difference from even a week before, when his body had been one big ache, one long, slow, muscle-bone-gristle ache.

He got out of bed and caught, turned away from his reflection in the bureau mirror. He climbed into a pair of boxer shorts, shaking his head and muttering.

That damn face of his, high cheekbones, narrow eyes, widow’s-peaked hair, that damn easily recognizable face, which both beard past and mustache present failed to disguise. At least the lean weeks had affected his body somewhat to the better. He felt drained, sure, but that roll of softness the years had put around his waist had disappeared.

“Hi,” she said, in the doorway again, now wearing only bra and panties.

She had never been beautiful, he supposed. But she’d been better than plain, and nowhere near ugly. Now, after seven or maybe eight years of traumatic experiences— assorted divorces, abortions, affairs with married men—she was getting the kind of lines in her face that polite people say show character. Nolan saw the lines as too much age for too few years, giving her an air of having been taken advantage of emotionally, used once and thrown away like Kleenex.

“You look tired,” he said.

She nodded, undoing the scarf that tied her black hair behind her head, letting the shoulder-length mane fall free. “I’m tired, all right,” she said, “but not physically, you know, just mentally. I mean, the old mind really gets a workout waiting tables eight till five. It’s a goddamn challenge.”

As she spoke, Nolan watched bitter lines deepen in her face and then lowered his eyes to her breasts as she released them from her bra. The breasts were large, and though beginning to sag, were still quite good. Her nipples were like rose-hued sand dollars.

“How was your day, Nolan?”

“Long. Dull.” He went back over to the bed and lay down again.

“How’s the side?” She came and stood by the bed and leaned over him, her breasts swaying like hanging fruit.

“What?”

“Your side, how’s it feeling?”

“Better.”

“Do anything today?”

“Just slept.”

“Oh? Now don’t hand me that line . . . you haven’t been sleeping more than nine hours out of every twenty-four since you been feeling better, and you had near that when I left for work this morning. So what’d you do today?”

“I watched television.”

“Sure you did. The soap operas.”

“That’s right.”

“Come on, Nolan.”

“I read the paper.”

“Do anything else?”

“No.”

“Took you all day to read the paper?”

“Slow reader.”

“All right, so be a bastard.”

“That was an accident of birth.”

“Smartass remarks don’t make you less a bastard, Nolan.”

“Okay, okay. I suppose I ought to tell you, anyway.”

“Tell me what?”

“I made a couple long-distance calls.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I’ll pay for them. I’m going to pay you back for everything you’ve done for . . .”

“Shut up, Nolan.” She sat down on the bed, facing away from him and touching her face with her fingertips.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“You don’t owe me a damn thing, that’s all. Do you understand?” Her voice was drum tight. “I am a lot of things, and I’ve been a lot of things, and I will be a lot of things in days to come. But I was not, am not, and will not ever be a whore.” She was quiet for a few moments, then added, her voice hushed, “You don’t owe me anything, Nolan. And if you try to give me any money, I’ll tear your goddamn heart out.”

He touched her shoulder.

She turned and rubbed her hand over his chest, twining her fingers in its hair. She made an effort and got a smile going and said, “I won’t try to pry out of you what those phone calls were about—you don’t have to worry about that.”

He nodded, smiled.

“Did you do anything else today?”

“No. Just did some thinking.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. That’s why those stupid damn phone calls put me on edge so.”

“What do you mean?”

“Now you’ve started thinking.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve started thinking, and before I know it, well . . .”

“Well what?”

“Well, you’ll be gone, damn it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You are leaving,” she said, “aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said you been thinking. Same difference.”

“Sometime I’ll leave. Everybody leaves sometime or other.”

“You’re half right. Everybody leaves me all the time.”

“What is this, self-pity day?”

“You’re goddamn right it is. Who else is going to pity me if I don’t? You?”

“How old are you?”

“What? Why are you forever asking me how old I am?”

“Don’t make me ask again.”

“All right, all right, I’m thirty-one.”

“What else are you? Besides thirty-one.”

“Free, white, and ten years too many?”

“You’re intelligent. Not bad looking.”

“Beautiful is what I am. A funhouse mirror with sex.”

“Shut up. You’re a good-looking kid.”

One side of her mouth smiled. “Maybe I should have pulled this self-pity routine before. I’ve never heard you talk so much—and compliments, too! Don’t stop now.”

He allowed himself a grin and said, “I’ll grant you I don’t talk much, but now I am, so listen, I got something to say: sling hash if you want to, or don’t sling it.”

She looked at him wide-eyed. “That’s it? That’s the big message?”

“That’s it.”

“Profound. Pretty fuckin’ profound, Nolan. ‘Sling hash or don’t sling it.’ Let me write that down.”

He laughed and grabbed her arm. “Okay. You think about it. For now let’s shut up and get on with it.”

Her lips took on a wry smile, and she latched her thumbs in her panties and tugged them off. “You got yourself a deal.”

They made love, slow, grinding love, and it was as good for them as it had always been over the past month of Nolan’s recuperation. At the beginning, because his wound was serious, their lovemaking had been gentle, increasing in intensity as the weeks passed, each time different for them. Nolan was amazed that this one woman could seem to be so many different women. Never having bedded down longer than a week’s time with the same woman, he had assumed a woman’s sexual possibilities could be sufficiently explored in that time or less. It was a pleasant surprise to him to discover at this late date that he was wrong.

After several hours of sleep, Nolan and the girl awoke to darkness and, checking his watch, Nolan said, “It’s nine, kid. What shall we do?”

“Hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want?”

“How about breakfast?”

“At nine o’clock at night?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

She climbed out of bed, slipped on her bra and panties, got into a houserobe, and went out into the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later Nolan and the girl sat at the kitchen table, eating the evening breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in silence. Nolan’s attention was on his plate of food, while the girl stared at him intently.

She broke the silence with, “Why do you ask me what my age is all the time?”

“Do I?”

“You did tonight, and I bet it was the hundredth time, too. Why?”

“To make a point.”

“What point is that? Oh, I remember, don’t remind me, that quote of yours that’ll go down through the ages: ‘Sling hash or don’t sling it.’ž”

He looked up from the plate. “That’s the one.”

“There’s got to be more to it than that.”

“Maybe there is. You never bothered asking how old I was, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. But then, you told me at the start not to ask you a lot of personal questions. For my own sake, you said.”

“That’s right. But you don’t have to ask, I’ll tell you. I’m forty-eight.”

She was surprised. “I thought forty, maybe . . . but, hell, so what? I been had by older men, that’s for sure.”

“You never met anybody older than me. I’m a dinosaur who can’t get it through his head he’s extinct.”

“What are you . . .”

“I’m forty-eight and I’m hiding out with a girl who spends her days slinging hash, and I’m living off her while I get recovered from a gunshot wound.”

“You said not to ask questions, Nolan, so . . .”

“I know. You’re not asking, I’m telling. You got time left. You got stuff left in you. I’m running out. Of time. Of stuff. I picked what I am, and I blew it. I got nothing left to do but make the best of the sucker choice I made a long time ago. Till it’s over.”

“I don’t . . . don’t follow you, Nolan.”

“You don’t have to. You got a life of shit here. Change it. Change yourself. You got time left to choose again. Me? My life’s shit because I picked wrong. Too bad. Too late.”

“I think you’re feverish again.”

“No, I’m not. Have you been listening to what I said?”

“Of course, Nolan, of course . . .”

“Sometime when you got nothing to do, think about it.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and got up from the table. “Let’s not talk anymore. I’m tired again.”

They went back to bed, fell asleep quickly, then woke in a few hours and made love, hard, fast, violently. Then Nolan and the girl rolled apart and went back to sleep.

At five the next morning the phone rang them awake, and Nolan went for it, spoke a few times and listened for a minute-and-a-half without answering, said, “Yes,” and hung up the phone. He went back to bed and pretended sleep, just as he knew the girl was pretending she hadn’t seen and heard what had just happened.

At six-thirty the girl kissed Nolan on the cheek as she was preparing to leave the apartment for work. Nolan grabbed her, stroked her face, and smiled good-bye. Then he rolled back over in the bed and closed his eyes and she was gone. When she’d been away an hour, Nolan got out of bed, called the bus station to confirm his reservation, packed his bag, and left.