Free Shorts - Sinister Shorts by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

that you think about it, did you notice anything in his behavior that day, you know, going outside for a long time, anything like that?”
    “Just the usual foul mood when he has a hangover,” Valerie said. “I slept late that morning and didn't go out with Ginger for her walk until ten. But I still-”
    “I hate being sober,” Tim said. He rubbed his jaw, wondering what brought that comment on. She would understand, that was it. He could talk to her, and she would understand. “You ever feel that way?”
    She stayed right with him, as if he hadn't suddenly changed the subject. “I know what you mean,” she said. “It's like, you went to the optometrist, and he fit you with powerful glasses, and the whole world springs into this vivid focus. And it's the same old ugly world you drank to escape from, and you can see every dirty crevice again…” She looked around the shabby kitchen, at the cracked linoleum and the broken high chair in the corner.
    “Yeah. Like you used to love riding the Ferris wheel, and now all you notice is the operator's tired and mean, hates his job, and doesn't like you,” Tim said.
    Valerie nodded. “I look back, and it's like we used to live in the night, under those romantic hazy-colored lights, and now it's daylight. It's too sharp and bright, isn't it?”
    He sat there looking at her. She had that ironic, crooked smile he'd seen on so many drunks at so many meetings. “Yeah. They keep trying to convince you it's better,” he said. “It's worse, but you can't escape anymore. You're gonna die if you keep boozing, shooting up, whatever you're doing.”
    “Condemned to real life,” she said, laughing a little. “Forced to grow up.”
    “I could love you now,” he said. “We've both been through it.”
    “Quit kidding yourself,” she said. “You could have loved me years ago, when we were kids and drunk all the time, but not now. You can't fall in love unless you can get out of your head.”
    “Normal people do it.”
    “They're just born insensitive. Born lucky. So we sobered up, and you turned into a depressed cop. And I turned into an unhappy housewife. We're big successes now.”
    “There was something brave about what we were doing,” Tim said. “You know? And now we don't even have that.”
    “We are the driest of dry drunks,” Valerie said. She got up and came around the table to him. She took his big head in her hands and drew him to her breast, and his arms went around her little waist. “Maybe this will help,” she said.
    “Maybe.”
    “We could give it a try, anyway. Even if it only lasts a minute.”
    “Count on it lasting a little longer than that.”
    “Sobriety sucks, it really does,” she said.
    “Yeah. The whole situation. Take your panties off, okay?”
     
    Tim put Bodie on Ed Strickland for the next couple of days. Bodie reported that Strickland sat in on three or four regular floating poker games at Camden and at Timberlake. He seemed content to hang around town, like he was waiting for something to happen.
    After the second day, Tim got another search warrant, and he and Bodie tore up Strickland's room at the Placer Hotel. But they didn't find anything. The Strickland bank account contained about enough money for next week's groceries.
    The Gibraltar man called. “Are you closing the investigation after the inquest tomorrow?” he said. “I need a final report for the records, so I can issue another check for Bayle and get this thing over with.”
    “You're going to give up on finding the money?”
    “Let me put it to you this way,” Burdick said. “You're Joe Schmoe with a mortgage, fishing along the riverbanks, and what do you snag but a bag full of a fortune in cash? What do you do with it?”
    “You tell me.”
    “You dry out the bills on an inside clothesline. You wait a few months, and you start spending it slowly and carefully, and you thank your lucky fucking stars,” Burdick said with a laugh. “We call it dead money. Now