Free The Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch

don’t it. I guess the show’s over for a time. The man with the money says we should take a little time off, and we’re very happy to oblige the man with the money.”
    “That’s me,” Mattison said, smiling at the others, all of whom quite frankly stared at him. “Hi, everyone,” he said. He felt weirdly elated.
    “I recognize you,” said one woman. Her lipstick was the color of blood. “You’re the guy—you won the big jackpot. I saw it on the news.” She turned to her friends. “That’s him. And look at him. Throwing money around in a bar on Thanksgiving Day.”
    “Hey,” a man said. “How about letting us have a little of it?”
    “I can’t think of a single solitary thing I’d rather do,” Mattison said. “Why not?” He began to laugh, getting to his feet. He stood before them, their frowning faces, the wrong faces, no one he knew or loved. He reached into his pocket for the other thousand.

SELF KNOWLEDGE

    That morning Allan Meitzer had an asthma attack and was taken to the hospital. It disrupted the class, and Mrs. Porter, the teacher, edged toward panic. Her husband was in Seattle trying to save things. A once-big man in the airline industry, was Jack—gone a lot these days, even when home: money troubles, drinking through the evenings to calm down. She too. They drank separately, and he’d been violent on occasion. They were going to pieces.
    A comforting word—cordials. She’d drink cordials in the nights, bouncing around alone in the house. She felt no bitterness, considered herself a fighter. They were in serious debt, living on cash only, bills piling up. This month’s cash was gone. The house was empty of cordiality. She had no appetite to speak of and nothing to drink. A terrible morning.
    But she got herself up and out to work. And Allan had the asthma attack.
    Pure terror. No one had ever expressed how
physical
thirst could get, how deep it went down into the soul.
    Some days, Allan Meltzer’s parents had prevailed on her to give the boy a ride home. They lived a hundred yards from her, on the other side of Jefferson Street. Allan was a quiet, shy boy. She had heard his loud father outside, calling him “stupid.” She would think about his big moist dark eyes in class. She’d tried being especially kind—this child with asthma, allergies, a fear of others. The other children were murderously perceptive, and pecked at him.
    All this lent urgency—and guilt—to the fact that he was gone to the hospital with asthma. Urgency because she feared for him; guilt because she planned to use his absence. No sense lying to herself.
    She had such an awful dread.
    When the school day ended, she started for the hospital, planning to check on Allan. The Meltzers would be there. They saw her as a kindly childless woman, Mrs. Porter, who had nurtured a whole generation of schoolchildren. Well, it was true. And they trusted her. She had a key to their house, for those times she took the boy home.
    No, she wouldn’t deceive herself. A drink was necessary before she faced the Meltzers. Before she let another hour go by.
    She drove to their house and let herself in. Mr. Meltzer kept only whiskey. She ransacked their kitchen looking for it, resolved to fix everything when she got to a level, when she could think straight again, out of this shaking. Quite simple. She was contending with something that had come up on her and surprised her.
    She drank most of the bottle, slowly and painfully at first, but then with more ease, gulping it, getting calm. She wasn’t a bad woman. She loved those kids, loved everyone. She’d always carried herself with dignity and never complained—a smile and a kind word for everybody, Mrs. Porter. Once, she and Jack had made love on the roof of a Holiday Inn while fireworks went off in another part of a city they were passing through. On their fifteenth anniversary they’d pretended to be strangers in a hotel bar and raced to their room on the sixth floor,