Free The Informant by Marc Olden Page B

didn’t like him when he was drunk, when he telephoned her at odd hours of the night and said he was coming over. Just like that. Coming over, waking her up, using her.
    She was thirty, almost six feet tall, plain as white bread, with red hair combed forward to hide a high, wide forehead. The world frightened her, which was why her eyes were never still. She was always on guard against danger, alert against the hell of living that she knew definitely was always ready to come down on her.
    Fear had sent her into a convent when she was twenty. Fear had driven her out of the convent at twenty-eight.
    “Joke.” Katey giggled, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. He still wore his topcoat and reeked of liquor.
    “ Edward. ”
    “Funny. You gonna like it.”
    She sighed. “If I listen, will you leave ?” Why did she let him do this to her? Did she need his strength that much? Or were they both cripples, each with one leg and leaning on the other, thus feeling they were one whole person?
    “Joke. Now, you …” He belched. “ ’Scuse. You got to listen.” He spoke with exaggerated slowness, aiming a forefinger at her, a silly grin on his ax blade of a face.
    “It’s a newspaper headline. ‘The Jig is Up.’ Now, you gotta tell me what that means.”
    “I haven’t the slightest idea.” She wanted a cigarette, but if she got one, he’d ask for one and end up staying longer. She folded her hands in her lap. He was sad, vulnerable, even if he was tough and carried a gun and other men feared him.
    “Give up?” Katey giggled.
    “Yes, I give up.”
    “ ‘The Jig Is Up.’ That’s the newspaper headline when the first nigger astronaut lands on the moon.”
    “Oh, Edward … oh, God. Why—”
    He stood up, swayed, then staggered toward her. “Marge, tonight I need to be with somebody, somebody.”
    “Somebody?” She was on her feet, angry, arms stiffened against his chest, keeping him away from her. “I am so tired of being just somebody !” She stepped past him, stopped with her back to him, hugging herself, head high. To hell with spending the rest of her life as somebody.
    His hands gently touched her shoulders. “You’re not just somebody, you know that. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
    He turned her around, and they embraced. Her tears were hot on her face as she clung to him. An ex-nun in love with a cop separated from his wife. God had not given Margaret Soames very much, and it seemed to her that he held out a promise of even less in the future.
    Edward Kates was consumed by his job and could give Margaret Soames only the leftovers from his life. Because she loved him, she took the leftovers. She was plain-looking, too tall, an ex-nun who found the rigid life of a convent destructive and terrifying. And while she had escaped the convent’s four walls, she had not escaped the guilt she still felt for having left.
    He had other women. She knew; a woman always knows. And he had his job, which is all he really lived for. Margaret Soames had to be fitted in whenever and wherever possible.
    “What’s wrong?” She stroked the back of his neck.
    “Sometimes it’s too much. Too fucking much.”
    “Being a cop?”
    “Yeah. Second highest divorce rate in the country, we got. Alcoholism, suicide. We got more of that than anybody ’cept shrinks. We got shit that won’t quit. We got no money, no fucking security, and we got goddamn queers …”
    She leaned back to see his face. “Queers?”
    He shrugged, shaking his head. “Feel bad. Want to be with some … be with you.”
    “Edward, you want to talk about it?”
    He shook his head, closed his eyes, squeezing out tears. “My whole fucking life. But who wants to talk about that? Who the hell wants to listen?”
    She helped him to the couch. Did he have an argument with his wife again? Was the department on him? Had a friend been killed? So many things went wrong in his world. So many things.
    Katey lay down on the couch, wept