Free Songs in the Key of Death by William Bankier

fingers could fit the key to the ignition lock. As he drove away, he assured himself of one good thing emerging from the debacle—he would certainly not be spending any more time with that dangerous little bitch.
    Carmen was waiting for Dolan in the Coronet lounge. She had telephoned in sick to the radio station, taking a day’s leave. At four in the afternoon, with his evening broadcast mostly prepared, he had responded to her call and come down to see her. She was halfway through a beer. Soon due on the air, Dolan ordered coffee.
    “Can you believe it?” she opened. “That whole business about the stag in Montreal was a put-on. He suspected us. He set it up to catch you with me.”
    Dolan could believe anything of Alvin and he said so.
    “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “I’m sorry I put you through it.”
    “Not your fault,” he said bleakly. But he thought it was—why couldn’t she just leave him alone? He was old enough to be her father. Why all the provocative attention?
    “We talked for a long time after you left. Alvin can be sweet when you approach him the right way. At first he didn’t want to know but I kept on and finally he understood. We love each other.”
    “Carmen, did you see his face?”
    “He was all right later. I told him you want to marry me.”
    “Carmen—”
    “Don’t you? Are you just in this for what you can get?”
    “You know better.”
    “Well?”
    He tried to be patient with this stubborn child. “I have a wife.”
    “You talk as if you’ve got cancer. Millions of men get cured of wives. It’s called divorce.”
    “It takes two to get a divorce.”
    “Have you asked her? She doesn’t even live with you. She’s over in Centralia having a ball running her store. She’s probably waiting for you to bring up the subject.”
    It was all so complicated. What had happened to the quiet life he used to think was boring? A divorce would cost money. A wedding would cost money. Carmen would get pregnant. Babies cost money. He would be the oldest daddy in Baytown—laughter in the beverage rooms, to say the least.
    He drank his coffee doggedly, aware that she was watching him across her beer.
    “Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll drive over to Centralia and put the question to her.”
    Dolan waited until Sunday when he had no program to do and then drove down the Bayshore Road through a region of dairy farms and acres of half-grown corn, reaching the concrete towers of Centralia at five o’clock in the afternoon.
    He had always hated the big city. Years ago, the Redmen had come up against Centralia in a sudden-death semifinal leading to the Southern Ontario Baseball League championship. Baytown lost the game eleven to four and Dolan, besides going hitless, had allowed the ball to get past him twice and each time a run scored while he was scrambling around twenty feet behind homeplate, trying to find the handle.
    Warned by his telephone call the day before, Anna was waiting for him in the back garden when he walked around the side of the house. It was bigger than his place back home but she was only renting it, furnished. Reclining in a folding chair, an empty one beside her, she raised her sunglasses and studied him as he shambled across the grass.
    “You’ve lost weight,” she said.
    “Pining away without you.”
    “You look younger.” Her voice and her frown conveyed suspicion. “What’s her name?”
    There was a pitcher of lemonade and a couple of glasses on a table between the chairs. He poured himself a splash and sat down. “You’re a mindreader.”
    “Why else would you ask to come and see me?”
    “Maybe I miss you.”
    “Maybe, but you don’t.” She had not taken her eyes from his face. “Don’t look so pathetic. I wrote us off a long time ago.”
    “I hate it when you say that.”
    “Stop clinging to a finished thing. Move on, Case.”
    He set down his empty glass on the tin table. It rang like the signal for the start of round one.