Free The True Detective by Theodore Weesner

on his door. He looks over but doesn’t say anything.
    “Duncan,” a voice says. “I come in?”
    The door opens several inches.
    “You okay?” Duncan says.
    Vernon nods; he would say yes, but the kindness is confusing and the word doesn’t come out.
    “You know,” Duncan says. “You’re the one might think of going to a different school. I say that as a friend. There are schools that are more—well, I don’t know—that aren’t so base, you know.”
    Vernon only looks back at him; the suggestion would be generous except, as Duncan should know, it is Vernon’s last semester.
    “The animals are going out,” Duncan says. “So am I. You wanna go?”
    Nor can Vernon say no, as he moves his head back and forth.
    “I understand. See you later, man.”
    Closing the door softly, Duncan is gone. Vernon sits there, wishing he had said yes. He seems to listen to the house, or to the sky. He doesn’t know if what he hears is within his head or without.
    They all leave. He hears the cabin door out there open and close; a car starts up, backs around, and drives away. Vernon feels some relief to have them gone. Then, at once, the familiar aloneness is within him again.
    To avoid the feeling, he goes ahead and carries his scant laundry bag of socks and underwear to the bathroom. Lights are on in the kitchen, to his left, and a stillness there takes him back to childhood, when his mother left him alone so many times in the evening.
    He wishes not to think, but he thinks that washing his clothes like this is a strong thing to do. Shaking detergent on the sinking socks, pressing them into the water, his mind keeps looking to the question of how he is going to get through the night. His odd life. He won’t be able to sleep. Will he live?
    Looking into the mirror, it occurs to him that he will go out. He should go out, this early evening, and do something. Maybe he should go somewhere and let himself be picked up. Is that how it’s done? Go somewhere, degrade himself if he can. He will bathe, and dress in clean clothes, he thinks. He’ll sprinkle talcum powder over his stupid heart, and soul, and go out and give himself away to anyone who will take him. In degradation, maybe his aloneness will fade.

CHAPTER 12
    “T HAT CARD WASN ’ T FROM F RIEDA , WAS IT? ” C LAIRE SAYS , AS they approach the Legion Hall.
    “Heck no. Gosh. ”
    “It’s okay if it was,” she says in a moment. “And it’s okay now or any time, if you have a girlfriend. Or a friend who is a girl. You don’t want to let your brother’s teasing get in the way of that.”
    Maybe he nods, as they continue walking. In her glance at him, she wonders what is in his mind, what he knows. Is shedoing all right by him? she wonders. Is it guilt that has her acting so affectionate? Having him walk her to work? Well, the main thing, going to work on Saturday night and leaving him alone? Was that it?
    At the same time, the twenty or twenty-five or thirty dollars she earns long ago became a necessity. And when she returns home and Eric, counting her tips at the kitchen table, announces the verdict, they both seem to know a kind of satisfaction. It always seems right then, when the week’s lunch money for all three of them is in hand.
    Besides, she’d have to admit, she enjoys the few hours she puts in each weekend waiting on tables. It’s the only chance she has to act like a hostess, a wife almost, serving food and drinks to people who are in a good mood, who are having a good time and know her by name.

CHAPTER 13
    L EANING AGAINST A BRICK WALL , M ATT OVERLOOKS B OW Street and Ceres Street, the sheltered lee in the harbor around which are taverns and glassed-in terrace cafés, tugboats and yachts. And out-of-towners. The sunless air on the horizon is dusty orange, and for the first time he feels an allure here. The feeling of Vanessa keeps coming up in him. It fills, like a balloon. A moment later it fills again.
    From where he stands, the Interstate 95