Free The True Detective by Theodore Weesner Page A

bridge is in view. He gazes for some time in that direction. Perhaps he has never looked to the horizon before, or within himself. The bridge arcs through the sky like something more modern than the city, and in reverse focus he imagines the view of Portsmouth below, its buildings and houses, the wide river, its lobster boats, and at last—would he be visible?—himself standing here. No, he thinks. But what an idea. Does it mean he is in love with a black girl? Boy, are you losing it, he says to himself.
    He strolls some. Sleek cars slide by here, close to the restaurants around the harbor and the Theatre-by-the-Sea. He watches a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce drift by. Women passing are different, too, and he strolls, eye-searching both for European cars and for the appealing droop of free-flowing breasts. In his mind this early evening, breasts uncontained look to be presenting themselves, ready in their faint sag to be lifted and held like kittens in his hand, to have their noses touched by his thumb.
    What if he called her again. No, he thinks. Too uncool. He said he’d call tomorrow. Or sometime. That’s what he had to do. Be cool. That was the way to make out with a girl. He could see why, too. Calling her now would be the uncoolest possible thing anyone could ever do. Talk about being a twit.
    “G OODNESS , TWICE IN one evening,” Vanessa says. “Is this getting serious or what?”
    “You still eating?” Matt says.
    “All done,” she says.
    “Could I meet you somewhere? Can you come out?”
    “Tonight?”
    “Right now.”
    “Gee, I don’t know. I know I can’t be out past nine. Is something wrong?”
    “No.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m still in town. I just been hanging out.”
    “I can meet you, I guess. But I have to be back by nine. I’m sort of on probation.”
    “Where could we meet?”
    “The Mall? I could have my father drive me there. He thinks the Mall’s cool.”
    “Where in the Mall?”
    “By the plants, in the center?”
    “Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
    Leaving the translucent telephone shell, Matt is all at once surprised. What are you doing? he asks himself. What is all this?

CHAPTER 14
    P ARKING HIS CAR ON THE SIDE , WALKING AROUND TO THE door on the highway, entering into a noisy crowd, a true crowd, he is trembling with apprehension. He pauses a moment. Disco music is playing. It sounds like Saturday Night Fever, and so it is. So many people are lined up, packed along the bar, he has to reach and step sideways between customers to achieve a view of the other side. Then, when a bartender, a young man withsmooth hair and a black bow tie, pistol-points an impatient finger at him, Vernon isn’t ready with something to say.
    The finger shifts. In the crush, not giving up his place, Vernon pulls two dollar bills from his wallet. Within the near roar of talk and music, he overhears a voice call out, “Chablis on the rocks, mon cher. ”
    Ready, he holds out his money. “Chablis,” he says when his turn comes. “On the rocks.”
    Two-fifty. Drink in hand, held shoulder high, his two dollars gone, he has to work with his free hand as the bartender waits. He retrieves another dollar, working one-handed, extends it between shoulders. Two-fifty for a glass of wine! Is that what these places cost?
    Quarters in hand, the drink in his uncertain left hand, he slips—“pardon me”—away from the bar to a less-crowded opening. Pocketing his change, shifting the heavy glass, he sips and glances above the glass edge around him.
    It occurs to him that he fears rather than anticipates someone approaching him. He is wondering, as he had when he drove into the parking lot, if the police collected numbers in such places, kept tabs, filed reports. Should he use a name other than his own?
    Five minutes at least have passed and nothing has happened. How does it happen? he wonders. This all seems so ordinary, even happy. Will someone wink at him?
    Sex. It has to be the