Free Spree by Max Allan Collins Page A

open stairs off the living room into the big open rec room, where a competition-size pool table and a wet bar dominated, and down the hall to the right, to the guest bedroom.
    “I appreciate this, Nolan,” Jon said, flopping on the bed. The sparsely furnished room had three light blue plaster walls and one wall that was strictly closet with wood sliding doors.
    “No problem,” Nolan said.
    “I, uh . . . may need to stay a week.”
    “No problem.”
    “You really are a good friend, Nolan, underneath it all.”
    Nolan said nothing. Then he turned to go.
    Jon said, “Thanks, Nolan. G’night.”
    “Night, kid.”
    Nolan stepped out into the hall; then he peeked his head back in and said, “Kid?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Lose the mustache.”
     
     
    7
     
     
    TWO WEEKS LATER , on a colder Sunday night, snow on the ground, Sherry was feeling pissed.
    She had been invaded. It was as simple as that. This Jon person shows up, out of the blue, and simply moves in. Just like that. Like he fucking owned the place.
    The screwy thing was, he and Nolan weren’t even particularly nice to each other. They rarely spoke. They went their own way. On no occasion in the two weeks since he’d been there had Jon ever eaten a meal with them—with the exception of Thanksgiving, last week. She’d made a turkey and all the fixings, a rarity, since she seldom cooked; she and Nolan ate at restaurants, sometimes their own, on weeknights, after the dining room closed; but more often one of the many other restaurants in the Cities: Nolan’s accountant had confirmed that if he ate his meals at rival restaurants, he could deduct the meals, on a basis of “checking out the competition.” So when Sherry made the grand gesture of actually cooking a meal at home—particularly something as elaborate as a turkey dinner—she would like to have the sullen son of a bitch all to herself, at least.
    But, nooooooo—this “kid” (as Nolan called him—though he seemed to be in his mid-twenties) had to join them. Jon was polite enough, and praised the meal, more overtly than Nolan (but that was no big deal—her man was as stingy with his praise as he was with his money) but what little table talk there was was confined to the football game the two of them had just watched, that and the football game they would watch next, into the evening! Men. It was hard enough living with one—now she was living with two!
    She and Jon had barely spoken as the days turned into weeks; he seemed to be avoiding her—and when he couldn’t avoid her, when he came face-to-face with her, he’d give her a twitch of a smile and avoid her eyes, avoid looking at her, as if he couldn’t bear to, as if she were something horrible to look upon.
    It was early Sunday evening, and she was driving back to the house after a long afternoon of solitary shopping, at Brady Eighty’s chief rival, North Park. She had shopped there primarily to figuratively thumb her nose at Nolan. It drove him crazy when she shopped anywhere but Brady Eighty, because of the discounts she could get at their “home” mall. Normally, she lived and let live where his tight streak was concerned; after all, he provided a good home for her, and paid her a salary, a generous one, for her hostessing at Nolan’s. So she had her own money.
    But she relished the pained look that would register on that Lee Van Cleef mug of his, when he saw the sacks from North Park stores.
    “They don’t have a Limited at Brady Eighty,” she’d explain innocently, shrugging.
    And he’d shake his head, eyes wide.
    Childish of her, she supposed, as she tooled her midnight-blue Nissan 300 ZX across the bridge at Moline; the river tonight was smooth, shimmering with ivory, reflecting the three-quarter moon that rode the sky like a gray-smudged broken dinner plate. The fuel-injected toy she drove had been Nolan’s gift to her last Christmas. She felt a fool, and an ungrateful one at that, for considering him a Scrooge.
    Who cared