“Please do it,” Bella said. “Go to her and live with her and never come back here. Don’t even use the phone. Or write. Just forget about all this. Forget you ever lived in this house.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Sure it’s easy. You said so yourself. Just a matter of spending the carfare.” Her voice was torn with a sob. “Fifteen cents.”
“That’s cheap enough,” he said. “Maybe it’s too cheap. I think it costs more than that to break off all connections.”
Then slowly, gently, he took hold of her wrists, he unfastened her arms from around his middle. She didn’t look at him as she stepped away, giving him an unimpeded path to the door. But as she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, she made one last try to hold him back, calling on the only power that could stop him now, moaning, “Dear God, don’t let him do it.”
But the door was already open. Bella sank to her knees, weeping without sound. Through the window she saw him as he stepped down off the doorstep. His face was like something carved from rock, a profile of hardened whiteness, very white against the darkness of the street. Then he was crossing Vernon and she saw the route he was taking. He moved along a diagonal path aiming at a foggy yellow glow in the distance, the window of Dugan’s Den.
16
As he entered the taproom he heard voices and saw faces but everything was a blur that didn’t seem real and had no meaning. His eyes were lenses going past the faces and searching for Frank. But Frank wasn’t there. He told himself to stand near the door and wait. And just then someone yelled, “Come join the party.”
It was the voice of the skinny hag, Dora. She sat with several others at a couple of tables pushed together for what seemed like a celebration. Kerrigan focused on the drinkers. Dora was seated between Mooney and Nick Andros. The other chairs were occupied by the humpbacked wino and Newton Channing. Next to Channing there was an empty chair and the person who’d been sitting on it was prone on the floor, face down and out cold. He looked at the sleeper and saw the orange hair and shapeless figure of Dora’s friend Frieda.
For some moments he stood there gazing down at Frieda. She had one arm outstretched and he saw something that glittered on her finger. It was a very large green stone and he didn’t need to be told it was artificial.