Chase: Roman

laughed, you know?’ She frowned, remembering how she had laughed and wondering now if she had not been all wrong. ‘The idea was silly, right out of a movie. Mike was like that, too, always off on one fantasy or another. He was going to be a painter, did you know? At first he was going to work in a garret and become famous. Then he was going to be a paperback-book illustrator and then a very famous industrial designer. He never could decide - but he knew whatever it was he would be famous and rich. A dreamer.’ She shook her head, so wise with hindsight, knowing that dreams and plans don't work.
        ‘What about being followed?’ Chase asked. He did not want to anger her by prodding her the wrong way, for he knew she had the kind of temper that might make her clam right up. On the other hand, he didn't want to spend the rest of the night listening to a biography of Michael Karnes.
        ‘It was a man in a Volkswagen,’ she said. ‘A red Volkswagen. After a week or so of listening to Mike, I started watching myself, and I found out it wasn't another fantasy. There really was someone following us in a red Volkswagen.’
        ‘What did he look like?’ Chase asked.
        ‘I never saw him. He stayed far enough behind and always parked far along the kerb when we went in somewhere. But Mike knew him.’
        Chase felt, for an instant, as if the top of his head were coming off, and he wanted to reach out and shake the rest of it out of her without having to go through this question-and-answer routine. Calmly he said, ‘Who was the man in the VW?’
        ‘I don't know,’ she said. ‘Mike wouldn't tell me.’
        ‘And you weren't curious?’ he asked.
        ‘Sure I was. But when Mike made up his mind about something, he wouldn't change it. One night, when we went to the Diamond Dell - that's a drive-in hamburger joint on Galasio - he got out of the car and went back and talked to the man in the VW. When he came back, he said he knew him and that we wouldn't have any more trouble with him. And he was right. The man drove away, and he didn't follow us any more. I never knew what it was about.’
        ‘But you must have had some idea,’ Chase insisted. ‘You can't have let it drop without finding out something more concrete.’
        She put her drink down. She said, ‘Mike didn't want to talk about it, and I thought I knew why. He never said directly, but I think the man in the VW had made a pass at him.’
        ‘A homosexual,’ Chase said.
        ‘I only think so,’ she said. ‘I couldn't prove it.’ She started to pick up her drink, then brightened. ‘Hey, do you think it was the same man Monday night, the one with the ring?’
        ‘Maybe,’ Chase said.
        ‘Who is he?’
        ‘I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out.’ He stood up, and Glenda stood up beside him.
        Louise said, ‘I'll just bet that's who it was!’
        ‘One more thing,’ Chase said. ‘I'd like a list of Mike's friends, anyone his own age that he was close to.’
        ‘Girl friends too?’ she asked, just the slightest bit tart about it.
        He thought a moment and decided that this was not something a boy Mike's age would discuss with girls he was dating, for fear the very idea of having been approached by a homosexual would call his own masculinity into question. With boys his own age, however, he might be inclined to bring it up as a joke, for laughs. ‘Just boys,’ he said.
        ‘How many?’
        ‘Five or six.’
        ‘That would probably be a waste. Mike wasn't close to very many people. I can only think of three guys, actually.’
        That'll do.’
        She got a piece of paper at the desk, sat down and printed the three names. She got up, put the pen away and brought the list back to him. All the getting up and sitting down was designed, he was sure, to give him a few more little glimpses of what she must have considered paradise.
        ‘Thanks,’ he said, seeing addresses below the names and wondering how many of Mike's best friends had been to bed with her.
        At the door, Louise brushed against him, all plastic promise and manufactured musk. She whispered, ‘You know, it could have been very nice indeed.’
        Glenda was in front of Chase with her back to them, and she should not have been able to hear, but she turned and smiled pleasantly at the younger girl. She said, not pleasantly, ‘But the problem is that you try too hard,