Dead as a Doornail

what I hoped was a meaningful smile.
    Claude moved his arm down to circle my waist and gave her a distracted smile of his own, hardly moving his eyes from mine. Oh, brother. “Hello, Halleigh,” he said in his richest baritone.
    “You’re lucky to have someone to bring you home fromthe hospital,” Halleigh said. “That’s very nice of you, uh, Claude.”
    “I would do anything for Sookie,” Claude said softly.
    “Really?” Halleigh shook herself. “Well, how nice. Andy drove your car back over here, Sookie, and he asked if I’d give you your keys. It’s lucky you caught me. I just ran home to eat lunch. I, um, I have to go back to . . .” She gave Claude a final comprehensive stare before getting into her own little Mazda to drive back to the elementary school.
    I unlocked my door clumsily and stepped into my little living room. “This is where I’m staying while my house is being rebuilt,” I told Claude. I felt vaguely embarrassed at the small sterile room. “I just moved in the day I got shot. Yesterday,” I said with some wonder.
    Claude, his faux admiration having been dropped when Halleigh pulled away, eyed me with some disparagement. “You have mighty bad luck,” he observed.
    “In some ways,” I said. But I thought of all the help I’d already gotten, and of my friends. I remembered the simple pleasure of sleeping close to Bill the night before. “My luck could definitely be worse,” I added, more or less to myself.
    Claude was massively uninterested in my philosophy.
    After I thanked him again and asked him to give Claudine a hug from me, I repeated my promise to call him when my wound had healed enough for the posing session.
    My shoulder was beginning to ache now. When I locked the door behind him, I swallowed a pill. I’d called the phone company from the library the afternoon before, and to my surprise and pleasure I got a dial tone when I picked up my phone. I called Jason’s cell to tell him I was out of the hospital, but he didn’t answer so I left a message on his voice mail. Then I called the bar to tell Sam I’d be back at work the next day. I’d missed two days’ worth of pay and tips, and I couldn’t afford any more.
    I stretched out on the bed and took a long nap.
    When I woke up, the sky was darkening in a way that meant rain. In the front yard of the house across the street, a small maple was whipping around in an alarming way. I thought of the tin roof my Gran had loved and of the clatter the rain made when it hit the hard surface. Rain here in town was sure to be quieter.
    I was looking out my bedroom window at the identical duplex next door, wondering who my neighbor was, when I heard a sharp knock. Arlene was breathless from running through the first drops of rain. She had a bag from Wendy’s in her hand, and the smell of the food made my stomach wake up with a growl.
    “I didn’t have time to cook you anything,” she said apologetically as I stood aside to let her in. “But I remembered you liked to get the double hamburger with bacon when you were feeling low, and I figured you’d be feeling pretty low.”
    “You figured right,” I said, though I was discovering I was much better than I’d been that morning. I went to the kitchen to get a plate, and Arlene followed, her eyes going to every corner.
    “Hey, this is nice!” she said. Though it looked barren to me, my temporary home must have looked wonderfully uncluttered to her.
    “What was it like?” Arlene asked. I tried not to hear that she was thinking that I got into more trouble than anyone she knew. “You must have been so scared!”
    “Yes.” I was serious, and my voice showed it. “I was very scared.”
    “The whole town is talking about it,” Arlene said artlessly. That was just what I wanted to hear: that I was the subject of many conversations. “Hey, you remember that Dennis Pettibone?”
    “The arson expert?” I said. “Sure.”
    “We’ve got a date tomorrow night.”
    “Way to go, Arlene. What are you all gonna do?”
    “We’re taking the kids to the roller rink in Grainger. He’s got a girl, Katy. She’s thirteen.”
    “Well, that sounds like fun.”
    “He’s on stakeout tonight,” Arlene said importantly.
    I blinked. “What’s he staking out?”
    “They needed all the officers they could call in. They’re staking out different parking lots around town to see if they can catch this sniper in the act.”
    I could see a flaw in their plan. “What if