Odd Hours

was wonderfully menacing in Mirage with Gregory Peck.”
    “If not the chin beard, then maybe a redheaded guy who will or will not have bad teeth. Whoever—tell him I quit without notice, you’re angry with me.”
    “I don’t think I could be angry with you, son.”
    “Of course you can. You’re an actor.”
    His eyes twinkled. He swallowed some cookie. With his teeth just shy of a clench, he said, “You ungrateful little shit.”
    “That’s the spirit, sir.”
    “You took five hundred in cash out of my dresser drawer, you thieving little bastard.”
    “Good. That’s good.”
    “I treat you like a son, I love you like a son, and now I see I’m lucky you didn’t slit my throat while I slept, you despicable little worm.”
    “Don’t ham it up, sir. Keep it real.”
    Hutch looked stricken. “Hammy? Was it really?”
    “Maybe that’s too strong a word.”
    “I haven’t been before a camera in half a century.”
    “You weren’t over the top,” I assured him. “It was just too…fulsome. That’s the word.”
    “Fulsome. In other words, less is more.”
    “Yes, sir. You’re angry, see, but not furious. You’re a little bitter. But it’s tempered with regret.”
    Brooding on my direction, he nodded slowly. “Maybe I had a son I lost in the war, and you reminded me of him.”
    “All right.”
    “His name was Jamie, he was full of charm, courage, wit. You seemed so like him at first, a young man who rose above the base temptations of this world…but you were just a leech.”
    I frowned. “Gee, Mr. Hutchison, a leech…”
    “A parasite, just looking for a score.”
    “Well, okay, if that works for you.”
    “Jamie lost in the war. My precious Corrina dead of cancer.” His voice grew increasingly forlorn, gradually diminishing to a whisper. “So alone for so long, and you…you saw just how to take advantage of my vulnerability. You even stole Corrina’s jewelry, which I’ve kept for thirty years.”
    “Are you going to tell them all this, sir?”
    “No, no. It’s just my motivation.”
    He snared a plate from a cabinet and put two cookies on it.
    “Jamie’s father and Corrina’s husband is not the type of old man to turn to booze in his melancholy. He turns to the cookies…which is the only sweet thing he has left from the month that you cynically exploited him.”
    I winced. “I’m beginning to feel really bad about myself.”
    “Do you think I should put on a cardigan? There’s something about an old man huddled in a tattered cardigan that can be just wonderfully pathetic.”
    “Do you have a tattered cardigan?”
    “I have a cardigan, and I could tatter it in a minute.”
    I studied him as he stood there with the plate of cookies and a big grin.
    “Look pathetic for me,” I said.
    His grin faded. His lips trembled but then pressed together as if he struggled to contain strong emotion.
    He turned his gaze down to the cookies on the plate. When he looked up again, his eyes glistened with unshed tears.
    “You don’t need the cardigan,” I said.
    “Truly?”
    “Truly. You look pathetic enough.”
    “That’s a lovely thing to say.”
    “You’re welcome, sir.”
    “I better get back to the parlor. I’ll find a deliciously sad book to read, so by the time the doorbell rings, I’ll be fully in character.”
    “They might not get a lead on me. They might not come here.”
    “Don’t be so negative, Odd. They’ll come. I’m sure they will. It’ll be great fun.”
    He pushed through the swinging door with the vigor of a younger man. I listened to him walk down the hallway and into the parlor.
    Shoeless, pantless, bloody, I scooped some cubes from the icemaker and put them in a OneZip plastic bag. I wrapped a dishtowel around the bag.
    Pretending the confidence of a fully dressed man, I walked down the hallway. Passing the open doors to the parlor, I waved to Hutch when, from the solace of his armchair, moored in melancholy, he waved listlessly at me.

 
    TEN
    MY SCALP WAS ABRADED, NOT LACERATED. IN THE shower, the hot water and shampoo stung, but I didn’t begin to bleed freely again.
    Unwilling to take the time to cautiously towel or blow-dry my hair, I pulled on fresh jeans and a clean T-shirt. I laced my backup pair of sneakers.
    The MYSTERY TRAIN sweatshirt had been lost to the sea. A similar thrift-shop purchase featured the word WYVERN across the chest, in gold letters on the dark-blue fabric.
    I assumed Wyvern must be the name of a small college.