Shooting in the Dark

who can get through to me, someone who doesn’t give a damn.’
    ‘That’s two.’
    ‘I’m a fussy guy; minimum requirements.’
    ‘And she fits the bill?’
    ‘I want her to.’
    ‘She’s been asking around, wants to know what your face is like.’
    ‘What did you tell her?’
    ‘I said you look like a fucking turkey.’
     
    Back home he stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and remembered the thing he’d heard about Austrian girls. The mirror was cracked and the face in it was cracked as well. A cracked person. Someone with a flaw.
    ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Show me someone without a flaw and I’ll show you someone dangerous.’
    But there’s a mean somewhere. No flaws at all is way off, but how many flaws do you have to have before you go rolling down the opposite side of the hill?
    He couldn’t answer that one. Left it hanging in the air and went to use the phone. She picked up on the third ring. Said, ‘Hello, Angeles Falco.’ It was a pretty good sentence really. Didn’t waste words and got the message across. Didn’t leave any room for doubt.
    ‘Hello?’ She said it again. It was taking Sam a while to get his own words out because they had to come all the way up from his socks.
    ‘I was out of order this morning,’ he said.
    ‘You don’t have to apologize.’
    ‘Tomorrow night?’ he said. ‘If you’re free, we could talk. Maybe listen to some music?’
    ‘Sounds good. I’m free.’
    ‘Austrian girls,’ he told her. ‘Traditionally, in the country areas, they put apple slices in their armpits when they go dancing, and at the end of the evening they present them to the boy they like best.’
    ‘Ugh,’ she said down the line. ‘That’s disgusting.’
    Sam laughed. ‘Have I blown it?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I don’t suppose it will stop you trying.’
    ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘People tell me you’ve been asking what I look like.’
    ‘A girl needs to know what she’s getting herself into.’
    ‘And now you think you know?’
    ‘I know more than I did. Being blind makes me more focused.’
    He put the phone back on the hook and returned to the cracked face in the cracked mirror. A distinct change had taken place; he looked as rampant as a billy-goat.
     

53
     
    Angeles was walking into things all morning. It was good to be back home, to have all her things around her, though it was quiet after Sam’s house. She rubbed her shin and remembered that the stool was there for a purpose. A short time away and she had already forgotten the layout of her own house.
    She missed his touch. When you’re blind and you live with someone else they touch you all the time. And touch means so much more when you live in the dark. It undermines loneliness.
    She switched the computer on and pushed an old Feliciano album into the CD slot. It opened with the acoustic guitar intro to ‘California Dreaming’, magically hustling Mamma Cass’s wistful song into a soulful lament. Something to play for Sam, she thought, in return for ‘Tomorrow is a Long Time’, which he’d whispered to her in the dark that night by the fire.
    The phone rang but when she picked it up there was no one there. At least there was no sound. Someone listening to her voice, to her breath? She put the handset back into its cradle and held it down with both hands. Surely they weren’t giving him access to a phone. The man was in custody. They wouldn’t let him have an outside line, wouldn’t let him harass her. Would they?
    A couple of days before they’d heard that he made a suicide attempt, slashed his wrists. So he wasn’t in prison any more, he was in a hospital somewhere. But he’d be under guard.
    She took the phone off the hook but put it back again. Don’t let him panic you, she thought. He’s been taken now, removed from the scene, don’t let him reach over the divide and dictate your movements.
    It couldn’t be him, anyway. She was letting herself be spooked over nothing. There were other explanations. A hoax call? Some fault on the line? A crossed wire? If it had been him, he would have said something. He would have made it plain that he was still around.
    Couldn’t be him.
    She watched the phone, expecting it to ring again at any moment. And then what would she do?
    She took the CD out of the player and put it back in its case. The music wasn’t working.
    She remembered the time in the garden, when he’d been there, just before he attacked her. It had felt