The Axeman's Jazz

name?”
    “I don’t know. I like his style … something about his eyes.”
    “Yeah. Like he could get away with anything.” She looked straight at him and they laughed, together, in sync. She was definitely flirting.
    He felt strangely powerful. He, Sonny Gerard, had done something to win this stunning woman’s attention. He couldn’t think what. How could he keep it?
    She picked up her quarters. “I’ll see which one works.”
    “Which-uh—what?”
    “I’ll look them up.”
    It was only after she was gone that he realized that she was going to analyze the names he’d picked according to that crazy system of hers. It made him laugh.
    The encounter had done more for him than his whole bar-as-window system ever had before. He felt strong, fresh, masculine—like a man, not the terrified boy he felt like most of the time, the boy who was the truth he struggled so hard to conceal.
    It wasn’t working either. Someone else knew, and she was trying hard to help him, but he hated it that she knew, that he was so transparent. He felt as if Di didn’t see him that way.
    Damn! He didn’t know her last name. How could he see her again?
    Forget it, Sonny, he told himself. No way you’re going to see her again. You’re just drunk. Go home.
    * * *
    “Hi, Missy.”
    She looked like every girl in Georgia. Blond. So many of them here were dark, like everyone in New York and Pennsylvania. This one had almost certainly been head cheerleader in high school, and probably homecoming queen, had gone on to pledge some good sorority at LSU and now probably worked as a teacher or maybe a clothing-store clerk. Just something until she got married.
    A piece of fluff—slender, blue-eyed, perfect WASP features. If there had been one single thing about her that was different, that set her apart from a million other young women, she could have been a TV star; probably she wouldn’t make it in movies, you had to have talent for that. But even for TV she needed a beauty mark or something.
    She said, “I’m going through something really hard right now. I’m trying to let go. Well, not let go, exactly, just loosen my grip, sort of.
    “I’m trying not to be too smothering, not to hang on too hard.”
    Her voice was like a flower petal, her perfect face marred by her earnestness. “I’m trying to recognize the fact that not everyone needs as much attention as I do, and that maybe I don’t really need it myself. But I’m not really there yet. I’m still fighting it. I’ve been with the same man for a year.…”
    Damn!
    He hoped no one had heard his sudden intake of breath. It wasn’t fair—the good ones were always taken; he’d been watching her for weeks.
    Oh, get a grip, Abe.
    He looked around to see if any of the other men looked similarly disappointed and saw that they didn’t. They looked as earnest as Missy, their sympathetic brows creased with concern.
    I should have known. She’s always with that guy
.
    Well, she wasn’t tonight. “I know that my boyfriend needs time to himself, and that it isn’t personal when he doesn’t want to be with me every day, all day. I mean, we both work, but when we’re not working, we don’t have to be together all the time. I know that, I really do.”
    She was too young anyway, and a shade too perfect—perfection was blandness. He’d be sick of her in five minutes.
    “I’m doing okay with that. It’s just that lately he’s seemed really distant sometimes. I keep wondering if something’s bothering him and telling myself that it’s not my problem. He and I are two different people. If he’s having a problem, it’s something he has to work out for himself, it’s nothing I can help him with.”
    Suddenly he saw through her as clearly as if she were made of Lucite:
She thinks she’s the problem. She’s afraid he’s going to dump her.
    Adrenaline suited through him. She’d be vulnerable now; it was a perfect time to move in.
    She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “I’m a social worker. I spend all day every day trying to solve people’s problems. I think I should be able to solve his and everybody else’s as well. Sick, isn’t it?”
    No one answered. It was forbidden.
    “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, not to meddle; not to try to help when I know I could. He has to go through this thing alone, whatever it is. I think it’s something like a mid-life crisis. Except he’s only twenty-six.”
    Before Abe could stop himself, he snickered.