The staked Goat

”She wears Kenny out. All I have to do is feed him and forget him.”
    She gave me a big smile. I smiled back.
    ”And those pills. I’ll have to remember the name of them. They knocked Martha clean out.”
    ”You’d need a prescription for them,” I said. ”Easy enough. I meet a lot of doctors at the club. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, you name it.”
    We had gotten Martha from the cemetery to a local emergency room, where Dale and I cooled our heels in the waiting room for a few hours while Larry and Carol rode back with Cribbs to pick up her car and rejoin us. The doctor, when we finally saw her, prescribed some tranquilizer/sleeping pills, which we filled on the way home. Carol changed at her place while dismissing supersitter Ruthie, then got Martha and the boys bedded down back at the Sachs residence. She was wearing designer jeans that made a little too much of her little too ample rump. She also wore a lamb’s-wool V-neck sweater and no apparent breast supporter.
    ”Not many private eyes, though.”
    ”I’m sorry?” I said.
    ”Not many private detectives at the club. Lawyers and doctors and such, but not many detectives.”
    ”Tough way to make a living. Most of us don’t.” 113
    ”I’ll bet you’re pretty good at it. Can you tell me about some of your cases?”
    I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. Carol was exhibiting what I call the post-mortem high. When you witness your first few deaths and burials, particularly in your age group, you feel so relieved to be quit of the depressing rituals, not to mention so relieved that you’re still alive, that you adopt a partylike attitude. Gregarious, flirtatious, boisterous. Different people adopt different attitudes. But they all point in the same direction, toward life and away from death.
    The only problem, I have found, is that after enough deaths, especially close ones, you wait at the departure point long after your fellow mourners have begun moving toward the destination. You remain a wet blanket at the party.
    ”Well, can you talk about your cases?” she said, trying to fill the clumsy silence I was creating.
    ”Not much,” I said. ”Professional confidentiality.”
    ”Uh -huh,” she said terminally. ”Well, I guess I’ll go check on supper again.” She stood up. ”What do you want?”
    I suddenly found I couldn’t swallow too easily. Carol really did look a lot like Audrey Hepburn, a little harder in the eyes and softer in the hips, but a lot.
    ”John? What do you want?”
    ”I want,” I started thickly, then forced a swallow. ”I want you to sit next to me, and hug me until I fall asleep.”
    She blinked three or four times, then came over and knelt down on the couch next to me. She buried her face in my shoulder and clamped her arms around my neck. We started crying at about the same time, crying with each other and for each other and for all the slights and hurts and tragedies that had piled up since the last time either of us had an other to hug.
     

Eleven
     
     
     
    I AWAKENED AT 9:30 P.M. C AROL WASN’T THERE BUTA A jackhammer headache was, partly from the straight vodka itself and partly from the dehydration it causes. I ran my tongue over my front teeth. They felt furry. I heard cutlery clatter coming from the kitchen. My stomach growled in reaction. I could feel the death gloom sliding away, eroded by soothing sleep and growing hunger.
    I was stretching and thinking about searching for aspirin when I heard a faint tapping at the front door. I crossed the room and opened it.
    Dale blew in, borne by an arctic blast. ”Christ, what a climate,” I said.
    ”Oh,” he said, pushing back his parka hood, ”you get used to it.” He dropped his voice. ”How’s Martha doing? We were afraid the telephone might wake her up.”
    ”I think she’s fine. I just woke up myself.”
    ”John,” said Carol from the kitchen, ”who is it?”
    Dale looked from the kitchen to me and cleared his throat. I guessed my hair and clothes looked like I had just awakened and, possibly, not alone.
    Carol came out. ”Oh, hi, Dale, we’re just about to attack your food again. Join us?”
    Dale relaxed a little. ”That would be fine. An old friend of Larry’s from college is in town and they’re out... having dinner.”
    ”Terrific,” said Carol, pirouetting and heading back to the kitchen. ”Martha and the boys—”
    She was interrupted by a plaintive ”Mommieeeee” from upstairs. She was by me like a punt returner and