Read Online Bullets of Rain by David J. Schow - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David J. Schow
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you always teased me about."
"Sorry." Art grinned anyway. Sarcasm as a trait of male bonding.
"We got a place on Kaunakakai, away from a lot of the tourist bullshit. A lot like this place''-his arm indicated the sweep and scope of Art's overdone house-"but with, you know, no money involved. We were together for a year until one morning she rolled over and said, 'I think we need to see other people.' Point-blank, like that, while I'm still thinking about not waking up. She hung around most of the day, but it was clear all she wanted to do was run. We saved the first real argument for when she got back, and I swear I could already smell the new guy on her. Now picture me: I'm burned out from Lockheed, all that corporate crap, all that political. crap, and she's the only one who understands or gives a damn, and we'd even mentioned getting married once or twice, and now she's out the door like I have the plague."
"You talked about getting married?" Art let his disbelief register on his face, mostly to prompt an explanation. "You weren't on speedballs or anything?"
"Afraid not, amigo. I know-alert the media." He killed half the beer in a swig, just tipped it down his throat without swallowing, the way Blitz would do it if he had a taste. "I'd come around to thinking about human relationships, the patterns people stick to. You've seen most of my girlfriends."
"They tend to blend at the edges. I remember Brady, that vice-president of something or other from the company in the Trans-America Tower."
"She worked in publishing-that outfit that did the series of books on how normal people were supposed to figure out what were then called 'home computers.' Why do you remember her?"
"Because she had fabulous legs, knew how to walk in heels, looked like Gene Tierney in mint condition, I thought her glasses were cute, and she came right over and talked to me without looking toward you for permission, which is something a lot of the others did, like puppies waiting for a command they don't understand anyway. We had this very memorable conversation about modern hard-boiled novelists, and it turns out we held a lot of the same tastes. After Crumley, Westlake, and Willeford… forget it, everybody else was just a pretender or a recycler. I'll admit I got most of that line from Lorelle, but Brady liked it."
"She did read a lot of books. Fiction books."
"She was slightly older than you, too, as I recall."
"One of the few. Erica was a decade younger, and that was no strain until she decided it was high time she had a midlife crisis, mostly to find out what it was like. Her whole life had been smash-and-grab, chase-and-run, trade on her looks, slip through the cracks, and as soon as she stabilized and got a tiny bit of security, of permanence, I think it scared the shit out of her."
"She was thinking, Great. I'm old. I'm over already?"
"Or words to that effect. So, how do you countermand this feeling? You run as fast as you can back to what you knew worked when you were in your twenties."
"A lot of people do that. Chase it, hoping to recapture it."
"Meanwhile, I'm sitting around with this not-bad life, thinking that most people do the same thing, which is why the range of human relationships runs on a scale from one to ten-one is the initial attraction, and ten is growing older together, and I knew far too many people who had concentrated on becoming world-class experts on one through three. As soon as 'four' threatened-let's call 'four' a longer-term relationship than normal-they freak out, self-destruct the current relationship, and reset to one. It's not living, but it's a life, if you know what I mean. You get the allure of unwrapping a fresh body as opposed to the normalcy of sleeping with the same person for a year. Get out of the house before the home makes you feel stagnant, and you accumulate too many mementos. Stay
"Sorry." Art grinned anyway. Sarcasm as a trait of male bonding.
"We got a place on Kaunakakai, away from a lot of the tourist bullshit. A lot like this place''-his arm indicated the sweep and scope of Art's overdone house-"but with, you know, no money involved. We were together for a year until one morning she rolled over and said, 'I think we need to see other people.' Point-blank, like that, while I'm still thinking about not waking up. She hung around most of the day, but it was clear all she wanted to do was run. We saved the first real argument for when she got back, and I swear I could already smell the new guy on her. Now picture me: I'm burned out from Lockheed, all that corporate crap, all that political. crap, and she's the only one who understands or gives a damn, and we'd even mentioned getting married once or twice, and now she's out the door like I have the plague."
"You talked about getting married?" Art let his disbelief register on his face, mostly to prompt an explanation. "You weren't on speedballs or anything?"
"Afraid not, amigo. I know-alert the media." He killed half the beer in a swig, just tipped it down his throat without swallowing, the way Blitz would do it if he had a taste. "I'd come around to thinking about human relationships, the patterns people stick to. You've seen most of my girlfriends."
"They tend to blend at the edges. I remember Brady, that vice-president of something or other from the company in the Trans-America Tower."
"She worked in publishing-that outfit that did the series of books on how normal people were supposed to figure out what were then called 'home computers.' Why do you remember her?"
"Because she had fabulous legs, knew how to walk in heels, looked like Gene Tierney in mint condition, I thought her glasses were cute, and she came right over and talked to me without looking toward you for permission, which is something a lot of the others did, like puppies waiting for a command they don't understand anyway. We had this very memorable conversation about modern hard-boiled novelists, and it turns out we held a lot of the same tastes. After Crumley, Westlake, and Willeford… forget it, everybody else was just a pretender or a recycler. I'll admit I got most of that line from Lorelle, but Brady liked it."
"She did read a lot of books. Fiction books."
"She was slightly older than you, too, as I recall."
"One of the few. Erica was a decade younger, and that was no strain until she decided it was high time she had a midlife crisis, mostly to find out what it was like. Her whole life had been smash-and-grab, chase-and-run, trade on her looks, slip through the cracks, and as soon as she stabilized and got a tiny bit of security, of permanence, I think it scared the shit out of her."
"She was thinking, Great. I'm old. I'm over already?"
"Or words to that effect. So, how do you countermand this feeling? You run as fast as you can back to what you knew worked when you were in your twenties."
"A lot of people do that. Chase it, hoping to recapture it."
"Meanwhile, I'm sitting around with this not-bad life, thinking that most people do the same thing, which is why the range of human relationships runs on a scale from one to ten-one is the initial attraction, and ten is growing older together, and I knew far too many people who had concentrated on becoming world-class experts on one through three. As soon as 'four' threatened-let's call 'four' a longer-term relationship than normal-they freak out, self-destruct the current relationship, and reset to one. It's not living, but it's a life, if you know what I mean. You get the allure of unwrapping a fresh body as opposed to the normalcy of sleeping with the same person for a year. Get out of the house before the home makes you feel stagnant, and you accumulate too many mementos. Stay
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