Read Online The Narcissist's Daughter by Craig Holden - Free Book Online

up at me with such longing anticipation that I felt it like a slap and remembered only then in my exhaustion, my mind reeling with images of Joyce, her scents still fresh, that I’d promised to take him over to the east side to look at a Plymouth. He’d been with Donny already to see it once, though he had no money and besides he was an old GM man and had made a minor avocation out of badmouthing Donny’s Road Runner. And this car, whatever Brigman did to it, would never out-muscle the Road Runner, but it had called out to him somehow. This was all of course notwithstanding the central facts that 1) he was looking at a hot rod at all after having committed lethal carnage with one and sworn off them forever and 2) that he had lost his license after the wreck and never tried to reinstate it. But he’d always liked to look, even after jail.
    “Come on,” I told him.
    As I drove, he sipped from a can of beer and watched the wide seedy world flash past, and it seemed to make him happy, as odd things did in those days.
    I said, “How’s Chloe?”
    “Okay, I guess. Why you asking me?”
    “I was just thinking about her and Sandy’s car.”
    “She was your mother. Why you call her Sandy?”
    “I don’t know. Why shouldn’t Chloe drive it?”
    He looked out the window. There was no good reason but that the thought of it ate at him and I didn’t know if it was because of his desire to keep the car safe and locked away, or to keep Chloe that way.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “I’d help you get it ready,” I said. “It’ll take some work.”
    “Some,” he said. “It’s pretty clean. I drained the gas out back when, so it ain’t gunked or nothin. Needs new rubber.”
    I nodded, surprised that he was even talking about it, then (stupidly) I pushed. “She really wants that job.”
    “She wants this, she wants that. What’s this all about?”
    “Why shouldn’t she work? She’s old enough.”
    “She’s got school to worry about.”
    “We’re talking about a couple nights a week.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “She needs to do something. Learn how to work. It’s time, don’t you think?”
    “You don’t even know, Syd,” he said. “You just— fuck .”
    He stared out the window, chewing on his teeth. A little later, he said, “So how’s the job?”
    “Fine.”
    “You like nights?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
    As we came onto the High Level, the great suspension bridge over the river, he said, “There a guy there who’s missing a hand?”
    It crawled down my back when he said it and burrowed in and turned around a couple times in my stomach. “What?”
    “A doctor. I remember an article in the paper when he first came on at St. V’s, one of those profile things. While ago. You were a kid. He lost it in Korea.”
    “Ted Kessler?”
    “I don’t know. He missing a hand?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You call him by his first name?”
    “Not to his face.”
    “But you know him?”
    “Pretty well.”
    “No shit.”
    “Why?”
    “He was 1st Marines.”
    This had some significance to Brigman. He’d been himself a marine in the later 50s, wedged in between the wars, so he saw no real action, though he went to the Philippines, I knew, and Cuba. He was booted with a dishonorable discharge after only a year but once in the club I guess you were in forever.
    “They were the first ones in over there. Talk about the Shit. And he had this rep, I guess, of being a real bad ass. He made major. He had this small platoon of guys who were as crazy as him. He could get them to do anything. And supposedly he carried this big knife and liked to whack gooks bare-handed. Quiet, you know.”
    “This was in the newspaper?”
    “Not that part. A guy at the plant knew him. After that article came out we were talking, he said he was this stone killer. Now he does autopsies and shit, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “See, it’s like he got this fascination with death. Couldn’t leave it alone even after he got