Because I had not, as I’d told him, found out about the point-shaving weeks after the game. I had found out about it the day before the game, through a personal contact in the gambling syndicate. And instead of breaking the story, blowing the lid off the whole sordid affair, I had withdrawn my wife’s and my entire savings of $8,000 and bet it all on the New York Sabers.
Yet it was not Rolfe who had cost me my savings, and as a result my marriage; it was me who had lost them, me who had robbed myself. I could admit that now, after all this time. I was no better than Rolfe; we were two of a kind. Just as he had had his moment of greatness in 1957, so had I had my moment. Just as he had fallen from grace because of one terrible mistake, and lost a career full of promise and a chance for fulfillment, so had I.
Alex Rolfe had lived in his own private hell for twenty-one years; he would go on living in it for the rest of his life.
And so would I in mine.
Black Wind
It was one of those freezing late-November nights, just before the winter snows, when a funny east wind comes howling down out of the mountains and across Woodbine Lake a quarter mile from the village. The sound that wind makes is something hellish, full of screams and wailings that can raise the hackles on your neck if you’re not used to it. In the old days the Indians who used to live around here called it a “black wind”; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that if you listened to it long enough it could drive you mad.
Well, there are a lot of superstitions in our part of upstate New York; nobody pays much mind to them in this modern age. Or if they do, they won’t admit it even to themselves. The fact is, though, that when the black wind blows, the local folks stay pretty close to home and the village, like as not, is deserted after dusk.
That was the way it was on this night. I hadn’t had a customer in my diner in more than an hour, since just before seven o’clock, and I had about decided to close up early and go on home. To a glass of brandy and a good hot fire.
I was pouring myself a last cup of coffee when the headlights swung into the diner’s parking lot.
They whipped in fast, off the county highway, and I heard the squeal of brakes on the gravel just out front. Kids, I thought, because that was the way a lot of them drove, even around here — fast and a little reckless. But it wasn’t kids. It turned out instead to be a man and a woman in their late thirties, strangers, both of them bundled up in winter coats and mufflers, the woman carrying a big, fancy alligator purse.
The wind came in with them, shrieking and swirling. I could feel the numbing chill of it even in the few seconds the door was open; it cuts through you like the blade of a knife, that wind, right straight to the bone.
The man clumped immediately to where I was behind the counter, letting the woman close the door. He was handsome in a suave, barbered city way; but his face was closed up into a mask of controlled rage.
“Coffee,” he said. The word came out in a voice that matched his expression — hard and angry, like a threat.
“Sure thing. Two coffees.”
“One coffee,” he said. “Let her order her own.”
The woman had come up on his left, but not close to him — one stool between them. She was nice-looking in the same kind of made-up, city way. Or she would have been if her face wasn’t pinched up worse than his; the skin across her cheekbones was stretched so tight it seemed ready to split. Her eyes glistened like a pair of wet stones and didn’t blink at all.
“Black coffee,” she said to me.
I looked at her, at him, and I started to feel a little uneasy. There was a kind of savage tension between them, thick and crackling; I could feel it like static electricity. I wet my lips, not saying anything, and reached behind me for the coffeepot and two mugs.
The man said, “I’ll have a ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye bread. No mustard, no mayonnaise; just butter. Make it to go.”
“Yes, sir. How about you, ma’am?”
“Tuna fish on white,” she said thinly. She had close-cropped blonde hair, wind-tangled under a loose scarf; she kept brushing at it with an agitated hand. “I’ll eat it here.”
“No, she won’t,” the man said to me. “Make it to go, just like mine.”
She threw him an ugly look. “I want to eat here.”
“Fine,” he said — to me again; it was as if she wasn’t there. “But I’m leaving in five minutes, as soon as I drink my coffee. I want that ham-and-cheese ready by then.”
“Yes, sir.”
I finished pouring out the coffee and set the two mugs on the counter. The man took his, swung around, and stomped over to one of the tables. He sat down and stared at the door, blowing into the mug, using it to warm his hands.
“All right,” the woman said, “all right, all right. All right.” Four times like that, all to herself. Her eyes had cold little lights in them now, like spots of foxfire.
I said hesitantly, “Ma’am? You still want the tuna sandwich to eat here?”
She blinked then, for the first time, and focused on me. “No. To hell with it. I don’t want anything to eat.” She caught up her mug and took it to another of the tables, two away from the one he was sitting at.
I went down to the sandwich board and got out two pieces of rye bread and spread them with butter. The stillness in there had a strained feel, made almost eerie by the constant wailing outside. I could feel myself getting more jittery as the seconds passed.
While I sliced ham I watched the two of them at the tables — him still staring at the door, drinking his coffee in quick angry sips; her facing the other way, her hands fisted in her lap, the steam from her cup spiraling up around her face. Well-off married couple from New York City, I thought: they were both wearing the same type of expensive wedding ring. On their way to a weekend in the mountains, maybe, or up to Canada for a few days. And they’d had a hell of a fight over something, the way married people do on long, tiring drives; that was all there was to it.
Except that that wasn’t all there was to it.
I’ve owned this diner thirty years and I’ve seen a lot of folks come and go in that time; a lot of tourists from the city, with all sorts of marital problems. But I’d never seen any like these two. That tension between them wasn’t anything fresh-born, wasn’t just the brief and meaningless aftermath of a squabble. No, there was real hatred on both sides — the kind that builds and builds, seething, over long bitter weeks or months or even years. The kind that’s liable to explode some day.
Well, it wasn’t really any of my business. Not unless the blowup happened in here, it wasn’t, and that wasn’t likely. Or so I kept telling myself. But I was a little worried just the same. On a night like this, with that damned black wind blowing and playing hell with people’s nerves, anything could happen. Anything at all.
I finished making the sandwich, cut it in half, and plastic-bagged it. Just as I slid it into a paper sack, there was a loud banging noise from across the room that made me jump half a foot; it sounded like a pistol shot. But it had only been the man slamming his empty mug down on the table.
I took a breath, let it out silently. He scraped back his chair as I did that, stood up, and jammed his hands into his coat pockets. Without looking at her, he said to the woman, “You pay for the food,” and started past her table toward the restrooms in the rear.
She said, “Why the hell should I pay for it?”
He paused and glared back at her. “You’ve got all the money.”
“I’ve got all the money? Oh, that’s a laugh. I’ve got all the money!”
“Go on, keep it up.” Then in a louder voice, as if he wanted to make sure I heard, he said, “Bitch.” And stalked away from her.