‘Do you always give your suitors such a hard time?’ he asked.
Liza sighed again. ‘Is that what this is? You’re paying court to me? And if so, then do you always stalk your victims?’
She saw that she had hurt him and regretted what she’d just said. Why could she never just leave it? The guy was driving her home, his woman had just dumped him, and he was looking for some comfort. How difficult could it be for her — especially for her — to understand that?
The radio was playing low. Emmylou Harris’s version of Springsteen’s ‘Tougher Than the Rest’. A playlist from his own phone maybe. OK, so he got bonus points for that.
‘All right then,’ she said. ‘My son’s father up and left me. I developed a rare illness, one that eats up the bones. It took parts of my hip and no one believed I would ever walk again. He just couldn’t handle looking after a newborn baby and a disabled wife and away he ran. Not hard to understand.’
‘But not to forgive and forget, maybe?’
Liza looked out the window. She hoped it would rain soon. She’d always liked the rain, didn’t know why. Maybe it was the country blood in her. Maybe it had something to do with purification. And maybe it was just because she liked the rain.
‘You’re right, a stalker tried to rape me when I was thirteen years old.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So three out of three. Congratulations.’
Silence. Just Emmylou.
‘D’you want to talk about—’
‘No,’ she interrupted.
‘—something more pleasant?’
They drove.
She started to laugh. He glanced over at her and then he began to laugh too.
‘Screwed-up people,’ she murmured, and he turned up the music, another woman, singing about could you please stop your whining and laugh instead. And Liza began her story. Not much of it, not the whole story, just stuff about her childhood and her parents. A typical white middle-class family facing the future and optimistic about the eighties, and then the shit hits the fan.
‘My father lost his job. We had to move to somewhere cheaper, a place where the neighbours didn’t go out to work but got as much in social security cheques as my father did for breaking his back in all those casual jobs he took. He told me he had to use all the money they’d been saving to send me to college, because I was bright, you know. Instead we lost everything, while the rich got richer. And no one seems to know just exactly how it happened.’
‘Then other people began making cars that weren’t just cheaper than ours, they were better than ours too.’
‘Could be. My father says that people like us were once the backbone of this country but now we’re the crap in the middle, not lucky enough to get rich but still too proud to live off welfare. He’s voting for Donald Trump, he says.’
‘And you?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose I could vote for Trump, but he just makes me puke. I’m not too crazy about Hillary Clinton either, but maybe it is time for a woman to take over.’
Then they were there. He parked outside her house, and to Liza it seemed the journey hadn’t really been all that long.
The police officer leaned forward and looked up at the house. ‘Looks cosy.’
‘I dated this guy from Tennessee who said that back where he comes from it’s what they call a shotgun shack.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘A house so small you could stand in the doorway and empty both barrels through the window at the other end.’
‘That I would like to see.’
‘I’m not inviting you in if that’s what you think.’
‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘OK.’
‘So he had no staying power?’
‘Who? The Tennessee guy?’ She grinned. ‘I was the one that jumped ship there. He believed in UFOs, and that it was fake news about the world being round. Those two things together were just a little bit too bizarre for me.’
They laughed.
‘Some people are just screwed up,’ he said, again with that sad smile she suspected was something he deliberately used on women.
‘How’d you get the bump on your forehead?’ she asked.
He raised his hand as though to hide it, the same way her sister automatically did whenever Liza asked about her most recent bruise or black eye.
‘I let a guy hit me so I could beat him up,’ said Bob. He sneaked a glance at her, as though checking to see how she took this.
‘I see. And what happened to him?’
‘I think they took him to hospital. If my colleagues hadn’t stopped me, I believe I might even have killed him.’
‘Jesus. What had he done?’
‘He complained that I’d fucked his wife.’
Liza didn’t respond.
‘I have an anger management problem,’ said Bob. ‘And I have... other problems too.’
‘O... K...’ she said, drawing out the syllables.
‘Here is when I ask if you’d like to meet for a coffee one day,’ he said. ‘And you should answer no.’
‘Then I say no.’
He nodded. ‘Smart girl. Sleep tight.’
‘You too.’ She opened the car door. Was about to step out. Stopped. ‘Hey.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You shouldn’t try to just fuck her out of your head. Your ex, I mean.’
He licked his lips, as though tasting the thought. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes. You shouldn’t drag other people down with you when you’re sinking.’
She could see he was about to say something, try to be funny. But then it was as though he felt a sudden jolt and his face twisted in pain. That was definitely not something he used on women, and she felt an urge to reach out and stroke the bruise on his forehead. Instead she climbed out of the car. Then turned back to look inside.
‘Thanks for the ride, Bob.’
‘Well, thank you. See you soon.’
‘OK. But not...’
‘Not?’
‘I meant what I said about not meeting for a coffee. All right? I don’t want any campaign.’
He gave a big smile. ‘I hear you, Liza.’
She shut the door and headed up toward the house. Knew he was watching her. Then she heard the car drive off.
12
Hanson, October 2016
After saying goodnight to Kjos, Olav Hanson crossed the parking lot. Looked at his watch, a present from a time long gone. Already he regretted drinking those three beers. Or had it been four? In the first place there was the risk of being stopped, and he knew that one day he would meet some keen young policeman who would not be influenced by the fact that the man in the car he stopped was a fellow officer. There was a new generation coming up now, one that didn’t respect the old rules. In the second place, Violet would moan. Women were like dogs, the smaller they were, the more noise they made. But then Violet was one of the reasons he needed these few hours to himself after work, either in a bar or down by the river with his fishing rod. How come he’d ended up with her? Shouldn’t he have seen the warning signs when she said straight out she wouldn’t have Sean — Olav’s adult son from his first marriage — in the house? She hadn’t been willing to listen to Olav’s explanation that Sean had certain difficulties, she made him choose, her or his son, no discussion. So he’d made his choice. The wrong one. The way he’d got it wrong twice, with two different women. As he walked along Olav had to laugh. Bad choices, wasn’t that the story of his life? With the start in life he had he should have owned the world by now. If not for a bad knee and a wrong choice made over thirty years ago now. He’d never been caught, but there had been rumours back then. Enough that it was convenient to hop over him the next time a pawn was due for promotion.