Page 286 - Some Dance to Remember

256 Jack Fritscher

Ryan had his suspicions.
Thom said everything was cool. Ryan wondered how many times
Thom had reassured him, himself, and Sandy Gully. Everything was not
cool.
Sandy had left Thom.
Thom did not know why.
But Ryan knew.
Sandy had fled under cover of darkness with all that she had left of
herself, of any sense of herself, into the night more than a week before.
Sandy was an innocent. Life had confused her and she had confused
her life. She had lost all sense of her own coming and going. She found
everything went by too fast. She had left the Rancho when she realized
that Thom had told her in no uncertain terms that she was not his wife.
“I married you!” she said.
“You’re another child,” he said.
She retreated to the bathroom and locked the door. She looked in the
mirror. She scrubbed her face. The Mary Kay cosmetics washed down the
drain. She saw lines she had not seen before. She pulled at her skin. She
brushed her hair back straight from her face. She was not young anymore.
Thom had taken to turning out the lights as soon as he came to bed. She
had done her duty in the dark. She resented him. “He lays back and I do
all the fucking work.” Then, remembering the pleasure she still found in
his body, no matter how passive to her, she smiled, dried her face, packed
on the makeup, feathered her blonde hair back at the temples until the
black roots showed, and announced to her face in the mirror, “Thommy,
baby, you ain’t so hot neither.”
In the truck, Thom told Ryan how it had been the night Sandy left.
She had packed her overnight case and a brown paper Safeway sack and
had driven to Cotati. She parked on the green in front of the Meander
Inn. For half an hour, she sat in the car crying. Then she walked into the
Meander. Gentleman Tim, an old friend from Ryan’s first days in the
county, was working the bar. The place was empty. She ignored him and
walked to the bulletin board. She read two notices and pulled the third
one off the wall and headed toward the pay phone. She glared at Tim. “I’ve
had it,” she said. “I’ve been had and I’ve had it.”
“Tell me about it,” Tim said. He knew the story of Ryan’s brother’s
family.
“Life is shit,” she said. She dialed the number from the notice and
waited for an answer. She lit a Lark and held it in her smoking-fingers
while she pressed the palm of her hand against her ear. Willie Nelson was

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