Blue Lonesome by Bill Pronzini Page B

course it wasn’t. He wondered what she used it for.
    It was not quite as hot in here; a noisy rooftop swamp cooler stirred the air sluggishly. Over the rattle of the cooler, the dog’s frantic barks seemed to thud like solid things hurled against a wall. “That’s Buster,” she said. “Doesn’t like strangers any more than we do. Go on into the kitchen. I’ll settle him down.”
    The kitchen had an old-fashioned look that appealed to him, dominated by a huge black cast-iron cookstove—the kind that sold in Bay Area antique stores for upward of two thousand dollars. A bulky refrigerator-freezer was the only newish appliance. A dinette table sat next to the window with the cracked pane; as he drew out one of the three chairs, the dog’s barking cut off into a shrill whine and then silence. Half a minute later Dacy Burgess reappeared.
    She took glasses from a cupboard, a jug of ice water from the refrigerator, and brought them to the table. “You look dry,” she said. “Help yourself.”
    “Thanks.”
    She sat down and watched him drink thirstily, not touching the glass he’d poured for her. Up close and without the broad-brimmed Stetson, she bore a faint resemblance to Anna. The same facial bone structure, the same pale gray eyes. But her eyes were full of life, even dulled as they were at the moment. He wondered if Anna had been a woman of mood and temper and passion once too, long ago, and decided that she probably had.
    “I’m sorry about your sister, Mrs. Burgess.”
    “You already said that.”
    “I want you to know I mean it. Really very sorry.”
    “So am I. Now Lonnie’s all the family I’ve got left.”
    “What about your husband?”
    “I don’t have a husband.”
    “Lonnie’s father …?”
    “Him. Long gone, and good riddance.”
    He started to say, “I’m sorry,” again, bit the words back. Meaningless. And she wouldn’t want to hear them anyway.
    She pinched a pack of Marlboros from her shirt pocket, lit one and coughed out smoke, grimacing. “Shit, that tastes awful. I’ve been trying to quit but it’s not easy. Not when you’ve had the habit more than half your life.”
    “No, I guess it isn’t.”
    “Don’t smoke yourself?”
    “Never have, no.”
    “Smart,” she said. Then, “What was Anna to you?”
    “Somebody I wish I’d known better.”
    “She didn’t make friends easy.”
    “We weren’t friends.”
    “Bed partners?”
    “Not that, either.”
    “No, you’re not her type. Only man she ever wanted was that son of a bitch she married.”
    “Dave Roebuck.”
    “God’s gift to women, to hear him brag on it. We sure could pick ’em, Anna and me.” She sucked in more smoke, made another face and exhaled gustily. “So you met her in Frisco.”
    “We lived in the same neighborhood. Ate every night at the same café.”
    “Surprised me at first, to hear that’s where she went.”
    “You had no idea she was living there?”
    “Before you told me? No. Not a word from her since she up and left here. I figured she’d gone somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. Born and raised in the desert—desert rats usually stay close to home. More I think about it, though … makes some sense that she’d head for a city. Get as far away from here as she could, in miles and surroundings both. Frisco was the only city she ever visited that she liked.”
    That isn’t why she went there, Messenger thought abruptly, with an insight so clear he had no doubt it was true. Contraction of self in the city: easier there to wrap loneliness and despair and resignation tight around yourself, weave a smothering cocoon of it all; easier then to put an end to the pain. Anna either thought that out or intuited it at some level. In any case, she went to San Francisco to die.
    “Just how well did you know her, Jim?”
    “Hardly at all,” he admitted. “I tried to talk to her once but she didn’t want any part of me or anyone else. She’d cut herself off from all human