Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg Page B

believe you. I can’t. But if he was splitting, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
    “Wouldn’t he?”
    “Please, Rich. Help me. Tell me if he’s said anything.”
    “I have. He’s said nothing.”
    She sat there looking at him. “God, I despise the lot of you. You’re like birds of prey, you know that? Above it all except when it’s time to eat or screw.”
    Bone shrugged. “I’m sorry, kid. You asked.”
    “And a fat lot of good it did.”
    “What makes you think something’s wrong at home?”
    “You were married. You live with someone, you can tell. It’s just different lately. He looks right through me.”
    “Money problems. It’s usually money, Mo. You ought to know that. Once he gets his next government check—”
    “Oh sure. Everything will be roses.”
    Suddenly she got to her feet and picked up the baby. “You take us home?”
    “Of course.”
    As they walked to the car she told him that Cutter had phoned home earlier. “He said he’s bringing a guest for dinner,” she added. “How about that, huh? Dinner at the Cutters’. Or Alex and Mo’s, I guess I should say. Anyway, he asked me to ask you to be there?”
    “Who’s he bringing?”
    “The victim’s sister.”
    Bone did not miss a step, but the news hit him like a small stone thrown hard. “The girl last night?”
    “The cheerleader, yes. Her sister.”
    “Goddamn him.”
    “Alex? Why? What’s he up to?”
    Bone put her off. “I’d rather not know.”
    Cutter did not make it home until almost nine o’clock that evening, hours after Mo’s small roast had turned black in the oven and she had calmly abandoned it in favor of martinis in front of the fire with Bone, who was responsible for both, having that afternoon cleaned out the fireplace and bought some ersatz logs and real booze at the supermarket. While he liked the fire too, and the drinks, he did not share Mo’s indifference to food, and had first raided the kitchen, cutting off an end of the burnt roast and downing it along with a rocklike baked potato and some scattered greens, the makings of a salad that never did get tossed.
    So he was feeling fairly comfortable in front of the fire now, his stomach full, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and a good-looking girl to share it all with. The only problem was the girl—for her, he might as well not have been there. One moment she would be goddamning Cutter, shaking her head in futility and bitterness, and the next she would give in with a wistful smile and say something inane, like it was good she and Cutter weren’t married, because this sort of thing would really piss her off then. She might think she owned him then, you see. But of course no one owned anybody else, and anyone worth his salt would not let himself be owned. So of course all she had a right to do was wonder where he was and what he was doing, and for that matter admire him too, precisely for this, for pissing her off, because it meant he was his own man, he was free, he was worthy of her. Bone, listening to her run on, occasionally lifted his glass in a toast. White woman speak with dumb tongue, he said. White woman full of shit.
    But she was not listening.
    And finally they heard Cutter arriving home, the Packard’s old engine laboring up the hill. Bone absently went over to the window, in time to see Alex bring the car to a stop out in front, unable to pull in because of a Toyota that blocked half the driveway. But he was not stymied. Abruptly he threw the Packard into gear and roared ahead, slamming into the Toyota and driving it backward a few feet. At the crash, Mo got up and came running over to the window, just as Cutter finished backing up a short distance and now took another crack at the tiny foreign car, this time smashing the front end over the curb onto the grass, totally clearing the driveway, which he calmly entered now and parked. If there was a scratch on the Packard, Bone could not see it. The Toyota, however, looked