Repo Madness by W. Bruce Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

needed to breathe. “Last call!” I shouted.
    I checked my phone. No response from my fiancée.
    By the time we’d broomed everyone out the door, it was just Jimmy and me. I locked the place and poured us a couple of short beers, and we sat underneath the bear—a taxidermied black bear that stood in the corner, its lips in a snarl, arms raised, looking fierce and ready to attack. I had nicknamed the bear Bob and thought he was kind of cute. He was the reason my father gave the bar its name. Legend had it Dad had shot the thing, but Becky claimed she was with him when he bought it at a garage sale.
    As I get older, I learn more and more that memory is a tricky thing and that Becky’s is wrong.
    â€œOkay, so?” I prodded.
    Jimmy swept his black hair out of his eyes and looked at his hands as if he were holding cards in them. “Yeah. I have a problem. With Alice.”
    â€œAlice. Alice Blanchard?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œIs she asking for child support? Because if she is, you know you need to pay it.”
    â€œNo, she still won’t take any money for Vicki.”
    Jimmy had recently found out he had a daughter, Vicki, now ten years old, by a woman he hadn’t known was pregnant when they’d stopped dating. Alice Blanchard was married to a big shot banker in Traverse City now and had a nice life and was altogether hostile to Jimmy, but she allowed my friend to see his biological daughter.
    â€œSo she won’t take money.… Wait, is Alice threatening to cut off your visitation? Because that’s not right either.”
    Jimmy shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”
    I was impatient with the guessing game. “I know she hates you, Jimmy. What’s she doing now?”
    Jimmy looked pained. “It’s like this, Ruddy. I sort of started having sex with her again.”
    I stared at him. “I did not see that one coming,” I confessed.
    â€œWe didn’t mean to. We just couldn’t help it.”
    â€œSure, that makes sense.”
    â€œSo I need your help.”
    â€œYou need my help? How can I help? With what?”
    â€œAlice thinks her husband suspects something.”
    â€œWow, Jimmy.” I shook my head. “This is a big mess.”
    â€œTell me about it,” he responded moodily. “And it gets worse. He told her one time that if she ever cheated on him, he would kill her.”
    â€œRight, well, a lot of people say things like that.”
    â€œNo, Alice says he means it.” Jimmy gave me a soulful look. “She’s really, really scared.”

 
    5
    Why Would You Believe Something Like That?
    My dog, Jake, stirred in his bed when I walked in the front door, giving me a mournful look with his basset eyes. His mottled body—brown and black and white—was coiled and ready for inaction, his flabby stomach as pink as a baby’s butt.
    â€œYou know, for a lot of dogs, when their master comes home, that’s a really big deal. They jump around, bark, lick. Or, you know, move a single muscle.”
    He sighed with disgust at the behavior of those other dogs. I went over to him and knelt to stroke his soft ears. “Hey, Jake. You get a lot done today?” He leaned into my massage. “Did Katie take you out?”
    He shot me a coldly disapproving look at the word out .
    â€œOkay, you and me, outside, leg up, in five minutes. Prepare yourself mentally.”
    I walked down the short hall and stood in the bedroom doorway. Katie was sitting up in bed, reading Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille. She wore a gray flannel nightgown that looked like it had been issued by the Russian army. I was learning to read the signals: White clingy T-shirt meant she could be coaxed into feeling amorous. Lacy black meant I’d better be ready to perform. This one suggested I’d have better luck invading Poland.
    I gazed at her, feeling the distance between us. Some random seed of discontent