Rubbed Out by Barbara Block Read Free Book Online Page B

find the words. I felt as if all the air had been squeezed out of me. I watched a squirrel run along the telephone line.
    â€œI’m sorry,” George repeated.
    Then he was gone. I heard him close the downstairs door. I heard him drive off. So it was over. All those years. Just like that.
    Zsa Zsa whimpered and nosed at my hand. I patted her head mechanically. “It’ll be fine,” I told her. But the way she was looking at me, I could tell that she knew it wasn’t.
    I threw the covers off me, got up, and took a shower. The bottle of shampoo I was using slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor. Rivulets of yellow ran toward the drain. I left the bottle, got out of the stall, dried myself, and got dressed. I knew I should cry or scream or do something. But I couldn’t. I felt as if my guts had been ripped out, and there was a pain in my chest that wouldn’t go away.
    Â 
    Â 
    The phone was ringing when I walked into the store. I picked it up. It was George.
    â€œI’m calling to see if you’re okay.”
    â€œDon’t call.”
    â€œRobin, I feel terrible.”
    I hung up. The phone started ringing again. After five rings the answering machine came on. I listened to George while I took a cigarette out of the pack I’d just purchased and lit up. When he was done, I erased his message and gave Zsa Zsa a treat. Then I got to work. Sweeping the floor comforted me.
    Half an hour later, Walter Wilcox came by. As I watched him slowly walk across the floor, it occurred to me that we had something in common. We’d both had people we loved walk out on us. That should have made me more sympathetic. But it didn’t. It made me not want to look at his face.
    â€œSo,” he said, shoving the shoebox with the items I’d requested from him yesterday across the counter.
    A faint odor of unwashed clothes and alcohol came off him. I wondered how much he’d been drinking last night. Certainly he didn’t look as if he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. His eyes were sunk back in his head, and the circles under them looked as if they’d been painted on skin that was pasty white from lack of sun.
    â€œHow long do you think it’s going to take?”
    â€œTo find your wife?”
    He scrunched his eyes against the light. “Who else are we talking about?”
    â€œIt was a rhetorical question.”
    â€œSorry. I don’t feel very well. I think I might be coming down with something.”
    Like a hangover.
    â€œDid you speak to my daughter?”
    I nodded.
    â€œShe wasn’t much help, was she?”
    â€œNo, she wasn’t. You were right about that.”
    â€œJanet and she never got along. It was tough. I felt bad for Stephanie.” Wilcox stared into the shoebox as if it contained the past. “One day Janet would say it was okay for Stephanie to walk to her friend’s house, the next day she’d throw a fit and insist she hadn’t said anything like that.” He gave a deprecatory shrug. “I tried to smooth things over, but I had to work.”
    â€œStephanie told me she was adopted.”
    Wilcox nodded and unbuttoned his coat. It was standard lawyer’s issue. Gray. Mohair. Conservative. Only there was a stain on the lapel, as well as a stain on his blue-and-white striped tie.
    â€œShe was. Janet really wanted a child. And sometimes she was a good mother . . .” His voice drifted off. “I don’t know. I never figured out what the problem was.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just let me go through this stuff, and then we’ll talk.” I told him.
    â€œFine.” His eyes never left my hands as I took the top off the box and laid it aside. “The photo’s a couple of years old,” he said as I lifted the picture of his wife out of the box. “She’s gained weight since then. Maybe thirty pounds or so. That’s why she went to that charlatan. But I told you