“Anyway, you fought for her, Mike.”
Lunde shrugged. “Fought and fought. After a while we realized we’d both been lucky and hit the bull’s-eye first time around. That we were made for each other.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
“Don’t I know it. And you?”
“Me?”
“When a man asks another man if he’s ever had woman trouble it’s usually because he’s having woman trouble himself.”
“What kind of woman trouble are you talking about?”
“Well, I can’t possibly know that,” said Mike as he worked at the hair on the dog’s tail with a comb and scissors. “But maybe it’s related to that loneliness in your eyes. What’s her name?”
Bob lowered his head. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to sober up so quickly after all. “Alice,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Same story as yours. She met someone else.”
“And that left you lonely?”
Bob stood up and walked over to a white hare that looked as if it had frozen in mid-hop. He gently stroked the fur. “Before I met her, I didn’t know what loneliness was. Or maybe I just covered it over with other women. She opened me up like a clam, and I discovered there was another Bob in there, a sensitive, tender guy who could love, cry, ask for help…yeah, all that kind of stuff.”
“All that kind of stuff,” Mike echoed with a slight smile, still intent on his work.
Bob put two fingertips against the hare’s nose. “But when she left me, I found out she had nullified the effect of my antidote to loneliness. Women. Casual sex. Alcohol. Work. I try, and for a short while it’s okay, but I know it can’t last. I’m like that open clam, the sphincter is gone. I stand there gaping, defenseless, and all the time I’m drying out inside and smelling worse as each day goes by.”
Bob was almost surprised to feel that the hare’s nose was neither cold nor damp, so likelife was the illusion. Around its round pupils the eyes were brown, shading to black at the edges. But Bob was looking at the area closest to the pupil, where the brown shading was lighter, like amber. Like Frankie’s eyes.
“The only consolation is that after a while you get numb to it,” said Bob. “You stop caring, self-respect doesn’t seem all that fucking important. Nor does the respect of others either. In fact, nothing does. Nothing seems to matter.”
“Apart from work?”
“Not even that.”
“But the way it looks, you work night and day.”
“That’s just because I want to be the one who brings Tomás Gomez down, not Olav Hanson or one of those other idiots.”
“Is that why you haven’t told any of them about a taxidermist where Tomás Gomez has an order waiting to be picked up?” Mike Lunde didn’t look up from his work, but he had that slightsmile on his face. It reminded Bob of the way his father looked after he had had that stroke. “To be honest I’ve been wondering why you’re the only police officer I’ve spoken to.”
“Well,” sighed Bob, “now you know.”
“Thank you for being honest, Bob. Are you going to be honest about that other thing too?”
“Other thing?”
“The reason you and Alice broke up.”
“But I already told you. She met someone else.”
“Before that. The reason the two of you fell apart.”
“And what might that be?”
“I don’t know. It could be the real reason you’re so lonely. But of course, we don’t need to talk about it.”
