Night Relics Read Free

weren’t ever guilty of the same thing?”
    “Not once,” Peter said. “I’m a confirmed monogamist.”
    “Like foxes,” Beth said. “I guess if you’re a confirmed monogamist you won’t stand for anything less in a mate.”
    Peter shrugged. “Since we’re telling the truth,” he said, “tell me what you meant about Bobby, about how you wouldn’t let
    that happen to him a second time.”
    “I don’t know,” Beth said. “What did I mean? I guess it’s just that in the last three months he’s become pretty attached to
    you.”
    “I guess he has,” Peter said.
    “His life is all full of Peter this and Peter that. I bet his father is sick of hearing your name. I
hope
he is.”
    “Remember that we’re not all alike,” Peter said.
    “I know you’re not. Why do you think I’m here? If you were like that you wouldn’t be sitting in an empty room at dawn staring
    at photographs of the woman you broke up with after fifteen years of marriage. I guess what I wish is that you’d... figure
    out what you want right now, and settle down to it. Find a way to let the rest of it go.”
    She stepped across and picked up the coffeepot, wrinkling up her face, trying to act cheerful. “And you complain about
my
coffee.” She set the pot down.
    “You going?” Peter asked. “Stay for breakfast.”
    “Can’t. I’ve got lots to do today before Bobby’s plane lands. He’s flying into John Wayne at noon.”
    She put her arms around him and kissed him, long enough to take some of the fear out of him. “Cheer the hell up,” she said.
    “This isn’t the end of life as we know it. It’s just time that we got to know it a little better, that’s all. It’s time we
    got serious.”
    After she left, Peter sat in the kitchen chair staring intohis empty cup. He could still feel the pressure of her lips against his. His hands remembered the shape of her body from last
    night, and he recalled the lilac smell of the scented powder she put in her bathwater and how, with her skin still damp from
    the bath, she had slipped into bed.... Each part of him seemed to have its own singular memory of their lovemaking.
    The woods outside were gray-green now in the dawn light. He got up and made a fresh pot of coffee, thinking now about the
    ghosts of summer afternoons. He went out into the living room and rummaged through the hutch again, pulling out more envelopes
    of photographs, sorting through them as he stood there, barely conscious of the wind sighing in the trees.
    There was something in the photographs, in their captured memories, that reminded him again of what he had seen before dawn
    that morning. He set them back into the drawer, then walked to the parlor door and looked in. Early-morning sunlight slanted
    through the shutters, dimly illuminating the room.
    On the carpet directly in front of the cold hearth lay a small flute, delicately carved out of wood, lying in plain sight
    like another hallucination. It was tipped across the edge of the tiles as if it had just that morning rolled out of the open
    fireplace.

3
    O LD, OUT OF DATE—THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY P OMEROY could describe Mr. Ackroyd’s place. It was the nicest in the canyon, because it had always been maintained, but the interior
    was like some kind of time-warp place, all wood and wool and books and old pottery. There were doilies sitting around on things,
    too, which was weird in a bachelor’s house, but the whole place was clean, and that was something to admire. Most men couldn’t
    keep a clean house. There was even a little closet near the front door with a broom and dustpan in it.
    When Pomeroy had arrived that morning, Ackroyd was sweeping up the leaves and rose petals on the front porch, and had picked
    up the debris with the dustpan and put it into the bin instead of just sweeping it under the railing. Pomeroy had committed
    the scene to memory, playing it through in his mind to get the phrasing just right so he could tell the story to