“I got five kids,” Romero said. “Two of them in college. I can’t risk it with you anymore, Jesse.”

Jesse nodded and shrugged. Romero shook hands with him, opened his mouth to say something, and closed it, and shook his head and walked away. When his new partner quit him in less than a week, Jesse was transferred inside to records. When he started not showing up for work, Cronjager called him in and talked to him and sent him to the police doctor. The doctor got him to AA. He thought the meetings were full of self-satisfied assholes, and he hated the higher power crap. After the second meeting he went home and drank nearly a fifth of scotch and slept through most of the next day. The day after that Cronjager offered him the chance to resign or go through the firing process. Jesse resigned. And went home and sat in his small kitchen with ice and scotch and found himself without connection or purpose. I’ll drink to that. He sat and drank scotch and the tears ran down his face.

Chapter 8

Her sister had agreed to take the kids for the night, and Carole Genest had the house to herself. Before she went to dinner with Mark she had changed the bed linens. She and Mark had had two margaritas and a bottle of white wine with dinner and they were laughing as Mark pulled the BMW sedan into her driveway and parked under the big maple tree near her side door.

“You better lock the car,” Carole said when they got out. “I don’t think you’ll be leaving for a while.”

As Mark beeped the lock button on his key ring, and the power locks clicked in the car, Jo Jo Genest loomed out of the shadows by the side door.

Carole said, “Jesus.”

“Where’s the kids?” Jo Jo said.

“Get out of here, Jo Jo,” Carole said.

“You gonna fuck this pipsqueak?” Jo Jo said.

“Watch your mouth, pal,” Mark said. But he didn’t say it with conviction. Hulking before them in the half light, Jo Jo looked like a rhinoceros.

Jo Jo put his huge hand against Mark’s face and slammed his head back against the roof of the car. Mark’s legs buckled and he staggered but remained upright, leaning on the car, clasping his head with both hands, rocking slowly from one side to another.

“Get outta here,” Jo Jo said.

Mark went around the car, still holding his head, got into it, and backed down the driveway, the car running off of one side of the driveway and then the other as he overcorrected, going too fast backward in the dark.

“You son of a bitch,” Carole said. “I got a court order on you. I’m going to put you in jail, you bastard.”

“Kids are at your sister’s, aren’t they? You stashed them there so you could come home and fuck that faggot.”

“And if I did, what’s that to you. Don’t you get it, you jerk. We’re divorced, D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D.”

She unlocked the side door as she talked and pushed past him into the house. He followed her.

“Get out of my house,” she said.

“Your house? Your fucking house? You paid for it?”

Jo Jo kicked the side door shut with his heel.

“I’m calling the cops,” Carole said.

“No,” Jo Jo said. “No. I came here to talk. Lemme talk with you.”

“Nice start to a talk,” Carole said. “Smacking my date against the car.”

“I’m sorry,” Jo Jo said. “I just can’t stand seeing you with somebody, you unnerstand? I can’t. You and me are forever, Carole. I can’t stand it, you’re with somebody else.”

“Well, you better get used to it, Jo Jo, because that is how it is.”

Jo Jo felt frantic. She was killing him. How could she kill him like this.

“I was hoping maybe, we could, you know, have sex, just one time, for old times’ sake, you know?”

“Are you crazy? You come up here, two years we been divorced, you beat up my date and push in here and tell me you want to have sex? Get the hell out of here, Jo Jo. I’m calling the cops.”

“Carole, please, I need it. I’m going crazy without it. Please.”

She turned toward the phone and Jo Jo pushed her away. She tried to step around him and he grabbed her arm. She hit him with her free arm, a wild swing punch with her fist closed. He shoved her backward, away from the phone and onto the couch.

“Please,” he said. “Please.”

She was trying to hit him, but he held her wrists as he forced her down. She kicked at him, but it seemed to have no effect.

“Please,” he said. “Please.”

Her skirt was up over her thighs. He tore at her hose. His mouth pressed against hers. She tried to twist away. She punched, she kicked, she tried to bite him. But he was so oppressively strong, so irresistibly huge, that her struggles had no impact. His face was pressed against hers. She could smell liquor on his breath, or maybe it was liquor on hers. He had gotten most of her clothing out of the way. His weight pressed her helplessly back and his hands were on her and she could barely move and barely breathe and she thought oh, God, what’s one more time, and gave up.

Chapter 9

The rain stayed with Jesse into western Pennsylvania. It had eased when he stopped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Pittsburgh. He got a cheeseburger in the restaurant, and a cup of coffee. He ate at the counter looking at the scattering of travelers around him. A lot of truckers, a lot of old people, retired probably, who’d arrived in their RVs. See the country: Trailer parks where you could get water and electrical and sewage hookups. Gas stations where you could fill up on gas and buy a pre-made sandwich wrapped in Saran Wrap, places like this where you could sit among your fellow adventurers and not look at them. They all looked like they’d eaten too much white bread. When he finished eating, he went to the men’s room, and washed, and came out and walked to his car. The rain was firm now, and pleasant. Standing beside his car with one hand on the door, Jesse took off his baseball cap and turned his face up to the rain. He stood a long time letting the hard rain soak into him. He didn’t know why he was doing it, and he stopped only when he became aware that other people were watching. His wet clothes were uncomfortable to drive in and when he reached the next rest stop he got some dry clothes out of his suitcase and changed into them in a bathroom stall. He bought a large coffee at the rest stop, and back in the car added a lot of scotch to it. He sipped the laced coffee as he crossed the Delaware River north of Philadelphia and picked up the Jersey Turnpike. He was in the east now, but it wasn’t yet the east he imagined. This part of the east looked like Anaheim. Except for the rain. This was eastern rain. No sudden outbursts, no scudding clouds, no interruption for sunshine before another downpour, no bright colors made more brilliant by the wetness. Eastern rain was steady and unyielding and gray. . . . What confused him most was that Jennifer would neither embrace him nor let him go. He was a self-reliant guy. He had spent most of his life staying inside, playing within himself. He was pretty sure he could still do that, but there had to be some sort of completion between them. Having been her lover, he was quite sure he could never be her friend and nothing more. In the early days of his dismay he had thought maybe he could share her. He had, after all, in the last year or so of their marriage been sharing her involuntarily. But in a while he understood that he could not. And so he sat one evening in their kitchen, on one of their high stools at the breakfast counter, with a United States road atlas, a police help-wanted listing, and a bottle of scotch, and decided where he would go to look for peace. He had to work and all he knew was cop. Of the possible jobs the one in Paradise, Massachusetts, was the farthest away. With a lot of scotch inside him, which made him ironic rather than sad, he imagined the salt spray and the snowy streets at Christmastime and the cheery New Englanders going steadfastly about their business and decided to try Paradise first. Now as he approached the George Washington Bridge he was maybe two hundred miles away from it and he felt as remote and unconnected as if he were adrift in space. There were other ways to get to New England, but he wanted to do it this way. He wanted to drive over the Hudson River across the George Washington Bridge. New York City stretched along the river to his right looking the way it did in all the pictures. Not to be confused with Los Angeles, he thought. He’d been in Chicago once looking for a guy who’d killed a process server in Gardena, and again for the Paradise job interview. He’d arranged several at a law enforcement convention in the Palmer House. But he assumed he wasn’t getting a glowing recommendation from the LAPD, and Paradise was the only one to offer him a job. He remembered the march of Chicago cityscape along the lake front, but the New York skyline was different. Chicago had been exuberant. This congregation of spires was far too reserved for exuberance. There was nothing exultant in their massed height. There was something like contempt in the brute grace of the skyscrapers standing above the river.