Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,28

chair beside him. Not the one the cop’s ass had filled. “He’s one dangerous son of a bitch.”

“Unless I pay him, he won’t go away,” she said in a small voice.

“What are you going to pay him with?” Webster asked.

“I’ll think of something.”

“How much have you got saved?”

“Two hundred? I was saving to buy the Buick.”

“Why do you owe him eight fifty?”

“He staked me.”

“To what?”

“Pool.”

“What happened?”

“I had some nights I shouldn’t have been playing.”

Webster let out a forceful breath. “You actually lived with this guy?” he asked.

Sheila abruptly got up from the chair.

“Fuck.” Webster stood. “I’ll get the money and take it to him.”

Sheila walked into the bedroom, lifted the mattress, and gave Webster her two hundred. “It should be me that goes.”

“Yeah, well, it isn’t going to be.”

“Wait, let’s think.”

Webster waited. “There’s nothing to think about,” he said. “I either give him the money or I call the cops. If I call the cops, which is ludicrous, he’s only going to come back another day, and he isn’t going to be as congenial.”

Sheila was silent.

Webster would never be able to rid himself of the image of Sheila, rosy and pink, waiting at the top of the stairs.

* * *

Webster drove to the bank and made a withdrawal. He ignored the questioning eyes of Steph, the teller, who would wonder what he was buying. From the bank, Webster walked to the pub, knowing with every step that he shouldn’t be giving money to an extortionist. But if he didn’t give the guy the money? Webster didn’t want to think about it.

He entered the gloom of the pub. The cop was finishing a piece of lemon meringue pie. From the back, the man looked even bigger than he had in the apartment. Webster put the envelope on the stool beside him.

The man turned. “I said Sheila, dickhead.”

“You want this or not?” Webster asked in a steady voice.

The cop stuck his jaw out and thought for a second. Then he gave a cold laugh.

“Don’t ever come back here,” Webster warned.

“Or what?”

“I’ll kill you,” Webster promised.

He turned before he could see the smirk on the cop from Chelsea’s face.

When he entered the kitchen, Sheila was sitting at the table. It appeared she hadn’t moved since Webster had left. All the color had gone from her face.

“What happened?” she asked.

Webster whirled and punched the wall. He made a sound of frustration mixed with pain. He couldn’t feel the full extent of the hurt yet, but he knew he would.

He could hear Sheila getting up, putting ice into a dishcloth.

Webster turned. “There’s so much I don’t know about you,” he said.

Sheila, with the bundle in her hand, was silent.

“I think you need to tell me everything,” Webster said.

When Sheila finished talking, it was nearly dusk outside the window. She had held the ice to Webster’s hand. She had smoked two of her three allotted cigarettes, but she hadn’t poured herself a drink. She had paced and sat down and paced again. She had put more ice on Webster’s hand. She had stood and walked through the tiny living area. Webster had listened to every word.

By the time she was done, she’d told him about the father who drank, who’d spent her seventh birthday in a city jail and shortly after had left the house. She described the mother who worked as a seamstress and behind the register at J. J. Newberry’s, who tried her best but was never home. Who died too young of colon cancer when Sheila was thirteen. She told Webster about how she and her older sister, Nancy, had been taken in by their aunt and uncle, who lived three streets over. The aunt wanted them, the uncle didn’t. He punished them with a belt. Nancy got the worst of it. She was a good student, but Sheila wasn’t. She didn’t care, she said.

When she finished with that story, she told Webster about what it was like to be a waitress in Chelsea, a city rife with gangs and drugs and crime. About how the streets were dangerous, especially at night when she got off work late. About how she was constantly approached and threatened or approached and hit on. About the cop who came into the Italian restaurant where she worked and walked her to her car one night, and how after that no one ever hassled her again. And about how the cop had set her up in a cheap apartment that had rats, but a place that finally got