came in a gallon bottle made from plastic.
“They’re all the same,” Porter Dolamore used to say to him. “People are fools. Put rotgut in a pretty bottle, and everyone thinks they’re living like kings.”
Richard went to the Scotch aisle. A woman about his age studied the bottles, looking like she was trying to read a menu in a language she didn’t understand.
“That’s a good one,” Richard said, tilting his head toward the bottle of single malt she’d just picked up off the shelf.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. She wasn’t pretty. Her nose was too big and her eyes were too close together, but it was clear that she worked out and took care of herself. She had long brown hair with blond highlights, and she wore a pumpkin-colored sweater with a plunging neckline. Richard let his eyes scan the exposed tops of her breasts, nicely tanned. Dark brown nipples, he thought.
“Super smooth,” he said. “Like silk. Is it for you or for . . . ?”
She’d caught him looking down her sweater, and Richard thought she hadn’t decided yet how she felt about it. But she bit her lower lip and said, “It’s for a new friend in my life. He loves Scotch, and I don’t know anything about it.” Then she laughed, as though she’d said something funny.
“Does he like peaty Scotch?”
She grimaced, said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
Richard explained the difference between peated and unpeated Scotch, asked her if she could remember any particular brand he’d ordered at a restaurant. “Macallan, I think.”
“Right, Macallan,” Richard said, and grabbed a Scotch at random off the top shelf and handed it to her. “Get him this. He’ll love it. Just like Macallan but a little bit better.”
“You sure?” she said.
“Trust me,” Richard said, then thought, I could do this for a living. Easy peasy. The bottle he’d handed to the woman came inside a very tasteful box, and he could tell that she was impressed.
“All right,” she said. “Sold.”
“And if it doesn’t work out with your new friend, I’d be happy to take his place.”
The woman frowned. “You’re married,” she said, looking down at his hand.
“I wear a ring,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I’m married.”
“It usually does,” she said, and headed toward the front of the store.
Richard whispered, “Cunt,” and wondered if she heard him. He thought he saw a twitch in her upper back.
From the second shelf up from the bottom he grabbed a bottle of J&B for himself, then waited a couple of minutes to give the woman a chance to buy her overpriced swill and get away from the big bad wolf. When he got to the checkout himself, he almost told the teller—an old guy with a mustache stained yellow from cigarettes—that he should get a commission for talking the previous customer into a hundred-dollar bottle, but decided against it.
Back in his car, he stowed the Scotch in his glove compartment. It was nice just knowing it was there, even if he decided he didn’t need it.
From the liquor store, he drove through Middleham back toward Dartford, taking Sudbury Road over to Blackberry Lane. He almost didn’t turn down his own street for fear that the police were already there, but decided to take a chance. If there were any suspicious vehicles, he’d simply pull into another driveway, then turn around and leave. And if they weren’t there yet, then he’d have a chance to do what he should have done a long time ago. He took the turn down Blackberry, all the properties except for one—a monstrous new pillared house—built in the decade after World War II, charmless boxes designed to contain an average American family. The lane dead-ended at a cul-de-sac that was ringed by four properties, including Richard’s childhood home. It belonged to him now; well, technically it really belonged to Matthew, who paid the taxes on it. The house—half brick and half white siding—was set back behind a cluster of white pines. The front yard was covered with a layer of brown pine needles, and the driveway asphalt was cracked and choked with weeds. The house itself, at least from the outside, still looked decent, although the white vinyl siding had begun to turn a mossy green. A blank, dumb house, Richard thought, not for the first time. He swung the car around the circular dead end and parked it so that its nose was facing back toward Sudbury Road. Before getting out of his car, he took a little sip