Prayer for the Dead by David Wiltse Page A

down, and the salesman turned the literature so his companion could read it. Seven o’clock and the man was still working. Selling was not an easy life, Becker thought. Not that that was any excuse for the man’s hobby—whatever it was—but still not an easy life.
    “Let it go, Alan,” Cindi said. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
    “That was then, though, right? You were this kind of super fed and now you’re what? Nothing?”
    “Now I’m nothing. You’ve got it.”
    “Alan,” said Cindi. “Go away.”
    “Listen,” said Alan. He gripped her elbow possessively and she twisted it away.
    “Go on.” She did not raise her voice but spoke as if she expected to be obeyed.
    To Becker’s relief, Alan went. He had been afraid of a scene developing that would have drawn the salesman’s attention to him. He was also gratified to see that whatever bond Alan had with Cindi, it was loose enough for her to order him off.
    “Kind of an asshole, isn’t he?” Becker said as Alan made his way toward the bar. “I thought he was going to take me to the parking lot and bump antlers.”
    “He’s just being protective of me,” said Cindi.
    “Why? Are you in danger?”
    Cindi grinned. “Mom made us promise to take care of each other.”
    Becker winced. “Ouch.”
    “No harm done. He can be an asshole.”
    “He’s your younger brother, I hope.”
    “Three years older.”
    “See you around.”
    She laughed. Becker liked the sound of it. She always seemed genuinely amused when she laughed, and as if she were more than prepared to stay in that mood.
    “My mother was a high school teacher,” she said. “Not a classmate. She taught typing.”
    “Oh. Mrs. Tolan. One of my favorites.”
    “You didn’t have her. I’m thirty-one. You’re forty-two. Does that help?”
    “It clears up the arithmetic, anyway,” said Becker. “Terrible thing, arithmetic.”
    “It’s only numbers,” she said.
     
    When the man in the tweed jacket rose to exit, Becker left. He wanted to go out the door first so that the salesman would not look back and notice him. Only a professional ever considered the possibility of being tailed from the front.
    “Stick around,” said Becker to Cindi. “I have some things to take care of but I’ll be back.”
    “Or I could meet you somewhere,” she said.
    “Or you could meet me,” he said. “Where?”
    There was nothing flirtatious about her manner as she wrote out her address on a napkin. She seemed more amused than anything else, as if she knew a joke that Becker did not. He would have to come see her to learn the punch line.
    Becker went to the parking lot, sat in his car, and waited. Before long, the salesman came out, got in his car, and drove straight home to a neighborhood like many others in the Clamden area and the adjoining towns where one-family houses were perched close to the sidewalk and children filled the narrow yards. The only thing remarkable about this particular block was the salesman’s presence there: a single man in a neighborhood where families predominated.
    Becker watched for several minutes but saw no lights come on. The house remained in total darkness long after the salesman had stepped inside.
    Becker drove to a phone booth and called the salesman’s home phone. When the man answered on the third ring, Becker replaced the phone on the hook and drove back to the house. The car was there, the man was there, but still not a single light had been turned on.
    Sitting in the silence of his car, watching the darkened house, Becker tried to empty himself of both thought and feeling. He did not want to impose anything on the situation—there was time enough for that later. Right now he wanted to shut off his rational mind and simply react with the senses of the beast. Was there something in the house to be feared? What lurked beneath the salesman’s respectable public pose?
    Becker had done this before: At other times, in other places, he had relied on his