The Nothing Man by Jim Thompson

him.
    "I'm not sore, Tom," I said. "If I were sore I wouldn't be sitting here. And you wouldn't be either-very long."
    "W-What?" His head snapped up. "What do you mean?"
    "You know what I mean. But let's take it from the beginning. You talked to her. You got her to give you the number of her cottage. Then you told her I was gone for the day, and you suggested something to the effect that you would be happy to take my place."
    His dull, chubby face reddened and he spread his hands. "Brownie, I-I-Christ, what can I say?"
    "It's all right. You behaved quite normally. You haven't had much of what passes for good times. No later than yesterday morning I'd called you a lousy newspaperman and a son-of-a-bitch. Why not put one over on me through the pleasant medium of laying my wife?"
    He shook his head miserably. "Brownie, it-that's not quite-"
    "It's close enough. What did she say to the proposition?"
    "Well… she didn't really say anything. She just sort of laughed."
    "And you construed that as an invitation? Go on."
    "Go-go on?"
    "Spill it. Tell me all. Go and on. A phrase meaning to proceed."
    I felt sorry for him, responsible for him. But he didn't need to make it twice as tough as it was by acting like a Piltdown moron.
    "You went over to the island," I said. "Take it from there and keep going."
    "I… well, I went over around four. A little after four, I guess it was. A little while before the storm started. It was still light then, of course, and I didn't want to-to go down there yet, so I stopped in a bar. I had a couple of drinks and-"
    "Did you see anyone you knew?"
    "Huh-uh. I mean, I don't think there was anyone there that knew me. I didn't talk to anyone or… Well, it started raining, pouring down, but drinks were awfully high in there and someone said the ferry had stopped runfling and I didn't know quite what to do. I'd been kind of nerving myself up. I'd got to thinking about how crazy this was-me with a wife and kid, and you, a guy I worked with-how it might get me in all kinds of trouble. And- and I'd just about decided to drop it. I mean it, Brownie! If the ferry had been running or if I'd had enough dough to hang around there in the bar, I-Jesus, Jesus! Why couldn't it have been that way? Why-"
    "I wonder," I said. "Go on, Tom."
    "There wasn't anything else to do, so I did it. I bought a fifth at the bar-tequila, the cheapest thing they had. Then I went down to her cottage. I figured we'd-we, we'd just drink and talk and as soon as the storm was over… All right, all right"-he paused and sighed-"go ahead and laugh."
    "That was a grimace," I said, "of unadulterated pain."
    "Yeah? Well, anyway, I guess you know what happened. She wouldn't let me in. She bawled hell out of me, said I'd taken a hell of a lot for granted, and slammed the door in my face. I-God, Brownie, it wasn't right! If she hadn't wanted me to come, she ought to have said so. She shouldn't have laughed and acted like, well, it would be all right."
    "Very few of us," I said, "behave as well as we should. Perhaps you've noticed that… I take it that, having no other refuge, you retired beneath the cottages?"
    "Yeah, hell. What a mess. Soaking wet and damned near broke, and I had to lay under there like a goddamned rat or something. Couldn't even sit up straight, and it wasn't a hell of a lot dryer under there than it was outside. I kept crawling around, trying to find a dry spot. I guess most of those places were empty but there was one-well, you could hear the bed going up and down, and then the people getting up and going to the bathroom and-and- and me under there like a rat. Like a goddamned drowned rat. You-I guess it wouldn't have meant anything to you, Brownie. But-hell, what difference does it make? I opened up the tequila and started hitting it. I kept pouring it down, I was so damned miserable and wet and… All at once I went out like a light. It was just like something had hit me over the head.
    "I don't know how long I was out. I