Headstone by Ken Bruen Page A

said,
    “Please excuse me Maura, I’ll have to take this.”
    That she hadn’t heard the ringtone was overridden
    by the booze.
    I said to the silent phone,
    “What? Now?”
    I nearly believed there was someone at the other
    end, acted like
    I’d rung off , said,
    “Emergency at home, I’ll have to run I’m afraid.”
    I was up and leaving, the drink had her rooted to
    the chair, she tried to rise, failed,
    I said,
    “I’ll be back next week and we can have a proper
    chat.”
    And I was outta there.

    We must get into step, a lockstep
    toward
    the prison of death.
    There is no escape.
    The weather will not change.
    —Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
    Ridge knew her marriage was over. As a gay
    woman, she’d married Anthony because of who he
    was.
    He had serious clout. Played golf with the people
    who ran the city. Anthony simply wanted a mother
    for his teenage daughter and a lady of the manor for
    functions. Sex just wasn’t in the picture. Ridge
    looked good, knew how to behave, and he
    believed, like breaking in a horse, he could train
    her into some semblance of aristocracy.
    Before the marriage, Ridge had lived in a small
    house at the bottom of Devon Park. On a quiet day,
    you could almost hear the ocean. It was an oasis of
    gentility between Salthill and the city. She loved
    that house and just couldn’t bear to sell it. She
    rented it to an ex-lover named Jenny. More and
    more, she was drawn back to her old life, to
    intimacy and some remnants of integrity.
    Two years ago, as a favor to Jack, she’d gone on a
    routine call. Some girls were bullying a Down
    syndrome child and she intended to give a quiet
    caution to the girls in this family. Neither she nor
    Jack realized their father was an up-and-coming
    thug. He’d beaten Ridge senseless, put her in the
    hospital.
    The mastectomy she’d undergone a year before
    worsened her condition. She’d heard that Jack
    went after the thug in his own inimitable fashion
    and, for once, she was glad. Her recovery was
    slow and painful. She resolved never to be
    defenceless again. The hypocrisy of her life had
    begun in earnest then. Jack’s treatment of the thug
    was never legal, she knew that. She never openly
    acknowledged it. She was still a Guard and Jack
    persisted with his philosophy of the law being for
    courtrooms and justice being for alleyways.
    Her marriage had paid dividends, she was almost .
    . . almost ashamed to get the rank of sergeant. Torn
    asunder by that incident and the coldness of her
    marriage, she had three times a week begun to
    drive to Devon Park and park outside her old
    house. Same time those three days. Jack had
    always warned: never set up a routine; makes you
    a target. When her shift finished, it was as though
    her car headed for Devon Park. With a deep
    longing, she imagined Jenny, curled up on the sofa,
    dressed in her old track suit, eating chicken curry
    and watching reruns of The L Word . Her visits
    became so regular she began to notice the
    neighbors. Two men, in their late sixties, bang on
    nine, they’d walk their dogs, head for the Bal, have
    one pint and stroll back. There was something very
    comforting in the regularity of their habit.
    When the floods came, Ridge, like all the Public
    Sectors, was stretched to the limit. One Tuesday,
    after a day of ferocious depression, dealing with
    people who’d lost everything, she just could not
    face Anthony, who’d ask, without the slightest
    interest,
    “How was work dear?”
    And before she could spill all the pain and
    distress, he’d add,
    “A dry sherry perhaps, my sweet?”
    She’d want to scream,
    “Wake the fuck up, people’s homes are being
    washed away.”
    But he never actually asked about her work. Once,
    bone weary from the day, she’d tried,
    “Don’t you ever wonder about what I do?”
    Anything to break the impression of living in a
    Jane Austen novel.
    He’d raised one eyebrow in that infuriating
    manner, his tone one of mild reproach, said,
    “My