Rose Madder

“Madam,” he said, “would you consider doing me a small favor?” Her smile was replaced with a look of caution.

“It depends on what it is, but I’m not in the habit of doing favors for strangers.” That, of course, was an understatement. She wasn’t even used to talking to strangers. He looked almost embarrassed, and this had a reassuring effect on her.

“Yes, well, I suppose it’ll sound odd, but it might benefit both of us. My name is Lefferts, by the way. Rob Lefferts.”

“Rosie McClendon,” she said. She thought about holding out her hand and rejected the idea. Probably she shouldn’t even have given him her name.

“I really don’t think I have time to do any favors, Mr Lefferts-I’m ru

“Please.” He put down his weary briefcase, reached into the small brown bag he was holding in his other hand, and brought out one of the old paperbacks he’d found inside the pawnshop. On the cover was a stylized picture of a man in a black-and-white-striped prison outfit stepping into what might have been a cave or the mouth of a tu

“All I want is for you to read the first paragraph of this book. Out loud.”

“Here?” She looked around.

“Right here on the street? In heaven’s name, why?” He only repeated

“Please,” and she took the book, thinking that if she did as he asked, she might be able to get away from him without any further foolishness. That would be fine, because she was starting to think he was a little nuts. Maybe not dangerous, but nuts, all the same. And if he did turn out to be dangerous, she wanted to find out while the Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn-and Bill Steiner-was still within dashing distance. The name of the book was Dark Passage, the author David Goodis. As she paged past the copyright notice, Rosie decided it wasn’t surprising she’d never heard of him (although the tide of the novel rang a faint bell); Dark Passage had been published in 1946, sixteen years before she was born. She looked up at Rob Lefferts. He nodded eagerly at her, almost vibrating with anticipation… and hope? How could that be? But it certainly looked like hope. Feeling a little excited herself now (like calls to like, her mother had often said), Rosie began to read. The first paragraph was short, at least.

“It was a tough break. Parry was i

“Okay?” He was smiling, clearly delighted.

“Very much okay, Ms McClendon. Now wait… just one more… humor me…”

He went paging rapidly through the book, then handed it back to her.

“Just the dialogue, please. The scene is between Parry and a cab-driver. From

“Well, it’s fu

“This is very peculiar,” she said, but she was smiling. She couldn’t help herself. He nodded, and she had an idea that he would have nodded in exacdy the same way if she’d told him her name was Madame Bovary.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it seems that way, but… do you see where I want you to start?”

“Uh-huh.” She sca

“"Well, it’s fu

“From faces I can tell what people think. I can tell what they do. Sometimes I can even tell who they are… you, for instance.”

“"All right, me. What about me?”

“'You’re a guy with troubles.”

“I don’t have a trouble in the world,” Parry said.

“"Don’t tell me, brother,” the driver said.

“I know. I know people. I’ll tell you something else. Your trouble is women.”

“"Strike one. I’m happily married."” Suddenly, just like that, she had a voice for Parry: he was James Woods, nervous and high-strung, but with a brittle sense of humor. This delighted her and she went on, warming to the story now, seeing a scene from a movie that had never been made inside her head-Jackie Gleason and James Woods sparring in a cab that was racing through the streets of some anonymous city after dark.

“"Call it a two-base hit. You’re not married. But you used to be, and it wasn’t happy.”

“"Oh, I get it. You were there. You were hiding in the closet all the time.”

“The driver said, “I’ll tell you about her. She wasn’t easy to get along with. She wanted things. The more she got, the more she wanted. And she always got what she wanted. That’s the picture."” Rosie had reached the bottom of the page. Feeling a strange chill up her back, she silently handed the book back to Lefferts, who now looked happy enough to hug himself.

“Your voice is absolutely wonderful!” he told her.

“Low but not drony, melodious and very clear, with no definable accent-I knew all that at once, but voice alone means very little. You can read, though! You can actually read!”

“Of course I can read,” Rosie said. She didn’t know whether to be amused or exasperated. “do I look like I was raised by wolves?”

“No, of course not, but often even very good readers aren’t able to read aloud-even if they don’t actually stumble over the words, they have very little in the way of expression. And dialogue is much tougher than narration… the acid test, one might say. But I heard two different people. I actually heard them!”

“Yes, so did I. Mr Lefferts, I really have to go now. I-”

He reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder as she started to turn away. A woman with a bit more experience of the world would have known an audition, even one on a streetcorner, for what it was and consequently would not have been entirely surprised by what Lefferts said next. Rosie, however, was stu

At the moment Rob Lefferts was listening to his fugitive wife read on a streetcorner, Norman Daniels was sitting in his small office cubicle on the fourth floor of police headquarters with his feet up on his desk and his hands laced behind his head. It was the first time in years that it had been possible for him to put his feet up; under ordinary circumstances, his desk was heaped high with forms, fast-food wrappers, half-written reports, departmental circulars, memos, and other assorted trash. Norman was not the sort of man who picks up after himself without thinking about it (in just five weeks the house which Rosie kept pin-neat across all the years had come to look quite a bit like Miami after Hurricane Andrew), and usually his office reflected this, but now it looked positively austere. He had spent most of the day cleaning it out, taking three large plastic garbage bags full of swill down to the waste-disposal site in the basement, not wanting to leave the job to the nigger women who came in to clean between midnight and six on weekday mornings. What was left to niggers didn’t get done-this was a lesson Norman’s father had taught him, and it was a true lesson. There was one basic fact which the politicians and the do-gooders either could not or would not understand: niggers didn’t understand work. It was their African temperament. Norman ran his gaze slowly across the top of his desk, upon which nothing now rested but his feet and his phone, then shifted his eyes to the wall on his right. For years this had been papered with want-sheets, hot-sheets, lab results, and takeout menus-not to mention his calendar with pending court-dates noted in red-but now it was completely bare. He finished his visual tour by noting the stack of cardboard liquor cartons by the door. As he did so, he reflected how unpredictable life was. He had a temper, and he would have been the first to admit it. That his temper had a way of getting him in trouble and keeping him in trouble was also something he would have freely admitted. And if, a year ago, he had been granted a vision of his office as it was today, he would have drawn a simple conclusion from it: his temper had finally gotten him into a jam he couldn’t wiggle out of, and he had been ca