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Three Times a Week

Lisa Gray

    She’d done it three times a week. For years. Different men. Different faces. Different places. All because of Joe.
    It wasn’t getting easier. It had taken her twice as long to get ready to look half as good. And she was feeling tired.
    Maybe tonight would be different. That’s the one thing that kept her going. The one thing she’d searched for all her life. And never found.
    She twisted round on the bar stool and surveyed the room.
    At least this is better than some of the joints I started off in, she thought. Or maybe not.
    The joint was classy. But dead. No takers. Only the elderly couple in the booth, the bartender and the beat-up looking dude at the end of the bar, his bowed head begging his Jack Daniels to banish all his miseries.
    Worn, brown leather bomber jacket. Blue jeans. And sneakers. She was surprised the bartender had let him in. He hadn’t even made the effort.
    Why the hell didn’t men make the effort? she thought.
    She looked at the expensive short chiffon dress that slipped seductively from her shoulder line, her bright red perfectly manicured nails and silver sandals that Cinderella would have died for. And thought of all those other guys. In woollen sweaters, open necked tee-shirts and sandals. Whatever happened to collars and ties? The bastards were all damn lazy. Or arrogant.
    Well, she needed this one. This would make her third this week. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. She slid her glass along the bar counter till it stopped inches from his, slid off the stool, walked provocatively towards the guy and settled herself on the stool beside him.
    “My drink seems to like yours,” she said.
    The guy didn’t raise his head.
    Damn him! she thought.
    Detective Shepherd stared harder into his drink. He was tired. Years of tiredness. And it told on him. A broken marriage. Unsolved cases. Going back years. A career going down the pan. What the hell was it all for? Tonight he was off duty but the last thing he needed was this dame trying to pick him up. He knew the dangers of getting involved. He said nothing. Maybe the dame would go away if he ignored her.
    “You’re fuckin’ friendly,” she said.
    Give him a hard time, she thought. Men like a hard time.
    He turned a hard eye on her and said, “The language doesn’t go with the dress.”
    “Well, it got your attention, didn’t it?” she laughed.
    He had to admit her laugh was sexy.
    “Is that what you want?” he said.
    She looked at him and thought of what she wanted. She could almost bet he was nothing like it.
    “It’s a start,” she said.
    “And then?”
    He looked directly in her green eyes.
    She wasn’t happy, he thought. But who is?
    He resumed his study of glass.
    He was annoying the shit out of her. Why was she bothering with this ass-hole?
    But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how she felt.
    She curled a hand round his glass.
    “I’m a bit like this drink. One sip and you might feel better,” she said.
    “The question is would you?” he replied.
     She reeled back like he’d struck her.
    “I don’t need you, buster. There’s other fish to fry,” she said, sliding off the stool and vacating the bar.
    He watched her. She didn’t head outside. She headed for the elevator. He resumed his glass study.
    Whatever made a woman act like that? he thought. A lack? A lack of something.
    He knew all too well what it was. Love. That was part of it. Though that could die. Loyalty. That was more important. Because the second fed the first. The woman had neither. And neither did he.
    He was there the next night.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” she said when she saw him.
    “I’m keeping an eye on you,” he said. “You look like you need it.”
    She slunk away from him towards the far end of the bar and seated herself beside a dishevelled guy in a suit. She was getting desperate. She’d only done it twice that week. The third seemed to be eluding her. And this was the twentieth year.
    It was that bum. There’d never been a problem before him. He’d changed her luck.
    She didn’t score a hit with the guy in the dishevelled suit. And the week was drawing to an end.
    “No luck?” he said as he saw the guy beat a hasty retreat.
    He was beginning to feel sorry for her. She reminded him of himself. Drowning her sorrows in a bar.
    Don’t! he told himself. Don’t get involved.
    But it seemed he already was.
    “What is your problem?” she said sitting down beside him.
    The bartender slid her another drink as if he’d anticipated this.
    “Same as yours,” he said.
    “You don’t know what my problems are,” she replied.
    “Maybe I do. Mine are not that much different.”
    She should have dumped him then but there was something about him that intrigued her. He wouldn’t be her third. That she knew. Instinctively. But it didn’t seem to matter.
    “Why don’t you give it up?” he said.
    He was staring at her.
    “I would if I met the right man,” she said.
    “Would you recognise him if you did?”
    “Sure I would,” she said. “He’d be like Joe.”
    She backed off the stool, aware she’d said too much. Spilled her guts so to speak. To him, of all people.
    He watched her walk away. Now that she’d stopped trying and no one was taking her on she had an almost childlike walk. A vulnerability he found strangely enticing. Maybe that’s what others had felt. And taken advantage of. The old story he thought. Bastards take advantage of nice people. He was sure she’d been born nice. Like he’d been.
    He was there the third evening she walked into the bar. He couldn’t keep away.
    She was strangely glad to see him too.
    “Are you giving up?” he said, as he ordered her favourite drink.
    “I can’t,” she said. “Because of Joe.”
    She opened the outlandishly large purse she was carrying. It didn’t seem to go with the outfit. She drew out a photo. Something she’d never done before.
    But this guy was different. She could talk to him.
    “That’s Joe,” she said.
    He looked at the old, dog eared photo.
    “He must have been very special,” he said.
    “He was,” she said simply, sliding the photograph back in her purse. “I’ve been looking for someone like him ever since. Three times a week for twenty years.”
    “Do you think you’ll ever find him?” he said, staring sombrely into his glass.
    “I’ve got to keep trying,” she said. “You understand?”
    He nodded. He understood all right. She was just like him. Keep trying. Never give up.
    She slid off the stool reluctantly as a suave-suited businessman settled himself on a stool at the bar.
    This was her last chance this week. She had to take it.
    Third time lucky, he thought as he watched them leave the bar arm in arm.
    But not for him.
    They didn’t take the elevator. They left the hotel.
    I can’t let her do it, he thought, following them at a discreet distance. They hailed a cab and he did too. The cab made one stop at a florist’s, the guy emerged with a bunch of roses and then the cab sped off.
    Detective Shepherd sighed. That only confirmed his worst fear.
    The cab dropped him outside a seedy apartment.
    Some businessman, he thought.
    He saw the top floor front light go on and the girl appeared in the window to draw the drapes. He had to stop her. Before it went too far.
    The door of the apartment block flew open and a woman emerged screaming. For a split second he thought it was her and his heart sank. Then he realised the shouting was in Spanish. He jumped out of the cab and flashed his badge. The woman grabbed him and pulled him inside the building, up the first flight of stairs and into the open door of an apartment. Flames were leaping from a saucepan on a stove. He grabbed a cloth and threw it over the pan. The screaming woman hugged him, chattering rapidly in Spanish all the time. He tried to extract himself but the woman was hysterical and wouldn’t let him go.
    Damn! Damn! he thought. He’d be too late.
    He pulled the woman’s arms from his body and headed for the stairs, aware he had wasted valuable seconds. He took the stairs two at a time and ran the length of the corridor. He tried the apartment door. Locked. He put his shoulder to it and forced it.
    She was kissing a photograph and laying it on the corpse’s face. She smiled when she saw him, placed the baseball bat by the side of the body and laid the six red roses in their cheap cellophane on the lifeless chest.
    “Me and Joe DiMaggio,” she said huskily, her voice broken.
    She looked so vulnerable he could have cried.
    “He left roses on her grave three times a week for twenty years,” she said, looking at him. “That’s the kind of man I wanted. Not this kind.”
    She pointed at the dead guy on the floor of the apartment.
    “That’s why I killed them. Three times a week for twenty years.”
    “I know,” he said.
    He’d been on the case for years.
    He walked over to the body. The photo of Joe DiMaggio on the guy’s face did not waver. He picked it off the guy’s face and removed one rose from the cellophane.
    “You’d better come with me,” he said, handing her the rose.
    “Strangely enough I want to,” she said as he led her to the door of the apartment.
    “You’re the only man I ever felt I could talk to,” she added, as he placed the handcuffs gently on her.
    He could have wept.
     “What’s your name?” she said.
    He didn’t answer for a second or two. And when he did his voice was strangled.
    “It’s Joe,” he said, handing her the photograph of Joe DiMaggio.
    “I knew it,” she said, looking at him and then the photograph.
    And Joe smiled back like he always did.

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