Fade to White Read Online Free

him.”
    *   *   *
    Brian was there when Stacey announced last call; and he was there when Jack closed out the cash register; and he was there when Pete Hardwick showed up bleary-eyed and yawning to make up the night’s deposit. He was sitting at a little table over past the silent jukebox, as though he was waiting for somebody and didn’t care if everyone in the whole world knew.
    “Hey,” Pete said, sizing up the tape. “You had a good night.”
    “One good table is what we had,” said Jack. He took the tape, ran it through his fingers, and found one transaction, twenty or thirty times the usual.
    “That’s all it takes.”
    “Definitely an expense account situation.”
    Pete looped the tape around itself and pressed it flat. “Nice.”
    Jack picked up a spray bottle and worked on scrubbing the bar, moving in close to where Jack stood. He tilted his head ever so slightly in Brian’s direction. “That’s the last of them right there,” he said. “The TV people.”
    “Huh?”
    “You know, the TV people. That commercial they’re making over at the mountain.”
    Pete forgot all about the money. “The one with Harper Stone?”
    “If they’re making more than the one commercial, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
    “Come on, man. Harper Stone was in here and you didn’t tell me? You didn’t call?”
    “You said no calls unless the place burns down.” He kept working the spray bottle, moving along the bar. The bottle quacked like a duck when he squeezed the trigger. He breathed in the sharp smell of disinfectant. “That’s your rule. No calls to your house, unless I call the fire department first.”
    Pete looked aghast. “I don’t believe it. You didn’t—”
    “Take it easy, boss. Take it easy. There weren’t any movie stars in here tonight.” He pointed with the spray bottle at Brian, who was distracted for the moment by the bottom of his empty glass. “That guy right there’s as close as we came. He’s the one signed the slip.”
    “My new best friend,” said Pete, his face softening. “Movie star or no.”
    “I thought you’d see it that way.”
    Stacey came out from the back where she’d been putting the vacuum in the storage closet. She stopped short to see Brian there still, then she turned around and went back for her coat.
    “Hey,” Brian called before she could disappear. “I could use a lift back to the condo, if you don’t mind.”
    Jack and Pete exchanged a look.

FIVE
    They had to sit side by side in the freezing car for a while, their breath blowing thin clouds of smoke, until the engine warmed up and the windows cleared. Stacey pushed the gas pedal to hurry things up and the Subaru coughed and hesitated and steadied itself. Brian shivered and turned the thumbwheel to switch on the heated seat, but nothing happened.
    “Doesn’t the heater work,” he asked, “or is the light just broken?”
    “That heater hasn’t worked in five years,” Stacey said. “If you’d ever lowered yourself to ride in my car, you’d have known.”
    “Sorry.”
    “That’s all right.”
    “I’ll try to do it more often from now on.”
    “Oh no, you won’t.” Stacey threw the transmission into gear and hit the gas. If there had been any snow on the ground it would have been a risky move, but even in the Binding’s ill-maintained parking lot there wasn’t much of anything on the ground but gravel and frozen dirt.
    They were quiet as they drove through town, and the streets were quiet, too. No lights anywhere except the big arc lamp on the front of the library and the yellowing overhead fluorescents at the gas station. Bud’s Suds was closed up tight, along with the pizza joint next door to it and the grocery store down the block. All of the other restaurants and bars were shuttered and dark, too.
    She asked him why he was here shooting a television commercial instead of doing research or whatever for the family law firm. He said that he’d been made an offer he