Page 86 of Little Last Words
He shook his head. “Man, you’re something else.”
I smiled. “I sure am.”
He jumped down from the counter, grabbed one of the biggest glasses I’d ever seen, filled it with water, and gulped it down. “Give me a second, okay? I’ll answer all your questions.”
I gave him an entire minute’s worth of seconds, during which time his breathing shifted, becoming heavier, almost like he was struggling to catch his breath.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He set the glass next to the sink, gripped the countertop with both hands, and bent down. “I have anxiety, and not the mild kind.”
“Is that the reason why you see a therapist?”
“It’s one of the reasons. I’m still working on getting past the end of my marriage.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“She cheated on me, and not just once. Many times, in fact. I’m talking time after time after time.”
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“In the worst way possible. I left the house one morning to cater a wedding luncheon, but the groom called off the wedding. I arrived back home to find my wife with a guy I’d been friends with for years. They were naked in our bed.”
“Oh, wow. I can’t imagine ...”
“I never understood why she didn’t just leave me. If that’s the lifestyle she wanted to live, it’s the least she could have done.”
I thought about the women I’d seen coming in and out of his place since he’d lived here. “Do you think you’re the way you are with women, going from one to the next, because of what happened with your ex-wife? It makes so much more sense to me now. You want to date. You just don’t want to get too close.”
“This bachelor life, it isn’t who I am. Believe me. I thought it would be fun. And it was, sometimes, if you don’t mind waking up with a splitting headache and feeling a hollow sense of nothingness after a night of casual sex.”
“I haven’t seen any women coming and going for a few weeks or more. Is it because of the advice your therapist gave you?”
He turned toward me, leaning against the counter, and he uttered something I didn’t expect him to say. “Everything changed the day Penelope moved in. No one else mattered anymore, just her.”
CHAPTER34
“I’ve been thinking you and Penelope were an item since yesterday,” I said. “And then a waitress confirmed as much this morning. She saw a man fitting your description with Penelope the week before she died.”
“It was me,” Becker said. “I didn’t justknowPenelope. What I mean to say is, we hadn’t just met when she moved in across the street. I knew her from before.”
From before?
I was shocked.
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“We first met when Penelope was bussing tables at a restaurant in San Simeon.”
San Simeon was the next town over.
“What restaurant?” I asked.
“It was an Italian place. Can’t remember the name. It’s not there anymore.”
“Did you grow up around here?”
He shook his head. “I’m from Huntington Beach. The night we met, I was headed up to San Jose to start culinary school. I stopped in at the Italian restaurant, and we met.”