Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

  Brian took a left past the Westin and she lost him for a moment, which was not the place to lose him. He had too many options there—he could loop around onto the Mass Pike, head straight down Stuart, or turn right onto Dartmouth and head into the South End. She caught his brake lights as he did just that and passed the mall on his right. She lost the cover of the cab, though, as it continued straight and she turned right. Brian was half a block ahead but there were no cars in between them. If she got any closer he’d be able to see her face in his rearview.

  She’d considered a disguise yesterday but it seemed so ridiculous—what was she supposed to do, wear a Groucho face? A hockey mask? As it was, she wore a newsboy cap, something she rarely did, and sunglasses with wide round rims that he’d never seen before, so she’d pass the test if he looked at her from a reasonable distance but definitely not close up.

  He turned left on Columbus, and another car slid into the mix, a black station wagon with New York plates. Rachel dropped in behind it and they continued in unison for a couple of miles. All three of them left Columbus for Arlington together and Arlington for Albany and headed toward I-93. When she realized they might be getting on the expressway, she feared she might projectile-vomit onto the dashboard. The surface streets were hard enough, the noise, the bumps, the jackhammers breaking open pavement at a construction site, the pedestrians who dashed across the crosswalks, the other cars pressing in, cutting in front, riding up hard on her tail. But that was at twenty-five miles an hour.

  There wasn’t much time to think about it because there was Brian pulling onto 93 South. Rachel followed, feeling as if the on-ramp sucked her forward. Brian punched the gas and bolted across three lanes of traffic into the left lane, his Infiniti rocking on its wheels. She stepped on her own gas pedal and the immediate result wasn’t much different than if she’d stepped on a boulder and expected it to gallop. The small Ford inched forward and then inched forward a tiny bit faster and then a little bit faster again. By the time it reached the seventy-five miles an hour or so that Brian had reached near instantaneously, his Infiniti was a quarter mile ahead. She kept pressing on the pedal, staying one lane to his right, and soon she made up enough of the distance that by the time they’d passed through Dorchester into Milton she had a perfect bead on him from five cars back.

  She’d concentrated so hard on the task at hand that she’d forgotten all her terror at being on the expressway in the first place. Now it returned, but it wasn’t quite terror, just a persistent fluttering at the base of her throat accompanied by the certainty that her skeleton might burst through her skin.

  And a sense of betrayal and rage as toxic as Drano. Because what was abundantly clear, though there had never been much doubt, was that Brian was not headed to the airport. Logan was fifteen miles in their rearview.

  When they left 93 for 95 South and the signs for Providence, she considered the possibility that he could have chosen to fly out of TF Green Airport, the only major airport in Rhode Island. She’d known people to prefer it to the crowds at Logan, but she also knew for certain they wouldn’t have a direct flight to Moscow.

  “He’s not going to any fucking Moscow,” she said aloud.

  A few miles later she was proved correct when he engaged his turn signal at least ten miles short of the airport and began to glide smoothly across the lanes. He got off in Providence, at the Brown University exit, where the neighborhoods of College Hill and Federal Hill met. Several other cars chose the same exit, including Rachel’s, three back of his. At the top of the exit ramp, Brian went right but the two cars between them took a left.

  She slowed as she neared the intersection, let him get as far ahead as possible, but there wasn’t much stalling to be done. A Porsche swung wide on her left, engine revving, and shot out in front of her. She’d never been happier for a small penis driving a small penis car to act like a small penis because she again had cover between her and Brian.

  It didn’t last, though. At the first light, the Porsche drifted into the left-turn-only lane, then floored it, zipping around Brian as they crossed the intersection, and roaring up the road ahead of him.

  Little dicks, Rachel thought again, and their little dick cars. Shit.

  Now there was no buffer between her and her husband, no way to control whether he looked into his rearview and recognized her. She passed through the intersection. She kept four car lengths between them, but the driver of the car behind her was already craning his head to see past her, as if to discern why she’d commit the unforgivable sin of not keeping pace with the car in front of her.

  They drove into a neighborhood of Federalist clapboard homes, Armenian bakeries, and limestone churches. Once, Brian’s head tilted up and to the right—he was clearly checking his rearview—and she damn near stomped her brake pedal in panic. But, no, no, he looked back at the road. In two more blocks, she saw what she’d been looking for—the shoulder widened by a doughnut shop and a gas station. She put on her turn signal. She pulled over by the doughnut shop and prepared to pull right back out again as the green Chrysler pulled past her.

  But behind the green Chrysler was a brown Prius and behind the Prius was a tan Jaguar and right behind the Jaguar was a Toyota 4Runner with monster wheels and, Jesus, behind the 4Runner was a minivan. By the time she pulled back out, not only was she five cars back, but the minivan was too tall to see past. And even if she could, she’d then find herself staring at the back of the 4Runner, which was even taller than the minivan.

  The traffic stopped at the next signal and she had no way of knowing if Brian had actually passed through the signal before the light turned red.

  The traffic moved again. She followed as they continued along in a straight line, no curves in this road. Just give me one curve, she prayed, just one fucking curve and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to catch a glimpse of him.

  A mile up, the road forked. The Prius, the minivan, and the 4Runner all went right onto Bell Street, while the Chrysler and the Jaguar stayed the course on Broadway.

  Only one problem—Brian’s Infiniti was no longer in front of the Chrysler. It was nowhere at all.

  She screamed through gritted teeth and gripped the steering wheel so hard it felt like she might rip it out of the drive shaft.

  She banged a U-turn. She did it without thought or warning, meriting angry beeps from both the car behind her and the oncoming one in the opposite lane that she cut off. She didn’t care. She didn’t feel fear, she felt rage and frustration. But mostly rage.

  She drove back up Broadway, drove all the way to the gas station and the doughnut shop where she’d lost sight of him. She U-turned again—this time with warning and a bit more finesse—and drove back down the way she’d just come. She looked at every side street as best she could at thirty miles an hour.

  She reached the fork again. Resisted the urge to indulge in another scream. Resisted the urge to cry. She took a left into a tiny lot outside a VFW Post and turned back again.

  If she hadn’t hit a red light, she never would have found him. But she did. And as she sat at it, with another gas station and a drab insurance agency to her right, she looked down the cross street and saw a large Victorian with a tall white sign on its front lawn that listed the businesses housed within. And there, in the parking lot that branched off the side of the building under a wrought-iron fire escape, was Brian’s Infiniti.

  She found a parking space six houses past the Victorian. Walked back up the sidewalk. The street was lined with old oaks and maples, the shaded parts of the sidewalk still a bit damp from the dew the trees had shed this morning, the May air filled with the scents of decay and rebirth in equal measure. Even now, approaching a building in which her husband hid the truth of himself—or certainly a truth of himself—she could feel the street and its odors calm her.

  The sign on the front lawn listed three psychiatrists, a family practitioner, a mineral company, a title company, and two attorneys. Rachel stayed in the shade of the great trees unti
l she reached the alley along the side. A large sign at the entrance to the alley warned that the parking spaces were for occupants of 232 Seaver Street only, while a series of smaller signs bolted to the siding identified whose spot was whose. Brian’s Infiniti was parked in the spot reserved for Alden Minerals Ltd.

  She’d never heard of Alden Minerals Ltd., and yet it seemed vaguely familiar, as if she had heard of it. But she was certain she hadn’t. Yet one more paradox in a week full of them.

  Alden Minerals Ltd. was on the second floor, suite 210. Seemed like now would be as good a time as any to storm up the stairs and burst into the suite and see exactly what her lying husband was up to. Yet she hesitated. She found a spot under the fire escape and leaned against the building and tried to ferret out if there could be any logical explanation for any of this. Men sometimes engaged in elaborate hoaxes on their wives if they were, say, planning a surprise party.

  No. They didn’t. At least not to the point where they claimed to be in London when they were in Boston or claimed to be flying to Moscow when they were driving to Providence. No, there was no acceptable explanation for this.

  Unless . . .

  What?

  Unless he’s a spy, she thought. Don’t spies do this kind of thing?

  Well, yes, Rachel, a sarcastic voice that sounded like her mother’s agreed, they surely do. So do cheating husbands and sociopaths.

  She leaned against the building and wished she still smoked.

  If she confronted him right this second, what would she gain? The truth? Probably not, not if he’d been lying to her this successfully for this long. And whatever he told her, she wouldn’t believe it anyway. He could show her his CIA credentials and she’d think of the selfie he’d “sent” from London (how did he fake that, by the way?) and tell him to take his fake CIA credentials and find a way to go fuck himself with them.

  If she confronted him, she’d get nowhere.

  Harder to admit, of course, was that if she confronted him, whether he lied to her in the moment or not, the relationship—or whatever she’d call it from here on—would leak out on the floor. And she wasn’t ready for that yet. It was a humiliating realization, but at this moment she couldn’t stomach the loss of him from her life. She pictured their condo emptied of his clothes, his books, his toothbrush and titanium razor, the food he liked gone from the fridge, the scotch he preferred removed from the liquor cabinet or, worse, forgotten and left behind as a reminder until Rachel poured it down the sink. She pictured the magazines he subscribed to still showing up months after he left and her long empty days bleeding into long endless evenings. Since her on-air meltdown, she’d lost most of her friends. She had Melissa, yes, but Melissa was the type of friend who expected her to “buck up” and “think positive” and—Excuse me, waiter, could I have one more of these with less ice this time?—“shake it off.” Beyond that, her friends weren’t friends at all but casual acquaintances; it was hard, after all, to maintain social contact with a virtual shut-in.

  These last few years, her one true and constant friend had been Brian. She relied on him the way trees relied on their roots. He was her world in full. And the rational part of her knew that, of course—of course—she would have to divest herself of him. He was a fraud. And theirs was a house of sand. And yet she—

  He walked out of the back of the building and crossed directly in front of her. He was texting someone as he walked to his car and she stood less than six feet away from him under the fire escape. She waited for him to see her. Tried to think of what she’d say. He’d changed into a dark blue suit with a white shirt, silver-and-black-checked tie, and dark brown shoes. He wore a brown leather laptop bag over his right shoulder. He climbed in the Infiniti and shrugged the bag off onto the passenger seat, still texting with one hand as he shut the door with the other. He pulled the seat belt strap across his chest. He started the engine, still texting, and then must have hit “send” because he flipped the phone onto the passenger seat and backed out of the space, his eyes on his rearview. All he had to do was move his gaze down six inches and he’d be staring at her. She imagined the shock would be so great he’d forget he was in reverse and back straight into the light pole across the alley. But it never happened. He backed up, turning the wheel as he did, and then he was facing forward, looking out at Seaver Street. He drove out of the alley and turned left on Seaver.

  She ran to her car, thankful she’d dressed in sneakers as part of her “workout” ruse. She got in the car and turned around, drove up the street and went careening through the intersection as the yellow turned red. A minute later, she spotted him on Broadway, three cars ahead.

  She followed him back into College Hill. On a block caught somewhere between decay and refurbishment, he pulled to the curb. She pulled over fifty yards back in front of a boarded-up travel agency and a defunct record store. Past that was a furniture rental store that seemed to have cornered the market on black lacquer dressers. Next was a liquor store and then a camera store, Little Louie’s. Camera stores, she suspected, would all go the way of record stores and travel agencies (liquor stores, she suspected, would hold the line the world over), but Little Louie’s was, as yet, hanging on. Brian entered it. She thought of walking up the sidewalk and getting a glimpse of what he might be doing in there, but she quickly deemed that idea too unpredictable to risk. This was confirmed when Brian walked back out within two minutes of entering. If she’d given in to her impulse, she would have been caught flat-footed in the middle of the sidewalk. He drove off and she pulled away from the curb. As she passed the camera shop, she could see that it was fairly dark inside; the windows displayed only photographs of cameras and newspaper ads taped to the glass. She had no idea what went on in that store, but she suspected selling cameras wasn’t the main priority.

  Brian led them out of Providence, through a series of smaller and smaller towns, where the clapboard homes grew more and more distressed, and farms sprouted up here and there, until he pulled into a strip mall that appeared to be reasonably new. He drove past the Panera Bread on the edge of the mall to a small freestanding bank, pulled into a parking space, and got out of the car. He walked to the bank, the laptop bag over his right shoulder again.

  She idled in the strip mall lot, in front of a CVS and a Payless ShoeSource. While she waited, she took her phone out of the cup holder and saw that she’d received a text.

  She opened it. It was from Brian and it had been sent twenty minutes ago as he’d walked out of the Seaver Street building and crossed directly in front of her.

  Babe, on the runway. Taking off soon. Land in about 10 hours. Hope you’re still up when I call. Love you so much.

  Ten minutes later, he came out of the bank but no longer carried the laptop bag.

  He got in the Infiniti and drove out of the lot.

  She followed him back into Providence. He stopped at a florist and purchased a bouquet of white and pink flowers, and her stomach turned. She wasn’t sure she was ready for where this was headed. He stopped one more time and purchased a bottle of champagne from a liquor store. Now she knew she wasn’t ready. He turned off the main road at Federal Hill, long an Italian-American stronghold and the seat of power for the New England mafia but by now just another handsome, gentrified neighborhood of chic restaurants and redbrick row houses.

  He pulled the Infiniti into a slot in front of one of those row houses, its windows open to the fine day, white curtains wafting in white-trimmed windows. She parked across the street and a few houses down from where he stood on the sidewalk with the bouquet in his hand. He put two fingers into his mouth and let loose a loud, sharp whistle, something she’d never seen him do in all their time together. It wasn’t just the whistle that was new, she realized. He moved differently, his shoulders higher, his hips looser, springing off the balls of his feet with a dancer’s confidence.

  He walked up the steps and the front door opened.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Rachel whispered. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.�
��

  It was a woman who answered the door, about thirty-five or so. She had curly blond hair and a long, pretty face. But none of that held Rachel’s attention when Brian handed her the flowers and the champagne, then knelt on the landing to kiss her pregnant belly.

  20

  VHS

  She couldn’t remember driving back to the highway. The rest of her life she’d wonder how a completely sober person could operate a motor vehicle for several miles through a medium-size city and not remember it.

  She’d picked Brian as her spouse because he seemed safe. Because he was can-do. Earnest bordering on grating. A man who would never cheat. Never lie. Certainly never live a double life.

  Yet she’d watched her husband enter the row house with his arm around the waist of his pregnant wife(?), girlfriend(?), and shut the door behind them. Rachel had no idea how long she sat in her car, staring at the house, enough time to note that the paint was peeling a bit from a windowsill on the second floor; the cable from a rusted satellite dish dangled off the roof down the front of the building. The window trim was white; the brick facade, recently washed by the look of it, was red. The front door was black and looked to have been painted many times over the course of a century or more. The knocker was pewter.

  And then she was on the highway with no idea how she got there.

  She thought she’d cry. She didn’t cry. She thought she’d tremble. She didn’t tremble. She thought she’d feel grief and maybe she did, maybe this was what grief felt like—a total numbness, a brining in nothingness. A cauterized soul.

  The three lanes of the highway dropped to two as they crossed into Massachusetts. A car drove up on her right, attempting to cut in front of her as its own lane began to disappear. Signs warning of the lane drop had been posted for the last two miles. The other driver had ignored them until it was convenient for him and inconvenient for her.