Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

  The thought of never seeing him again slid through her intestinal tract like a shiv. Losing Brian—knowing he was out in the world somewhere, yet she would never see him again—would be like losing a kidney. It was a certifiably insane reaction, and yet there it was.

  “Why aren’t you already gone?”

  “I couldn’t synchronize every part of my timetable as fast as I wanted.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “We don’t have much time,” Brian said.

  “For what?”

  “For anything but trust.”

  She stared across the boat at him. “Trust?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  There were probably a thousand things she could have said to the galactic absurdity of his asking her to trust him, but all she managed to say was “Who is she?”

  She hated the words as they left her mouth. He’d stripped her of every foundation she’d built the last three years of her life on, and she was coming off like the jealous shrew.

  “Who?” he said.

  “The pregnant wife you keep in Providence.”

  Another smile, bordering on a smirk, as his eyes rose to the starless sky. “She’s an associate.”

  “At your mineral company?”

  “Well, tangentially, yes.”

  She could feel them dropping into the rhythm of all their fights—she typically played offense, he played an evasive defense, which usually made her more and more aggressive, like the dog chasing the rabbit that has no meat under its fur. So before it could deteriorate any further, she asked the real question.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m your husband.”

  “You’re not my—”

  “I’m the man who loves you.”

  “You lied to me about everything in our lives. That’s not love. That’s—”

  “Look in my eyes. Tell me whether you see love there or not.”

  She looked. Sardonically at first, but then with growing fascination. It was there, no question.

  But was it? He was, after all, an actor.

  “Your version of it,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, “that’s the only version I’d know.”

  Caleb cut the engine. They were about two miles out in the bay, the lights of Quincy off to their right, the lights of Boston back and to their left. In front of them, the ink dark was interrupted by the ridges and crags of Thompson Island to their west. Impossible to tell in this dark if it was two hundred yards away or two thousand. There was some kind of youth facility on Thompson, Outward Bound maybe, but whatever the organization, they’d turned in for the night because the island emitted no light whatsoever. Small waves broke softly against the hull. She’d once piloted herself and Sebastian home on a night like this using only their running lights, the two of them chuckling nervously through most of the journey, but Caleb had cut every light but the small bulbs of uplighting on the deck by their feet.

  Out there in the impermeable dark on a moonless night, she realized Brian and Caleb could quite easily kill her. In fact, all of this could have been orchestrated to get her to think she was supervising the events that led her to this boat and this bay and this callous dark when in fact it was the other way around.

  It suddenly seemed important to ask Brian, “What’s your real name?”

  “Alden,” he said to her. “Brian Alden.”

  “Are you from a lumber family?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing so glamorous.”

  “Are you from Canada?”

  He shook his head. “I’m from Grafton, Vermont.”

  He watched her carefully as he removed a plastic sleeve of peanuts from his pocket, the kind they gave you on planes, and opened it.

  “You’re Scott Pfeiffer,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “But your name isn’t Scott Pfeiffer.”

  “No. That’s just the name of some kid I went to high school with, used to make me laugh in Latin class.”

  “And your father?”

  “Stepfather. Yeah. He was the guy I described. Racist, homophobic, scared the world was run by a large-scale conspiracy to fuck his life up and piss on everything he’d put his faith in. He was also, paradoxically maybe, a nice guy, good neighbor, help you put up a fence or fix a gutter. He keeled over from a heart attack while shoveling a neighbor’s walk. Neighbor’s name was Roy Carrol. Funny thing? Roy was never even nice to him, but my stepfather shoveled his walk because it was the decent thing to do and Roy was too poor to hire anyone to help and he lived on a corner lot. You know what Roy did the day after my father’s funeral?” Brian popped a peanut in his mouth. “Went out and bought himself a three-thousand-dollar snowblower.”

  He offered her some peanuts and she shook her head, feeling numb to all of it suddenly, feeling as if she’d stepped into a virtual-reality booth and this was the set onto which she found herself projected.

  “And your real father?”

  “Never really knew him.” He shrugged. “Something we have in common.”

  “How about Brian Delacroix? How’d you come up with that identity?”

  “You know, Rachel. You know because I told you.”

  And she did. “He went to Brown.”

  Brian nodded.

  “And you were the pizza delivery guy.”

  “Delivered in forty minutes or less or you get it for half price.” He smiled. “Now you know why I drive so fast.” He shook some more peanuts into his hand.

  “Why,” she said, “are you sitting there eating peanuts like nothing’s changed?”

  “Because I’m hungry.” He popped another one in his mouth. “It was a long flight.”

  “There was no flight.” She clenched, then unclenched her teeth.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her and she wanted to tear it off his face. She wished she hadn’t drunk so much. She needed to be clearheaded right now and she wasn’t even close. She had wanted to have all her questions lined up in perfect sequence.

  “There was no flight,” she said, “because there’s no job and you’re not Brian Delacroix, which means our marriage isn’t even legal and you’ve lied to me about . . .” She stopped. She could feel the dark all around her and all inside of her. “Everything.”

  He slapped the peanut dust off his hands and pocketed the empty plastic sleeve.

  “Not everything.”

  “Really. What’s real?”

  He waved his fingers between their chests. “This.”

  She mimicked the gesture. “This is bullshit.”

  He actually had the temerity to look hurt. The balls. “No. It’s not, Rachel. It’s as real as anything.”

  Caleb joined them on the deck. “Tell me about the camera shop, Brian.”

  Brian said, “What is this, bad cop/bad cop suddenly? You’re both gonna grill me?”

  “Rachel says she followed you to Little Louie’s.”

  A heartless cast found Brian’s face. He’d worn the same look when he’d slapped Andrew Gattis, wore it when he’d walked out of the Hancock Tower in the rain, and it had flashed across his face during a fight once, for just a second. “How much did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You told her nothing?”

  For a second, she thought Brian’s voice sounded funny, like he’d bitten his tongue or cut it somehow.

  “I told her we were actors.”

  “Nothing else?” His voice sounded like his own again.

  “I’m right here,” she said.

  Brian looked over at her and his eyes were dead. No, not dead. Dying. The light bled from them. She felt infinitesimal in them. He swept her body with them in a way that was clinical and lustful at the same time, the look of a man watching pornography when he wasn’t even sure he was in the mood.

  Caleb said, “Why’d you go to the camera store, Brian?”

  Brian held up a finger to Caleb, his eyes still moving up and down Rachel, and Caleb’s face seize
d with the dismissiveness of the gesture.

  “Don’t fucking hold your finger up to me like I’m the help. Are the passports ready?”

  Brian’s jaw tightened even as he chuckled. “Oh, ho, ho, my man, let’s not push me tonight.”

  Caleb took a step toward Brian. “You said they wouldn’t be ready for another twenty-four hours.”

  “I know what I said.”

  “Is this about her?” Caleb pointed at Rachel. “Her and her bullshit? People could fucking die because—”

  “I know people could die,” Brian said.

  “My wife could die. My child could—”

  “A wife and child you shouldn’t have.”

  “But it’s okay for you?” Caleb took two more steps. “Huh? It’s okay for you.”

  “She’s been in war zones,” Brian said. “She’s battle-tested.”

  “She’s a shut-in.”

  Rachel said, “What are you two—?”

  Caleb stepped to Brian, pointed a finger in his face. “You lied about the fucking passports. You put us all at risk. We’re gonna fucking die because you can’t see past your dick.”

  As violence always did in her experience, the next few things happened very fast.

  Brian slapped Caleb’s finger out of his face. Caleb whacked the side of Brian’s head with a hastily clenched fist. Brian rose half out of his seat as Caleb took another swing at him, half connecting with his neck. Brian buried his fist in Caleb’s solar plexus. When Caleb doubled over, Brian punched him in the ear hard enough that she could hear the cartilage crunch.

  Caleb stumbled sideways. He dropped to one knee and inhaled desperately for a moment.

  She said, “Guys, stop,” and the words sounded ridiculous.

  Brian rubbed his neck where Caleb had hit him and spit off the side of the boat.

  Caleb used the table to push himself to his feet. Then he was holding her gun in his hand. She watched him thumb off the safety, and she couldn’t make sense of it at first. It characterized the surreal quality that had marked the entire day. They were Brian, Rachel, and Caleb, regular people, boring even, not the kind of people who brandished firearms. And yet it was she who’d forced Caleb to drive her here using the same gun.

  And now he was pointing it in Brian’s face. “Hey, tough guy, tell me where the fucking—”

  When Brian struck Caleb’s gun hand, the gun went off. It wasn’t as loud as it sounded on the range, with partitions on either side of her. It sounded like a desk drawer being kicked shut. Judging by the muzzle flash, the bullet passed in her general direction. But she didn’t scream. Brian swiped the gun out of Caleb’s hand and swept Caleb’s legs out from under him with the kind of ease that again suggested he’d had some wrestling experience. Caleb landed on his back, and Brian kicked him in the chest and abdomen, kicked him like he was going to kick him to death.

  “Point a gun in my face?” Brian screamed. “Fucking kidding me?”

  With every sentence Brian delivered a kick.

  “Try to fuck me?” Brian kicked him in the stomach. “Talk shit about my wife?”

  A blood bubble popped from Caleb’s mouth.

  “Try to fuck my wife?” Brian kicked him in the groin. “You don’t think I notice the way you fucking drool over her? Stare at her? Think about her?”

  When the kicks started, Caleb had begged him to stop. Now he just lay there.

  “Brian, stop.”

  Brian turned toward her, his eyes narrowing at his gun in her hand. She couldn’t remember picking it up, but she could feel its weight, so much heavier than hers, which, in Brian’s hand, looked like a toy.

  “Stop?” he said.

  “Stop,” she repeated. “You’ll kill him.”

  “And why would you care?”

  “Brian, please.”

  “What in your life would change if he was dead? If I was dead? Or just gone? You’ll do the same thing—sit inside and look out at the world. But you won’t engage it. You won’t affect it. I mean, forget about him. What difference would it make if you’re in the world or not?”

  The words seemed to surprise him as much as her. He blinked several times. He looked at the lightless sky and the black bay. Looked at Caleb. Looked at her again. And she could see a realization take root—if he returned to land with an empty boat, no one would be the wiser.

  He raised her gun. At least she thought he raised her gun. No, he did. He raised it. Raised it from his knee in a sweep, bringing it up and toward the center of himself, his right arm half-crossing his chest.

  And she shot him.

  She shot him as she’d been taught—center mass. Bullet straight to the heart.

  She heard herself say, Brian no Brian no. She heard herself say, No no no please.

  Brian stumbled backward and the blood bloomed on his shirt and then fell from his body in drops.

  Caleb looked at her with a mix of horror and gratitude.

  Brian dropped her gun. He said, “Shit.”

  She said, “I’m sorry,” and it left her mouth like a question.

  And there was so much love in his eyes. And so much fear. Words left his mouth accompanied by a spoonful of blood that spilled down his chin. And she couldn’t compute what he was saying to her because of the blood and his fear.

  He took a half stumble-step backward, his palm to his chest. He fell off the boat.

  And she heard clearly now what he’d said to her, what had gotten lost while the words fell from his mouth with the blood. “I love you.”

  Wait. Wait. Brian, wait.

  She could see his blood on the deck and a small splatter of it on the white foam cushion of a bench by the rail.

  Wait, she thought again.

  We were supposed to grow old together.

  III

  RACHEL IN THE WORLD

  2014

  23

  DARK

  The first thing she removed was her watch. Then her necklace, the same one he’d bought her in the mall three weeks back. Kicked off her shoes. Pulled off her windbreaker, followed by her T-shirt and her jeans. Put everything on the table with the gun she’d used.

  She moved past Caleb and went down into the hold. Just to the right of the door, she found a flare gun and a first aid kit but no flashlight. Farther down the counter, though, she found one encased in yellow plastic and black rubber. She tested it. Worked beautifully. She checked the base—solar powered. If she’d had time to look for an oxygen tank, she could have stayed down there forever. She went back out on deck, found Caleb waiting for her by the rail.

  “Listen,” he said. “He’s dead. And if he’s not—”

  She brushed past him. She stepped up on the rail. Caleb said, “Wait,” but she dove into the bay. The cold seized her heart, her throat, and her intestinal tract all at the same time. When it found her head it drilled down through her temples, rolled through her sinuses like acid.

  The flashlight beam was even brighter than she could have hoped for, though, and illuminated a lime green world of moss and seaweed, coral and sand, black boulders the size of primitive gods. She descended through the green and felt alien, very much the unnatural intruder into the natural world. The world before the world, so old it pre-dated language, humanity, conscience.

  A school of cod passed within feet of her. When they were gone, she saw him. He sat on the sand about fifteen feet below by a rock as old as the world. She swam down to him and treaded water in front of his corpse. She wept, her shoulders convulsing, and he stared back at her with sightless eyes.

  I’m sorry.

  A thin rope of blood pirouetted along the rim of the hole in his chest.

  I loved you, I hated you, I never knew you.

  His body was canted to the right, while his head was cocked to the left.

  I hate you. I love you. I’ll miss you for the rest of my fucking life.

  She stared at him and his corpse stared back until her lungs burned and her eyes burned and she couldn’t take it any long
er.

  Good-bye.

  Good-bye.

  As she swam up, she saw that Caleb had turned the boat lights on. The hull bobbed on the surface, twenty feet up and about fifteen yards to the south of her. She kicked for the surface and was halfway there when something grazed her thigh just above the knee. She slapped at her leg but nothing was there and all she managed to do was drop the flashlight. It dropped faster than she rose, and the last she saw of it, it had settled on the sandy floor, a bright yellow eye looking up toward the world.

  When she broke the surface, she took a great guzzle of oxygen, then swam to the boat. As she climbed aboard, she noticed a tiny island off the starboard side that she hadn’t been able to make out in the dark. It was an island for birds and crabs only, barely big enough to plant one butt cheek on, definitely not two. A lone and sickly thin maple pointed up from the bedrock, bent about forty-five degrees by the elements. Several hundred yards away, as she’d guessed, sat Thompson, a bit more clearly defined but just as lightless as before.

  On the boat, she took her clothes with her into the cabin, ignoring Caleb, who sat on the deck with his hands between his knees and his head lowered. She found a small bathroom with a sliding door just past the bed. There was a picture of them hanging over the toilet, one she’d never seen before. She remembered when it had been taken, though, because it was the first time Brian met Melissa. They’d had lunch in the North End, then walked over to Charlestown and sat on the grassy hill by the Bunker Hill Monument. Melissa had taken the picture, Rachel and Brian with their backs to each other, the monument rising behind them. They’d been smiling—no news there; people always smiled in photographs—but the smiles were genuine. They were happy, radiant. That night he’d told her he loved her for the first time. She made him wait half an hour before she said it back.

  She sat on the toilet seat for a few minutes and whispered his name a dozen times and wept noiselessly until her throat clogged. She wanted to explain that she was sorry because she’d killed him and she wanted to explain that she hated him because he’d played her for a fool, but the truth was she didn’t feel either of those things one-tenth as much as she felt the loss of him and the loss of who she’d been with him. So much of her essential wiring had been shorted in Haiti—her empathy, her courage, her compassion, her will, her integrity, her sense of self-worth—and only Brian had believed it would come back. He’d convinced her the shorted wires could be re-fused.