The Last Innocent Hour
Page 27
“Suppose this guy Latimer is some kind of outlaw, Cotton? I’ve heard that about folks in Texas. Suppose Wes Latimer wants revenge and he’s willing to take it vigilante style?”
“So, if I go there, I’m dead, right?”
“Not if you turn yourself in and let the police handle it.”
“Then it’s prison for sure.”
“But you’d be alive. You’d be doing what you could to rectify the situation.”
He didn’t answer.
“Look, maybe the best thing is to take a few days, find a meeting, talk to some people . . . Cotton?”
He held the phone to his ear hating how Anita cared about him like he was good. He told her he had to go. He said he was sorry.
o0o
In addition to fry cook, Cotton worked a second job for Gooney doing maintenance on some rental property Gooney owned and within a matter of weeks he had enough cash to check out a few beaters in the neighborhood used car lots. The problem was he had no ID, not since he’d gone off the grid, and now he wasn’t sure what it would take to get back on or what the consequences would be if he did resume an ordinary life, his old life. He wasn’t sure anymore that he even wanted to be that guy again. That guy had worked his ass off and even after he’d had it made, he hadn’t been that happy. Not until he met Livie. Then he’d felt hope open inside him as wide as the sky. He had felt redeemed; he had thought in poetic rhyme, in melodies of song; he’d been every kind of a romantic fool.
He’d believed he was worthy of her love.
He’d believed he’d known who he was, too, and how he’d act under pressure, even extreme pressure. He’d figured he was tough, tough enough anyway. If asked, he would have said he was the kind of guy who’d do the right thing. Maybe not every time, but when it counted and it was bullshit, everything he’d believed. Cotton knew that now.
He knew that guy he’d been hadn’t known jack about himself.
o0o
He was in the Laundromat around the corner from the hotel doing a load and reading the Sunday sports pages somebody had left behind when this kid came in to post an ad. He was maybe twenty-five, collegiate looking, Polo shorts, Aggie t-shirt, flip flops. Clean-cut. Unlike the guy dozing in the corner who looked more like a pile of rags than a person, who was probably homeless, who smelled like he was sleeping one off.
But it was that kind of neighborhood. You could see anything here, a flophouse could be squatting on a square of scalped earth between a swank townhome and an immaculate restored Craftsman bungalow, or there could be a guy in a three piece suit at a bus stop with a wino right next to him puking his guts onto the guy’s Bruno Magli’s. Cotton had built a lot of the townhomes in the area. He’d been living in one of them when he’d met Livie. Living the high life, a swinging bachelor, the ace, the cool jerk.
Not long ago, he’d walked over there and sat on a bench across the street watching a man mow the postage-stamped square of grass. A woman had come out onto the deep wrought-iron encased porch and watered a pair of urns that had contained tall spires of something purple under planted with a tiny silver-leafed trailer. Ivy of some sort. Livie would have known its name. She would have admired the style of the urns.
“. . . selling my dad’s car,” Cotton heard the kid say now. He was talking to a woman who’d come to look over the bulletin board full of announcements.
“What kind is it?” Cotton stood up, leaving the newspaper in the molded plastic chair.
“Mercedes,” the kid said raising his voice over the rattle and slosh of machine noise.
“Well, I can’t afford one of those,” the woman exclaimed with a laugh and she carried her laundry basket over to an empty washer and began the sorting process.
Cotton saw something pass across the kid’s face, a painful sort of shudder that made him think there was a story behind the car, made him ask straight out in a low voice if it was hot.
The kid shook his head. “Not so you’d go to jail if you were to get stopped driving it. I’ve got the title,” he added hopefully.
Cotton took down the card and read the description: 1978 Mercedes, 420 SEL. Dark blue. Body and interior in fair condition. He looked at the kid. “Sure is low mileage for a car this old.”
“My dad bought it used from a guy whose mother owned it. He said she never drove it much. I know how that sounds, but hey, a Mercedes is supposed to be good for more than 300,000 miles, right?”
“Yeah,” Cotton said, “I’ve heard that. You want twelve hundred. I’ll give you six. Cash. Right now.”
The kid squeezed his eyes shut, groaning. “Oooh, god, cash makes me weak.” His eyes flew open. “Done,” he said.
They shook on it and keeping the kid’s grip, Cotton said, “Maybe we should see if it starts first.”
“It’ll start, I swear.”
Cotton let go of the kid’s hand.
“So, we’re good? You’ve got the cash? You can take her now?”
“If you want, yeah.”
The kid’s sigh made it sound as if it was more relief than he could stand. Too much relief.
Cotton looked at him from under his brows. “You swear it’s not hot.”
“I swear. It’s just it’s been taking up space in my driveway for weeks and my neighborhood association is threatening to sue if I don’t get it out of there.” The kid shifted a weighted glance to the Laundromat window. “I don’t figure my old man’s coming back to pick it up anytime soon. I’ve gotta get rid of it, the quicker the better.”
Must be kismet, Cotton thought. We’re both desperate.
o0o
It was a big car, a boat of a car, a long, low-slung, white-wall-tired pimpmobile. But it ran.
Driving felt awkward. It had been long enough that Cotton was tentative. Nervous. For over a week, all he did was cover his route to and from work. On the plus side, as long as he was behind the wheel dealing with the traffic and the plethora of road signs and the endless construction, he didn’t see the bars so much, all the neon-sparked temptation.
But there were still the sleepless nights when he lay awake staring at the ceiling, at the crack that was working its way from the corner of the kitchenette to just short of the foot of his bed, the interminable dark hours when he wondered what he was doing.
What’s your plan? Anita had asked.
Shit if I know, he answered her in his head.
He went back to the library and used the computer again. Google search engine this time. It wasn’t hard to locate information about the Latimers and find their home address. Weston Latimer owned his own business, the way Cotton once had, an ad agency. The family lived on Cherryhill Drive in Dove Lake, Texas. No surprise there, Cotton thought. The upscale suburb was northwest of Houston, on the rural outskirts, near where he and Livie were to have been married. Lakeside if the weather cooperated, but it hadn’t. The air that morning had been foggy and slick with mist and he remembered being worried that it wouldn’t clear in time for the ceremony, that Livie would be disappointed. Initially Cotton blamed the weather for what happened. Stumbling around the accident site then, trying to get a grip, get a signal on his cell, call for help, do any damn thing, his mind had worked out what he’d tell the cops. “Weather was a factor,” he’d say. “Roads are slick as ice.”
“Yeah, buddy, right, the weather made you do it. . . .”
Now Cotton half stood, ready to take off, but then he sat back down. Typed in the name of Livie’s website, Gardens by the Yard, and looked at her photograph. Her smile dove into his heart, opened a pain so harsh it took his breath. He wanted to see her, to hear the sound of her voice. He wanted to tell her. . . .
He closed the window, googled Houston AA chapters and found a church nearby that held meetings every day and he made himself go, then, and for the next three days. Because he knew Anita would ask and he couldn’t bother her, continue to involve her, unless he could say he was making an effort. He bought a cheap cell phone so he could call from the privacy of his room and
he was so grateful when Anita answered that his eyes teared. She was relieved to hear from him, too, thrilled when he told her he was going to meetings. She didn’t really care about his lack of enthusiasm.
She said, “Fake it ‘til you make it.”
He told her about buying the car and that when he was driving, he felt free. He said, “Sometimes after work, I drive out of the city, go around on the county roads, get myself lost.” He faked a laugh. It was a lie; he was never lost. He’d found Livie’s house and gone there a half dozen times. He always waited until after dark and parked on the side of the road where the shadows were deepest. He rolled down his window, breathed air that carried remnants of the sun’s heat, fainter scents of manure and fresh-mown hay, a cooler glimmer of moonlight. He listened to the drone of cicadas and watched her lights wink out one-by-one and he was comforted to think of her safe and sleeping in that pretty little house. She had always wanted a place in the country. Back when they’d planned a life together, they’d hunted for property; they’d designed their home, a four-bedroom bungalow with a huge kitchen-living area and a deep porch on all four sides. The house Livie had now was older, early nineteenth century, and smaller, and the porch hugged the front, but there was a swing. She’d always wanted a front porch swing. At least she had that part of her dream.
But there was no husband, or even the sign of a boyfriend. So far. Which both elated him and saddened him. If she was alone now, it had to be because of him, what he’d done to her. She probably hated men. Certainly she couldn’t trust them. And how could he fix that? With amends? He’d go up to her and say what? That he was sorry? Then presto, her faith in humanity would be restored?
“What about a sponsor,” Anita asked. “Have you found anyone?”
Cotton sat on the end of the bed and said, “What if drinking’s not my problem?”
“Ah geezus, Cotton, don’t start--”
“No, listen, I know I’m a drunk now, but I wasn’t before. And the reasons I drink now aren’t physical. It’s not like I have a physical craving. I drink to cover up, to hide, to forget; it’s mental, psychological not--”
“Physical, psychological, what difference does it make? Besides, you did drink before, often to excess--your words--you were drunk the night of your rehearsal dinner.”
“So, I partied--” Cotton broke off, paced to the window that overlooked the alley. He could hear the drag of disapproval in Anita’s silence. He said, “I wrote to her again.”
“Livie?”
“Yeah. I emailed her.”
“Since when did you get a computer?”
“I didn’t. There’s an Internet café close to work.”
“What did you say this time?”
Cotton took a breath; he rubbed a line between his brows. “I told her I want to see her, that I have to.”
-o0o-
See Barbara’s website for further details. www.barbarataylorsissel.com
Table of Contents
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Volunteer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
THE NINTH STEP
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Table of Contents
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Volunteer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
THE NINTH STEP
Chapter 1
Chapter 2