by E. Z. Rinsky
“Yoga,” I gasp, clearing tears out of my eyes. “Yeah, I have some experience.”
“I wasn’t joking,” he says.
“I know.” I laugh. “I know you weren’t. That’s what’s so goddamn funny. My daughter’s been kidnapped by a psychopath and you think the best use of our time is yoga. And you know what the funniest part is? I can’t even fucking argue with you. So, what, is there a fucking YMCA around here?” I can’t stop giggling.
“Actually, I’m a certified instructor,” Courtney says.
“Of course you are!” I slam a fist on the table. “Of course you fucking are! Well what are we fucking waiting for?” I shoot to my feet. The waiter on duty for breakfast is the skater-looking boy from the other night. I point at him. “Hey! Champ, wanna go upstairs and fucking meditate? We don’t have a second to lose.”
He’s cowering behind the bar.
Courtney stands up and wraps an arm around my shoulder. Shoots a nonverbal apology to the other patrons and the little stoner.
“Let’s go upstairs, Frank,” he says in a therapist voice.
“Sure.” I laugh as he leads me up the carpeted stairway. “All the answers are upstairs, right? Maybe that’s where they hid it, Court! Upstairs!”
“JUST LET YOUR mind go blank,” Courtney intones.
We’re both on the carpeted floor in what Courtney calls child’s pose. The shades are drawn. I’m in a filthy Rolling Stones T-shirt and boxers. Courtney is wearing only a spandex bottom. He’s built like a lemur. He dumped all the papers in a recycling bin and set it on top of the TV, figuratively demonstrating that we’ve absorbed all the information we’re going to. The rest is processing it.
“It’s not working. I keep imagining making people’s faces bleed.”
“Shut up, Frank. This has no chance if you don’t give yourself over to it. Now, I want you to push up from the floor with your palms, rise into downward dog. Your knees can be bent. Push back with your hands, driving your toes into the carpet.”
“Okay,” I mumble.
“Now, slowly pick up your right leg and stretch it back toward the wall behind you. It’s not about height, it’s about distance.”
I silently oblige. My mind still isn’t blank though. When is my fucking mind going to go blank?
Courtney runs us through an hour-long progression, his voice like a metronome. He’s more gentle and reasonable than the instructor at the class Sadie took me to. Feels a little less like bullshit. At the end I’m sweating profusely, and though the gag reflex is once again rearing his ugly head, I feel a little better than I did before. We lie down flat on the carpet, palms up.
“Now just imagine you’re on top of a mountain,” Courtney coos. “There’s nobody else around. You’re on the very, very top of the mountain alone. It’s warm. The sun is shining on your face. There is nothing else but you, the mountain, the sun, and the warm grass beneath your hands. Can you feel the grass? I can. It feels wonderful. It feels like spring: like lemonade and squirrels and kissing girls by the tire swing. And you have no worries, Frank. You are just letting the sun’s warmth wash over you. Your mind is . . . blank.”
I’m on the mountain. I can feel the sun and the grass. I feel a peace I haven’t in so long. I lie there for a very long time, and when I slowly open my eyes and sit up I’m not alone on the mountain. Savannah Kanter is sitting beside me, wearing an amber sundress, her pale shoulders freckly in the sun. We are sitting beside each other on a smooth boulder, our feet dangling, flirting with the top of a cool stream. I let clear water rush over my pair of filthy feet. Her feet are refracted by water, clean and pale an inch beneath the glassy surface.
We look at each other.
“Savannah,” I say.
She nods.
“You were right. I made a mistake.”
She nods again, smiling sadly.
“Is it too late? Or can I fix this? Can I save my daughter?”
She looks down at her feet, like she’s considering my request, then shoots to her feet. She slips on a pair of sandals and urgently beckons me to stand as well. Then she starts walking backwards, like a tour guide, telling me with her eyes to follow her.
We follow the creek, which gushes down the rocky slope of the mountain. Yellow daisies and some purple wildflower I don’t recognize sprout on its banks.
She’s moving quickly. I have to hurry to keep up with her. She doesn’t walk so much as skip backwards. Dance.
“Where are we going?” I ask her. She says something in response that I can’t understand.
As we descend the mountain, the sky darkens, and the breeze grows colder. The trees start to gather snow. The flowers disappear. The rocks grow sharp. I’m wearing no shoes, I realize. And I’m struggling to keep Savannah in sight.
“Wait!” I call after her, racing down the steep path, cold wind whipping in my ears. Where is she? “Savannah!” I call. Nothing. I run faster, blood pumping in my ears, and then I think I glimpse her up ahead, at the edge of a clearing.
I slow to a halt as I reach her. We stand shoulder to shoulder and look out over the dead, snow-covered meadow before us. The stream ends in a murky swamp that gurgles off to our left. The scene is still, save a cold breeze that ruffles her light hair. A blackbird screams something and shoots across the sky, then the scene resumes its heavy stillness.
“Where are we going?”
She points ahead, across the clearing, toward a dark mound of trees. Something about this looks familiar.
“Where are we?” I ask.
She responds, but it’s again the damn incomprehensible warbling.
“I can’t understand,” I say.
She tries again, nearly shouting, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but it sounds like she’s an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. I can only shake my head helplessly.
She takes my hand, sandwiches it between her two petite ones. Her hands are warm, and I can feel her pulse pumping through them.
“What is this?” I ask. “Are you a ghost or something?”
This amuses her. She laughs, low at first, and then laughs hard and squeezes my hand tightly. She gazes into my face, eyes tearing a little, and shrugs: I don’t know.
And then she drops my hand and turns away. Retreats back up the mountain, back to where we started. I glance over my shoulder at the dark mound of trees she’d pointed to.
“Are you not coming with me?” I shout after her.
She turns and shakes her head adamantly, then points at me—
“Frank!”
I open my eyes. I’m lying flat on my back in the hotel room. “It’s seven at night!” Courtney says. “We slept all day.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“It’s seven. We only have three hours before Helen is taking over. What’s with you? What’s wrong?”
“I . . . I was dreaming, I guess. Savannah Kanter. She was showing me some place. There was a mountain and a field.” I sit up and look at Courtney. The sleep has done my body good, that’s for sure. And then my stomach falls out as I remember who I am, where I am, why I’m here.
“What else?” Courtney asks.
“I mean . . .” The pain in my ribs and cut-up ankle slowly return, and I sink back into a familiar whole-body sickness. “I guess I sort of felt like she was pointing to some trees. And I think . . . I think I knew that the tape was there, beyond those trees.”
Courtney looks devastated. “And I woke you up. I’m so—”
“Forget it. It’s all bullshit.”
I stand up, look at my watch. Three hours.
“Let’s call Helen now,” I say. “Give her another few hours to work with.”
Courtney looks pained. “We still have time. What if . . .” He stares at me. “It exists. It’s somewhere. The clues are all in front of us, I can feel it. I
can feel it, Frank. It’s so close . . .” His hands are clenched into fists.
“No, Courtney,” I say, put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. We did what we could. But we have to do whatever gives Sadie the best chance.”
Courtney nods, but I can tell how much this hurts him. I wonder if he’s ever not solved a case.
“Go wait for me downstairs,” I say. “I’m gonna call Helen. Then let’s get out of this shit hole of a town.”
WE CHECK OUT of the Ritz. I can’t bear another minute in that goddamn place: the stuffed deer mounted on the walls, the tacky polished wood, red-checkered tablecloths.
The tiniest of weights lifts from my chest as we leave Beulah. It’s like escaping the pull of a black hole. The whole town is mired in some kind of evil haze; I’m only able to see this as we speed away from Candy, Ms. Anderson, Linda. That house. The altar.
We don’t say anything. There’s nothing to talk about. The case is out of our hands. Courtney buys tickets to NYC on my phone while I drive.
I spilled my guts to Helen, told her every detail, down to those black leather gloves that “Greta” wore. Helen assured me that I was doing the right thing. Said I was giving my daughter the best chance of being safe by handing it over to her. Said she’d have a team mobilized within a few hours.
Assuming they haven’t found her by the time I get back to NYC, I’m supposed to go to Helen’s office. Then we’ll have to talk options: negotiating alternatives with Greta or just lying to her about having the tape.
I admire Helen’s cautious optimism, but I’m the only one who’s met Greta face-to-face; I’m the only one who understands how serious she is. There will be no negotiating with her—money is meaningless to her—and there’s no way she’ll fall for any sort of trickery.
Headlights capture a sliver of yellow-lined asphalt, empty fields, shadows of mountains. I should have let Courtney drive, probably. I can feel a sort of apathy as I take each turn in the road a little too quickly, in the back of my head thinking that sliding off the road, flipping into a ditch and just burning up or getting my head bashed open . . . that might be easier than facing what’s back in New York.
I turn on the radio. Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”
“Great song,” I mumble.
“Never heard it,” Courtney replies. He’s got his red duck-hunting hat back on. Starting the hard transition back to civilian. Guess he lost his ponytail for nothing.
“Let’s get a drink,” I say. “We’ll sober up by early morning and drive to DIA for our flight.”
Courtney doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no.
I pull into the first place we pass as we enter Pueblo: Harry’s Hole. In the parking lot, I step over a dead rat the size of a small squirrel. Kinda comforting. Little slice of home.
The bouncer doesn’t ask for ID. Anybody as dreary looking as us deserves to get fucked up, regardless of age. Inside a heavy funk bass line is pumping out of the speakers. A couple hipsters sit around eating oysters and twirling their wax mustaches. Maybe in Colorado they’re not called hipsters; they’re just guys. A creepy, primitive-looking man is standing by the pool table in the back, holding a cue vertically like a fishing pole. He doesn’t seem to be in the middle of a game. We squeeze into the bar between an old bald guy and a pair of giggling girls around Savanah’s age. Or how old she was when she was killed.
The bartender is a heavily tattooed girl, her shiny black hair clipped into a bowl around her head.
I look at Courtney. “I tried your yoga. Now you try my therapy, alright?”
He nods wearily, resigning himself.
“Two PBRs,” I tell the bartender.
“It’s five dollars for a PBR and a shot,” she offers.
“Fine. Two meal deals.”
There’s a TV mounted on the wall, but instead of sports it’s showing some kind of vintage porn that looks to be a takeoff on Flash Gordon. Ah. Flesh Gordon.
The waitress gives us the beers and two shots of something vile. Yellow chemical color. Without hesitation, Courtney downs his shot and follows it with a healthy swig of beer.
“Whoa there, champ,” I say. “This is your first time, right?”
“I had a beer once in high school. Didn’t like the way it made me feel.”
“Nobody likes the way it makes them feel.” I chuckle. “It’s just the lesser of two evils. Reality or drunk reality.”
My shot burns all the way down, and the PBR doesn’t do much to ease the pain.
“See, I like Pabst,” I grumble, “but it’s ridiculous. See this can? It’s called Blue Ribbon because it won this award in 1893. Jesus. That’s good and all, but what have you done for me lately, right?”
Courtney turns to the bartender. “Two more please, ma’am.”
We down the shots, clink cans. This is irresponsible, sure. But I guess this is marginally better than spending time at the airport. Airport. Try not to think about what might be facing me when I get off the plane in NYC.
I chug the rest of the PBR.
“Who’s Sadie’s mom?” Courtney asks.
I gawk at him. He’s totally serious.
“You really wanna hear about it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If you don’t mind talking about it.”
I swallow a lump in my throat, focus on the warm buzz starting in my head.
“Her name’s Jennifer. I hardly knew her. One-night stand. I met her in a bar in Williamsburg and brought her home. Thought I wrapped up, but who knows. I was trashed. She called me two months later and told me. Wanted me to pay for half the abortion. I met up with her for coffee. Sweet girl. Young. When I saw her, I felt terrible about it all. She said her insurance wouldn’t cover the operation, but she wanted to make sure she did it right. Two grand.
“But . . . I dunno. I’d never really given much thought to it before, but she was showing just a little bit. And I thought, hey, there’s a person inside her. We’re just going to, like, end this person? So I looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘Jennifer, it’s your body, and my fault, and if you want me to pay for the operation, I’ll pay the whole fucking thing, no questions asked. But if you’re willing, I would love if you have this baby. I’ll do everything for you. I’ll pay for everything. And after, I’ll take her. I’ll raise her myself. You never have to see her if you don’t want to. And she said yes. Still can’t believe it. It was a miracle.”
Getting misty-eyed. Courtney’s about to order another round when I stop him.
“Miss?” I say to the bartender. “How about something a little classier than PBR? Surprise us.”
She smiles and goes to the tap. Hands us two glasses of dark brown lager.
“It’s your first time getting wasted,” I tell Courtney. “You shouldn’t have to drink shit.”
He smiles and sips the beer, thinks about it, then nods appreciatively. “Not bad. So Frank, if you don’t mind me prodding . . . what led you to make her that offer?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. That’s the god-honest truth. I don’t know. It was totally impulsive. I showed up to that coffee shop fully intending to just give her the money. But something came over me. Maybe I realized this was probably my only chance to have a kid.”
Some good old New Orleans boogie jam comes on. Half the people in the place jump to their feet and start shimmying. We don’t even consider it.
“You’re a good guy, Frank. I’ve suspected this for a while. Even though you don’t see it, way down deep, you’re a good guy.”
“Thanks, champ.” I sigh, drain my beer. It’s thick. Feels like drinking a loaf of rye bread. I wave my empty glass at Courtney, and he takes a deep breath and chugs his down as well.
“Two more of those, please.” I wave at the bartender.
“Take it easy, fellas. The night is young.” She winks.
“Yeah, but we aren’t. And the jury is out on whether you can get fucked up after death.”
A girl in skintight leopard print sits down next to Courtney.
“I like your hat,” she coos.
“That’s a very kind thing to say,” he responds in monotone and sips on his beer.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asks him.
“Nope.”
She has long blond curls that keep getting in her eyes. In response, she throws her head back every few seconds to brush them away. Not a very effective system.
“Want to buy me a drink?” she asks. She looks like she’s already knocked back more than her fair share tonight.
“Nope,” Courtney says.
“Asshole,” she says and leaves.
“She didn’t ask me,” I tell Courtney. “Maybe I would have.”
“Mmm.” Courtney’s about halfway through his second dark beer. Something is shifting in his face. He must be one of those zero-to-sixty-type drunks.
The bartender smiles at us. “Doing alright, boys?”
“Not really, but you’re doing your best,” I reply. She laughs and moves onto someone else.
“Keep an eye on that bartender,” Courtney says in a low voice. The switch has been flipped. “Make sure she doesn’t put anything in our drinks. She’s been looking at us funny all night.”
“Uh-huh.”
Courtney suddenly sniffs his beer warily.
“Think she’s trying to date-rape you, Courtney?” I ask, then laugh a little too hard and smack the bar.
“Laugh away,” he says seriously. “I’m a good-looking guy though. I have to watch my back—”
He stops suddenly.
“Give me your phone,” he says.
I hand him my phone, and he goes at it like a man possessed. I realize he’s checking his email.