The Cold Kiss

by John Rector

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Butch stared at us, then he motioned to my shoulder and said, “She got you.”

  “Yeah.” My voice cracked. “She did.”

  Lilith’s eyes were moving from the left to the right, but I could tell they weren’t seeing anything. She’d stopped talking, and now the only sound she made came from deep in her throat, wet and choking.

  I saw the gun lying a few feet away in the snow.

  I thought if I moved fast enough—

  “All this is your damn fault,” Butch said. “You two brought a hell of a mess with you.”

  Sara was leaning against me, crying.

  Neither of us spoke.

  “Zack was a wreck of a human being, but he was the only family I had left.” He looked down at Lilith. “Now he’s dead.”

  I took half a step toward the gun.

  Butch didn’t seem to notice.

  “Goddamn it, I never killed anyone in my life,” he said. “Not even in the war. I was always proud of that.”

  I took another step but this time Butch saw me and raised the gun to his shoulder.

  Sara screamed and dug her nails into my arm.

  I held my hands up in front of me and said, “Wait, you don’t have to do this.”

  Butch stared at me down the twin barrels of the shotgun and said, “No choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Not this time,” Butch said. “Two more bodies ain’t gonna make a bit of difference.”

  “No, we can all just walk away from this,” I said. “We’re not going to say a word to anyone.”

  Butch shook his head. “That’d be easy for you, wouldn’t it? You didn’t kill anyone, so now you want to walk away while I go to jail.”

  Lilith coughed and I felt Sara let go of my arm.

  I stayed between her and Butch.

  “You won’t go to jail,” I said. “We’re not going to say anything.”

  “I can’t risk it.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, silent, then I pointed at the shotgun and said, “You’ve only got one shell left. You’ll have to reload to get us both.”

  Butch didn’t speak.

  “One of us will get to that gun before you do.”

  The expression on Butch’s face changed, turned dark, then he smiled. It wasn’t a good smile.

  I started to tell him again that we didn’t have to do this, that we could work something out, when I heard Lilith gasp and saw Butch’s eyes shift past me.

  “Hey, goddamn it.” He moved to the side and pointed the gun. “Don’t do it. Put it down, now!”

  I turned and saw Sara crouched next to Lilith. When she stood, she had the gun in her hand.

  Butch’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  “No!” I moved fast, stepping in front of him, blocking the shot. “She’s pregnant.”

  Butch looked at me, and for an instant something changed in his eyes, then it was gone. I moved toward him, fast, thinking I had a chance of knocking the gun away before he could fire. When I did, I heard a familiar, metallic whisper of air behind me, then another.

  Then nothing.

  Butch stood for a moment, staring past me, then he lowered the gun, slow.

  I turned around.

  Sara was standing over Lilith. She had the gun pointed down at her, and a new swell of blood was pooling into the snow around her head.

  The soft choking sounds had stopped.

  For a while, no one moved.

  “Sara?”

  She looked at me, but there was nothing there, no emotion at all.

  I started to say something else, but Sara moved away from Lilith and walked past me toward Butch. When she got close to him, he stepped back.

  Sara held the gun out to him.

  “Take it.”

  Butch hesitated, then reached out and took the gun.

  “Now you didn’t kill anyone.”

  Butch looked at the gun, then over at Lilith. I thought he was going to say something, but before he could, the lights around the walkways buzzed and lit up. The main highway sign outside the office flickered into a large neon Palm Tree with the words THE OASIS INN and VACANCY underneath.

  Butch looked around then back at me.

  “Power’s back.”

  The casual tone wasn’t what I’d expected, and all I could do was agree. I asked, “What do you want us to do?”

  He didn’t say anything right away, then he pocketed Lilith’s gun and said, “I want you to get the hell out of here. I’ve got a few phone calls to make before the sheriff decides to stop by and check in.”

  I felt like I should say something else, but before I could, Sara grabbed my hand and started pulling me away. As we passed the suitcase, I leaned down to pick it up.

  Butch stopped me.

  “Leave it,” he said. This time his voice was cold.

  I hesitated, only for an instant, but it was long enough to see Butch lift the shotgun, just a bit.

  Sara pulled on my arm, hard. “Nate, come on.”

  I took one last look at the suitcase then turned and followed Sara out of the playground toward our room.

  The bags were sitting inside the door. Zack had torn through them when he’d come looking for the money, but it didn’t take long to put everything back together and load them in the car.

  We moved as fast as we could, and five minutes later, we pulled out of the motel parking lot and onto the highway.

  Neither of us said a word for a long time.

  Part III

  38

  We made it to Omaha just before sunrise.

  I found a twenty-four-hour SaveMore off the interstate and I pulled into the parking lot and stopped under a streetlight. It was snowing, and the parking lot was almost totally empty.

  “Is this place open?” Sara asked.

  I pointed to the OPEN 24 HOURS sign above the door, then gave Sara a list of things to buy. Once she went inside, I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes.

  It wasn’t much of a rest, but it helped.

  When she came out, she had a plastic shopping bag filled with sterile gauze, rubbing alcohol, and antibiotic ointment.

  “Is this going to work?”

  I told her it would.

  We got back on the interstate and drove through town. I wanted to find someplace outside the city where I could get cleaned up and grab something to eat.

  To the east, a thin slice of light ran pink along the horizon, and by the time we were out of the city, the sky was a burning twist of orange and red.

  “How about there?” Sara pointed at a large red neon sign. “Sapp Brothers. Is that a truck stop?”

  The sign was shaped like a giant coffee percolator.

  It made me think of Caroline and Marcus.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  I stood over the sink and watched the swirl of blood circle down the drain, then I looked at my shoulder in the mirror and examined the bandage.

  It wasn’t the best patch job, but it would do.

  I took a clean shirt out of my bag and slipped it over my head then down past my shoulder. I’d managed to wash most of the blood off my face and hands, but I could still feel it in my hair and under my clothes.

  I hoped it was my blood, but I wasn’t sure.

  I stayed in the bathroom for a while longer, staring at the bags under my eyes and the tiny cuts on my face from the plastic shrapnel under the slide. When I was ready, I picked up the gauze and the rubbing alcohol and put them back in the SaveMore bag, then I turned and walked out of the bathroom and into the diner.

  There was a row of newspaper boxes by the front door. One of them had the Chicago Tribune. I dropped in a few quarters, then opened the front and grabbed a copy.

  When I got back to the booth, Sara was sitting there, staring out the window. Our food had come while I’d been in the bathroom, but it didn’t look like she’d eaten any of hers.

  I dropped the paper on
the table and sat down.

  Sara didn’t look at me.

  “You should eat,” I said.

  “Not hungry.”

  I kept quiet.

  If she didn’t want to eat, it was her choice. There wasn’t a thing I could do to make her.

  But I was starving.

  I picked up my fork and cut into the eggs and hash browns on my plate. They were hot and greasy and absolutely delicious. I ate them all in five bites then finished what was left of my coffee.

  I was starting to feel alive again.

  “You sure you don’t want to eat?”

  Sara looked down at her food then pushed the plate across the table toward me. “You can have it.”

  “You need to eat.”

  Sara shook her head. “I can’t stand to look at food right now. Go ahead.”

  I didn’t argue.

  When I finished, I reached for the paper and scanned through the local stories. On page three I saw an article about a real estate developer named Rodney McGee who’d been murdered at his house in Hyde Park.

  According to the article, Rodney had made a fortune through questionable business deals. He’d also had strong ties to organized crime, so no one was surprised when he turned up dead. But the actual focus of the article had to do with his wife, Lilith McGee, who was still missing.

  The paper didn’t have much on her.

  They knew she’d been born in St. Petersburg and had immigrated to the United States almost five years ago. They could find no records of her life in Russia, other than a short period of military service. All they had to go on were the couple’s friends who told the Tribune that Lilith and Rodney met while he was in Russia on business, and that she moved back to the States to marry him.

  Most people who knew them believed if she wasn’t dead, then she had something to do with his murder.

  I read the entire article twice.

  There was no mention of Syl or the missing money.

  When I closed the paper, I debated telling Sara. In the end, I decided not to.

  I wanted her to forget, even though I knew she never would.

  I reached for the coffeepot on the table and refilled my cup then said, “If we go nonstop, we can make it to Salt Lake City tonight, then Reno tomorrow.”

  Sara was quiet.

  “It’ll be a push, and we won’t have a lot of time to rest once we get to Nevada, but we can do it.”

  Sara whispered something I didn’t quite hear.

  I asked her to say it again.

  “I said what kind of people are we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “Forget it.”

  I pushed, and after a while she gave in.

  “Don’t you feel responsible for what happened?”

  “We didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I did.”

  “She wanted to kill us,” I said. “She was going to kill us. Butch was going to kill us. You did the right thing.”

  My voice came out louder than I thought it would, and I noticed the couple at the next table look up briefly, then back down at their plates.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “We didn’t.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it here.”

  “Butch was right,” she said. “It was our fault. We brought it with us, like a curse.”

  “Sara, stop.”

  “What kind of people are we, Nate?”

  I turned and waved to our waitress then picked up my coffee and finished it.

  “God isn’t going to let us get away with this.” There were tears on her face. “We’re going to have to answer for what we’ve done.”

  The waitress came by and asked if we needed anything else. I told her we didn’t and she set the ticket on the table then took the empty plates.

  When she was gone, I leaned toward Sara and said, “What do you want me to do about it now?”

  “Just admit it,” she said. “Admit that it was our fault, that we’re the reason all those people are dead.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Zack was a crazy fuck, that’s why.” I looked at the couple at the next table and they looked back. When I spoke again, I fought to keep my voice quiet. “He was a tweaker and he was out of his mind and that’s why all those people are dead, not because of us.”

  “We could’ve stopped him.”

  “How?”

  “We could’ve done something,” she said. “But we didn’t.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I got up and grabbed our ticket then walked to the front of the restaurant and paid.

  Something about what she’d said burned in me, but I pushed it away and tried to forget.

  When I looked back, Sara was staring out the window at the highway and the line of cars moving west toward the horizon. I watched her for a long time. When I went back to the table, I sat across from her and reached out for her hands.

  She didn’t want to give them to me at first, but eventually she did.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “You saved our lives.”

  Sara looked at me but all I saw in her face was sadness. She let go of my hands, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft.

  “I didn’t do it for us.”

  Reno

  39

  It was a long drop.

  I eased my way toward the edge, then took a couple nails from my belt and picked up another shingle. The sun was low on the horizon, but the air was hot. I could feel the lines of sweat rolling over my neck and down my back.

  It was the greatest feeling in the world.

  I finished the row then climbed to the top of the roof and looked out over the string of new houses snaking their way through the canyon. The ones closest to me were practically finished, but the farther down the line, the more work needed to be done.

  I reached for another stack of shingles.

  “Nate?”

  I looked down and saw Hank Johansen, the foreman, looking up at me. He had his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the setting sun. The rest of the crew shuffled past him on their way out to their cars.

  I’d lost track of time.

  “Come on down,” Hank said. “I need to see you in my office before you take off.”

  I waved, then set the shingles back on the stack and walked to the ladder on the opposite side of the roof. When I climbed down, I stopped by the cooler for a drink of water, then I crossed the road toward Hank’s office.

  The office was a white trailer parked on the far end of the job site. There were two desks inside and four filing cabinets. In one corner, an oscillating fan pushed hot air from one end of the room to the other.

  Hank was standing at one of the filing cabinets when I walked in. He had a folder in his hand, and when he saw me he used it to point to a metal folding chair.

  “Have a seat.”

  I did.

  Hank went behind his desk and sat down. “How do you like Reno so far?”

  “I love it.”

  “Heat’s not getting to you?”

  “Can’t get enough of it.”

  “Wait until July,” he said. “You might have a different opinion.”

  I told him he might be right, but I knew he wasn’t.

  The hotter the better.

  “Listen, Nate. I want to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done these past few weeks. You’re a hell of a hard worker.”

  I thanked him.

  “So this is tough for me, but I’m going to have to let you go.” He sat back in his chair. “Believe me, I don’t want to do it, but with the way the market is nowadays, I just don’t have the work.”

  I wasn’t shocked, but at the same time I felt something heavy settle at the base of my stomach.

  “The market?”

  “Afraid so, and since you’re the low man on the totem pole around here . . .” He paused. “In a perfect world, ther
e would be two or three guys I’d like to see go before you, but that’s just not the way it works.”

  I told him I understood.

  “I hope you do.” He opened the folder then took a piece of paper and a pen from his desk and started to write. “Here’s a name and a number for one of the foremen over at Orin Construction. Talk to Ben and tell him I sent you. I’ll give him a call tomorrow and tell him to keep an eye out for you. Can’t promise what he’ll say, but I’ll do what I can to get you on over there.”

  He finished writing then handed me the paper.

  “I appreciate it.”

  “We’ll keep your name on file, too,” he said. “Once things change, I’ll make sure to give you a call.”

  I nodded then got up to leave.

  “Real sorry about this, Nate.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

  I wasn’t ready to go home, so I stopped by the Washoe County Library and sorted through the periodicals until I found the Chicago Tribune. The library only got the Sunday edition, and it was always late, but I’d made a point of coming by and reading it every week.

  At first, the story of Rodney and Lilith McGee was big news, but eventually it faded from the first section to smaller articles buried in the back of the paper.

  Today, there was nothing at all.

  It was a good sign.

  A few weeks earlier, I’d found another article in the Des Moines Register. This one mentioned a motel fire forty miles south of Frieberg.

  According to the report, the blaze started when an unchecked candle was placed too close to a set of curtains. Then, with the help of the wind, the fire spread from one building to the next, destroying the entire property.

  No fatalities were listed.

  The next week, I went back and searched the Register for more news, but there was no mention of the fire.

  The motel was forgotten.

  I stood up and walked to the window and looked out at the city lights hovering brown and dull in the dry air.

  Even at night, Reno looked dirty.

  After a while, I put the paper back in the rack then took the stairs to the main level and walked out to my car. I still didn’t feel like going home, but I knew I had to. Sara was probably worried.