Fog of Dead Souls

by Jill Kelly

  Could she trust Danny? She thought so. He was no saint, but he was who he said he was. He was an alcoholic with no intention of quitting, a man who loved women—all women. In the ten years they’d been together, he’d been unfaithful to Ellie a dozen times, but honest and open about it every single time. He hated deception. So she knew that she could trust him to tell the truth. If he couldn’t be there for her, he would say so.

  Danny picked up on the third ring, the whiskey and smoke still there in his voice. He didn’t seem surprised to hear from her though all those years had gone by.

  “I’m coming through Houston, Danny,” Ellie said after they’d exchanged “how are you” and “it’s a long story.” “In fact, I’m in Dallas. Wondering if you might have room for me for a few days.”

  While the hesitation was there, it lasted only a few seconds. “I’ll have to clear the decks,” he said, “but I’m happy to do that. Are you okay?”

  “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Bring plenty of bourbon. And hey, Ellie? I’m sorry about Paris.”

  As she turned off Westheimer and wound her way up to Stratford Avenue, there were signs of change but not much. The Baby Giant had become a 7-Eleven. The laundromat was a nail salon. A few of the old beauties along the short four blocks had been fixed up: new paint, new roofs, redone foundations. At the same time, the wretched bungalows that sat between them were more rundown than ever. She pulled up in front of 203, the little house back from the street where she and Danny had been happy and then unhappy and then miserable for way too long before she’d left and moved north.

  It felt odd to stand at that familiar door and hear the same doorbell. It felt even odder to see the Danny who opened the door. A Danny whose dark curls had gone gray, whose mustache had descended into a soul patch and goatee, equally gray. He’d grown stouter through the middle though it looked like he still worked out. There was something to be said for vanity.

  Of course he was taking her in too: The pale skin, the extra pounds, maybe thirty by this point. She’d given up the makeup when she left him. She’d given up the chic clothes and the constant dieting to stay thin enough to keep him. The extra pounds had crept on the last few years and especially since Paris. Her hair was still dark by design, but her famous brows were now salt and pepper, and she knew the stress of the last twelve months showed in her skin. So what? she thought. I’m not here to seduce him. I’m here because I don’t know where else to go to be safe.

  The hug they shared was both genuine and awkward and, to recover, she thrust the brown paper peace offering at him. He grinned then and it was the old Danny, and she felt better as she followed him inside.

  54

  Ellie was flooded with memories as she stepped into the house. Their house. Danny wasn’t much into the look of his environment. He just wanted it comfortable, comfortable and familiar. And familiar it was. She’d left him most of the furniture and it was all arranged as before. The monstrous purple sofa across from the little fireplace, the leather recliner he’d found in a thrift store, the crowing rooster lamps his mother had left him, claiming they were worth a fortune.

  On every table top there was an ashtray. Although the house smelled of smoke, they were all clean, it was one thing he was fastidious about. But she had forgotten the smoking or chosen not to think about it. She wasn’t sure she could stay here even if he asked her.

  He’d moved on into the kitchen and she could hear him talking to her. She followed him then and watched him pull down the Waterford crystal highball glasses he was so proud of and fill them with ice and then bourbon over it. He chatted about the weather and the writing job he was working on for a foundation in Seattle, how work had slowed but that he was doing okay. She realized he might well be as nervous as she was after all these years.

  They took the drinks into the living room. It was dim in the late afternoon, shaded as it was by old oak trees and the two larger houses on either side. A big orange tom wandered in, yawning and stretching.

  “That’s Lawrence,” Danny said. “He found me about four years ago.”

  “He’s handsome,” said Ellie. “I meant to write and tell you how sorry I was to hear about Chester. I appreciated your letting me know.”

  Danny smiled sadly. “He was a great cat.”

  “He was.” Ellie took a deep sip of the bourbon. She began to relax. “How have you been, Danny?”

  “Good enough. Pretty much the same as always.” He paused. “Is this a social visit, El? Things sounded more serious than that when you called.”

  She sighed. How much to tell? And how to tell it? “No, it’s not. I mean no, it’s not a social visit. And yes, things are serious. I don’t quite know how to explain it all.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Yes. I mean no. I’m not on the lam if that’s what you’re thinking. I guess you still don’t read the papers much.”

  He shook his head.

  “Last fall, the man I was dating paid another man to rape and hurt me while he watched. Then he killed himself.” She looked down at her hands, then over at Danny. His eyes were huge and the disbelief that first appeared turned to a deep scowl.

  “Oh, Ellie. My God, that’s horrendous! Are you all right?”

  “Physically, yes. I have scars … burns and other scars … but that part has healed up.” She willed him to come and sit by her on the sofa, to hold her, but he sat in the recliner, anger crossing his face, clenching and unclenching the fist that didn’t hold the drink.

  “Did they catch the guy?”

  “No,” she said and the tightness in her throat that she’d been experiencing these last days welled up again. After a moment, she told him as much of the story as she could bear. How she met Joel, Arlen’s connection, his death, and finally the gold cords in her apartment in Greensburg and her decision to leave town. She did not mention Hansen. She did not mention the police at all.

  Danny asked questions. At first, it seemed that he wanted to know about her, but then it began to feel more like an interview. She saw that he had stepped over into writer mode, his old newspaper training coming out. Of course, she thought, he’s seeing this as a novel. Suddenly she didn’t feel like saying much more.

  “Do you think he might have followed you here?” Danny asked as he stood up. He came over and got her glass and took it to the kitchen and refilled it. “Are you in danger right now?”

  She felt put off by his question. Did he need the drama for himself? “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I wasn’t aware of seeing the same car on the road anywhere.”

  “That’s good,” he said. And she felt a little easier.

  “How can I help you, Ellie? What can I do?”

  “I don’t know, Danny. I couldn’t stay there. I don’t know where to go or what to do. Maybe I could stay here a few days to sort things out.” She looked at him for the first time in a few minutes.

  He nodded. “Let me make a call.”

  “You’ve got somebody?”

  He nodded again. “Yeah, Melissa. She has her own place, but we’re together most of the time. I’ll talk to her.”

  “I can stay somewhere else. I can just move on. I don’t want to be a complication for you.”

  “That’s okay, Ellie. We’ll sort it out.” And he went out to the porch to make his call.

  Ellie used the bathroom. It was familiar, too, though there was a new shower and better lighting. She glanced into the second bedroom, which had been their guest room and was now clearly Danny’s office. A card table held a lamp and a laptop, and there were a couple of filing cabinets and stacks of paper everywhere. In the bigger bedroom, although not bigger by much, she saw that Danny still had the water bed. The platform frame they’d had built by a craftsman in Dallas filled up the whole room as before.

  The bourbon was flowing in her veins by now. They’d each had three strong ones and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. But she wasn’t drunk, just relaxed
and sleepy. She kicked off her shoes and lay down, pulling the edge of the comforter around her in the air-conditioned room. She was out in less than a minute.

  She woke to sounds of Danny in the kitchen, the smell of meat and garlic heavy in the air. Although she wasn’t hungry, it was a great relief not to be alone.

  They ate in the living room, the silence mostly comfortable between them. When she’d asked him about Melissa, he’d just said “all worked out” and that had been that. Later they talked of old friends in the city and in Austin, where they’d been fond of the music scene, Danny catching her up on their doings. Some of it she already knew, but she let him believe it was all news to her. He smoked a joint, but she shook her head when he handed it to her, deciding bourbon was enough. They listened to music. It was a lot like old times, except that everything had changed.

  When they went to bed sometime in the wee hours, she was loose enough with whiskey to let him touch her and have sex with her. He was so familiar to her, the way he smelled, the way his hands felt, that she was sure it would be all right. And it was, or as close to all right as she thought she could get right then.

  They stayed together the next three days. The gallons of bourbon she had brought lasted that long. Each day Danny was up by six and he worked all morning and Ellie read or slept. About two, the workday would be over. Danny would walk to the 7-Eleven for beer and she would fix sandwiches and they would start drinking and playing cards or board games. They watched old movies on Netflix and some of the stand-up comics he found funny. It did Ellie good to laugh and forget for a while.

  They went to bed late, past midnight, and each night Danny made love to her in the old way. She felt very little. There was no desire, no yearning except to be held and feel safe, and she was willing to let him in so she could have that. Her dreams were few and confused. Joel’s face flitted by, Sandy’s as well, but there was no story, no situation in them for her to fear.

  On Friday at lunch, Danny announced that Melissa was coming back that night for the weekend. “I can’t put her off any longer, Ellie,” he said. “And I don’t want to lose her.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I can leave this afternoon.” But her throat closed up in fear and her mind raced.

  “Have you decided where you’ll go next?”

  The casualness of his question irritated her. She had put off thinking about the future all week. She had rested in the moment and in the safety of being there with him. When would she have solved all the complications? She took a deep breath. It was her problem, not Danny’s. And that was what was so terrifying. It was all her problem. Hansen hadn’t fixed it. Capriano hadn’t fixed it. Danny couldn’t fix it.

  “New Mexico,” she said finally. She’d always wanted to visit Santa Fe and Taos.

  “Got friends there?” Danny said. “One of your grad school buddies?”

  “Yes,” she lied. “A couple I knew in France. They live in Albuquerque.”

  “Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

  Ellie packed up and left within the hour. She didn’t want to get caught in the nightmare of the late Friday afternoon exodus from the inner city. That saved her an emotional parting from Danny. A quick kiss and her bags in the car and she could let the tears flow on her own as she hit the beltway and angled southwest. San Antonio seemed a good destination.

  55

  It was dinnertime when Ellie got to San Antonio, but she wasn’t much interested in food. She checked in to the Holiday Inn near the airport, as it was just off the freeway. She was momentarily tempted to stay down at the fancier hotel near the River Walk, but she didn’t have the energy to find it. She wasn’t about to play tourist anyway.

  She took a shower and lay on the bed for a while, flipping channels on the TV. She had hoped for the oblivion of sleep, but she was too restless, so she got dressed and went down to the lounge. It was just after seven.

  The hallway door woke her as it closed. The bedside clock glowed 2:52. Enough light seeped in from the edges of the heavy curtains to see the covers in disarray, her clothes in a heap on the floor. Her mouth was dry and her lips sore. Bourbon wafted up at her from the glass on the table.

  She closed her eyes and tried to find the evening. Zeke? Zach? A short man with ruddy cheeks and styled hair. A good suit, even a vest—an unusual sight in an airport hotel bar. He sold heavy equipment to the Saudis, he’d said. He came to her table late, after spending a couple of hours chatting up a blonde in a well-filled sweater set. Ellie didn’t care that she wasn’t first choice. Anything seemed better than being alone.

  She got up now and used the bathroom, scrubbed him off her face with a cold washcloth and soap, brushed him out of her mouth. There was still plenty of ice in the bucket and the man had left the bottle. She was grateful for small favors. She poured a stiff drink and then stood at the tall windows with the heavy curtains closed behind her. She felt safe, invisible.

  There were many lights—the airport, the freeway—traffic even now deep in the night. She tried to watch the moving lights, to clear her mind of all thoughts, but Joel and Arlen hung like floaters in the eye of her mind, dark, shapeless specters whose decisions had stolen her life from her. She wasn’t afraid. There was enough liquor in her to keep all that at bay. What she felt was adrift, the boat rudderless, the ocean vast. This was something no Zeke or Zach could touch, much as she wanted him to. She stood there a long time, enough to refill the glass twice. Then she slept without dreaming until noon.

  She stayed in San Antonio for three days. She drank Bloody Marys with lunch and slept in the afternoons. She read mystery novels that she had bought in the gift shop. She watched movies on pay-per-view. Each night a Zeke or a Zach would put her to bed.

  On the fourth morning, she checked out. She made reservations for herself at Holiday Inns in Del Rio, Alpine, El Paso, Truth or Consequences, Albuquerque. The days blurred into one another. She drove to the towns in the afternoons, took a shower, found a bar. Some nights there was a man, a man her age or a little younger, a man who would buy her lots of drinks and then take her to bed. Some nights she drank alone. She had stopped worrying about the killer, stopped worrying about how much she drank. She had given all of that over to fate.

  In Santa Fe, she found a branch of her bank, paid her credit card bills, closed her liquid accounts, and put the money in traveler’s checks. She didn’t want to be tied to Pennsylvania anymore. There was nothing there for her.

  Slowly, strangely, something in Ellie began to come alive again. The town was friendly, slow-paced, restful. The skies were blue, the air crisp in the mornings, scented in the heat of the afternoon. Languid was the word that came to her. She treated herself to a massage at a spa, thinking that maybe she should soak some of the alcohol out of her system. The masseuse said nothing about the welted scars on her back and the burn marks on her thighs, just treated her kindly and gently. Ellie went back twice more to feel the warmth of those hands.

  One morning she signed up for a walking tour of Santa Fe art and architecture. It was a guided tour and there were mostly gray-haired couples. Some were happy, maybe newlyweds, and she felt a pang of envy. Would she ever be half of a couple again? Her last desire for that had led her to Joel. Despair wrapped its slobbery fingers around her heart and a wrenching dizziness made her sit down on a street bench.

  “Hello, are you all right?”

  The concern belonged to a woman in her late thirties, a Dutch bob of shiny brown hair framing a pretty face. A little girl of four or five, clearly her daughter, clutched one of the loops on the mother’s cargo pants. The little girl wore a tie-dye tutu and hot pink tights.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Ellie. “Just an unpleasant thought.” She saw that the group tour had disappeared into the art museum.

  “Can I get you some water? Do you need anything?” The young woman sat down on the bench next to her and the little girl climbed into her mother’s lap.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got water.”
And as if she needed to prove it, Ellie took out a green bottle from her bag and took a long swallow.

  The woman sat back as if she had all the time in the world and the little girl snuggled in. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “we’ll just rest here a moment with you. Lu always likes a bit of a rest when we’ve been gallivanting around town, don’t you, honey?”

  The child nodded and put her thumb in her mouth, then pulled it out as if she remembered she was too big for that now.

  After a long moment, the woman spoke again. “I’m Janet and this is Lu, Lulubelle, Lucy, Lucinda, and Lucky Lulu.”

  The girl giggled in delight.

  “We live here in Santa Fe. Are you visiting?”

  “Yes,” said Ellie. “I’m traveling for a while and just came from Texas where I saw an old friend.”

  “I’ve never been to Texas,” said Janet. “But you don’t sound like you’re from there.”

  “No, I’m from the Northwest but I was living most recently in Pittsburgh. I was a teacher there.”

  “I thought about being a teacher,” Janet said, “but I had some other jobs. Then, we had Lu and now I work part time. I’m really a writer.” She stroked the little girl’s hair and the child closed her eyes. “Are you on sabbatical?”

  “Sort of. Just taking some time to sort things out.”

  “Santa Fe is a good place for that. Lots of people come here wanting a change. We did—my husband and I and Lu and our dog.” She smiled and it was a very happy smile. It made Ellie feel happy too. She realized she hadn’t seen or felt anyone’s happiness in a long time.

  The tour group came out in a straggly bunch. Ellie watched the leader try to gather them together.

  “Are you with the tour?” asked Janet. “I’ve thought about doing that someday but it doesn’t look like it would be much fun for Lu.”