The Hannah of yesterday, or even just a couple of hours ago, might have had further questions about this. A protest, perhaps. But the moment she chose to get back into Black’s car, she decided to listen to him. She wasn’t so stubborn or proud she couldn’t admit she needed help, and though it was a risk to trust this man, she felt she had little other choice. So Hannah took the soft piece of silk, wrapped it around her eyes, then tied it once behind her head. Despite its red shade, the blindfold bled no color through to her eyes. There was just a deep, satisfying darkness.
The comfort of black.
A few minutes later the songs on the radio finally succumbed to static and Black turned it off. In her darkness, Hannah surrendered to the sounds of the road, the rhythm of her breathing, and the rush of the wind on the car. Together, the sounds lulled her into a sleep she didn’t expect nor would have thought possible given all she couldn’t stop thinking about.
For the minutes she actually slept, Hannah dreamed of Billy. It wasn’t the Thanksgiving dream, and she could barely consider it a dream at all, for it was little more than a jagged collection of images, a slideshow that had no timeline or purpose. Some of the images were based on reality, some just flashes of an alternative history. Billy in his swimsuit at the dingy neighborhood pool, his muscles lean and taut, tensed as if he might have to throw a punch at any moment. Billy smoking in his bed, remote in his hand, the once-white bed sheet covering him a dirty gray from being washed with hard water year after year. Billy grabbing his wife’s ass as she walked past him in the living room, his leer carnivorous, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and resignation. And, Billy on fire, the flames licking his face like a faithful dog. In this last image Billy grinned and welcomed the heat as the fire peeled back his skin, rendering him nothing more than a skeleton, the butt of a Pall Mall still squeezed between the exposed phalanges of his left hand.
You can’t burn me, Hannie. Don’t you get that? Some things just don’t catch fire.
“We’re here.”
Hannah jolted awake and removed the blindfold.
Black was looking over from the driver’s seat, and as he came into view, she felt an odd relief at the sight of him. He brushed a thumb against her forehead, drawing off a thin film of sweat, a small gesture that felt powerfully intimate.
“You were dreaming,” he said.
Hannah looked through the windshield and saw a driveway of what looked to be a very normal house. She turned her head around and scanned the street, which was lined with similar houses, a collection of tan and brown, of gray shingles and stucco siding, simple lawns well cared for, and identical mailboxes standing like sentries every fifty feet, black and rigid.
“This is your house?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it would be some remote castle somewhere. Thought we’d be entering through a cave or something.”
“That’s my other place.” Black clicked the button of a remote and the garage door opened. As he pulled the car forward, Hannah saw the garage was entirely empty save a stepladder and a blue tarp folded in the back corner.
“I assume you live here alone?”
“I do everything alone.”
He closed the garage door, and the darkness again fell over them. “Come on,” he said.
Hannah followed him into the house, which was only slightly more decorated than the cabin in the woods. There was art, but it was generic art, the stylish prints found in an upscale office of a law firm. The furniture was modern and appeared barely used, no creases or wrinkles in the leather sofa, no scratches on the surface of the glossy dining room table.
“This doesn’t seem like a place where you would live.”
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough. And of everything you might be, you’re not boring. This place is boring.”
He looked around the room, and Hannah thought she saw a ripple of sadness flutter over his face. It was gone in a second.
“Yes, boring. Plain. It’s one home in a sea of identical ones, and as far as anyone knows, I’m just like everyone else. Pay my bills, keep my lawn trimmed. Pay my taxes.”
“Why the need for secrecy? You help other people disappear, you told me. Why do you need to hide?”
His mouth tightened. At first she didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally he said, “Because I was my first client.”
She didn’t know why, but the idea that Black was on the run felt exciting to her. “Now that’s interesting,” she said.
“Nine years ago I had to make a choice,” Black said. “I chose freedom. So when I’m giving you advice about disappearing, it’s not just because it’s what I do for a living. It’s my life.”
“You’re a criminal?”
“In the eyes of the law, yes. In my opinion, I’ve already paid the price for my past mistakes.”
“So your name isn’t Black?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m Black to you. That’s what matters.”
“Why did you have to disappear?”
This time he smiled, a gentle smile that bordered on patronizing. “Did you want something to drink?”
“So no answer?”
“I have water, beer, wine, coffee…”
“Okay, I get it. You get to know everything about me, but you get to remain a mystery. The man in the mask.”
“Hannah, I barely know you at all.”
“But you at least know my real name.”
Another smile. “I also have bourbon, which I’m going to pour for myself.”
It was barely past morning. The idea of not drinking alone was nearly as powerful as the lure of the alcohol itself.
“Bourbon sounds perfect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Alcohol and Hannah were sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, and usually both within a span of several hours. She didn’t like to admit that, for the past two years, she had grown more dependent on her nightly wine, or bourbon, or tequila, or whatever was available. She enjoyed the steady nighttime buzz as much as she disliked the molasses brain in the morning, and the two sensations battled with such equilibrium that the routine became a consistent, seemingly unalterable cycle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Hannah grazed her thumb along the glass tumbler containing two fingers of Maker’s Mark and two ice cubes. The glaze of the liquid was a smooth caramel, and she craved it like a child lured by a candied apple gleaming in a polished-glass display.
The bourbon slid down her throat in one gulp, leaving behind a pleasurable burn. She put the glass down and poured some more.
“You might want to slow down,” Black said. “You hardly had anything to eat today.”
“I might be small, but I can hold my liquor.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Black lifted his glass, emptied it, then also poured more.
Hannah straightened in her chair. The sunlight streaming through the kitchen window warmed her neck, while the bourbon warmed everything below it. “I’m going to get you drunk enough to tell me your real name,” she said.
“You’d have to get me really drunk. And then I’d have to kill you.”
Hannah sipped this time. “Well, that would save you the headache of what to do with me otherwise.”
Black stood and walked over to the plastic bags on the counter. He pulled out a box of hair coloring. “Hope you like black, because that provides the greatest contrast to what it is now. It would be helpful, but unless you can do it yourself there’s only me to do it, and you definitely don’t want that.”
Hannah had never dyed her hair in her life. The idea of changing it to black made her nervous but also excited. A chance to hide in the shadows.
“What else did you buy?”
“Clothes, mostly. Toiletries. Some food. Another cell phone. A cheap tablet, so you can at least go online if you need to. A few other things. Most of the things I need to help you are here in the hous
e.”
“Things like what?”
Black spoke as he piled the contents of the bags on the granite countertop. “Tools for making new IDs for you. The more difficult work needs to be done on the phone and online. If you’re going to disappear, it’s not just a matter of changing your name and hoping for the best. We need to change your past. Erase old footprints. Create false trails.”
“Is that what you did for yourself? Create false trails?”
“I continue to do it.” Black walked over to her, and she swiveled her tall counter stool to face him. She had the sudden impulse to simply open her legs and let him walk into her, his body pressing against hers. She could reach around his waist and pull him harder against her stomach, her thighs. She hadn’t felt that way about another man in a long time.
“Listen,” he said. He stopped short of where her knees would touch his legs. He placed a hand on the counter and leaned in close to her. “If you disappear, if you really disappear, it will be your full-time job. It’s impossible to disappear completely, and there will always be traces of you out there, popping up from time to time. Pings of your existence. If someone is looking for you, and if they know what they’re doing and have the patience to keep at it, they will find you the moment you let your guard down. And it doesn’t take much.” He looked around the kitchen. “This house? I’ve been here eight months. It’s the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere, and I won’t be here much longer. So don’t be fooled. If you want to erase your existence, you are going to have to work really hard at it.”
“But I don’t want to disappear. Not…not like you have. I have a whole life that I’ve built. A good life. I mean, aside from the obvious situation.”
“Nobody wants to. Who would? It’s a matter of the other options available. I don’t know if you need to disappear forever, but if you go back now, the consequences would be severe.”
Disappear forever. Hannah struggled to grasp the concept. She would never see her sister again, or her beautiful nephews, one of whom would never remember her and the other having perhaps a vague recollection of Auntie Hannie. And what about Zoo? Would she not even be able to take her dog with her? How would she even live, and where? And what about all the money, all the wealth she and Dallin had built together? Would she just be forfeiting that, leaving it all to him?
Then there were her friends, those daily points of human contact that gave every person’s life a routine, a structure. Though she had many social connections, she had to admit most of her friends were little more than acquaintances. Many of them she knew more about from their Facebook posts rather than actual conversations with them.
A sudden realization struck her, one both enlightening and depressing. If I disappeared, how much am I really leaving behind? How many people and things in my current life do I actually, truly care about?
It was too heavy a thought to ponder, so she dropped it. “The news,” she said.
“What?” asked Black.
“Can we turn on the news? I want to see what they’re saying about the shooting this morning. Shouldn’t we see if my name is being mentioned at all?”
“If you want,” was his response, seemingly indifferent to the idea. To Hannah, it seemed like a natural thing to do. Scour the news, the Internet, see what’s being reported. So much had happened. Something had to be on the news, hadn’t it?
He handed her the remote control, and she aimed it at the flat screen mounted to the wall.
“I’m making lunch,” Black said. “Sandwiches okay?”
Hannah would have been happy just drinking her lunch, but she knew she had to eat something. “Perfect.” Hannah first found CNN Headline News and lingered there for a few minutes, expecting to see something about the shooting earlier this morning. Black shot a cop—real or not—in downtown Seattle. That must be a big story. But the headlines of the day were political ones, which meant it was a pretty slow news day.
Hannah turned to the local networks and found soap operas instead of local news. She checked the time on the TV receiver: just after one in the afternoon. There would be no local news airing at this time, unless the networks broke into the regular programming with a big story. But nothing interrupted the fake tears and the dramatic music of the soaps today.
Hannah turned the TV off and took another sip of her bourbon, which was now starting to taste more like an enemy than a friend. How quickly it turned, she thought. How difficult to maintain that perfect balance of pleasant numbness. She rinsed out her glass and replaced the liquor with tap water, gulped a full glass down, then filled it up again.
Black handed her a plate containing a very simple-looking sandwich and apple slices. “Believe or not, I’m a good cook. Don’t let this jade your opinion, but it should do for now.”
“This looks great,” she said. “But if you need to prove yourself, you can cook me a nice dinner.” Hannah consumed her meal faster than he did, caring not at all if she appeared like a feral cat greedily devouring its prey. He wasn’t even halfway done when she looked up from her empty plate.
“Want more?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I want to get online. Check the news.”
“Not now,” he said.
“There’s got to be something about me. About all of this.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“Anything to give me a clue what to do next. I mean, Justine said Dallin was talking about missing money that I took. I want to know what that’s about.”
“Later,” Black said.
Hannah felt the angry little girl in her well up. “Why?”
“Because you’re not going anywhere for a few days. You’re safe here, and feasting on a news cycle will overload your brain, which is close to that point anyway. I can see it. You need to sleep, even for just a few hours.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“You’ve had one adrenaline spike after another. You need your brain to relax.”
“I slept in the car.”
“But not enough. There’s a guest bedroom you can crash in. Don’t worry, I won’t let you sleep all day. We have work to do.”
Hannah didn’t want to sleep but knew he was right. She spun around and started going through the bags from the store. She found the hair dye and pulled it out.
“Show me where the guest bedroom is,” she said. “I’ll dye my hair and then rest a bit.”
Black walked her down the hallway and around a corner.
“Staying hidden must be exhausting,” she said.
“It is. But it’s better than being dead or in prison. Besides, you learn to adapt. Your body adjusts. It becomes normal.”
Hannah never felt she knew a normal life, so she had a hard time thinking anything would become that way in the future. Her gaze followed him until he disappeared around the corner. Then Hannah shut the bedroom door and turned the small lock that, she knew, wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to get in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She woke in a dark room; sunlight no longer spilled through the edges of cellular shades as it had when she’d first pulled the covers over her. After dying her hair she slept deeply, her wet hair still wrapped in a towel, and after awakening she opened her eyes, reached up and felt the thick, damp cotton. Moments passed before she remembered where she was, and then a few more seconds before recalling her hair was no longer blond but raven black. She walked to the bathroom where the light was on as she had left it, the sink splattered in streaks of black, watery dye. Hannah removed the towel, unwrapping it with hesitation, as if this was the first unveiling of a face after reconstructive surgery.
Her newly black hair fell around her face and shoulders in wet, clumped strands. It was such an unnatural color for her, as if someone had cut the mane off a bay horse and fashioned a wig from it. The color changed her. Such an easy thing, to dye one’s hair. But she seemed truly another person in the mirror, and as she stared at herself she wondered if it was merely the hair that made her
different.
Her eyes seemed lighter in contrast to her hair, her face more pale. She reached up, and in the mirror saw her fingers stroke an outline of her cheeks, one of which bore the fresh cut from what seemed like a lifetime ago. She leaned in and looked more closely in the mirror, but that didn’t answer the question of what it was that suddenly seemed both so different and familiar to her. She stepped back a few feet and saw herself from a distance, and then it hit her.
I look just like him.
The truth was, Hannah and Billy shared no physical traits. Justine was the one who had inherited her father’s washed-blue eyes and pointed jawline. But in the mirror Hannah saw the beauty on the outside and the rage within, just like with Billy. Despite the ugliness of his character, Billy had been a strikingly handsome man, and as a young man probably could have been a model if he’d had the chance. Wiry and muscular, with smooth, tanned skin and casual facial stubble. He hadn’t even had to work at it. He had just woken every morning, usually hungover or even still drunk, yet he was striking in his looks. Which is why his rage was all the more horrifying. Rage from something appealing is always jarring, like a fluffy housecat ripping apart a bird in the backyard, the cat’s normally cottony white facial fur matted in drying blood and tufts of feather.
But she wasn’t her father, and if she was going to deal with whatever was happening to her life, she couldn’t keep hiding behind the blame and hatred so easily directed at Billy. Her life was hers alone, and it was time for Hannah to regain some control of it.
Hannah left the bathroom and unlocked her bedroom door. The house was lit against the night. She had no idea if it was seven at night or three in the morning. Then she saw Black.
He was sitting on a stool leaning over the angled top of a desk. An architect’s desk, she thought. A light attached to the back of the desk arced up and over the top, bent to shine a focused beam directly on the part of the surface where he was working. In his left hand he held an X-Acto blade, working it delicately over something pressed against the top of the desk.
He heard her and turned.
The Comfort of Black Page 12