Where Night Stops

by Douglas Light

  “It’d break my heart to have to hurt you,” he said, hurting me.

  “What do you want?” I said, my face rammed to the floor.

  His voice was eerily calm. “What do I want?” he replied. “A young Latino lover, for starters. I want a better figure. I’d say I want world peace, but world peace would put me out of a job. Oh, and my hand. I want my hand back. But you know what I’ll settle for?” He pressed his knee harder to my spine. Every pore on my body shot out sweat.

  “Fuck, Ray-Ray,” I said, in pain. “Go easy.”

  He didn’t go easy. “I asked you a question.”

  “What would you settle for?”

  He took his knee out of my back, leaned over me, and put his moist lips to my ear. “Whatever was in the bag,” he said, his breath striking hotly. “I’ll settle for that.”

  Chapter 60

  The best lies are those kept simple. That way the story stays straight.

  Ray-Ray got the same story I gave Higgles: I didn’t have what he wanted on me. Safe-deposit box, bank, Presidents’ Day.

  Ray-Ray lifted his knee from my back, freeing me. “I believe you,” he said, sitting back down.

  I got up, feeling like I’d been snapped in half then jammed back together. I slowly sat down on the mattress.

  Ray-Ray didn’t believe me. The pinched sourness of his face told me he knew I was lying. “I like you,” he said. “I want this to work out. I want to feel comfortable using the word ‘amicable’ here. That’s how I want this whole thing to go down.”

  “I like the word ‘amicable.’” I rubbed my shoulder.

  “Unfortunately, another word that comes to mind, too. It’s a Greek word. Akrasia,” he said. “Know it?”

  Higgles had thrown it out before, after the Austin trip and the attack of Frogman/Ray-Ray, but he didn’t know what it meant.

  Neither did I.

  “It means weak-willed. Acting in a way that is in direct conflict with better judgment.” He held up his nub like it was the Olympic torch. “Let me give you an example,” he said. “There was this young man who seemed a bit lost, seemed to have nothing in his life. No home, no family, no friends. So this older, more experienced gentleman took him under his wing, started mentoring him. When the time came, he gave the boy some cash, set him up in the business. He gave him a purpose, a reason to wake every morning. And for about a year straight, our boy did a good job. So,” Ray-Ray said, massaging his chin with his stump, “the boy’s mentor decides the boy is ready for a promotion. He pulls some strings, sets him up with a new passport, and opens up a world of opportunity. He sends him to Cancún and other exotic places.” Ray-Ray pauses. “Are you with me so far?”

  My skin prickled hot. I was totally confused. Ray-Ray had directed me to the fanny pack, but Higgles controlled the Kam Man. Still, I said, “I’m with you.”

  “Good. Because this is where the boy fucks up. This is where akrasia, his weak will, comes in,” he said. “You see, instead of appreciating all he’d been given, instead of being content working his way up the ranks, our boy is tempted to do something that he knows—he knows deep down to his core—goes against everything right. Does that stop him? No. He does it anyway. The gentleman tries to set him straight, beat a bit of sense in him, but no luck. The boy tries to disappear. But that’s not the worst of it. He actually turns on his mentor, starts fucking him,” Ray-Ray said.

  “What exactly did this boy do?”

  “For one, he teamed up with some asshole,” he said. “An asshole who knows the ins-and-outs of the game, the value of certain materials and information.” Ray-Ray stood, straightened his pants, then sat back down. “When I was young, all this cheap Shakespeare shit—the intrigue, the violence, the murder, the covert running around—used to be thrilling. Now, it’s tedious.” He hit me with a damp gaze. He looked like he was about to cry. “Please don’t make me do what I don’t want to do.”

  I tried to swallow but my throat wouldn’t let me. “Listen, Ray-Ray, I made a mistake.”

  “You sure as fuck did.”

  “I mean, I didn’t know I was working with you.”

  “For me, not with me.”

  “I just thought—”

  “That’s the problem. You thought. I didn’t bring you into all this for your brilliant strategic insights. Now,” he said, “the only thing I want to hear from you is that you have what I want.”

  “I have it,” I said. “I’ll have it. Tomorrow, noon. Here.”

  He ran his nub over his hair, smoothing it, then stood. He smiled, sincerely. “I like amicable arrangements.”

  Pausing at the door, he said, “I forgot to ask, what’s the asshole’s name, the one you’ve been working with? The one pulling everything together?”

  I thought of lying, but why? If Higgles was in the same situation, he’d hang me out in a moment, instantly turn me over. “Higgles.”

  “Yes?” Ray-Ray said.

  “Yes.”

  He stood a moment, his face brightening with contempt. His eyes drilled through me. Everything about him shouted Don’t fuck with me. “Well, are you going to tell me his name or not?”

  “Higgles,” I said again, thinking he hadn’t heard me.

  “Yes?” His voice cut the air.

  “His name.” I didn’t understand. Then something cracked in my brain. A blaze of clarity tore through me.

  Ray-Ray was Higgles. He’d directed me to the locker, the phone. He ran the game. That was his last name, a name I’d never known, never thought to know. Ray-Ray Higgles.

  Which meant that Higgles, the guy I’ve been calling Higgles, was—

  I didn’t know who he was.

  Chapter 61

  The first time we met in Brighton, he laughed at my suggestion that I call him Higgles, that he call me Ray-Ray. The time in New Orleans when he referred to himself in the third person. Higgles’ head is a bit messed up today. Higgles needs a vacation. I should have known.

  Now it didn’t matter. The faux-Higgles. Ray-Ray. They’d both found me.

  They both wanted something I didn’t have.

  Both were determined to get it.

  Yet, unbelievably, both had miraculously walked out of my sad apartment, leaving me alone. At least until tomorrow noon.

  Evening entered the room, staining it with shadows. I felt flayed, my skin cut clean off of me and every nerve exposed. Even the slow breeze lazily pushing through the open window hit me with what felt like the tip of a whip.

  The idea of making a run for it skittered across my brainpan, then died away. Any escape would be only temporary. And wasn’t that my whole point in coming to Haven, to end all the running?

  Tomorrow, I determined, I’d resolve the whole affair, one way or another. How exactly I’d do that I didn’t yet know. And that scared the shit out of me.

  Tangled in the immediate, I couldn’t see the whole scene. I couldn’t see my next move.

  I couldn’t make future plans because there was no future.

  I needed a place to place my hope. Something to set my sights on. If I had that, I felt, then I’d have the strength to pull through whatever tomorrow brought.

  If only I had someone to talk to, someone to snap me out of my panic—Clement or my parents or even the Ray-Ray I knew three years ago—then I felt certain I could see the course of action I had to take. Someone I could trust to talk me past my dread. There had to be a way free, if only I could see it.

  Sarah. She could help. Or at least listen.

  Since my attempt to reconnect with her, she’d been nibbling at my thoughts, forcing her way forward.

  Maybe she’d broken up with that guy I’d seen at her place. Maybe he wasn’t even her boyfriend but just some guy. Maybe, if they were together, I could somehow break them up.

  Having no cell phone, I grabbed a fistful of change
and headed down to the battered pay phone on the street corner. Sarah’s old cellphone number kicked to the voicemail of a J. P. Ghahi. I poured more quarters in the phone, dialed up information, gave them her Inwood address, but couldn’t find a new number for her.

  I got the number for her parents, called them, and claimed I was a colleague of Sarah’s from her old art gallery who wanted to get in touch with her. “I’ve just opened my business, thought she’d be an ideal fit,” I said. Her father actually asked about salary. I threw out a high figure. “Plus three weeks’ vacation.”

  Her father made a noise like a gas stove igniting. “That’s near double what she’s making now,” he said excitedly, and handed over Sarah’s information.

  A 631 area code. So she’d made the transition to New Jersey. A bigger space, quiet, less chaos. She’d fully moved on to the life she thought she deserved. Hopefully, though, without the guy.

  Mustering courage, I dropped in the last of my change and dialed.

  She answered on the fourth ring, sounding tired.

  My blood leapt just hearing her voice. “Hey,” I said, my words rushing out. “I hope I’m not bothering you. And I hope it’s not too late to call. It’s just that—”

  I broke off, unsure what to say.

  “Listen, Sarah, I know it’s been a long time, but I’ve been thinking about you. A lot. And I’ve been thinking that the way we ended, the way we left things, isn’t the way I want it to be.” It was true—at least at the moment. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” I said, my lungs aching for air, “especially coming now, after so long, but I’m going to be in the area soon, and I was thinking maybe, if you’d be up for it, we could have dinner or drinks, catch up a bit.”

  The phone connection clicked, sounding like a playing card in the spokes of a child’s bike. I waited for her voice to travel the thousands of miles to my ear. I waited for what felt an hour.

  Then she spoke, her voice coming like a flock of starlings, scattered then solid and swift. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But who is this? Who’s calling?”

  Chapter 62

  Haven, Florida

  The woman has my name, which means she has my life, or some part of it. Somehow, she has grabbed a thread and traced it back to my beginnings. She also has a pistol pointed at me.

  The chat-up at Charm’s, the hard come-on, the promise—and fulfillment—of sex, it was all a play. She had the upper hand from the start.

  The room’s air tastes of burnt plastic and arc welding. My mind runs hot, thrashing about. I recognize this moment. In Seoul, moments before catching a fist to my temple, I realized that just because my contact said he wasn’t my enemy didn’t mean he was my friend. It’s a feeling of being fucked yet not clearly understanding how or to what degree.

  Standing naked with a makeshift toilet-paper bandage on my neck wound, I feel ill from it all. I say, “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave. I’m expecting company.”

  “You’ve already got company,” she replies.

  “Other company.”

  The statement seems to confuse her, like I’ve dumped her moments after we’d been named king and queen of the prom. She rattles the ice in her tumbler, says, “Everything in life boils down to something very simple: two people meet. They either like each other or they don’t. If they like each other, they may fall in love.” She takes a swig of gin, then cocks her head to the side. “Am I making sense?”

  “So far.”

  She nods. “I think he once truly loved me. But not now, not any more.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “Why do you think he stopped?”

  I shrug. There are too many reasons, too many possibilities. Plus, I have no clue as to who she’s talking about.

  “I can’t figure it out either,” she says.

  The conversation halts, each of us studying the other. She says my name a few times, waves the pistol a bit like she’s getting used to the weight of it, then, “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re someone who doesn’t think she’s very pretty,” I say, speaking in a controlled voice. A calm voice. A voice I hoped didn’t betray my true feelings. “You’re someone who’s unhappy. You’re someone who, for whatever reason, has done some research on me and is now sitting in my place drinking my gin.”

  She smiles her crooked-tooth smile. “It was never your gin,” she says. “You know that, don’t you? He brought it for me, knowing I’d be here.”

  How the fuck does she know? I think. The faux-Higgles and then Ray-Ray was too much, but now this woman? She’s involved? It’s impossible, insane. Or am I so stupid as to not see the set-up?

  I’m not that stupid. I can’t be.

  So who is her ex? The man who once loved her? It can’t be Ray-Ray, can it? There’s no way they know each other. Plus, I can’t see him saying he loved her, pulling it off. It would have been an Oscar-worthy performance.

  The woman refreshes her drink, the gin gurgling from the bottle. “I’m surprised he didn’t think to poison it.”

  “You’re talking about the man who’s stopped loving you?”

  She makes a noise I take for a laugh. “Sweet Raymond? Ray-Ray’s never loved anyone but himself.”

  I am that stupid. Ray-Ray. I can’t believe she somehow knows Ray-Ray.

  “No,” she says. “I’m talking about Mason.”

  My mind struggles past the impossibility of her and Ray-Ray, tries to grasp what she’s just said. Mason. Bearclaw boy.

  I gingerly pull the toilet paper from my neck, bewildered. “So you’re still in love with the king of pastries?” The toilet paper tears, comes off in damp, red pieces, the rest clinging to the sticky scab.

  Confusion tints her face. “I’m talking about the other Mason. Mason One,” she says.

  It’s my turn to look confused. I think he once truly loved me, she’d said. But not now, not anymore. She made it sound like Mason One was still alive. “The dead one?” I say.

  “Who said he was dead?”

  “You did.”

  She shakes her head. “I said I lost him. In the Gulf.”

  “So…what, he’s MIA?”

  She smiles. Then frowns. “Emotionally, yes. But technically…” Her voice fades, then comes back strong. “Actually, truth be told, he was dead. Literally dead. At least for a little while.”

  I wait for more.

  There is no more.

  I say, “You’re talking like a drunk right now.”

  Taking a deep breath, she explains.

  After the failure of her first marriage, she took to drinking. “Or drinking more,” she says. She met Mason One at Charm’s Tavern. He was younger than her, in the army, and a bit wild. They took to each other instantly. “Like I said, he’d do crazy shit just because he was afraid to do it. I think that’s why he married me.”

  “Because he was afraid of you?” I gesture to my clothing—can I get dressed? She waves the pistol at me, which I take to mean okay.

  “Not of me,” she says. “Of marriage. He was terrified of the concept. So we got hitched.” She sips her gin. “We weren’t together but six months when he got deployed to the Gulf.”

  “And that’s when you lost him,” I say, stepping into my underwear, then my pants.

  She nods, her eyes filming with tears. “He was out patrolling the Kuwait-Iraq border in a Humvee with two others,” she says. “The driver got hit, lost control, and ended up flipping the truck.”

  “Hit by sniper fire?”

  She shakes her head. “Hit by Mason,” she says. “Mason was riding shotgun. The guy driving said something he didn’t like, so Mason cocked him.” She powers down a swallow of gin, lets out a calm burp. “The Humvee ran off the road into—I don’t know—an irrigation ditch or something. It turned over, trapping everyone. They all drowned, including Mason, which is a typical Mason move. Drowning in a desert.” Tears
salt her cheeks. “Anyway, Mason was the only one pulled from the wreck in time, the only one Lazarused back to life.” She runs her hand over her face, wiping away weariness. “But death changed him. The Mason who came back wasn’t my Mason. Wasn’t the man I’d fallen in love with. The man who returned was some stranger in Mason’s skin. It was like the face of the building had been saved while the insides had been gutted. He kept saying he loved me but then he’d do things to hurt me. I had to get away from him. And for a while,” she says, “I did. I found my Mason Two. I made it out of Haven, made it to Indiana, built a new life.” The woman forces a sad smile. “And now I’m back,” she says, sounding exhausted, worn. “Back in Haven, back with Mason One, back doing the same shady shit I was doing before. They’re right when they say you can never cure an addict, only manage the addiction.”

  Neither of us speak for some time. We remain still, a portrait waiting to be painted. Finally, she says, “The bank accounts, the fake names, the traveling about for flash drives, secret codes, and exchanges. Ray-Ray turned me on to the whole thing. He turned me on to it all, showed me the ropes, taught me the basics.”

  “Just like me,” I say. “How did you two meet?”

  She takes in a deep breath, like she hasn’t tasted air for hours. “God, how did we meet?” She shakes her head. “I don’t like to think about it.” A smile sneaks to her lips. “You have to admit that it’s exciting at first. Fun.”

  “But then it isn’t so fun.”

  Her smiles wilts. “That’s why I stopped. At least for a time.” She brushes her bangs from her eyes. “What makes it all so sad is that I was the one to introduce Mason to all this. After he came back from the Gulf, I dragged him into the game. I taught him everything Ray-Ray had taught me.” She pauses, thinks a moment. “Why did I do that?” She shakes her head. “I guess I just wanted my old Mason back. I guess I thought that if we shared that, had some special secret, we’d be brought together again.” The hard morning light jets into the apartment, strikes her full and blanches her features. “It only made things worse. It only made him worse.”