Little Comfort

by Edwin Hill

  Then the front door opened, and she stepped out with the dog. He crouched behind an SUV and watched her pull her coat closed and adjust her earmuffs. She hurried down the sidewalk as quickly as the basset hound would allow, and turned the corner. Gabe followed, dashing from car to car, till she headed into a dog park. She took the leash off the dog, who immediately ran to join the pack. An elegant Indian woman crossed the frozen mud to stand with Hester, and Gabe couldn’t help it, he opened the gate and headed into the park too. And he stood by the fence and stared at her till the Indian woman glanced over Hester’s head and pointed to where Gabe stood by a trash can overflowing with shit-stained plastic bags. Gabe tried to stay still and look right at them as though every microbe in his entire body didn’t quiver as Hester handed her leash to the other woman and said something with a shrug, and then crossed the park toward him. He could feel himself sweat. He pretended that he couldn’t place her. He snapped his fingers. “I remember now,” he said. “I was passing by and saw you in the park. You came by the house. Any luck with the apartment search?”

  “Barry, right?” she said.

  He’d nearly forgotten. Again. “Barry Bellows,” he said to emphasize the name.

  “And your roommate? What was his name? Aaron?”

  “Good memory,” Gabe said.

  “How’d you two meet anyway? You and Aaron?”

  Shit. She wanted him to set her up with Sam. This always happened to Gabe. Women—and men—were desperate to meet Sam. “When I moved into the apartment last spring.” Always be general, Sam had coached. Spring, not June. It helped keep the stories straight. It kept you from being caught in a lie. Plus, if Gabe barely knew Sam, then he couldn’t facilitate a meeting. “We run in different circles.”

  “That’s smart,” Hester said. “Keep home and life separate. Roommates can get too intimate if you’re not careful. Any idea where he comes from?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Gabe said. “Why so many questions?”

  “Making conversation,” Hester said. “And I decided to stay put in my apartment. Thanks for asking.”

  “Where’s your little girl?”

  “Kate? She’s at day care.”

  “Do you have other kids?”

  “I don’t have any kids,” Hester said. “Kate’s on loan.”

  “You aren’t married?”

  She took a moment to answer. “Nope,” she said.

  He noticed now how she looked him over, taking in specifics—haircut long past due, shoes he’d picked up at the Goodwill. She stepped back when he moved toward her, keeping her hands out of her pockets. Wary. Careful. She checked to be sure her friend kept watch.

  “How about you?” she asked. “Where are you from?”

  “New Hampshire,” Gabe said, without really thinking through where Barry Bellows might have grown up.

  “I love New Hampshire,” Hester said. “Ever been to Polly’s Pancakes in the White Mountains? I could eat there every day.”

  Gabe’s life in New Hampshire hadn’t really been about pancakes or scenery. What he remembered from that time—what he tried to forget—was clinging to cookies offered, to old women who briefly invited him to call them grandma, to sheets on beds, and to brand-new tubes of Aqua Fresh. Some houses had kids stacked up like logs, whole rooms lined with bunk beds, troughs of American chop suey, fights over yellow-stained briefs. Gabe had almost liked those houses best, where he felt safe knowing he was worth $750 a month in state support. That’s what Cheryl Jenkins’s place had been like, at least at first. The day he met her, he’d been called to the office, where the principal had had that sad look people got when they had bad news to deliver. She stood next to a wiry man, and Gabe went numb.

  “Hey, kiddo,” the man said. “I’m Mr. Englewood. But call me Bobby, okay?”

  Gabe listened while Bobby and the principal talked at him, something about new towns, new schools, new chances. The principal even knew his name and managed to use it more than once without glancing at his file. And then Bobby grinned. “Car’s packed. Should we head out?”

  The principal hugged him and ruffled his hair. “We’ll miss you,” she said, even though she’d probably never see him again, probably never think about him either.

  Gabe’s suitcase, everything he owned, sat in the backseat of Bobby’s car. He’d been staying with a couple in Woodstock, but had already known his days were numbered when the woman’s waist began to swell. As they drove away, Bobby told him that he’d love the next spot with his friend and mentor. “She can handle anything,” Bobby said.

  Did that mean him?

  Down the road, they pulled into a gas station, where Bobby told Gabe to follow him and do what he did. Inside, a teenager read a magazine at the register, and Gabe trailed behind Bobby through the aisles of soda and junk food, till Bobby slipped a Slim Jim into his pocket, and followed it with a roll of powdered doughnuts, and Gabe thought that maybe he didn’t mean to, till he caught the twinkle in Bobby’s eye. Was he supposed to do the same? Or was this a trap? His fingers brushed the cellophane wrapper of a Whatchamacallit. He could practically taste the chocolate and caramel, feel the crunch, but his stomach nearly came out of his throat at the thought of taking it, the thought of handcuffs and juvy. Bobby shrugged with disappointment and paid the teenager for the gas.

  “You always pay for the gas,” Bobby said, as he pulled out of the station and tossed Gabe a bag of Combos. “Otherwise they get you.”

  Gabe stared at his lap. “Are you really a social worker?”

  “’Course I am,” Bobby said. “And that’s for you. You’ll have to tell me what you like next time. You were a chicken shit back there.”

  Gabe tore into the package and ate the pretzels three and four at a time, barely chewing or tasting the saltiness. Ravenous. Impossible to satiate.

  They drove for a half hour or so. It was the depths of winter, and snow blanketed the White Mountains. Soon, they were speeding along the shore of a frozen lake and then Bobby pulled into the driveway of an old house with a red barn. Gabe had long ago stopped feeling anything when he came to a new house. He was used to moving, and used to being discarded. A woman wearing a parka over her nightgown stood in the doorway and barely moved when Bobby got out and took Gabe’s suitcase from the back of the car. “I found you one,” Bobby said.

  As Gabe stepped into the cold, an orange cat slunk from behind the barn and ran across the yard. The woman held the door open and let it inside. “That’s Pumpkin,” she said. “Who are you?”

  When Gabe didn’t answer, Bobby said, “This is Gabe. He’s been staying in Woodstock for the past month.”

  “How come they kicked you out?” the woman asked.

  Gabe shrugged.

  “Deadbeats,” Bobby said, winking at Gabe again. He tossed him a Snickers bar, which Gabe gripped in his fist till he felt the chocolate melting.

  “You’ll do,” the woman said, standing aside to let him into the house. “Well, come on,” she said. “Before all the heat gets out.”

  Bobby carried the bag inside, and Gabe followed. The woman held out her hand. “I’m Cheryl Jenkins,” she said.

  Gabe hated it when they hugged him. Hated it when they told him to call them “Mom.”

  “You can call me Cheryl or Ms. Jenkins. Whatever you prefer. You’re in the bunk room. Top of the stairs, on the right. There’s one empty bed. Should be obvious which one.”

  Three other boys also lived in the house right then, all about Gabe’s age. When they got off the school bus that afternoon, Gabe could hear them as they wrestled from the street to the front door, through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the room. They didn’t seem to realize how big they were, or how long their limbs had grown. Eyebrows was the leader. He shoved a skinny kid covered in pimples, and called him a fag. Pimples shoved back, but the third boy, one with a gut, made it two against one. They barely noticed Gabe. Eyebrows may have said hello, but Gabe had perfected disappearing.

  That first
night, Cheryl made the biggest vat of macaroni and cheese that Gabe had ever seen. Eyebrows went first, and in any other house, he’d have taken much more than he deserved, and the rest of them would have been left to fight over the remains. Here, though, there was too much to go around. By the time Gabe’s turn came, he could fill his plate to overflowing and still go back for seconds. Cheryl sat with them. She asked about school. Eyebrows said that his English teacher was gay, and his math teacher was a slut. Beer Belly laughed at everything he said, and when Pimples said something about a girl named Allison, Eyebrows cupped his hands on his chest and flicked his tongue. None of this was new to Gabe, who was used to houses of wall-to-wall testosterone, energy that couldn’t be contained. What was new was that Cheryl refused to let him disappear. She coaxed information out of him, getting him to tell her small things like his favorite subject in school—math—and whether he knew how to swim—yes. After dinner, while the other boys worked on their homework, she let Gabe sit at the kitchen table and have thirds on dessert. And then she let him sneak away to the bunk room, which was exactly where he wanted to be.

  The boys came and went over the next few weeks. Pimples was replaced by Glasses, who gave way to Farty. Eyebrows disappeared one afternoon, leaving a vacuum of energy in the house that Mohawk eventually filled. All the while, Gabe kept to himself, eating last, but always eating well, and going to his room to work on homework. The times he saw Bobby, they headed to convenience stores and practiced shoplifting, till Gabe could line his coat with chips and leave paying for nothing but a pack of gum. When Cheryl asked him one day if he liked living with her, he managed to say, “Yes,” and believe it. He believed it more than anything he’d ever believed in his whole life.

  “You’re special, you know,” Cheryl said. “I don’t think you even know it. But you wouldn’t want this to end, would you?”

  Gabe piled chili onto his plate and added a mountain of cheese. “No,” he said between bites.

  And he’d hoped it never would. But that was before. Before the motel. Before the men. Before Sam.

  *

  The pack of dogs ran a loop around the park. A greyhound led the way, and Hester’s dog, the basset hound, held strong at the back. Gabe wondered what it would be like to have sex with a woman as tiny as Hester, someone he could probably lift with one hand. He felt himself getting hard and pulled his coat closed. He wanted to touch her hair.

  “What are you doing?” She jerked her head away from his hand, which had somehow reached out on its own and stroked one of her pigtails.

  “Sorry.” He let his hand fall.

  She stepped away and waved to her friend to say she was okay. “Honestly,” she said. “Don’t do that again.” She softened her tone. “I mean, you’re hardly the first. I’m like a pregnant belly. People touch without asking. They seem to think I’m a doll.” She looked out toward the dogs. “Waffles took a dump,” she said. “I should go.”

  She went to leave, but turned back. “I know this sounds strange, especially from someone who barely knows you, especially when you just did … that, but I think you think you’re weirder than you actually are. You’re dopey, but you’re better looking than you let yourself be. And we have more in common than you know. I bet you’re not half bad. You should remember that.”

  Gabe felt a smile start in his chest, a smile he couldn’t push down even if he’d wanted to.

  She took a deep breath. “And I should tell you I was in New Hampshire today. Right there in Holderness. I know Lila Blaine. I know your real name too, Gabe. And Sam’s.”

  The smile dried up.

  She came close. He could almost feel the warmth from her body. He wondered if she was pleased with herself, whether she was happy to see him squirm. She lowered her voice, and in that moment, her expression changed. She seemed kind. Concerned, even.

  “And someone shot at me,” Hester said. “With a rifle. And I bet I’m only telling you this because I’m still upset about it. I’ll probably always be upset about it, and I can’t tell anyone that it happened because they’ll freak out, and I just … I don’t need that right now. But I know what it’s like to be you. I know what it’s like to not be wanted, and then to find someone who sees you. I know what it means. They found a body last week,” she added. “By Lila’s cabin. In the next cove.”

  She touched his arm. Like with Sam, it felt like the sun, spreading through him, filling him with life.

  “I saw Cheryl and Bobby today too.”

  The names hit him squarely in the gut, enough to want her to stop, but not enough for him to ask. He stumbled and then turned and ran, out of the dog park and onto the street toward home. He tried to run from the past, but it caught him, like it always did.

  *

  “Come,” Cheryl had whispered that first time, shaking Gabe awake and leading him past the other sleeping boys and through the silent house. They drove her car down the road to the abandoned motel, and then sat in the driveway, heat blasting at their feet.

  “You’re special,” Cheryl said. “Everything about you. You know that, right? I tell you that enough, don’t I?”

  Gabe nodded.

  “You’ll have to be special tonight. For me.”

  She climbed out of the car. Bobby’s hatchback sat in the driveway too, and Gabe could see the glow of a cigarette behind the steering wheel. Cheryl waved for Gabe to follow, leading him to one of the small, overheated cabins. It was cold and raw, the last gasps of winter in mid-March. A tiny man wearing a baseball cap sat on the bed, his gut hanging over the waistband of his gray cotton sweatpants.

  “This is …” Cheryl said. “What’s your name again?”

  The man looked annoyed by the question, and then grinned. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m Mr. Rogers. This your neighborhood?”

  “Nice one,” Cheryl said, barely hiding her disgust, and as she stepped into the cold night Gabe went to follow her. “No, sweetie,” she said, her breath freezing in clouds. “You stay with … Mr. Rogers. I’ll be back in a bit.” She touched his hair and smiled down at him with sad eyes, and then closed the door as she left.

  Gabe faced the room. It was small, with a single bed, a sink, and a shuttered window that opened toward the lake. Mr. Rogers stood. He wasn’t much taller than Gabe. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held it out, but Gabe said no.

  “Suit yourself,” the man said, lighting up and inhaling deeply. “You should come on in,” he added.

  Gabe didn’t move.

  “Sit. On the bed. Right here.”

  Gabe’s feet felt heavy. He sat on the edge of the bed as told, and watched the man fiddle with the waistband on his sweatpants.

  “What do you like?” the man asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gabe said.

  “You got to know something,” Mr. Rogers said, stepping closer. He stomped the cigarette out on the floor. “I want to hear you tell me what you like. Okay? Do you like baseball?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ice cream?”

  Gabe nodded.

  “And girls with big tits?”

  Gabe nodded again, but Mr. Rogers clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I want to hear you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Say it.”

  Gabe inhaled. “I like girls with big tits.” It was true. Even saying it gave him a boner.

  “And wet pussies?”

  “And wet pussies.” That too.

  “What else do you like? You’ll say it, okay? And you’ll mean it. Even if I have to tell you the words.”

  Mr. Rogers tore the top off a yellow vial and inhaled sharply. The room suddenly smelled of old socks. He stroked Gabe’s hair, gently at first, but when Gabe recoiled, his grip tightened. He tore the top off a second vial with his teeth and held it to Gabe’s nose. “Inhale,” Mr. Rogers had said. “You’ll want it. It helps.”

  *

  Despite the December cold, sweat poured down Gabe’s face as his feet pounded the pavement. He should have been
stronger. He should have fought or run, though in reality, until it started, until he was chanting whatever Mr. Rogers told him to, hoping it would make it stop sooner, he hadn’t really known what was happening, and there had been no place to run or hide. Besides, Bobby had been waiting for him in the parking lot. Afterward, Bobby had even taken him to a 7-Eleven in Plymouth where they’d stolen a dozen candy bars.

  *

  Gabe stumbled into the apartment and went straight to his room and shut the door, where he opened his laptop and closed all the angry Slack messages. He searched on “Holderness” and “murder,” and the first thing that came up was a newspaper story about the body on the lake, which he read through ten times before erasing his browser history.

  He erased the photo of Hester at tthe beach, though every pixel of it was seared on his memory. Sam couldn’t find any of this.

  Not half bad, he reminded himself to help him forget the motel. To forget Mr. Rogers and the men who’d followed. That’s what Hester had said about him. And if that was true, none of the rest of this mattered.

  Not half bad!

  That was good enough!

  CHAPTER 12

  Hester hadn’t planned to tell Gabe about meeting Lila, or knowing his name, or the visit to New Hampshire, or being shot at. It had all spilled out on its own as she’d watched him watch her. Hester’s own childhood had been hard. Lonely. Not a subject she liked to dwell on. She’d grown up in a small town on the South Shore of Massachusetts with a mother who could barely get out of bed, and she’d often wondered if she had been brave enough to leave whether things could have been better. Or at least different. She’d never known her father and had often come home to find her mother lying in a dark room, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Hester subsisted on the food she could scavenge and went to school in torn, dirty clothes that had other kids calling her Dirty Thursby. She saw no bright lights in that childhood, no friendly neighbors or caring teachers. Her only escape had been the local library, where she’d stayed most nights till closing, huddled beneath a carrel, reading whatever she could find and hoping to stay instead of going home. Those were years of persisting, of working hard, of focusing on only those things she could control, like making good grades and having a plan to escape.