Little Comfort

by Edwin Hill

  “Between us,” Sam said.

  “You don’t even have to let her know we met. I don’t want any drama.”

  “No, definitely no drama.”

  “And I’ll keep your secret.” She smirked. “Aaron.”

  She would.

  “I should tell them I’ll be late.”

  “I already told them.”

  “But I’m on the board. They’re expecting me. I already missed most of the evening.”

  He kissed her again.

  “Hold on,” she said with a giggle. “This’ll take two seconds.”

  She dug in her purse for her phone, and he put a hand over hers.

  “What are you doing?” Fear hadn’t yet reached her voice.

  “Put your phone away.”

  “No.”

  Sam held her hand down and squeezed till she dropped the phone.

  “Stop,” she said.

  What did she think as he touched her neck? He swore he caught a glint of welcoming mischief in her eyes even then. His wrist pressed into her windpipe. What hope did she cling to as the blood stopped flowing and her eyes, so shiny moments ago, blurred? She grabbed at his coat, and clawed at his wrist, and tried to cry out. He held steady, though.

  “Relax,” he said. “This’ll only take a moment.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Gabe drove into the Back Bay and parked the car on Beacon Street, a broad avenue lined with brownstones. The streets were empty. In his mind, he reeled through what the steps might be, one by one, though the only step he really had to remember was don’t get caught. And he wanted this rush to last as long as it could. He turned off the engine and stepped into the night.

  A moment later, that warmth of the car already a memory, he found Sam huddled in a doorway.

  “Where?” Gabe asked.

  “Over here,” Sam whispered.

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “How the fuck do I know?” Sam said. “She wouldn’t stop yammering. She wanted to go out with Wendy. To talk about the old days. She thought it was funny that I used to clean houses.”

  He led Gabe through the iron gates of the Public Garden, where he’d shoved the body beneath a rhododendron. Gabe didn’t remember the woman from the lake, nor, he suspected, would she have remembered him. Her blond hair was fanned around her waxy face, and a splash of green fabric poked out from beneath her dark overcoat. Her eyes were open, milky and staring at nothing. It made Gabe feel for her, seeing her on that frozen ground. He wasn’t a monster, even if he did have to take care of this. Even if he had to protect Sam.

  “It takes one mistake,” Sam said. “And she wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t be quiet. And then she kept fighting and kicking, and …” Sam slid to the ground. “The bitch scratched me.”

  “Where?” Gabe asked.

  “Here. On my wrists.” He held up his cuffs, where bloodstains looked black in the night.

  “Okay,” Gabe said. “You’ll need to keep those covered till they heal.”

  Gabe had known from the moment Sam called that it was too late. He lifted Sam’s chin. “We’ll find a way out of this,” he said. “We always do.”

  Sam buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “I know. And now you need to be quiet. Very, very quiet.”

  Gabe watched Sam stifle a sniffle and then look around the garden, as though he was aware for the first time that they were still in a city, that buildings surrounded them, and that people saw and heard things that they didn’t always understand at first. With any luck, no one was out on a cold night like this. Somehow, Gabe reminded himself, Sam always got lucky.

  “We’ll have to get her to the car,” Gabe said.

  He slung a backpack from his shoulder and took out the pair of garden shears. Her hands were small and delicate. After a split second of hesitation, he cut off her bluish fingers, feeling the bone snap between the blades. He laid the fingers like hot dogs in a sealable, quart-sized plastic bag. Later, he’d sort through the ones with skin under the painted nails and put those in a separate bag and soak them in bleach. He struggled to get her coat off till he finally motioned to Sam, who stumbled over to help. They wrapped her head in the coat and smashed in as many teeth as they could with a brick. Gabe added the teeth to the fingers. “Did anyone know she was with you?” he asked.

  “No one,” Sam said. “Or no one that matters.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” Sam said.

  “Can anyone connect you to her?”

  Sam sighed. “There were people all over the party. I talked to her for maybe fifteen seconds, and that fat fuck Felicia might have seen me with her, and now she keeps texting. How long can I tell her I’m in the bathroom?”

  Gabe took the phone from Sam and turned it off. The police could track the signals on those things and triangulate them. Anyone who’d ever watched TV knew that, but Sam was panicking. “Help me get her coat on,” he said.

  She hung between them, her head lolling forward, rigor mortis still a couple of hours off. At least, if they held her up between them, she’d look like a drunk. Gabe lifted her furlined hood and tied her scarf around her sunken mouth. “Did she have a bag?” he asked.

  Sam nodded and tossed a black leather bag to Gabe, who hung it over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” Gabe said, but Sam, staring out toward the street, gasped.

  In the light from the streetlamps, a group of people stumbled down the sidewalk. Gabe heard a wail start in the back of Sam’s throat, which grew louder. He put a hand across Sam’s chest and pressed him into the shadows, drawing a finger to his lips in warning even as his own stomach rose in his chest. A man stopped at the iron gates. The flame from a lighter glowed on his bearded face. He took a step forward. He squinted and held the lighter up. Gabe clutched at the brick and closed his eyes to keep the streetlight from reflecting off his pupils. He counted to ten, and imagined doing what he’d have to do, what he’d had to do before. But when he opened his eyes, the man was gone.

  “I think I might throw up,” Sam said.

  “Well, don’t,” Gabe said. “At least not here. That’s the last thing we need the police to find. Let’s leave before someone else comes along.”

  They lifted her between them, struggling beneath the weight of her body. Her feet dragged across the uneven pavement. One of her shoes fell off. “Pumps,” Sam said as he squatted to retrieve it.

  Outside the garden gate, Gabe glanced each way before they stepped onto the fully lit avenue. He’d managed to find a spot three cars down, but those fifteen yards were among the longest he’d ever walked in his life as windows with who knew what behind them peered down from all directions. Halfway to the car, a door across the street to one of the brownstones opened. Music spilled into the night as a couple hurried down the cement stairs and walked away, too engrossed in each other to notice two men walking a drunken woman wearing one shoe to a car. Gabe clicked the keys and opened the back door, and between the two of them, they slid the body into the backseat and then covered it with a blanket. Sam slammed the door and then stared, as if he’d only now realized what he’d done. That feeling of excitement had begun to spread through Gabe’s body. Somehow it felt like they’d escaped the worst, even though they had plenty more to do. And he’d still have to rely on Sam. “You have to go to that party,” he said. “You have to make sure you’re seen.”

  “I can’t.” Sam clutched Gabe’s arm so hard that Gabe could feel fingernails breaking his skin. He brushed hair from Sam’s face and cupped his cheek in his hand. “Listen to me,” he said. “You can do this.”

  Sam looked at the ground. He closed his eyes and squared off his shoulders, seeming to steel himself right then for what was to come.

  “I’ll wait here for you,” Gabe said. “Use your phone. Create a phone record that shows you were there. But don’t call me again.”

  After Sam left, Gabe slouched down in the front seat of the car. He swore he smelle
d Twig’s body beginning to rot. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t run away from what was. For Gabe, it always came back to New Hampshire. To the lake. To that body that had spent twelve years decomposing on the shore, the body Hester knew all about.

  *

  That last night in New Hampshire, they’d snuck down to the lake after dark like usual, he and Sam, where they’d taken the canoe from Little Comfort and paddled it to the house they’d cleaned that day. The house would be empty for the week, but still, Sam said to be quiet as they glided into the dock. Gabe nodded and swung himself out of the boat. He secured his end with two half hitches, and then followed Sam as he crept from the wooden planks to the cool, lichen-covered granite shore. All about them, crickets chirped to mark midsummer. Out on the lake, a loon cried. Gabe looked through the trees toward the camp. It was enormous, hardly a camp really. It was set back from the lake and surrounded by birches that glowed under the full moon. Gabe had a knot of anxiety in his stomach. “We should go,” he said.

  “Don’t be a chicken shit,” Sam said. “And chill out. This’ll be easy. You want the money, don’t you?”

  Gabe needed the money. And he trusted Sam. And this, tonight, the ad on Craigslist, the photos, the promises, and the e-mails, were part of that trust. Inside, he followed Sam up the narrow staircase to one of the many bedrooms, where they found a Victrola and stacks of 78s, and old photos hanging on the walls of men holding oars and wearing what looked like black underwear. “They all went to Exeter,” Sam said, as he put one of the records onto the turntable and cranked the player till tinny jazz filled the room. “All those guys rowed crew. That’s another thing they do. Head of the Charles!”

  Then Sam opened a dresser drawer and slid a hand beneath a pile of mismatched sheets. “Bingo,” he said as he shoved a dog-eared copy of Flowers in the Attic into his waistband. Whenever they came to these lake houses, Sam took something easily misplaced but not forgotten—a matchbook from a long-ago wedding, a seashell, a postcard. Sam cranked the Victrola one more time. “Will we be friends after you leave?” Sam asked.

  “We’ll always be friends,” Gabe said. At least he hoped they would be.

  They sat quietly till the record slowed, and Sam turned the crank again. “Do you want to dance?”

  Gabe sat still. Was Sam joking?

  “Come on.”

  Even though Gabe said no, even though he really didn’t want to dance, soon he was swinging around the room and laughing, with Sam in the lead, doing something Sam called the foxtrot, even though he seemed to be making it up as he went along. When the record slowed again, Gabe wished Sam would turn the crank one more time. Instead, they listened to the sounds of the lake: water lapping at the shore, insects pinging against screens, a coyote crying in the distance.

  “What time is it?” Gabe asked.

  “Nearly midnight.”

  They were almost there. Gabe could almost smell the money. It would keep him from going back to Cheryl’s house. It could save him.

  “When I leave town,” he asked, “would you come with me?”

  Sam didn’t even pause. “Yes,” he said.

  *

  Sam sat up and put a hand on Gabe’s arm as headlights cut across the room. A moment later, the screen door downstairs clacked open.

  “Hello?” A syrupy voice that took Gabe straight to the motel oozed through the night.

  Footsteps pattered up the stairs and down the hallway until a man stood silhouetted against the door. He felt along the wall and flicked on the overhead light. A mass of chest hair spilled from his open collar. His shorts strained against his belly. It was Mr. Rogers.

  “This was a mistake,” Gabe said.

  Sam touched his arm. “It’s okay. Trust me.”

  And Mr. Rogers actually gasped. Sam was almost beautiful.

  “Where’s the money?” Sam asked.

  The man pulled a wad of twenties from his pocket and dropped it on a dresser. There were fifty of them there, more money than Gabe had ever seen in his life.

  Double the pleasure, double the fun.

  Plenty of cash to get him far from New Hampshire.

  Sam touched the man’s arm. It was as if he’d pushed the fast-forward button. Mr. Rogers came at him, lips parted, hands everywhere. Feral in his desire.

  *

  Afterward, Gabe told Sam to follow him, to tread lightly, to keep from touching anything. They passed the first smear of blood on the wall, and then they were in that great room, and Gabe felt the thick warmth beneath his bare feet before he slid across the floor in a pool that looked like crude oil. He could still hear the thwack of the hatchet into flesh and the word “Stop!” catching in his throat at the flash of the blade. He heard Mr. Rogers crying out in surprise, and then terror, as he fled down the hallway. He saw Sam’s eyes, alight with joy, the hatchet springing in his wrist. But another sound filled the night. Gabe hadn’t heard a sound like that ever. He realized that it was coming from Sam, and Sam was saying what happened and why and what can they do, and Gabe gripped him by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said. “You can do this.”

  Then Gabe heard footsteps. A tap and a thunk. Across the pine needles. Across the lichen-covered granite and onto the deck. The hollow sound of the canoe bobbing against pilings. The slap of a wet rope echoing across the lake.

  And Gabe was running too. Sam’s voice in his head, the hatchet in hand. His feet pounding on the forest floor. Moonlight on water. Bats overhead. Gabe saw the man’s face. Panicked. White under the moon. Blood matting his hair. Paddling with one arm. And Sam’s voice ran through Gabe’s head. You’re at the stern. You’re in control. You can finish this.

  And he did.

  Then they spent the night scrubbing the floor. They wiped away fingerprints, and paddled to the middle of the lake to drop the hatchet into the water, and then they dragged the body deep into the woods. They dug around roots and granite till they had a shallow grave. Gabe finally started to feel like it might actually be okay. As the sun rose over the lake, they’d taken the money and the man’s car. They’d driven out of town and out of state without a word to anyone. And they’d disappeared. Together.

  *

  Gabe glanced at the body in the backseat of the car and tried to push away thoughts of that night on the lake, of the power that had surged through him with each stroke of that hatchet, of Cheryl and Bobby, of waiting in one of those motel rooms for the door to open, of seeing Lila’s eyes glaze with terror as the truth spilled out and he sobbed into her breasts. Not till years later did he understand that he’d signed up to be Sam’s cleanup guy for life. Gabe thought of driving to Newburyport with Sam, where they’d taken the train to a bus to another train, all the while watching the stack of twenties dwindle away. He thought about that first-floor apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District where they’d wound up, of being crammed into a single room, of the smell of crack smoke that seeped through the walls, of that feeling of finally being free and happy. This Mission, the one where they’d lived, wasn’t about cocktails or restaurants that showed film noir. It was the world of the 24th Street Gang and overripe mangoes, of markets that smelled of meat, and children posing as adults. Sam went out at night, and when he came home, he had cash, and Gabe didn’t ask where it had come from, because he’d already seen enough of that for a lifetime. He spent his days wandering, his stomach rumbling, searching for food wherever he could find it in a city where everyone talked about eating. He trolled the farmer’s markets. He hiked to Golden Gate Park, to Haight-Ashbury, to the Sunset. He used the shoplifting skills he’d picked up from Bobby. When he tried to talk about the camp, about the blood, Sam said it wasn’t worth dwelling on, that sometimes you had to go through something and go through it together to get to the other side.

  San Francisco had been when everything had still seemed possible, when Sam had told Gabe to start calling him Jason. Jason Hodge was twenty-two, not fifteen, which opened up the world to them. He had a work history and a l
icense and a Social Security number, and Sam even started carrying himself in a way that made bouncers stop questioning his age. He got a job at a temp agency, and they moved to a new apartment, still in the Mission, but in the other Mission, the one that showed up in food magazines, the one with window boxes and baby carriages and brunch. They still shared a room, but this one smelled of jasmine and roses, and the young men who lived there too fawned over Sam and talked about eating and not eating and working out and how to be skinnier, and Gabe couldn’t imagine now what it had ever felt like to be hungry without choosing it himself. He went to the library and taught himself programming languages. One of the boys got him a gig that payed $150 for two days of work, and Gabe blew the whole wad of cash on a new pair of jeans.

  And then Sam stopped coming home for a few days, and when he did, he said, “We have a ticket!”

  “Where?” Gabe asked.

  Sam lay back on their futon and took a long drag from a joint. When he finally exhaled, the smoke swirled up toward the ceiling, then out the window. “To a new life,” Sam said.

  What about this life? Gabe nearly asked. This one, where things might not be perfect, but at least they were good. It was a feeling Gabe had never felt, and now, he wondered again what would have happened if he’d simply stayed behind after Sam told him about Ellen’s brother Zach’s fall from the Marin Headlands. What would have happened if he’d told Sam he was on his own? Would he have found new friends, a wife, maybe, a family? Maybe tonight he’d be living with them in the East Bay. Maybe he’d bike to work, and they’d all be vegans.

  But then, he owed Sam for what he’d done on the lake, for taking him away, for leading him to this life. And this life was far better than what he’d left behind at that motel.

  A swatch of green fabric poked out from beneath the blanket in the backseat. Gabe tucked it in and accidently touched Twig’s skin, which had already begun to cool.

  *

  The party didn’t feel wondrous anymore. To Sam, it felt as though everyone in the house stared as he slipped through those French doors, as though the music and the chatter and the clink of glasses all stopped. Wendy still held court across the room, but even she seemed to pause as a gust of frigid air swept in, lifting skirts and hair, sending cocktail napkins flitting across the parquet floor.