“If there’s anything I can—”
The front door opened. Dwayne said, “What’s going on here?”
“Cal just dropped by.”
Dwayne looked at the backpack I’d left on the porch. “What the hell is this? You’re bunking in with us?”
“No,” I said. He’d wiped his eyes, but I could see where tears had been running down his cheeks.
“I don’t have enough problems? I gotta take people in?”
“Dwayne, Jesus,” Celeste said. “It’s okay.”
“You know, Cal,” Dwayne said, “you had some awful shit happen to you. I get that. Your wife and your kid, what happened to them, that’s a tough break. But we got problems, too, you know? You can’t be coming around here all the time bringing us down.”
“Shut your mouth,” Celeste said. “God, just stop it.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I walked toward the door, grabbed my bag, and went back down the walk to my car.
“Good plan,” Dwayne said. “Good plan.”
• • •
I remembered there was a motel on the road to Albany, but when I got there, I found the place all boarded up. “OUT OF BIZNESS” had been spray-painted across the plywood sheets that had been nailed over the windows.
So then I tried the Walcott, parked under the front apron, and went inside. To my surprise, the place was fully booked. Normally, they’d have had more rooms, but one wing was undergoing renovations.
“Rented my last place to some guy who lost all his credit cards,” said the guy at the front desk. “But he had a good roll of cash.”
Well, shit.
I supposed I could drive closer to Albany. But I’d be spending the better part of an hour on the road before I had a chance to start looking for anything.
I had a thought.
I called Lucy Brighton’s cell phone. She picked up before the second ring.
“Yes?”
“Got a favor to ask. There was a fire and—”
“What?”
I explained. She said, “Can you give me half an hour? To get the guest room ready?”
“Sure,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
I was going to hit a diner. A couple of crackers and cheese earlier had not quite done the trick.
• • •
Lucy had been watching for me, and opened the door before I reached it. I thought she might be in pajamas or a nightgown, but she was dressed, and in something a little nicer than what I’d seen her in earlier in the evening. A black, low-cut top that showed a hint of cleavage and a pair of tight jeans.
“This is really kind of you,” I said. “Sorry to have kept you from going to bed.”
She had questions, and I told her more about what had happened. She offered to make some coffee, but I told her no. It had been a long day.
“I’ve got you all set up in the spare room,” Lucy said, her voice just above a whisper. Crystal, I figured, had gone to bed some time ago.
“She left me a surprise in my car,” I told Lucy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Her graphic novel. She left it for me to read. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I will.”
“That little scamp.” Lucy almost looked as though she might cry. “Do you know how rare it is that she’d do something like that?”
I didn’t.
“Crystal likes you. She senses that you’re a good man. That’s why she wants to share her artwork with you. She isolates herself so much, but every once in a while, she reaches out. That’s what she’s doing with you.”
We went upstairs, where she showed me my bedroom. The top of the dresser was stacked three deep in white cardboard business boxes full of files. There were more on the floor, but Lucy had created a path around the bed so I wouldn’t stumble if and when I got up in the middle of the night to hit the bathroom down the hall.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said, indicating the boxes. “This room almost never gets used, so it becomes a kind of dumping ground.” We were standing close together by the foot of the bed, where there was barely enough room for two people to get by.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“The bathroom’s right there, but it’s the only one up here, so if it’s occupied, you can use the little one, the powder room, on the first floor, and there’s another bathroom in the basement, but the one up here is the only one with a shower. God, I’m rambling.”
“This is all good,” I said, setting my bag on top of the double bed. “I appreciate it.”
“That’s a small bag. If you’ve forgotten anything, you can probably find what you need in the bathroom. Every time we go to the dentist, they give us new toothbrushes and I must have a dozen of them that have never been opened. So if you need—”
“I’m good,” I said.
“But I don’t have shaving cream. I mean, I’ve got ladies’ shaving cream, you know, and it’s probably the same stuff—it just comes in a pink can.”
I turned to face her and put my hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Her lips were twitching. “I know, to many people, he wasn’t a good man, my father,” Lucy said. “But I loved him.”
I waited.
“I did. He was my father. I know there was a kind of . . . hollowness about him. I believe he loved me, and I believe he loved Crystal. At least, as much as he was able to. He could certainly pretend to love. Does that make sense?”
“I think so.”
She took two steps toward the door, closed it. “I don’t want to wake her up.”
“Sure,” I said.
“But he taught me well, you know. From the time I was a little girl, he taught me to stand up for myself. I’m a survivor. I’m a single mother. When my marriage wasn’t working out, I could have tried to stick it out, but I thought, I can’t live like this. Not even for Crystal’s sake. Because what would that teach her? That you stay in an unhappy situation, that you surrender your life that way?”
“Your father seemed to be someone who went after what he wanted.”
“You mean that room?”
“I guess I mean that he didn’t let the conventions the rest of us tend to live by keep him from living the life he wanted. I’m not judging. I’m just saying, that’s what I see.”
Lucy thought about that. “I wondered sometimes if he was a borderline psychopath, but not in a malicious kind of way. I read somewhere that many successful CEOs are psychopaths. They don’t let the feelings of others get in their way because they’re not even aware of them, but they’re good at acting like they are. Sort of like politicians.”
Lightly, Lucy rested the tips of her fingers on my chest.
“You feel things,” Lucy said. “I can tell.”
I hadn’t slept with a woman since Donna and I made love the night before she died.
Three years.
“Lucy, I—”
“Don’t say anything. Just hold me.”
I did. She trembled slightly, as though my fingers were made of ice.
She turned her mouth up toward me, but she would have had to stand on her tiptoes to put her lips on mine, and even then, she might not have reached, so the ball, as they say, was in my court.
I knew what I wanted to do, and felt guilty about it. A little afraid, too.
The last two decades I’d slept with only one woman, never straying, even when opportunities had presented themselves. Over that kind of time, Donna and I had come to know each other’s needs and rhythms. Things were unspoken. I guess you could say we knew the routine, but that was not to suggest that it was routine. It had been good for almost all that time, except the last couple of months, when we’d grown distant in our grief over Scott. If we could have seen the future—
No, I couldn’t go over all that again.
I feared intimacy with someone whose needs and rhythms I did not know. Who didn’t know mine.
Maybe I had to live up to the words I’d spoken to Celeste. I had to move forward.
“I see it in your eyes,” Lucy said. “What you feel. So much pain.”
I put my mouth on hers and closed the gap between us. Pulled her into me so hard, it was like I was trying to bring her through the other side of me. I eased off, thinking I might hurt her.
How fast did one move in such matters? Did we do this for a while, then move on to something else? Or would one of us break it off, say this was a big mistake, that we were caught up in the moment, that we were both, in our own ways, dealing with loss, and that this was not the way to handle it? And then Lucy would slip quietly out of the room and close the door and that would be the end of that?
Lucy started undoing my belt.
We sat on the edge of the bed, fumbled with clothes, kicked off shoes, went through those awkward preliminaries before ending up under the covers. Twice she whispered that we had to be quiet.
We didn’t want to wake Crystal.
Later, for appearance’s sake, Lucy returned to her own room so she’d be there when Crystal got up.
I slept like the dead.
FORTY-SIX
IT was three minutes after one in the morning when Dwayne Rogers stepped out of Knight’s, one of Promise Falls’ seedier downtown bars that had been down on Proctor Street since God was in short pants, into the cool night air. He dug into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked in years, but the last couple of weeks, he’d found himself falling back into the habit. Calmed him, at least briefly. The whole ritual of it. Unwrapping the cellophane on the package, tapping the pack against his fist to eject the cigarette, putting it between his lips, opening the matchbook and striking a match, watching it flare briefly, putting it to the end of the cigarette, watching the warm glow as the tobacco ignited.
He’d been drinking more lately, too. You did what you had to do in tough times. Told Celeste he needed to get some air. He’d felt ashamed, crying like that in front of Celeste. Then her brother-in-law shows up, peeking through the window, seeing him that way. Dwayne confronting him and acting like a real asshole.
Celeste gave him proper shit after Cal left. Dwayne didn’t realize, until after Cal was gone, that he’d been burned out of his home. Dwayne thought maybe he could have handled that a little better.
He said he needed to go out to think about things. What he didn’t tell Celeste was that he’d already been planning to go out.
He had somewhere he had to be at a certain time.
He’d been at the bar only about five minutes—he hadn’t even ordered a beer yet—when he went back outside. Before he left, he said hello to a couple of people he recognized, gave the bartender a friendly wave. Said to him, “Have you seen Harry around?”
“Don’t think so,” the bartender said.
“Well, if you see him, tell him Dwayne was here,” he said.
“Sure thing.”
Once he was back on the street, he lit up his cigarette and waited. He wasn’t the only one out there. A young couple was leaned up against a lamppost, making out. Three men were huddled together debating which was better: NASCAR or horse racing. Occasionally, someone went into or came out of Knight’s.
Proctor Street ran downhill from north to south. When Dwayne was younger, he used to skateboard down the length of it late at night or early Sunday morning, when there was hardly any traffic.
As he looked to the north, he saw something coming, but it was not a kid on a skateboard.
It was a bus. A Promise Falls Transit bus, with a big baylike window at the front.
The buses didn’t typically run this late, at least not anymore. They once crisscrossed town until the bars closed, but since the town managers went hacking away at the budget, you couldn’t get a bus after eleven.
This didn’t look like a bus anyone would want to board, anyway.
It was on fire.
The inside of the bus was aglow with flames. They were flickering out the windows on both sides.
Rolling down the center of Proctor, with increasing speed, the bus looked like a comet. Proctor ran dead straight, but the bus looked like it was coming down on a slight angle, and pretty soon was going to crash into cars parked along the curb.
Dwayne stood, rooted to the sidewalk, mesmerized by the spectacle, as the bus got closer.
The men debating the merits of fast cars versus fast horses spun around and stared, mouths agape, as the fireball approached.
“Son of a bitch!” one yelled.
“Fucking hell!” said another.
As the bus flew past Knight’s, it became obvious to everyone that there was no one behind the wheel. Nor were there any passengers.
As the rocket of flame continued to barrel on down the street, the back end of the bus was illuminated every few seconds as it passed below streetlamps.
The number 23, in numerals three feet high, adorned the back of the bus below the window.
“Look!” said the young man who’d been making out with his girlfriend. “It’s him!”
“Who?” the girl asked.
“The guy the cops were talking about! Mr. Twenty-three!”
“What?” she said.
The bus sideswiped several parked cars on the other side of the street, setting off multiple alarms and flashing taillights, but the collisions did little to slow the vehicle down.
Proctor T-boned with Richmond about a hundred yards on. The flaming bus raced through the intersection, smashed through two cars parked on the street, and barreled into the front window of a florist shop.
“Wow,” Dwayne said.
The sound of the crash brought others out of the bar. “What the hell happened?” someone asked.
“That bus!” Dwayne said. “Went flying past, all on fire! Jesus!”
A growing crowd spilled out into the street. The bar emptied. Across Proctor, customers poured out of an all-night diner to see what was going on.
The man who’d read something into the number on the back of the bus started shouting: “It might have a bomb in it! It’s the guy who blew up the drive-in!” He grabbed his girlfriend by the arm and started running up Proctor the other way.
The others on the street exchanged looks, as though pondering what they should do. They seemed torn between moving in for a closer look at what happened—the flower shop’s burglar alarm was whooping loudly and the blaze was spreading from the bus to the building—and running for their lives.
Several of them started to run.
Dwayne heard heavy footsteps coming from the north and turned. It was a male jogger in his mid – to late twenties. He came to a stop next to Dwayne.
“What the hell happened?” asked the jogger, his shirt soaked with sweat.
“Beats me,” said Dwayne. “Thing just flew past here like a space shuttle on reentry.” He gave the jogger a closer look. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You were in the bar the other night, kinda mouthing off at everyone.”
“Yeah, that mighta been me. Had a bit too much. Sorry if I said anything to you—what’s your name?”
“Dwayne.”
“Well, sorry, Dwayne. I’m Victor, by the way.”
“Hey.”
Victor Rooney gazed down the street at the fire with something approaching awe and wonder. “Not the sort of thing you see every day, is it?”
FORTY-SEVEN
DEREK Cutter had set the alarm on his phone for six, but his eyes were open five minutes before it went off. Early-morning sunlight was filtering through the blinds into his bedroom. He could have lain in another five minutes, even a few more after six, but he wanted to get going.
; He was excited.
And surprised. Surprised that he was excited.
Marla Pickens had invited him to come over first thing this morning to have breakfast with Matthew and her. Matthew was her ten-month-old child. Matthew was also, as it turned out, Derek’s ten-month-old child.
Derek was stunned to learn that he was a father, but Marla was also somewhat stunned to learn she was a mother.
More than a year ago, he’d known he was going to become a dad, and he was certainly not excited about the news at the time. Scared shitless was more like it. He and Marla, a woman he’d met at the Thackeray pub, had gone out a couple of times, slept together, and even though that was the kind of activity that he was aware could lead to babies, he was dumbstruck when Marla told him she was pregnant.
He didn’t want a kid, and he didn’t know what the hell to do with one when it arrived. He didn’t know whether Marla even wanted him involved. All he knew was that she intended to have the baby.
Derek was a wreck for months.
Then he got the news.
The baby had died at birth.
He couldn’t believe how it hit him. Months earlier, he would have been secretly relieved to hear Marla had lost the baby. Off the hook. Problem solved. Case dismissed. But he was devastated.
My kid died.
Except, of course, as everyone now knew, that wasn’t what had happened. Marla’s mother and her doctor had tricked her into thinking her baby had not survived. Ten months later, Marla was reunited with her child.
Not that everyone lived happily ever after. Marla’s mother and the doctor were dead. Marla remained pretty screwed up. She’d refused to believe, for several days, that her mother had actually killed herself by jumping off Promise Falls. She and Matthew were living with her father, and being checked on regularly by the local child welfare authorities.
But everyone thought it was a good sign that she wanted to bring Derek into the loop.
Even Derek’s mother and father.
This was the really good part.
He’d figured his parents, Jim and Ellen, would be all over him about this. Still in school, got a girl pregnant, didn’t have a job, why couldn’t he keep it in his pants?—that kind of thing.
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