Can't Stop Loving You

by Janelle Taylor

  Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw something scurry down the wall beside the door. He turned his head just in time to see the biggest cockroach he had ever encountered before it disappeared into a crack near the baseboard.

  Suppressing a shudder, he asked, “Did you say Alan ripped you off?”

  “Among other things. I never realized he was helping himself to the change from my pockets until I caught him red-handed. That was when I threw him out.”

  “What else did he do?” Mariel asked. “You said there were other things.”

  “The guy was a snoop. He opened my mail a couple of times, then said he had done it by accident—that he thought it was addressed to him. And I know he went through a box of letters from my girlfriend—she’s living abroad right now, so we write a lot—because I could tell it had been disturbed, and nobody else could have had access.”

  “Yeah, I don’t doubt that he’d do something like that,” Noah said flatly, thinking that it was mild compared to the way he had violated Noah’s privacy.

  “Don’t trust him, dude,” Chas said. “He has no conscience. He’s pathological. I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I work with kids like that. They don’t care who they hurt with their actions.”

  “Do you think he’s capable of worse than just snooping or stealing?” Mariel asked worriedly.

  Chas shrugged. “Do you mean, is he violent? Hard to tell, but having lived with the guy for a few months, my gut instinct is that he’s just deeply screwed up, and not dangerous.”

  Relieved, Noah asked, “How did you meet him?”

  “Placed an ad in the paper for a roommate. He showed up. He was the most normal dude of the bunch, so I picked him. Now I’m working two jobs to pay the rent on this place until my girlfriend comes back and moves in. Anything’s better than living with some guy off the street again.”

  “I know what you mean,” Noah said. “Look, Chas, I need to track down Alan, and I don’t know where to look. He said he tends bar, but I never bothered to find out where.”

  “What’d he do? Take off with some of your stuff?” Chas asked. “I was surprised it never got that far with me. Then again, it’s not like I’ve got anything anyone would want,” he added ruefully, gazing around at the meager contents of the apartment.

  “No, he’s just taken off, period,” Noah said, not wanting to go into the details. “I need to find him.”

  “Well, he does tend bar. I know that for a fact because I went out with him a few times when he first moved in, and we stopped by the place where he works so we could get some free drinks. It’s a real dive bar, over in the meat-packing district.”

  “Do you know the name of it, or where it was?”

  “I don’t know what the place was called, but I remember the block it was on,” Chas said. “And you can’t miss it—it’s right next door to some gay leather bar that has a whole dungeon thing going on.”

  “Sounds charming,” Mariel said. “Listen, Chas, do you know anything about Alan’s, uh, love life?”

  “You mean, was he straight? Because I can tell you that he definitely wasn’t gay. He was into women.”

  “Did he have a girlfriend?”

  “Nah. Not that I know of. He talked big talk, but I think that was all it was. The guy knew a lot of people wherever we went, but he seemed pretty insecure around women, from what I saw when we went out.”

  Insecure. That would explain why he might be drawn to a teenaged girl. Sick bastard, Noah thought in disgust.

  “Okay, Chas, you’ve got to tell me how to find that bar,” he said, pulling out the Post-it note and a pen he had remembered to put into his pocket.

  A minute later, he and Mariel were on the street again, breathing fresh air and heading for Lenox Avenue to look for a cab.

  “Let me guess—we’re headed for the meat-packing district,” Mariel said, and Noah nodded.

  “Shouldn’t we wait until at least after dark?” she asked, checking her watch. “I mean, isn’t that when most bartenders work?”

  Noah glanced at her wrist and saw that it wasn’t even four o’clock yet. “I don’t want to waste any time,” he said. “Even if Alan isn’t there, the place might be open. And maybe somebody can tell us something about the lowlife. When I find him…” He clenched his fists in fury. “He’s going to pay for what he did.”

  “Noah, you’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Mariel asked worriedly, laying a hand on his bare arm. “He could be dangerous.”

  “If he hurt Amber—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Mariel said, and he allowed himself to be soothed by her voice, and her touch. He let her take his hand as they walked, and he entwined her fingers in his, taking strength from the contact.

  Maybe it was wrong.

  Maybe he should be keeping his distance from her, knowing that if she hadn’t missed her flight, and if he hadn’t caught her at the airport, she would be halfway across the country by now.

  He knew that when this was over, whatever the outcome, they would inevitably say good-bye again.

  How many times could they put themselves through that?

  As many times as it took before they were out of each other’s lives for good, he thought grimly.

  But he didn’t let go of her hand.

  * * *

  The bar was just as Chas had described it—a dive, located beside a strange-looking place that had a false stone facade and bars across the windows.

  “Bet you don’t have places like that in Rockton,” Noah said, and Mariel shook her head with a faint smile.

  As they approached the door of the place where Alan worked, she commented that this neighborhood was even scarier than the last.

  To her surprise, Noah said, “Don’t let appearances fool you. This is one of the trendiest sections of town. There are a lot of hot clubs here, and some of the biggest celebrities in New York hang out here after dark. A few even live here.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief as she looked over her shoulder at the dismal-looking row of warehouse-type buildings on the opposite side of the street.

  “New York is a strange place,” she commented.

  “And it’s filled with strange people,” Noah said dryly as a man walked by wearing a bird cage on his head.

  They laughed, and it helped to relieve the tension.

  But not for long.

  They entered the dimly lit interior. It was nothing more than a hole in the wall, really—a long bar lined with stools along one side of the narrow room, and a few neon-lit beer signs on the wall. There was a füssball table and a dart board, both in a dark corner, looking as though nobody had bothered with them in ages.

  There were a few men seated at the bar, all of them hunched over their mugs in a way that told Mariel they had absolutely nothing better to do on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon in June. It was incredibly depressing.

  Behind the bar, a youngish man with a shaved head eyed them with abstract curiosity. “Can I help you?”

  “Sure,” Noah said, and he slid onto one of the stools.

  Fighting the impulse to wipe it off before she sat on it, Mariel hopped up on the one beside his, trying to look as though she wasn’t squeamish.

  “I’ll have a bottle of Bud,” Noah told the bartender, who nodded and looked expectantly at Mariel.

  Normally, she would order wine, but she didn’t. For one thing, she was skeptical about the caliber of Merlot in this place, and for another, she figured it would be best not to drink out of a glass. Even from here she could see the smudges on the row of mugs and glasses that lined a shelf behind the bar.

  “I’ll have a bottle of Bud, too,” Mariel said.

  “No problem.” The bartender turned away and moments later was plunking two open beers on the bar in front of them.

  The men at the far end of the bar had gone back to their brooding conversation.

  “Hey, buddy, can I ask you something?” Noah asked the bartender, handing him a twenty-dollar b
ill.

  “Got anything smaller?” the bartender asked, ignoring the question.

  Noah shook his head. “Keep it,” he said pointedly, and sipped his beer.

  Mariel almost cringed. Noah had just lost his job. He didn’t have money to throw around. But she knew what he was up to.

  “Can I ask you something?” Noah repeated.

  The bartender’s gaze slid from the bill in his hand to Noah’s face. “What is it?” he asked warily.

  “You know a guy named Alan who works here?”

  “What about him?”

  “I’m trying to find him.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  “He’s my roommate. Hasn’t been around in a few days. I’m worried that something might have happened to him. I know he doesn’t travel in the best circles.”

  “Alan’s all right,” the bartender said. “He worked just last night.”

  “Yeah? Do you know where he’s been staying?”

  “Nah. Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’ll be here at eleven.”

  “I don’t want to wait that long,” Noah said. “I need to find him sooner.”

  “How come?”

  “Like he said, he’s worried,” Mariel told the bartender. “Do you know where he is now?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Where?”

  The guy just looked at Noah. “Why should I tell you? How do I know you’re not looking to cause him trouble?”

  “What is he, a friend of yours?” Noah asked, and Mariel marveled at how he had altered his usual manner of speaking to fit into this place. There was a regional inflection in his voice, the kind of accent she had heard in mob movies set in New York. The kind of accent the bartender himself had.

  “Nah, he just works here. But I don’t know if I should go telling a couple of strangers where he is.”

  Before Noah could make a move, Mariel felt in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out some folded bills she had stashed there. She handed him a twenty. “Tell us.”

  The bartender stuffed the bill into the front pocket of his black jeans. “He’s staying at a friend’s apartment. A friend who bartends here on weekends sometimes. The guy’s away right now, on an out-of-town gig with his band for a few more days. So Alan’s keeping an eye on his place.”

  “He staying there alone?” Noah asked.

  The bartender threw up his hands and said, “I don’t know anything more than that, man. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “You know where this friend lives, though. Right?”

  “It’s way out in Brooklyn. I don’t know where.”

  He was lying, Mariel realized. She could see it in his eyes. He saw her watching him and turned away, picking up a grimy rag and going down to wipe off the other end of the bar.

  “He knows where the apartment is,” Mariel told Noah.

  “Yeah, I’m sure he does, but we’re not going to get it out of him,” Noah replied in a low voice. “We’ll just have to come back here late tonight when Alan’s here.”

  “But then we won’t be able to catch him off guard. This guy’s going to tell him that we’re looking for him.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do,” Noah said. “We’re at a dead end. At least we know Alan’s still in New York, still coming to work.”

  “What if he did something to Amber?” Mariel asked, despair suddenly welling up inside of her again. “Or what if he’s keeping her prisoner somewhere? She could be terrified, and desperate. We have to try to get to her, Noah. We owe her that much.”

  He stared at her, taken aback by her outburst.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, realizing she was on the verge of tears. And here she had been the one holding it together all day, while Noah seemed to be teetering on the brink of losing it altogether. The tables had turned. Her nerves were frazzled; her emotions were shot. She had been living in a state of high anxiety for five days now, and the stress had taken its toll.

  “It’s okay,” Noah said, reaching out to touch her hand.

  “I just keep picturing her somewhere, alone and afraid. I feel like we’ve let her down, Noah. Not just because we haven’t found her yet, but because…”

  She couldn’t say it.

  She had convinced herself repeatedly that giving up the baby had been the right thing to do. She didn’t really believe that it hadn’t been. And yet, if she and Noah had kept Amber and raised her themselves, this wouldn’t have happened. Amber wouldn’t have fallen into the clutches of…

  Well, of whatever Alan was.

  She felt hot tears sliding down her face, and she wiped her cheek against her shoulder, sniffling.

  “Here,” Noah said, reaching into his pocket and offering her a crumpled tissue. “It’s clean.”

  She let out a laugh that sounded more like a choking sob. “Look at this place. It’s the only thing in here that is clean.”

  He laughed, too.

  And then she really did sob—a shuddering sound that escaped her and set off more tears. “I’m sorry, Noah,” she wailed into her tissue. “I just can’t help it. I can’t take this anymore. We have to know what happened to her.”

  “Is everything okay?” a voice asked behind her.

  She turned to see that the bartender had come back to their end of the bar and was watching her.

  She wiped her eyes.

  Noah said shortly, “She’s fine.”

  The guy just watched them for a moment.

  Then he reached for a cocktail napkin behind the bar, grabbed a pencil, and scribbled something on it. He handed it over to Noah, saying, “Here. This is where you’ll find Alan. Good luck.”

  “Guess you’re really getting to know a part of New York most tourists don’t get to see,” Noah commented as they ascended the subway steps and emerged on a Brooklyn street corner. Traffic whizzed by, and pedestrians hurried past them.

  “Yeah, lucky me,” Mariel replied. “Do you even know where we are?”

  “I’ve never been to this part of the city, but it’s pretty safe, from what I know,” he said. They started down the block, passing several men in hats and beards, with curly locks falling past their ears and long black coats flapping around their calves. Most had prayer books tucked under their arms. He noticed the way Mariel gaped at them, and then at the women who trailed behind, wearing prim dresses and stiff wigs.

  “They’re Hasidic Jews,” he explained in a low voice. “There are a lot of them in this neighborhood.”

  She nodded, and sniffed the air. “Something smells wonderful.”

  He saw that they were passing a kosher restaurant. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m too nervous to be hungry. But it smells good.”

  “When this is all over, I’ll take you to a place like that,” he said without thinking.

  “That would be great.”

  But he heard the awkwardness in her voice. Dammit, he had crossed the line again. He had acted as though they had a future, even the slightest future, once they found their daughter.

  “What kind of food do they serve?” she asked as they walked on.

  “In a kosher restaurant?”

  She nodded.

  Grateful for something to say—something that couldn’t get him into trouble—he said, “They have bagels and lox, and soup—mushroom barley and matzoh ball. And chopped liver and whitefish salad. And knishes, and kasha, and blintzes, and the best sandwiches you’ve ever tasted. Piles of pastrami and corned beef, with real pickles.”

  She laughed. “As opposed to fake pickles?”

  “As opposed to those limp, murky green slices that come in ajar from a supermarket shelf.”

  “There goes my taste for deli food,” she said as they rounded a corner.

  Noah looked up at the street sign and saw that this was the block they were looking for. So did she, and her grin faded.

  “What are we going to do when we find him?” Mariel asked, hanging back a little as they approached the address, an aluminum
-sided, two-family row house. All the houses on the block looked the same, fronted by chain-link fences and concrete stoops.

  “We’re going to ask him what the hell he did with Amber,” Noah replied, his gut clenching in anticipation of the confrontation that with any luck, was about to unfold. All the way down here on the subway, he had prayed that Alan would be at home. Knowing his roommate, there was a good chance of that.

  “What if he tries something?” Mariel asked. “What if he pulls a gun on us, Noah?”

  “He won’t,” Noah said with a confidence he didn’t feel.

  They made their way up the steps. Noah rang the bell for the upper apartment.

  They waited.

  Then they heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

  Noah shouldered his body in front of Mariel, instinctively shielding her from whatever was about to happen.

  Then the door opened and Alan stood there.

  “Noah! What the hell…?”

  “Where’s my daughter, you S.O.B.?” Noah asked, pushing past him, pulling Mariel along.

  Looking dazed, Alan protested, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” Noah said, taking the narrow flight of stairs two at a time, Mariel keeping up with him.

  Alan had managed to compose himself and hurried up the steps behind them, sputtering, “What are you talking about?”

  “You know,” Noah said, storming through the open apartment door and looking around the small living room. The television was tuned to MTV, and the pillows were propped on the couch in a way that indicated that Alan had been sprawled there before he answered the door.

  With Mariel on his heels, Noah strode into the next room, and then into the next, looking around, finding no sign of another person in the small kitchenette or bedroom with its pullout futon.

  He returned to the living room and faced Alan, who stood there wearing a bemused expression. “Where is Amber?” he demanded. “And don’t pretend that you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, because we read your e-mails. The ones where you pretended to be me and lured Amber Steadman to New York. Where is she?”