Too early to go out looking for Bree. Too early to do anything but sleep, and he pulls the covers up around his head.
It’s still dark when Fisher’s woken by a hammering on his door. Pax struggles to his feet and lets out a throaty volley of barks. Fisher rolls over. His alarm says 8:03. He’d meant to get up an hour ago, and now he remembers why. He needs to look for Bree. He needs to be on guard in this strange new world where Bree’s shot Brian, and Brian’s dead and been dumped in the river.
Bree: he has to tell her he’s taken care of things and she doesn’t need to hide, that in fact it’d be better not to. She must have holed up with a friend. He knows a few names and faces: Frisbee with his curtain of dark hair across his face, Jen with her sulky lips and too-small nose, Tomas who’s tall and lanky and restless, Logan—all he can picture of that kid is his green baseball cap. But where do these kids live? How the hell can he find them?
He rolls over. The sheets are cold through his longjohns. His head’s clogged and heavy, and his breath whistles through his nose like someone trying out a tune. He pulls a tissue from the box by his bed and blows his nose hard enough to drag up a hurt deep behind his eyes, then he blows again and drops the tissue into the pile on the carpet.
Whoever’s at the door hasn’t given up. Another rat-tat-tat of knocks and Pax barks back, then glances through the darkness at Fisher. For a moment he thinks: it’s Bree. Then his insides turn to liquid—Christ, it could be the cops. He tells himself that’s impossible, but his body won’t believe him and his legs tremble as he hoists them over the edge of his bed. The edge of the mattress digs into his thighs and the room’s chill makes him shiver hard. “Fuck,” he says to himself, “fuck fuck fuck.” Pax pushes his nose against his hand. It’s warm and dry as leather. Pax lifts a paw and his claws scratch down Fisher’s shin. Is he urging Fisher to his feet? He gently pushes the dog away and hauls on his jeans.
From the living room he catches the low lurching grumble of a badly tuned engine. The light spilling through the curtain’s a ghastly white. Headlights. His asshole grows tight and damp with fear. He waits for the light to pulse red and blue and red again in that Christmas-tree effect the cops favor these days. Is that how they come for people? With their colored lights giving them away? Maybe that’s just for traffic stops. Besides, surely they’d be cleverer than that if they thought he was a murderer.
He pads across to the window in his bare feet. His guts have curdled, his hand’s jerky, but he pulls back the edge of the curtain and rubs at the ice on the glass until he’s melted a hole. On his steps someone’s waiting, head tilted toward his door, hand raised to knock again.
The sight of that person makes him think: Brian. A zombie-Brian with decaying skin and gelid eyes and nothing in his head except vengeance.
But if Brian’s come back for him, Brian’s found himself a parka and a pickup that he’s left running in the driveway.
Grisby? he thinks. Maybe he’s borrowed a vehicle, because that’s not the ridiculous VW Rabbit he drives. But why would he have come out here at this time of the morning when he should be at work? No, he thinks, not Grisby. Grisby’s busy at the diner and will be until two, and those boxes of electronics and guns and God-knows-what-else stacked by his door will stay there, safe for the time being.
Fisher’s breath freezes on the glass and he rubs it again. Whoever’s come for him isn’t tall. For one heady moment he’s sure it’s Breehan and, like a jerk, here he is leaving her knocking and knocking on his door. He’s just about to let her in when he hears, “Mikey—I know you’re in there. For pity’s sake, open up before I freeze to death.”
A raw voice. Ada. His step-mother. Christ. Fisher lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He thinks: of course, fear can do strange things to you. Breehan went to the motel, never mind that she hates Ada and Ada hates her back. Why didn’t he think of that before? And now here’s Ada because she wants Bree off her hands. “Coming,” he shouts. “Give me a moment.”
His T-shirt doesn’t quite cover the bulge of his belly. He’s not going to open the door with his gut slumping over the top of his jeans, because she’ll say something acid, she just can’t let an opportunity pass.
Her voice comes through the door again. “What d’you think—it’s Hawaii out here? Let me in.”
“Coming,” he yells, but he’s digging through the jackets and coats hanging behind the door until he finds a fleece. He shrugs himself into it and snaps on the lights, and the whole time she’s talking, saying things like, “You can’t treat people like this, Mikey, how many times do I have to tell you?” and “Have you got someone in there? Is that it?”
The lock’s so frosted up and cold it burns his fingers. He swings open the door and ice fog rolls across the carpet like a cheap movie effect, bringing Ada with it.
He opens his mouth to ask, “Breehan?” but he doesn’t even get the first sound out because Ada’s saying, “Eight o’clock—right? I said I’d come fetch you. You went and forgot, didn’t you? Didn’t even bother to set your alarm. Most people are up by now, you know that? Most people are on their way to work already.”
A twinge of recollection: at the weekend Ada called and asked him to come with her to the hardware store Thursday morning. He’d said yes, probably, could tell her for sure when he had his schedule for the week, then the whole memory of it had slipped away.
“You were gonna call,” he says. “I didn’t know my shifts.”
“Honestly, Mikey—I did call, yesterday evening. I told you to call back if you couldn’t make it, and you didn’t. Now I’m thinking you didn’t even check your messages. What’s up with you?”
“For Christssakes, you can’t just take it for granted I can come—and as it turns out, I can’t. I’ve got stuff to take care of this morning, urgent stuff.”
She’s unzipping her parka, but she pauses. “Oh yeah? What sort of urgent stuff?” Her eyes are hard on his and he can’t think of a single thing to say that won’t sound lame.
She takes off her parka and dumps it on the armchair, then looks back at him with her mouth twisted to one side. “Like I thought,” she says and walks over to the kitchen in her boots, like there’s nothing wrong with treading snow across someone else’s carpet, especially not your stepson’s and especially because, as she’s told him pretty much every time she’s been here, it’s so filthy she can’t bear the thought of standing on it in her socks.
The snow boots exaggerate the thinness of her legs, but in truth she’s a stick of a woman and proud of it. That must be why she wears tight white pants and a close-fitting fire-truck-red sweater whose v-neck shows off the wrinkled skin above her breasts. Around her neck gleams a gold chain and a cross stuck with diamonds, real ones but small as grit. Her lipstick’s the same red as her sweater, her hair so blonde it’s almost white. It’s been pulled back in a pony-tail and her bangs teased and sprayed into a froth over her forehead, like she’s still twenty-something and can get away with dressing like a cheerleader. You’d think after all these years Fisher’d be used to the sight of her, but he isn’t. She’s all wrong, as wrong as the motel she runs with his dad with its phony antique clock in the reception area, and its vases of silk flowers, the cheap prints of Denali on the wall, the warm stink of her cigarettes beneath the fake-vanilla scent of air-freshener and, worst of all, the cheery Hi there she croaks out to guests. Every time he sets foot in the place he wants to tell her, you’re not fooling anyone.
But maybe she knows that and wants her hardness to shine out like a warning. That’s what occurred to Fisher when he was twelve and his dad led her into the kitchen and left her standing by the sink as he helped himself to a beer from the fridge. He took a swig and wiped his lips on his wrist before he told Fisher, “This is your new mom. You be good to her, you hear?” Fisher glanced over at her. She was leaning against the sink tapping her cigarette ash into the drain. Her low-cut sweate
r was a sour-apple green and her yellow pants so tight they showed the fleshy crease of her crotch.
Maybe she caught him looking, because as soon as his dad sat in front of the TV in the living room she came close, so close that the soft skin above her breasts was only inches from his nose. “Have a good look, I know what boys are like,” she said, “but don’t go getting ideas.” She let her smoke snake out of her nostrils. “I don’t like sneaks or pervs. You want kicks, don’t get them by spying on me and your dad, or you’ll be out on your ear before you can say jerking off. Got it? I’m not your mom. I’m not the maid, or the cook, or the nurse. You want something, go get it yourself. You see something needs taking care of, you take care of it. If you’re not happy, you shut up or you leave. This is my home now, and don’t you forget it.”
Within a few days the photos of his mom that had stood on the TV were gone. Fisher found them in the trash. He took them from their frames and carried them inside and hid them at the back of his closet. This is what he understood about what had happened to his mom: she’d been out late one night and hadn’t come home. Someone had called the cops because by a small lake up at the university a car had been found and a woman a few yards away, her head and chest in the water. A single shot to the head, her body dumped, and no one ever arrested for it. Four months later, his dad married Ada.
Now here she is popping the carafe from his coffee-machine and filling it at the sink like she owns the place. “Go wash your face, Mikey, and hurry up about it. I had to leave your dad handling the desk on his own, and he’s as crabby as you in the morning.”
Fisher hasn’t moved. “I told you—I can’t do it, not today.”
Over her shoulder she says, “You knew I was gonna call—why couldn’t you check your messages? You do it on purpose, don’t you?” Then her voice stops and her face hardens. She’s peering past him. Without looking he knows what she’s spotted. Brian’s bag. Standing a few feet away against the wall. “So that’s how it is—you’ve got someone staying.” She sets down the carafe and looks around, as though there might be other signs of a visitor that she’s overlooked.
“Fuck, no,” he says. “No one’s here except me.”
“You can stop with that language. If you couldn’t make it this morning, you should’ve let me know. It’s only common human decency—or is that beyond you? And now you’re too busy to help out because something better’s come up. You’re off somewhere and you couldn’t care less about leaving me in the lurch, like it’s not worth a second thought when I organized my day around you coming with me.”
“No, it’s not like that. I’m not off anywhere. Christ, I just have stuff to take care of. We can do this another day.”
“Maybe you can. I have a business to run.” She empties the carafe into the machine and slaps down the lid. She wipes her hands down her sweater as she comes across the carpet. “My, what a nice bag,” she says. “It’s not you at all.”
It’s not until she tilts her head at an odd angle that he looks down at the bag too. Stark against its black side, the luggage label in its plastic pouch. Ada’s stooping toward it when Fisher snatches at the handle and the handle telescopes out, making the bag totter. “Christ,” he hisses, “it’s just a bag, all right?” and he drags it behind him, squeaking on its tiny wheels, pitching and tipping, into the bedroom. He rips off the tag. BRIAN ARMSTRONG written in clear black capitals and then The Marriott Arbor, 1570 City Road, Denver CO. The Marriott Arbor, for fuck’s sake. How did he come up with that? He tucks it into his jeans pocket then shoves the bag into the closet.
His hands are damp. His heart’s throwing itself against his ribs like it wants to burst out. Christ, he thinks, one small thing and she’s onto it. He sits on the edge of the bed and presses his fists against his cheeks. Did she see the name? Was she close enough?
When he looks down, Pax is watching him from the floor. What sad eyes—and how unlike him not to come see who’s here. Fisher cups the dog’s head with his hand. “You poor old boy,” he says. “Not feeling so good, are you?” Pax lets out a snuffling yawn and sits up to push his muzzle into Fisher’s palm. But soon even that’s too much effort, and he sinks onto his paws with his soft belly across Fisher’s feet.
Fisher thinks, I have to get rid of her. He thinks, Where the hell can Breehan be? How can I find her friends? But maybe she’s been smarter than that. Could be she took off with one of Brian’s credit cards. If she’s got money there are any number of places she could have hidden away; could have bought herself a flight to the Lower Forty-Eight, to Canada, even. He wonders if she has a passport. How could he not know?
Before long the smell of coffee has forced its way through the trailer and when Fisher comes out of the bathroom, unshaven but washed and hair wetted down at least, Ada’s at the kitchen table with a mug in front of her. She puts a cigarette between her lips and takes a lighter from her pocket.
“Not in here,” he tells her.
“You’re not going to make me smoke outside at fifty below, Mikey. Forget that.” She holds a flame to her cigarette and lets the smoke flare from her nostrils, then she takes a sip of the coffee and makes a face. “No milk, no cream—not even creamer. You need to get yourself together. I don’t know how you can live like this. Look at you: forty-three and on your own. One glance says it all, believe me. You need a shave, you need to lose a hundred pounds, you need decent clothes that fit you. Who wants a guy who doesn’t take care of himself, huhn? I’d run a mile, I tell you.” She taps a few flakes of ash from her cigarette into a beer can she must have dug out of the trash and takes another drag.
He bites his teeth together and pours himself some coffee. In the thin electric light he can see the bottom of the mug through it, knows before he takes a sip how bad it’s going to be: the flavor of the coffee floating tenuously over the hard taste of boiled water. Ada’s coffee. Miserly coffee, hardly worth the effort of drinking.
She sits with her elbows raised, as though she can’t bear to rest them on his table with its crumbs and stains. To make her point, she scratches one red nail at something caked onto the wood and exhales more smoke through her nose, her lips compressed so he’ll knows she’s disgusted.
He says, more loudly than he intended, “I’ll come with you some other morning, but today’s just not gonna work. Sorry you had a wasted trip. And put out that goddamn cigarette, you know it’s bad for my sinuses.”
“Sorry?” she spits back. “Sorry?” She gets to her feet, her skin looking creased as crumpled tissue in this light, her eyes bright and hard. “You listen, Mikey. I don’t want excuses. You need to learn a little responsibility. I haven’t got time to drive all the way out here only to find out you’ve got better things to do than help me like you promised.” She steps so close that the smoke trailing from her cigarette drifts into his face. He shifts his head, but it’s too late because the smoke’s found its way inside him, prickling the soft flesh of his sinuses until it swells. He presses his fingers against his nose to stifle a sneeze.
“I told you,” he says, “something’s come up that I have to take care of. Besides,” and he steps away, “why don’t you ask Lyle? That’s what you pay him for.”
“Don’t start in on that. This isn’t about Lyle, it’s about you.”
“Got better things to do, has he? What’s it this time? Another doctor’s appointment? Or frozen pipes and he’s waiting for the plumber? A great handyman he’s turned out to be. If he wasn’t your nephew you’d have fired him long ago.” He pushes his fists into his pockets and looms over her. “I told you I’d help out when I could. That’s the best I can do. Now, you need to leave because I’ve got to get going.” He even starts toward the door, as though there’s any hope she’ll follow.
When he glances back she’s got her arm crooked to hold her cigarette close to the red gash of her mouth. “Well, aren’t you the assertive one,” she says quietly. She purses her lips and
sucks hard on the cigarette. “Eager to get rid of me, aren’t you? And why would that be?” Smoke gathers about her head and she waves it away. “Wouldn’t be something to do with that bag, would it? Maybe I should go take a closer look. Where’d you hide it? Under your bed, or in your closet?”
“Fuck you.”
“You never were much good at secrets, Mikey. What’s it this time?”
He stares back at her and the world shrinks, painfully. He tells himself not to say anything, but the silence wraps itself around him until he’s trapped and he hears himself tell her, “Just doing someone a favor.”
When she smiles he knows he’s lost. “Sure you are,” she says, “just looking after someone else’s bag. That’s a big favor all right,” and she touches the stiff froth of hair above her forehead. “I can pretend I didn’t see it. Is that what you want? Huhn? Now, hurry up and get your coat on, I’m already running late.” Then she drops her cigarette into the beer can, where it hisses.
13
IT GNAWS AT Fisher, the time wasted going to the hardware store when Bree’s out there somewhere, maybe scared out of her mind. He turns off the car radio when the news starts, turns it on again with the volume way up. A local guy threatened with jail time after a court appearance over unpaid taxes when he cursed out the judge. Air quality in town dangerous thanks to the inversion. Nothing about a body being found, but then, what’s he thinking? Sunrise isn’t for another couple of hours, and even in the tepid pre-dawn light, who’s going to think a tarp caught in the river is anything worth taking the trouble to pull out?
He follows the blink-bliiiink of Ada’s brakelights, because she drives with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas and won’t be told not to. This morning the sight of those lights needles him because it’s Ada all over, driving like she doesn’t give a shit about anyone else, swerving between a semi and a square box of a car like she has every right to, never mind that the semi brakes and lets out a blast of horn. Ada always has to have her own way. She had to hire Lyle as the motel handyman, though she must’ve known Lyle’s a useless fuckwit who can’t put up a towel rack straight, and besides, he always has better things to do than work. Two years of that crap: Lyle getting paid and Ada calling Fisher to fix dripping taps and holes in walls because Lyle’s too busy, or his truck’s in the shop, or he’s off moose-hunting, or dip-netting down in Chitina, always something, but she forgives him because he wanted to see Alaska and she promised him a job if he moved here.
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