Dark Debts

by Karen Hall

  “Like Pluto.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Cam got that serious expression on his face again. “Do you realize this is the first time since we’ve known each other that we’ve both been single at the same time?”

  Randa hadn’t thought about it. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  Cam picked up his fork, then put it down again. He looked at Randa, then shifted to face her. When he spoke, his voice was different, almost tentative. “Have you ever wondered what we’d be like . . . you know, as a couple?”

  Randa had to remind herself to breathe. “Yeah, I’ve wondered. But I thought you . . .”

  “What?”

  “I thought you didn’t think of me, you know, like that.”

  “I thought you didn’t think of me like that.”

  They both smiled at the irony.

  “So what do you think? How would we be?”

  “I think . . . we’d be great.” Randa said it in a quiet voice, wondering if that was the answer he had expected. Cam smiled, and reached down and took her hand. She didn’t have the presence of mind to feel awkward about it.

  “See, I think the reason I keep getting into these stupid relationships is that I don’t care who I’m with if I can’t be with you.” He smiled self-consciously. “I never said anything because I was afraid of what your reaction would be.”

  Randa heard the words, but she kept waiting for the punch line. This couldn’t possibly be real.

  “Cam,” she managed to say, “tell me this isn’t a joke.”

  “Of course it’s not a joke.” He reached up and pushed a strand of hair away from her face; she felt the back of his hand brush her cheek. He kissed her, before she even had time to wonder if he was going to. Then he smiled and said, “God, I’ve been wanting to do that for so long.”

  “Me too,” she whispered, afraid saying it out loud might jinx something. She could have happily died on the spot. Many times since then, she’d wished she had.

  The scene in Randa’s mind vanished suddenly, as if the film had snapped in the projector. She couldn’t bear to think any further than that. The tears she’d been holding back broke through and slid down her face; they felt like an invasion, but she couldn’t bring herself to wipe them away.

  She sat in her car for a long time, watching the ocean, trying to lose herself in the waves that rolled onto the sand one after another, effortlessly, as if this were any normal day.

  Nick Varella answered the door with a scotch in his hand, very obviously not his first of the day. He had two days’ growth of beard and his dark hair looked as if he’d just been in a strong wind. Randa had heard about Nick for years, but had never met him or even seen him before. He was the best friend Cam had, but not in a conventional way. They only got together about four times a year, but Randa knew that Cam told Nick things he never told anyone else. (Probably because whenever they met the main objective was to see who could consume the largest amount of alcohol in the shortest amount of time.) Even though their careers were roughly parallel—Nick’s science-fiction novels were as respected in that genre as Cam’s crime novels were in theirs—Cam considered Nick a mentor. Or maybe a surrogate brother. At any rate, Randa had heard about Nick until she felt she knew him. At least, she had until he answered the door and she was faced with having to explain her presence.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Randa Phillips.” She saw no reason to beat around the bush.

  “Oh. Wow. Hi.” He was staring at her, his eyebrows arched in a way she couldn’t interpret. Maybe it just had to do with being thrown a curve when he was too drunk to handle it. Or maybe no one ever dropped in on him; he was a notorious hermit. She could hear loud music coming from the back of the house, and it suddenly occurred to her he might not be alone. That possibility hadn’t entered her mind when she’d decided to go see him. God, can’t you ever think anything through?

  “I wondered if I could . . .” What? She hadn’t really thought about what she’d say. She tried again. “I know you don’t know me and this is a bad time, but I have to talk to someone.”

  He just kept staring at her. She suddenly felt very foolish.

  “I’m sorry, this was a stupid idea.” She turned to leave, but he grabbed her elbow.

  “No. Don’t go. I’m just . . . I’m not very good at spontaneity.” He held up the drink by way of explanation. “I’m also not thinking all that clearly, thank God.” He finally smiled. “Wanna join me?”

  She managed a nod. He opened the door wider and motioned her inside. He led her down a narrow hall into a room that, judging by the advanced degree of clutter, was where he spent most of his time. The music was coming from an elaborate stereo system against the back wall. It was loud, angry heavy metal; raspy voices screaming unintelligible lyrics. Nick went straight to the makeshift bar and started tossing ice cubes into a glass. “What can I pour you, given I don’t have anything dainty?”

  “Do you have any tequila?”

  “Now, what do you think?” He had already picked up a bottle of Cuervo Gold. “You’re not expecting me to mix it with anything that would require concentration, I hope.”

  “Straight is fine.” The music was already wearing on her nerves. Nick poured the glass half-full and handed it to her. He lifted his glass in a semi-toast.

  “Well . . . Life sucks.” With that he downed half a glass of scotch. Randa sipped the tequila. The slow burn felt great; she followed it with a healthy slug.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet you.” It would have sounded dumb even if she hadn’t had to shout.

  “Yeah. I wanted to meet you, too. Just not bad enough to go to one of Cam’s parties. He probably told you I can’t be in a room with more than three people. With special dispensation for strip joints.” He polished off the rest of the scotch with ease. “Guess I’ll have to add funeral parlors to the list.”

  She couldn’t decide whether she liked him or not, but straining to hear made it hard to think. She pointed to the stereo.

  “Could you maybe turn the music down a little?”

  “Why?”

  “So we won’t have to shout.”

  “It’s good for you.” She’d had this exact conversation with Cam, more times than she could count. She wasn’t in the mood for it.

  “I’m really not up to fighting with anything.”

  He shrugged and went over to the stereo. “This is very controlling behavior,” he said as he lowered the volume. Randa burst into tears. Nick immediately turned the stereo off, came over, and put his arms around her.

  “I’m sorry. I was kidding. I’m really sorry.”

  “Cam used to say that.” It came out in a choked whisper.

  “I know,” Nick said, rocking her gently. “That’s where I got it.” Now that she was close enough to tell, his eyes were none too dry, either.

  They sat in a booth in a tiny Spanish restaurant on Alameda and shared a pitcher of something that was supposed to be sangria. Randa felt pretty sure it was actually cheap burgundy someone had poured into a pitcher along with a can of fruit cocktail, but if it would anesthetize her, she didn’t care.

  “I thought . . . maybe you could shed some light on it.”

  “You’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Well, I hadn’t seen him in a year; you surely know more than I do. Had he been more depressed than usual? Had he called you up and said, ‘Guess what, Nick, I just robbed a liquor store’?”

  “I haven’t . . . hadn’t . . . seen him in a couple of weeks, so I don’t know what his most recent frame of mind has been . . . had been . . .” He sighed. “Christ.” He stared at his wine glass for a long moment. He finally continued.

  “He certainly didn’t call me and tell me he robbed a liquor store, not that he would have. But . . .” He bit his bottom lip and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just . . .” He looked up, directly into her eyes, as if he’d made some sort of decision. “I wasn’t terri
bly surprised when I heard that.”

  Randa stared at him, shocked. “You weren’t?”

  “Cam had been acting very strange. I think he just . . .” He stopped; seemed to change direction. “A couple of months ago, he ditched Nora, out of the clear blue sky.”

  Randa listened, trying not to have any opinion that would show on her face.

  “He didn’t tell her why, and he didn’t even tell anyone else that it had happened. I only found out because I ran into her at the Beverly Center.” He smiled. “Oh, yeah. I make an exception for that, too. But only on weekdays, and never when there are sales.”

  Randa smiled and forced back all the questions she wanted to ask.

  How did she look? Devastated, I hope?

  Nick fished a square of peach out of his glass with his spoon, popped it in his mouth, and went on. “Anyway, I asked Cam about it; he just said he had to be alone. I never could get any more out of him than that, but you know Cam. They come, they go . . .”

  Randa winced a little. Nick caught himself.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .” He seemed genuinely embarrassed. “See, I don’t put you in that category, so I’m not careful.”

  “What category do you put me in?” Randa asked, genuinely interested.

  “I don’t know if I could name it,” he said, speaking slowly, as if stalling for time. “There’s one thing; I don’t know if this will help you. Cam used to say something to me, over the years, every time I’d ask him why the two of you weren’t together, if he was so crazy about you. He’d always say he couldn’t be in a romantic relationship with you, and I’d ask why, and he’d say, ‘I love her too much.’ ”

  Randa felt her brow furrow. “What does that mean?”

  Nick looked at her. He seemed to be playing this conversation like a game of chess.

  “He never would tell me what it meant. Except for one night . . . It was very late, we’d all been over at Roger’s, playing poker. Cam and I went back to his apartment to see how much drunker we could possibly get, I guess. Anyway, it was about three in the morning and we were both several sheets to the wind, and Cam started talking about you. I don’t know why. I think it was right after you guys had started to . . . date.” He smiled. “I’ll be a gentleman.”

  He paused to take a sip from his wine glass and seemed to weigh the decision to tell her these things one more time. He looked back at Randa. “Cam told me he truly believed there was some kind of a curse on his family. Not like spells and witches and all that, but some real thing that was like this black cloud of bad luck. And he was convinced that if he got very involved with you, it would infect you and ruin your life.”

  Randa stared at him. “That’s crazy.”

  Nick nodded. “I know. I never said this was going to make sense. I just said I’d tell you.

  “Anyway,” he continued, before Randa could figure out what to say, “that’s just a digression. Although it may have been the beginning, and I just didn’t see it.”

  “The beginning of what?”

  “Like I said, Cam had gotten really weird. Even for him.”

  “Weird how?”

  “First, he started calling me all the time. Three or four times a day. Only me, from what I can tell. And he was saying all these bizarre things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like, he was having these nightmares, but he was convinced they weren’t dreams. He said he thought he was ‘going somewhere’ in his sleep.”

  Randa frowned, trying to follow. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t know. But he just became more and more insistent that these dreams were more than dreams, and he thought they were going to end up hurting him somehow. I guess he got sick of trying to convince me; he finally stopped talking about it. But then he started to get very paranoid. When we would go somewhere, anywhere, even during the day, he’d always look around, like he was afraid someone was following us. I’d ask him why he was doing that, and he’d either deny he was doing it or just say ‘no reason.’

  “He’d call me late at night, and he’d just talk forever about nothing, or he’d try to get me into some long, complicated argument. I always felt he was trying to keep me from hanging up. Or he’d show up at night, unannounced, and stay until very, very late, and then sleep on the couch. He’d claim he was too drunk to drive.” He stopped, looked at her. “Does that sound like Cam to you?”

  Randa shook her head. It didn’t. “What do you think all that was about?”

  “I don’t know. But I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” He picked up his wine glass and emptied it. He refilled both their glasses with the last of the alleged sangria. Finally he was ready to resume. He looked at her.

  “A couple of weeks ago, he told me he had seen Tallen.”

  Randa stared at him. The restaurant suddenly seemed eerily quiet.

  “He what?”

  “That’s what he said. He was adamant about it.”

  Randa was still struggling to understand. “You mean, he saw someone in a crowd who looked like Tallen?”

  Nick shook his head. “No. Tallen. In his apartment. He woke up one night and there was Tallen. He swore it. He saw Tallen, they talked, Tallen told him things . . . We never got to what Tallen told him. By that time, I had stopped him, I just couldn’t listen to it. I told him I was worried about him and I thought he should stop drinking and find a better shrink. He got furious and stormed out of my house.” Nick was quiet for a moment; he looked pained. When he spoke, his voice was different. “That was the last time I saw him.”

  Randa didn’t know what to say, what to do with any of this. Nick shook his head a little, as if coming out of a trance.

  “So,” he continued, “all in all, the liquor store thing just didn’t shock me.”

  “You think he was . . .” Randa couldn’t bring herself to say any of the possible words.

  Nick was nodding. “There’s that tiny line between eccentric and insane . . . Somehow, when nobody was paying attention, he just crossed over.” He looked away, and spoke as if he were talking to himself. “Let’s face it. How long could anyone expect him to keep it up—walking around, pretending to be normal, pretending he lived on the same planet with everyone else, like they . . . like we had any way to comprehend what he’d been through, what he had to live with . . .” He paused for a moment and shook his head. “In my humble opinion,” he continued quietly, “the question we should all be asking ourselves is not ‘How could this happen?’ but ‘Why did it take so long?’ ”

  Randa sat back in the booth, dazed, trying to take it in and wondering how much a pack of cigarettes went for these days. Nick motioned to the waiter to bring them another pitcher of fake sangria.

  The door to Cam’s apartment looked perfectly normal. Randa had expected there to be police tape, or at least some kind of note. She opened the door with the key she had never returned (not that he’d ever asked her to) and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and locked it.

  Nothing had changed. It looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen it. She was sure that if she looked hard enough, she’d see signs of Nora’s having passed through, but she didn’t plan to look that hard.

  She had decided to come here halfway through the second pitcher of sangria. She told herself she wanted to pick up the things that were hers, but she knew the real reason had little to do with two Pyrex casserole dishes and a spare hair dryer. Now that she was here, she realized that all she really wanted was some sort of closure. She had lived without it for the last year, but she couldn’t go on without it for the rest of her life.

  She did have one real quest. There were a couple of scrapbooks—the last remaining vestiges of Cam’s family, except for Jack, assuming he was still alive. Randa didn’t know what she’d do with them, but she knew she’d make sure they were kept safe. She didn’t know why that felt so important, but it did. Just the thought that generations of people had been whittled down to two tatte
red books of yellowed paper and faded black-and-white photos. The books seemed sacred to her; they were the only remaining evidence that any of these people had ever lived.

  Randa looked around, trying to remember where Cam had kept the scrapbooks. She checked the hall closets, but all they contained were clothes and boxes of old magazines. She would have to check the bedroom, something she’d hoped to avoid at all costs—she was sure she would find the scrapbooks there.

  The bedroom looked the same, too. The door to one of the closets was open, and there were clothes strewn on the floor in front of it, where the cops had plowed through. They’d obviously found the gun without much trouble. She didn’t see any sign of the scrapbooks. Without giving it a lot of thought, she went over and opened the door to the other closet. A couple of shirts hung on a hook inside the door; they brushed her face as the door opened. They smelled like Cam. She hadn’t expected this, and the full force of the pain made its way through the wine and the denial. She bent over, as a sob hit her, and let herself sink to the floor, and gave herself up to the misery.

  When Randa finally stopped, she felt as if something inside her had given way, like a fever breaking. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of one of the shirts—a faded red brushed silk, from Traffic at the Beverly Center. She had been with Cam the day he bought it. (“Randa, what about this red one? It matches my eyes.”) She took a couple of deep breaths and was about to stand when she saw the scrapbooks on the floor next to her. She gathered them in her arms and pulled herself to her feet.

  On her way out, she noticed something on the nightstand: a pen and a sheet of paper. The paper was covered with doodles: trees; dollar signs; a skull atop a mound of bones. A couple of phone numbers. One was hers. The other was an 800 number. Unable to resist, she picked up the phone and dialed it.

  “Thank you for calling Delta Airlines. All of our agents are busy at this time . . .”

  Randa hung up. She looked at the pad again. Cam had written #178 in the middle of all the pictures and circled it. Randa dialed Delta again. When she got an agent, she was informed that 178 was one of the morning flights from LA to Atlanta.