Safer

by Sean Doolittle

  I do my best to appear indifferent to the story he’s telling me. But Roger now has my full attention, and he knows it. Nothing about this situation is beyond his grasp. It never has been.

  “What else would she say?”

  “She’d say that summer ended, and school started again, and along the way, the two of them wound up getting into a spat over some boy.” He nods sadly. True story. “She’d say that it turned out her best girlfriend Rachel hadn’t deleted those pictures the way she’d said.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “She’d admit that, around November, her best girlfriend Rachel threatened to e-mail a few of those pictures to the eighth- grade football team, including the boy they were fighting over in the first place.”

  “How do you know all this, Roger?”

  “Brit told me.”

  “She told you.”

  He leans back again. “Not sure if the poor kid was more afraid of the pictures getting out or the thought of the school calling her folks.” A shrug. “So she came to someone she knew she could count on.”

  “And that would be you?”

  “That would be me,” he says. “And I took care of it.”

  “How do you mean, you took care of it?”

  “That’s not important.”

  Of course it isn’t. Silly me. None of this sounds believable to me. How would it sound believable to anyone else? “And Brit’s lying about all of this now because …”

  “Because I told her to, Paul. I think you know that I had my reasons. When I tell her it’s time to tell the truth, that’s just what she’ll do.”

  “Hang on a sec. Let me go get my tape recorder.”

  Roger smirks like he just can’t help but like me, despite our differences. “All kidding aside, I don’t want to see you go to prison. You can believe that or not, but I don’t. I don’t want it for you, don’t want it for Sara.”

  “That’s sweet of you.”

  “But I still can’t have you in the circle. Not anymore.”

  I nod along. “Loose threads and whatnot. Communities unravel, society crumbles. The terrorists win.”

  “Make fun all you like. I’m still here.”

  “Offering a truce. Right.”

  “I’m offering you a chance to walk away from all this.”

  “What about Brit?”

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “What chance does she get to walk away from this?”

  “Brit’s a tough kid. Maybe she’ll even learn a little something. A few years down the road, this will all be behind her.”

  It’s amazing, really. Looking at Roger, having a casual conversation in some other context, you’d never imagine the worms twisting around inside his head. “You mean like how to trust the people in her life she thinks she can count on? Something like that?”

  “Paul, there are things—”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. There are things I don’t know.”

  “Did you know that Melody found marijuana in Brit’s dresser drawer a couple weeks ago?”

  “Nope.” I write it down in an imaginary notepad. “Things Paul doesn’t know. Item one.”

  “Did you know that Pete caught her with a—”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I guess I don’t watch what my neighbors are up to quite as closely as you do.”

  “I can tell you one thing I’ve watched.” He takes a grave tone. “When I was on the force, I watched kids no older than Brit end up in court, in rehab, pregnant, in car wrecks, couple of ‘em even in caskets. I could tell you—”

  “That’s not necessary,” I say. “You obviously have the girl’s best interests at heart. She’s lucky to have someone like you in her life.”

  “The fact is, Brittany made me a promise not very long ago. So far, it’s a promise she hasn’t been doing a very good job of keeping.” Roger straightens his spine. “At this point, maybe a good kick in the ass is the best thing for her.”

  I’ve reached my limit. There’s no arguing this.

  I think about what Roger has told me. This story of a hormone- drenched feud between two teenage girls. It makes a prime- time- news kind of sense, and I honestly feel relief for Brittany. These photos were just a dumb gag.

  And then again, it doesn’t make any sense at all. According to Roger, Brit was so scared at the thought of the photos floating around that she went to him for help. And now she’s turned the same photos over to the police? Instead of being embarrassed at school, she’s put herself in the lead story at six and ten?

  And what about Roger? This is his idea of promoting neighborhood stability?

  Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s house is ablaze. Unless you burn it down yourself.

  He looks at me. “What?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. “Never mind.”

  On the television, there’s a leathery, sun- bleached, middle-aged surfer showing the documentary crew a jagged half- moon scar on his ribs. The scar goes from nipple to hip and connects to a matching crescent on his back. A giant bite mark. How the hell is this guy walking around? I grab the remote and turn the volume up a notch.

  “Well.” Roger stands. “Call me when you’re ready to talk about this.”

  As he moves toward the door, I say, “Can I ask one question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How come I’m the one getting kicked out of the neighborhood? Why not Melody?”

  “She has seniority.”

  “Ah.”

  “And the children.”

  “The children. Right.” I nod. “Sara and I don’t have any of those.”

  “I’m sorry to say it like that. But it is what it is.”

  I turn on the couch to face him directly. “Sara knows about what happened between me and Melody. Pete’s going to find out soon enough. You don’t think that’s going to create any hard feelings across the old backyard fence?”

  “I imagine it will,” he says. “But Sara’s told me how she’s been feeling lately.”

  “Oh? How has she been feeling?”

  “Well. I know the new job isn’t quite what she’d imagined.” Roger shrugs. “And I know she misses Boston.”

  Sara hasn’t mentioned any of this to me. Rationally, I know that I can’t be sure she’s actually confided anything in Roger, either. But hearing him say it still heats up my blood.

  “Hell,” he says. “A little time, a change of scenery, I figure you two will find a way to patch things up. You’ve got a good thing there. I can see that.”

  I want to leap up and declare war. I want to see his face when I tell him that I know all about Darius Calvin, and Brit has a tattoo, and I’ve been talking to his old neighbors. My attorney will be conducting interviews. He’s picked the wrong guy.

  I want to rattle his cage. Send him away with something to think about.

  I sit there frozen, staring at the television.

  On the program, they’re talking about the main attraction now. The shark to beat all sharks. The most fearsome creature in all the deep. According to the program, a great white rolls its eyes back when it strikes, protecting its only vulnerable spot, but making itself blind at the moment of attack. I wonder if we get this channel with the cable package Pete hooked up for us at the house.

  Roger opens the door to leave.

  “Hey, Roger.”

  “Yes?”

  “Imagine if Sara and I went back to Boston and lived happily ever after.”

  “I’d be happy to hear that.”

  “And Pete and Melody fell apart anyway.” I look at him. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  He stops as though he needs to think about that. But I know it’s an act. Of course he’s already thought about it.

  “They may have their troubles,” he says. “But my guess is, after this business is finished, all of that’s going to seem like small potatoes.”

  What does he think? That making this truce will somehow return order to his world? Is it possible that he really imagin
es this to be true?

  Has it honestly not occurred to Roger that I’m onto him?

  “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I’m quoting the middle- aged surfer, who just said the same thing on television. “Right?”

  “That’s the way it was explained to me.”

  Roger zips his coat and puts on his gloves.

  “Think it over. I’ll be at home.”

  25.

  MAYBE I SHOULD FORGET academia and look into a second career in broadcast journalism. Apparently, if you’re a television news reporter, you get lots of time to hang out in parking lots and hotel lobbies, catching up on your reading.

  Monday morning, I spot Maya Lamb as soon as I step off the elevator. She’s parked in an armchair near the big Christmas tree in the lobby of the Residence Inn, dressed in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, her coat and bag on the floor by her feet. She glances up to check the elevators and sees me approaching.

  “Miss Lamb,” I say.

  “Professor.” She marks her page and closes her book. “Good morning.”

  I glance down and see that she’s reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I can’t help chuckling.

  “It’s pretty good,” she says. “I had no idea.”

  “No? I got the impression you’d read it before.”

  Thanks to Douglas Bennett’s office TiVo machine I’ve now seen myself on the news. Both reporters in town managed to make use of the obvious reference to Nabokov’s best- known story. Of the two, Maya Lamb’s approach is my favorite. She actually worked a subtle quote from the opening passage of the book into her sign- off: We’ll continue to look at this tangle of thorns as it develops.

  “I’m cramming,” she says. “What can I say?”

  “You know, I went to grad school with a guy who teaches at Cornell now,” I tell her. “He has Nabokov’s old office in the English building there. He told me people come by all the time, just to stand in the space. His students, other professors, people he’s never even seen before. He told me that a woman once came in, said nothing, sat down on his couch, and cried.”

  “No kidding?”

  “That’s what he tells me.”

  “That’s quite a story,” she says.

  “Actually, I’m lying. I read that somewhere. Never met the guy.”

  She raises her chin, still smiling. “You’re not a very good liar, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Tell me something.” I make a show of looking around the lobby. “How come you’re the only reporter following me around?”

  “Uncommonly keen story sense?”

  “Network job didn’t pan out, huh?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Forty feet away, I notice the concierge talking with the girl behind the check- in counter. They’re both looking at me. When they see me looking back, they drop their eyes and go about their business.

  “Theoretically,” I ask her, “what would you say if I told you I was completely innocent and I can prove it?”

  “Are you, and can you?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “In that case, I guess I’d ask if you’d like to go get some coffee.”

  I shake my head. “Not a good time, but I have a proposition. Want to hear it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Your story is about to get good. I can tell you how and why. There’s nothing you’ll be able to report yet, but I’ll tell you everything there is.”

  “Yeah? How good?”

  “Pretty good. It’s got lies, adultery, subterfuge, police corruption, you name it. I’m prepared to offer complete preemptive access to the wrongly accused.”

  “Who would be you?”

  “And I’ll talk to you exclusively. If”—I raise a finger dramatically—”you promise to quit stalking me.”

  Maya Lamb leans forward and slips her book into the outside pocket of her bag. She brushes a lock of dark hair from her eyes. “I’ve been stalking you for three days. Why are you suddenly so eager to talk to me now?”

  “Because I want you to quit following me. And because maybe we can help each other.”

  “How do you think we might be able to do that?”

  “Do you want the deal or not?”

  She taps her fingertips on the arms of the chair and narrows her eyes. “I’d need a down payment.”

  “Do you have one in mind?”

  “Well, in the five minutes we’ve been talking, you’ve already admitted to telling me one tall tale.”

  “Yes, but I admitted it. That shows credibility.”

  “How about something that shows me what kind of a tale we’re talking about this time?”

  “Sure,” I say. “But bear in mind, I could be fibbing again, so if you report this before it’s confirmed by some other source, you could look foolish.”

  “With all due respect, Professor, based on this exchange, I’m willing to bet that I’m a better journalist than you are a fibber.”

  “All right. Try this and tell me if I’m fibbing.”

  Without naming my source, I tell her about the mystery tattoo that doesn’t appear in the photographs of Brit Seward.

  “A butterfly,” Maya Lamb says.

  “That’s what I’m told. I’ve never seen it myself.”

  Her smile gets bigger.

  “That’s just an appetizer,” I say.

  “When do we eat?”

  “Does that mean you agree to the terms?”

  “If you agree to meet with me exclusively before the day is over, then yes. We have a deal.”

  “Done.” I reach into my pocket and take out the cell phone Douglas Bennett gave me so that we’ll be able to keep in touch at all times. “What’s your mobile number?”

  I punch in the numbers as she speaks them. In a moment, her bag begins to play muffled music, and I recognize the tune she’s using as a ring tone. It’s an old hit from the seventies. Blondie. “One Way or Another.”

  She digs the phone out, flips it open, and says, “Hello?”

  “Nice ringer.”

  “I like it.” She smiles and closes her phone against her cheek.

  “So now I’ve got your number,” I say. “You have mine. We’ll stay in touch and meet up later.”

  “Before the end of the day. That’s our deal, right?”

  “That’s our deal.”

  As I turn and head for the doors, she says, “So where are you off to? You’re not dressed for lawyers.”

  I hold an imaginary cell phone to my ear—We’ll stay in touch—and push out into the morning cold.

  At the 7-Eleven on Belmont, I fill up and buy coffee. There’s a woman in line in front of me on her way to work reading meters for the gas company. The guy behind the register says, “Can you make ‘em go backward? My heat bill’s through the roof.”

  She laughs and tells him they should swap each other. “I’ve got eighty bucks until payday, and I just put forty in the tank.”

  Listening to this, I’m seized by an idea that I know is silly. But this morning I seem to have woken up with an overpowering urge to throw good sense to the wind.

  I step out of line and offer the woman two twenty- dollar bills to take my phone, dial Sara’s mother’s house in Philly, and pretend to be the dean of Western Iowa University.

  She gives me the kind of look I’d expect. Then she glances at the bills in my hand and screws up her mouth. One hand on the door handle, she says, “Do what?”

  I tell her the truth: I need to apologize to someone, but I can’t get an audience. “All you have to do is ask for Sara. I promise, I’m mostly harmless.”

  She shrugs and takes the money. I hand her the phone. A minute later, she hands it back to me and says, “She’s coming.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  “Ho ho ho,” the woman says, saluting with my two folded twenties on her way out the door.

  Frigid air streams in and swirls around me. I walk to an empty spot over by the slus
hie machines, hold the phone to my ear, and wait. In a few moments, Sara’s voice comes onto the line.

  “Dean Palmer, hello. I intended to call you myself this morning and—”

  “Sara, it’s me. Don’t hang up. Please.”

  Silence.

  “I just needed to hear your voice.”

  More silence. Colder than the air outside.

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” I say. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

  “I want you to go back in time and decide not to hump our next- door neighbor,” Sara says. “Will you do that?”

  “If I could, I would.”

  “Our neighbor. My jogging partner. Goddamn you both.”

  “Sara, I can’t erase it, and I don’t know how to make it up to you, but I’ll kill myself trying.”

  “You’ll be able to do that from prison?”

  I realize now that in our years together, Sara has never spoken a truly cruel word to me. This is what it feels like.

  “Wow.” It’s all I can come up with.

  “I’m sorry.” She breathes an angry sigh in my ear. “That was rotten.”

  “Sara…”

  “If you really want to do something for me, don’t call here. Because I can’t do this yet.”

  She pauses, as though she’s about to say something else. Then she hangs up instead.

  The sound of the dial tone in my ear might as well be the sound of a heart monitor going flatline. I woke up two hours ago ready to take on the world, or at least Iowa. Now I want to go back to my room and pull the drapes and order scotch for breakfast.

  I head for the doors. Just as I push the handle, a voice behind me says, “Sir?”

  The guy behind the register is looking at me cynically. I say, “Yes?”

  “You planning on paying for that coffee?” He nods toward the windows. “And the thirty bucks in gas you pumped on three?”

  Oh. “I’m sorry. Of course.”

  I work out my wallet with my free hand as I walk back to the counter. I pretend to ignore the fidgets and sighs and eye-rolls from the people waiting in line, the slow nod from the guy behind the register. Nice try, buddy.

  I’m halfway to Ponca Heights when the cell phone rings.

  “Melody just called,” Bennett says.