The Black Hour (25 page)

“I must have known you needed one.” Joe took up a rag and swiped at the bar without commitment. I watched his hands, the twist of his neck as he turned to catch a score on the TV. A familiar moment, here. I’d come to pick him up from work and take him back to my place so many times, and after that period of my life, sat here with Doyle and argued in low voices that Joe wasn’t all the things that Doyle needed to worry about. Younger, sexier, a mindless fling. It hadn’t mattered in a long time, but Joe turned me on.

In my pocket, the note burned its words against my hip.
It should have been you.

But it hadn’t been. What was it the students said, when they wanted to justify going out on weeknights, staying out late when they had tests and essays? A song lyric or a bumper sticker—

You can sleep when you’re dead.

My thoughts rushed ahead: my hand on Joe’s arm, the short drive home, stumbling into bed and not worrying for the first time in a while about looking like a fool.

“Look—”

His eyes found mine and slid away. He turned to wipe the back counter, but I’d already seen the bright flicker of panic—of horror—that I might ask him the question we both knew I wanted to ask.

I hadn’t always had to be the one to ask.

I never would again.

“Thanks for staying open.” My breath was short, my voice rasping. I reached for my wallet.

Joe waved me off. “On me.”

The pain in my hip had nothing on this. For a moment, I forgot about the note in my pocket, the fall, the bullet that had put this all in motion. It was a gift, really, that Joe had given me. I’d forgotten about the pills in my bag and what would happen if I didn’t take them on time.

I’d forgotten everything but the black room, where I’d been robbed of everything but my own raw materials. And the person I was hadn’t been enough. I had never been enough and now I understood.

I lived in the black room now. Always. Always I would remain here.

The phone rang. In my dream I dove from the sailboat into the water. That’s where the phone was, and I had to call for help. I swam down, down into the dark, reaching. I’d call Dr. Emmet, the President of the United States, that reporter—

“Asshole,” Kendall moaned. “Get the phone.”

I pulled the phone into my neck. “What?”

“Ahoy, matey.”

I sat up. The dream flew away. I was left with the muck of dread on my skin, and my throat scratched from coughing lake water from my lungs. My shoulder and back ached.

The sail back last night had been silent. I’d crawled into and out of the dinghy and back onto the rocks with shaking legs, clawing my way up the shore and away from Win and Dutch without a word.

“What do you want?” My voice hardly sounded like mine.

“To apologize,” Win said. “That—shouldn’t have happened.”

“You made it happen. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I’m the stupid one. It was a shitty thing to do. You could have been hurt.”

I felt hurt. “Fine. You’re sorry. Thanks for calling.”

“Let me make it up to you.”

The pressure on my shoulder of a hand holding me under. “That’s not necessary.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m never getting on a boat again, actually.”

“You’re on my crew for Night Sail, dude—”

“When was the last time someone drowned during Night Sail? Not interested.”

“You can think about it,” he said, as smooth as a politician to the last. “Do you want to come by the hotline sometime?”

I tasted the green lake in the back of my throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You are one touchy guy,” Win said. “I meant you could stop in, see what it’s all about. You seemed interested.”

My blood thudded in my ears. This was what I’d been waiting for. Why I’d come to Rothbert. Why I’d gone on the boat.

Had one of them really held me under the water? I couldn’t convince myself. I remembered struggling to find the surface and, at the last, giving into a feeling of elation. That moment when everything went clear, everything I’d ever done or been or said turning bright and good. Flying. And the moment after, out of the water, gagging for breath and heavy with my own body, wet clothes, and real life. Painful reality, when I’d just figured it out.

Euphoria. That was the word. I didn’t want the boat, or the hotline, or a sociology degree several years away. I wanted to try that feeling out again. I wanted to swim in it. Maybe Leo Lehane knew something none of us wanted to admit. Maybe a little brush with death was good for the soul.

Sure. All I had to do was call the number on the pen or magnet some early morning and tell them that, and I’d certainly find out everything I’d ever wanted to know about the Hope Hotline. From the inside, and then from a padded room. There had to be an easier way.

“I’m interested,” I said.

“You know where it is?”

“I’ll find it.”

“My shift starts at ten.”

“At night?”

“The graveyard.”

“What?”

“The overnight shift. I start at ten and get out at five. Unless I’ve got someone on the line. Up for it?”

Like the lake had never happened. I’d looked up sailing terms since my swim. Jibe. That’s what he’d said, and Dutch had wasted no time. Jibe was the order that turned the boat around and sent the boom swinging. The boom—that’s what it was called and also what it did to you if you stood in its way. They’d known exactly what they were doing. Dutch would have done it for sport, but what game was Win playing? Invite the dork out for a joy ride and then dump him in the drink? And now another invitation. If this turned into another mousetrap, then I wasn’t a very bright rodent.

“I really am sorry,” Win said.

“I’m up for it,” I said. And even though I didn’t forgive him, I found that I meant it. I was up for it, whatever it was.

When Win hung up, I held onto the phone. I couldn’t face a minute of the intro class, not today. Luck was on my side at last: the steel wool in my throat made for a convincing sick call. Dr. Emmet’s office voice mail picked up. Even better.

“Dr. Emmet, I hate to do this—”

“You’re not sick,” Kendall said. I cupped a hand around the receiver and hurried through my excuses.

I hung up and lay back in bed. But he was right. I wasn’t sick. I was mad. I jangled with it until I couldn’t stand to lie there any longer. I got up and grabbed some jeans from the closet floor.

“Told you. You couldn’t take a day off even if you were dead.”

“Shut up, Kendall.”

I shoved a few books into my backpack and hurried out of the apartment. I was halfway down the block before I faced the fact that I had nowhere to go. I walked toward the lake until the image of my foot sliding off the embankment came to me. I stopped and considered my options. The library couldn’t contain me. Dale Hall. The student center? I couldn’t picture myself anyplace I knew, except—

I looked at my watch.

When the Mill’s door opened, I reached and held it. The bartender, same guy as always, gave me a side-eye look. “A little early, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t be opening this early if people didn’t sometimes need a drink.”

“I meant—how old are you?”

“Old enough to worry about my own liver,” I said. “Do I have a usual yet?”

He remembered me now. I took the back booth and laid out my books. Within a few minutes, he dropped a coaster on top of my textbook, then the bottle.

I moved them off the book. “Start a tab.”

“I guess she’s teaching you something,” he said, walking away.

I opened the text and flipped to the chapter I needed to read for Dr. Emmet’s class. Stared at it, parsed out the first sentence, the second. The words didn’t seem to connect. I could have been reading about quantum physics or pet fashion for as much as I could concentrate.

Had one of them really held me under the water? I rubbed my shoulder until the pain flared. Proof, at least, that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

The door opened. Dr. Emmet stopped when she saw me. Then she turned to the bartender.

“Breakfast, with a lot of booze.”

“Melly—”

“Like a screwdriver, but with a
lot
of screw.”

“I wanted to—”

“Joe, I’m working on a couple hours of sleep. Whatever it is, I’m not—you know?”

He nodded and pulled a glass from above his head. “I just—”

“Joe,
really
.”

She headed my way.

“Dr. Emmet, I can explain.”

She waved a hand at me. “I don’t care how early you drink if you don’t care how early I do. What’s wrong with your voice? Are you sick?”

She hadn’t heard my message. “Sort of.”

“You should be home.”

“Home isn’t—my roommate’s there.” Somehow this conveyed what I meant. She nodded. The bartender brought her drink. Something clear with a splash of orange juice.

“Start a tab.”

He rolled his eyes and left. Dr. Emmet reached for my textbook and stroked the cover. “I always thought I’d write a better book than this.”

“Why don’t you?”

“It’s complicated. Big project, years of research and analysis.” Her eyes slid past me until I was sure she was thinking of something else, then snapped back. “Maybe I will yet. And then there’s whatever work you’ll do. Your dissertation. Have you given it any thought?”

The dissertation I wanted to do on the crime that had left her so miserable? Suddenly I saw what a creepy idea this was. The incident was far too recent. She had no distance, and I had no right.

“A little. I—I’m not sure what I want to do yet.” I pulled the book out from under her hand and tucked my materials away.

“Well. You have time. Actually, the worst part is that I did write a book better than that. You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy of it.”

“You never published it?”

“I burned it. On a barbecue grill.”

“Why?”

I must have looked horrified. She laughed. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think it had something to do with feeling—out of control. You know?”

I knew. Otherwise, I wouldn’t also know what dull steak knives looked like in moonlight.

Dr. Emmet threw back the last of her drink and looked toward the bar for a long moment.

“Do you want me to get you something?”

She shook her head. “The other night, do you remember when you said you wanted to skip certain parts? Of your life?”

The bartender finally looked our way. I raised two fingers and pointed toward her glass. “Yeah.” Maybe I shouldn’t say things like that. Even if they were true.

“I think I’ve felt that way my entire life. Except—my entire life, Nath. I’ve never wished for the moment I was in.” She shrugged. “And now, of course—well. That’s a hell of a way to live.”

The drinks came, two tumblers of anonymous liquor covered with a thin layer of juice. She made short work of hers, then reached for mine.

“It would have been a hell of a way to die, too,” she said.

“You didn’t.”

“I will. Someday. Maybe violence won’t have anything to do with it. I hope. I’d like to go out quietly. In the night, eighty-nine years old. Somebody, somewhere, sad about it. That’s all anyone ever wants, isn’t it? Thanks, Joe.”

He’d brought two more drinks. Bigger tumblers, less juice.