A Necessary Innocence

Backstory

2012-06-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

This was written in the summer/fall of 2004 as an attempt to improve upon "The Changing Seasons."

A lot of the settings are pretty much identical but the story is radically different and significantly darker. In this version our screwed-up misfit Nate starts off as a nerdy high school student whose only friend is the enormous 'Flabby' Abby. Everyone around Nate seems interested in S-E-X except him. When even Abby succumbs to lust with another boy, Nate attempts to find out why he's different and is diagnosed with a genetic disorder.

The story jumps forward to Nate's initiation into carnal matters by the free-spirited (and very open-minded) Tina. The pursuit of flesh consumes Nate, wiping away the last vestiges of his childish innocence. By the time Nate graduates college, he's a full-fledged Lothario.

Nate gets a job at the local chemical company where a few years later he meets the beautiful Eva, whom he's determined to add to his list of conquests. But she resists his initial attempts to jump into the sack. Eventually Nate finds himself falling in love with her, but by then it might be too late...

As a warning, there's some graphic sexual imagery, a little violence, and some strong language. Not recommended for children.

Please enjoy "A Necessary Innocence..."

CHAPTER 26

2007-06-14T11:36:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 26

Nate woke up to someone jostling him and stared up at the weathered face of an old crone. “What are you doing here?” the old woman said.

“I was just looking for Eva,” Nate said and sat up. “I guess I fell asleep.”

“She’s gone and I suggest you move along before I call the police.”

“All right, I’ll go. I’m sorry.” He trudged down the stairs, the vertigo replaced by a fevered stuffiness akin to a bout of the flu. The old woman remained at the top of the stairs, arms crossed over her chest like a wrinkled sentinel making sure he kept his promise.

Outside, the sun had come out and begun melting the layer of snow from Main Street as he headed down the sidewalk towards the Safari Club. He didn’t see any cars or other pedestrians until he rounded the corner of Ojibwa Road and started up the bridge crossing the river. The highway traffic roared overhead while lines of cars heading for the Herbert Tower or the mall bunched along the bridge—the morning rush had begun. He wondered if anyone would recognize him and offer a ride, but with his mismatched clothes and hair sticking up in dirty tufts, he doubted anyone would look close enough.

As he passed under the highway, he checked the shadows for Brad or Michelle, but saw only pigeons nesting among the supports. He waited at the corner of Ojibwa and Herbert Avenue, watching dozens of men like him talking on their cell phones behind the wheel of their Lexuses, Mercedes, or BMWs. While he stood on the sidewalk in rags and others like Scott waited in line at the unemployment office, the corporate dance continued. He started across the crosswalk when the signal changed, but after only three steps heard a car horn blare in his ear. An impatient driver waiting to turn stuck his middle finger out the car window and Nate doubled his stumbling pace to make it safely to the other side.

He rested on the bench of a bus stop and looked over in the direction of his condo. He could make it home faster than going back to the Safari Club and that way he could shower, change, and use the spare credit card in his dresser to pay for a cab to take him back to the club. His new strategy formed, he continued down Ojibwa Road until he reached Woodhaven.

He found his mother’s bags just inside the door and remembered she had a flight back to Jacksonville this afternoon. She searched the cupboards in the kitchen, but froze at the sight of him. “Oh my God. What happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We should get you to a doctor.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She took his arm and steered him to the dining room table. “Sit down and let me have a look.”

“Mom…”

“And take off those clothes. They smell terrible.”

He dropped the tweed jacket and flannel shirt to the floor, but couldn’t kick the pants free. His mother tore the slacks away—the gesture making him shiver at the memory of Michelle Kapanen and the front seat of the Golf—and applied a washcloth to his mouth. After she’d wiped the dried blood away, she ran the cloth over the rest of his face. “Too bad you don’t have any steak here; you’re going to have two black eyes. What were you doing last night?”

“I got mugged over on Main Street.”

“Why were you there?”

“I had to see someone.”

“Is this about the girl who came by yesterday?”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose she called?”

“About two hours ago. She was about to board a plane.” Tears came to his eyes and his chest exploded in pain as he sobbed. “What is it, Nate?”

“I screwed everything up, Mom. Abby, Danny, you and Dad, Tina, Michelle, Eva, everyone. It’s all such a mess anymore.”

“No, come on, honey, things aren’t that bad. You’ve just had a bad night.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

His mother gave to him a glass of water and pair of aspirin. “Get some rest and then you’ll feel better about everything, I’m sure.”

“But Mom…”

“Don’t argue.” After he’d taken the aspirin, she took his hand and tucked him into bed like she had when he was a child. She ran a hand through his hair as he closed his eyes and the world seemed to grow farther away.

“I love you, Mom,” he said. He didn’t hear her response, but when he awoke hours later, he found her next to the bed, his hand in hers. He sat up slowly, the pain in his body curbed by rest and the aspirin to a dull ache. He squeezed her hand and managed a weak smile.

“How do you feel?”

“A little better.”

“I can go down to the store and get you some chicken soup.”

“No, Mom, I’m fine right now.”

By five o’clock, Nate had moved to the couch and watched television with a steaming bowl of tomato soup from a can his mother had unearthed. The news anchors said nothing about a naked man lying on a sidewalk along Main Street or a crazy bum stumbling around in clothes stolen from the Salvation Army, which meant the old woman had never followed through on her threat to call the police. He lapped another spoonful of soup into his mouth, thankful he wouldn’t have to worry about becoming a fugitive like Danny.

His mother sat next to him on the couch and pressed a hand to his forehead. “You feel cooler now,” she said.

“I should probably get my car before they have it towed.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, I can manage. Thanks.” He remained on the couch, finishing the soup while contemplating what to do next. He still had to call his bank and the credit card companies to report his cards missing. Tomorrow he would need to go to the Secretary of State office to get his driver’s license replaced. And he would need to call Herbert Chemical to explain his absence. The weight of the obligations pressed down, his trembling hand spilling the tomato soup back into the bowl.

“Are you feeling sick again?”

“Just a little tired.” He steadied his hand and drained the rest of the soup into his mouth. As he set the bowl aside, he saw Abby’s paintings still resting against the wall. He focused on the image of the beach, his mind conjuring a flood of memories of the time he had spent there, from playing tag with Abby as kids to writing stories until the sun went down. Before the day he had discovered Abby and Cade together, the beach had been his one refuge from all the troubles of the world, his Batcave or Fortress of Solitude.

He got to his feet and strode down the hall to his bedroom for a change of clothes, the emergency credit card, and a spare set of keys. The memory of lying in the snow, his body going numb, entered his mind as he pulled a heavy sweater, scarf, and watch cap from the closet. With nothing else for self-defense, he slipped a steak knife into the inner pocket of his overcoat in case he had another unfortunate rendezvous with Brad or Michelle. His mother kissed him on the cheek and brushed imaginary dust from his shoulders. “Be careful. I don’t want to lose you too.”

“I will.” He called for a taxi service to pick him up and take him to the Safari Club. Nate scanned the parking lot for his Lexus and then Michelle Kapanen’s Golf; his car waited in the spot where he’d left it, but he couldn’t find hers. After paying the cab fare, he started for his car.

“Hey buddy,” a voice said from behind Nate and he reached in his pocket for the knife. He loosened his grip when he turned around and saw Scott. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“I just came to get my car.”

“Oh, I see. You look like shit, what happened?”

“Rough night. How are things on the job front?”

“I’m looking around. Making a few calls, but no leads. The wife was devastated of course. We haven’t broken it to the kids yet, but I think they’ll figure it out sooner or later. Not sure what the hell we’ll do for Christmas if I don’t find something in the next week or so.”

“So what are you doing here? I didn’t see any Help Wanted signs.”

“Well, I thought I might become one of those gigolos. You know, whore myself out for money.” Scott elbowed Nate in the ribs, causing him to double over in pain. “Sorry. I just need to get a drink while I think about my next move. Care to join me?”

“Nah, I’ve got to go.” He put an arm around his former co-worker’s shoulder. “If you ever need anything, give me a call.”

Nate left Scott and found his car untouched since he’d parked it last night. His briefcase remained on the passenger’s seat, stuffed full of papers for the InLarge campaign. He pushed aside the notes and diagrams to find a blank tablet of Herbert Chemical stationary and a pen. Then he started the Lexus and waved to Scott before pulling out of the parking lot.

In the nine years, no one from Herbert Chemical had fixed the hole in the fence he and Abby had used to gain access to the beach. His overcoat caught on one of the tines as he wriggled through the hole, opening a gash along the rear of the coat. After he made it through, Nate looked around at the old forest now devoid of any signs of life in preparation for winter. The walk through the dead trees was like exploring a cemetery late at night and he whispered to himself, “I’m not afraid of any monsters.”

At the edge of the trees, he looked down upon the beach, traces of snow still dotting the gray soil. To his left, the lights of the Herbert Chemical plant burned like an unholy furnace, belching clouds of orange smoke. He skidded down the embankment to the beach and walked along the sand until he found the flat-topped rock he and Abby had used as a bench.

To the right of the bench lay the remains of the box he’d incinerated after the fallout with Abby. The fire had etched a black ring in the ground, in the center of which he found the strongbox containing his most important materials. The finish of the box had blackened and become pockmarked with rust over the years. With the steak knife in his pocket and a couple of hard shots, he managed to pop the rusty lock on the box.

The paper inside had become dry and yellowed, but remained legible. Nate examined the plans he’d drawn and kept hidden until the night he’d revealed them to Abby. The ultimate place for kids like he and Abby to go, where they could browse comics and chat without having to worry about bullies or parents. He had dreamed of giving all the geeks of Freepoint a beach of their own. In his anger and confusion over Abby, Danny, and his father he had abandoned the idea.

He took the box to the bench and stared out at the glittering orange water. He had enough business training now to know his childish plan would never work. The location on Main Street was too inaccessible for the kids of the subdivisions across the river, who could get to the mall or surrounding shops easier. With so many other entertainment options, he also questioned how many kids like he and Abby even existed anymore. Even if he found the money for restoration and advertising, the place would close inside a year.

“I don’t want to waste my life filling out personnel evaluations and firing people. You made me see the light again,” Eva had told him outside the airport. He thought of Scott and Gina and the others of Herbert Chemical walking out to their cars with a cardboard box and an uncertain future, no more secure than investing in Andromeda Comics.

He couldn’t do it alone, though. He would need someone to help him and he could think of only one person. He folded the plans and stuffed them in his pocket before setting the tablet of stationary on his knee to draft a letter nine years overdue.

Dear Abby,

I never understood what really came between us, but recent events have opened my eyes. Cade gave you the one thing I never could and I let my jealousy, my fear of being replaced, overshadow our friendship. I’m sorry.

I once had a dream for the future, a dream I lost sight of. Now I need your help in bringing it to life. Enclosed is a plane ticket back to Freepoint. Please, come back and let me explain. Give me this second chance.

I’ve done a lot of things in the last few years I’m not proud of, losing you as a friend being at the top of the list. I know things will never be like when we were kids again, but maybe we can recapture just enough of that innocence to make our friendship work.

He signed the letter and tucked it in his pocket next to the plans. A pair of crazy ideas, neither with much potential to bring him anything but pain. A flight of Canada geese took flight from the bay and a smile came to his face as he watched the birds ascend into the orange sky like Eva’s winged angels. She had taken another chance on him, despite what he’d become since she tossed a pair of sweatpants over the bathroom stall. He had rewarded her efforts with cruelty, but she had shown him the way like a beacon of light at the end of a dark tunnel.

He had emerged from the tunnel and could now see the light.

While the sun went down, he scribbled the final tale of The Outcast on the Herbert Chemical stationary. The hero, still in the guise of a chubby teenage girl, takes the twin garbage bags of stolen money to the Viceroy’s office in the abandoned warehouse. Inside the office, the Viceroy has his latest victim pinned to the floor. The girl has long blue-black hair and dangling from her neck is an angel pendant.

The Outcast is rooted in place, watching as the Viceroy tears the necklace away. The angel rolls to a stop at the Outcast’s feet and as he takes it in his hand, Doctor Salazar’s tearful pleas come back to him. The girl’s eyes meet those of the Outcast and in them he sees a white light that burns into his soul.

The spell is broken.

The chubby flesh of the teenage girl turns to a yellow liquid and reforms into a muscular frame with skin as transparent and hard as diamond. The Outcast grabs the Viceroy from behind, spinning him around so they are face-to-face. The villain’s eyes glow in fiery hatred, but this time there is no effect on the hero. The hero’s right hand changes into a crystalline blade and he lops off the Viceroy’s head in one fluid motion. The Viceroy disappears in a column of fire, leaving only ashes on the office floor.

Then the Outcast scoops up the girl and they descend the stairs together.

-END-

CHAPTER 25

2007-06-14T11:36:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 25

Nate sat on the bamboo stool at the bar of the Safari Club and downed another shot of Jack Daniels before motioning the bartender to bring another. Eva had left him there in the snow, despite his apologies and pleas for understanding. He had done everything possible and she had still gone. “Screw her,” he growled into his drink.

A potential target wedged in between Nate and the stool next to him to order a drink. The blonde wore a leather skirt short enough for him to see her panties as she leaned forward. “Hey there,” Nate said and smiled. “That one’s on me.”

When he reached out to touch her arm, she batted his hand away. “Fuck you, creep,” the girl said. She stormed away and he turned back to his glass of whiskey.

“There goes another one,” he said to himself. Another woman exiting his life, joining the endless parade from his mother to Eva. He took another shot of Jack, dedicating it to the blonde. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

He waved for another drink, but the bartender shook his head. “I think you’ve had enough, kid.”

“I haven’t had enough. I can still see her. Damned wicked witch. Evil temptress. I had a good thing going until she came along. Fucked everything up, you know? Got all into my head so I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t remember the rules.”

“Maybe you should let me call you a cab so you can sleep it off.”

“Only if you’re going to get me a hot piece of ass to go with the cab.” He turned around and found a trio of girls at a nearby table. “Which one of you wants to go home with me?” The trio giggled, one of them waving her middle finger in Nate’s direction.

“You keep that up and you’ll be out on your ass,” the bartender said.

Before Nate could respond, a hand touched the back of his neck. “Hey there, handsome. I’ll go home with you,” a woman’s voice whispered into his ear. She had bright pink hair and a silver dress that made her look like an alien in a bad science fiction movie. Her eye shadow and lipstick matched the hair, but both contained glitter to complement the dress. The breasts within the dress had the prepubescent size in need of a set of InLarge implants, but his mother had always said beggars couldn’t be choosy. She sat on the stool next to him and ordered a banana daiquiri while he stayed with whiskey. “So what are you doing here all alone?”

“I got dumped, that’s why,” he said.

“Well, she doesn’t know what she’s missing then.”

“Damn right. So what’s your name, honey?”

“Bambi.”

“Bambi? That’s your real name?”

“My mom liked the movie.”

“I’m Nate. Have you come here before? I think I’d remember you.”

“This is my first time, actually.”

“It’s a great place. So what do you do?”

“I’m still in college. In nursing.” Nate saw the lines at the corners of her painted eyelids and wondered how long she had been going to school. She cleared her throat and ran a hand through her pink hair. “I, uh, switched majors a couple times.”

“Yeah, it can be a big decision.”

“What do you do?”

“I have to figure out how to market a new line of breast implants.”

“Don’t those break open and cause all sorts of problems?”

“Not these ones. They’re guaranteed to stay intact. Fully tested and approved by the FDA. They won’t break, scout’s honor.”

“That must be interesting work.” Her hand reached across the space between them to probe his crotch. A smile pulled at one side of her glittering lips while her blue eyes widened.

“You want to get out of here, then. Get better acquainted?” he said.

“How about one more for the road.” The bartender brought another drink for each of them. As she took a sip of the daiquiri, Bambi’s silver purse fell from her shoulder and spilled onto the floor. “Oh shit, I’m so fucking clumsy.”

Nate rolled off the stool and picked up the assorted lipsticks, eyeliners, and eyeshadows as well as a bottle of Prozac with three refills left. She snatched the bottle and her wallet before he could and her pale cheeks turned a vibrant red. After looking around to make sure he’d found everything, Nate gave the purse back to Bambi and took a pull from his glass. Bambi tasted her daiquiri before setting it aside while Nate finished his whiskey.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said. Nate stumbled off his stool and staggered after Bambi out to a Volkswagen Golf with a layer of snow along its black finish. He dropped into the passenger’s seat and leaned back against the headrest, the snow outside making him dizzy. The flakes seemed to enlarge and blur together so that it looked like white daggers plunging into the earth.

The Golf drifted down Main Street, the snow eliminating the pavement, leaving Bambi to follow the tracks made by other cars. The road alternated between a white river and a pale ribbon to Nate’s eyes and despite the cold, sweat had broken out along his forehead. He tried to say something, but his throat had become too dry, his words sticking in his throat. As she pulled into an alley, he worked up enough spittle to ask, “This is where we’re going?”

“Sorry, my apartment’s too far. I want you now.” She swung from the driver’s seat into Nate’s lap and kissed him on the lips. Her glittery lipstick had a metallic taste followed by a berry aftertaste that made him wince at the tartness. Her head spun in lazy circles, then split in two, each going in a different direction.

“I don’t feel too good.”

“Don’t worry, this will be something you’ll never forget.” Her hands reached down to his waist and jerked his pants down in one violent motion. Though the rest of Nate’s body felt lousy, his penis still responded, growing to full size as she took it in her mouth. She sucked on his dick like a popsicle until he groaned and then pulled away, leaving the extremity to pulse in anticipation. Bambi said something, but the words came out in syllables that rumbled into one another, overlapping into gibberish.

As her hand moved along the front of his shirt, leaving his chest bare in the cold, each finger became a long white tentacle lined with silver claws that tore at his skin. He grunted, but couldn’t find the strength to move his limbs in defense. When he tried to speak, the words tumbled out in a nonsensical rush of letters. Bambi’s laughter boomed in his ears like a squadron of warplanes going full throttle. A tentacle ran through his hair, followed by a wave of pain as though his head were on fire.

Nate turned to his right and saw someone outside the car, waving to him. Eva stood in the snow, again a sophomore at Freepoint Central with silver-rimmed glasses balanced upon pudgy cheeks and dirty red sneakers. Her skin had turned golden and a pair of feathery wings spread from her back. She reached out to take his hand and lead him to safety. He smacked his knuckles into the window and scrambled to find the door handle. “Go, run!” Eva called to him.

He yanked the door open, sending both he and Bambi collapsing into the alley. “What are you doing?” she said. He scrambled to his feet and searched for Eva, but she had vanished. Bambi pushed him down onto the ground and rolled him over. “I’m not through with you!”

The fall and subsequent struggle had knocked the pink wig ajar, allowing long strands of auburn hair to slink out. Bambi threw the wig back into the car and shook out her red mane. “Michelle?” he said, the word tasting like acid upon his tongue.

She held him down on the ground, pinning his arms with her knees as she tugged the dress over her head. Underneath, her little girlish breasts hardened in the cold, the brown nipples becoming as rigid as his penis. As she leaned forward to kiss him, he saw her mouth elongate into a pink Venus flytrap with rows of razor teeth. She held a hand over his mouth to suppress his scream while she kissed his neck, a wave of greasy hair falling over his eyes.

“It’s all right. You’re fine,” she said into his ear. “Don’t worry.”

The last words echoed in his spinning mind and he dropped his head back onto the snow. Michelle reared back, pulling her hand away from his mouth, and took her knees off his arms to orient herself with his penis. Her lips curled into a snarl as he entered her.

Michelle’s hair began to darken, becoming black like the Golf’s exterior and then twisted into greasy coils. Her cheeks expanded as though she were holding her breath, turning a livid shade of red. Her stomach rippled and then began to swell like a balloon until her gut eclipsed his waist. Flabby Abby’s eyes bulged behind her black-framed glasses and she cried out, “Oh my God!”

In the next moment, Abby’s gut receded while her breasts enlarged into two firm globes. Her hair lightened to platinum and straightened into a simple bell-shaped curve. Tina smiled at him and said, “Put your hand between my legs.” When he responded, she guided his hand to the right spot and moaned. “Nate, you have to involve your whole self.”

As her words died out, her body took on the sallow liquid form of the Outcast and ran through the catalog of female bodies he’d encountered at the Safari Club. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads. White, black, Latin, Middle Eastern, and Asian. A, B, C, and D-cups. They appeared in every combination imaginable, each solidifying into a blurry image of womanhood for only a moment before being replaced by another.

Then, at last, the hair turned blue-black and the skin the color of polished oak. “I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Eva said. Her crucifix touched his chin, its surface burning his skin like a brand. Then her skin became gold like the teenage Eva he’d seen outside the car, the glow becoming more intense until the world around him turned into a sea of white.

He awoke to find the back half of his body numb and warm breath on his face. His eyes flickered open, dots of white forming into a single image that came into focus by degrees. Against the orange glow of the streetlamps, a face leaned over him, not that of a woman’s, but of a grizzled man in an oil-stained army jacket, Metallica T-shirt, and blue jeans with both knees ripped out. His beard scraped against Nate’s chest and his hands—clad in olive gloves riddled with holes—probed Nate’s neck.

When Nate turned his head, the man slapped him across the face. “Don’t move,” the man said. Something bit into the skin of Nate’s neck and he wondered if this man intended to choke him to death. Nate tried to move his arms, but for the second time that night found them pinned. “Don’t fucking move.”

Nate heard something snap and then saw Eva’s pendant dangling from the man’s gloved hand. The man’s brown eyes studied the angel, appraising its value, and then he kicked Nate in the ribs. “I guess this will have to do, you fucking pervert.”

As the man turned to go, Nate reached out and grabbed the top of a work boot. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s all I have.”

“Too fucking bad. It’s mine now.” The man stepped out of Nate’s grasp and then kicked him in the ribs again. At the sound of the man’s laughter, Nate subtracted the man’s beard, scrubbed away a layer of filth, and came up with the face of Brad, the leader of the Three Stooges.

“Brad?” The former Stooge responded by kicking Nate in the jaw. Nate coughed up a wad of blood and spit a chunk of tooth onto the snow-covered sidewalk. His naked body convulsed, but couldn’t find any traction to attempt fleeing the scene. Nate rolled onto his stomach, pressing himself into a ball while Brad landed a series of blows to his numb body, accompanied by peals of laughter.

When he finished, Brad said into Nate’s ear, “This is where you belong, No-Dick.”

Nate listened for the sound of Brad’s boots crunching the snow to diminish before he tried to stand. He struggled forward a few steps and then crashed back onto the sidewalk. Tears iced on his cheeks and the snowy ground had the same feel of the bathroom floor at Freepoint Central. Except this time he knew Eva wouldn’t come along to save him.

He awoke again to find that the snow had stopped and the sun had begun to rise. Those parts of his body not already numb from the cold ached from the beating. Angry red gashes scarred his chest and arms and blood had crusted around his mouth. His lungs burned when he tried to take a deep breath of the frigid air and his midsection had the tenderness of raw hamburger.

He surveyed the area around him and found himself lying near the doorway of the former Andromeda Comics, now only another boarded-up storefront. His memory of the night before came flooding back and he realized Michelle had dumped his naked body at the spot where they’d first met.

He crawled forward towards the alley, dragging himself to the Dumpster that had knocked him out during the fight with Cade. His fingers ran along the trash receptacle’s rusty surface until he found enough purchase to haul himself up. Standing on tiptoe, he looked inside the Dumpster and came away with a greasy rag he could at least hold over his crotch as he searched for a telephone.

His numb feet struggled in the snow while his vision swam and pulsated from the combination of a hangover, the cold, and the abuse Brad had doled out. He edged along the abandoned storefronts, stopping at random intervals to brace himself as the world did a somersault. He paused at one point along the way to empty the contents of his stomach into the snow before stumbling onward.

No cars came down the road as he reached a payphone outside an old drugstore. The telephone made no sound and upon closer inspection, he found that someone had cut the receiver free. Nate threw the useless handset to the ground and leaned against the payphone for support as another wave of vertigo passed before his eyes. Then he continued up the sidewalk to the Salvation Army store where he’d donated his parents’s furniture.

Rummaging through the donation box, he uncovered a flannel shirt that dwarfed him, a tweed jacket that bunched around the shoulders, and a pair of gray pants that irritated his skin. He searched for a pair of shoes and came away with a pair of women’s flats that squeezed his toes, but were the only ones that fit. Thus clothed, he resumed his journey to find help.

At Eva’s former apartment building, he stopped and started up the stairs. After each step, he needed to recover his balance and twice felt himself ready to collapse backwards. He reached the top and knocked on the door in the slim hope she had returned home to wait for a flight the next morning. When no one answered, he dropped into a heap before the door and closed his eyes as he waited for the world to calm down.

CHAPTER 24

2007-06-14T11:35:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 24

When Nate arrived at his office the next morning, he found Gina taking down the devotional placards and Cathy comic strips arrayed on the walls of her desk. “What’s going on?” Nate said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Colbrunn, but I met with Personnel this morning. They offered me either early retirement or a pink slip.”

“What? They can’t do that without consulting me.” Gina gave a copy of a memorandum to him dated the day of Danny’s burial. The directive from the CEO stated the need to reduce staff levels to ensure the financial security of the company. “This is bullshit.”

The elevator doors opened and Scott stepped off with the weary gait of an old man. “They got you too?” Nate said.

“Yeah, they cut me. Do I still have the knife sticking out?” Nate steered Scott into his office and shut the door. Scott collapsed into a chair across from Nate’s desk and buried his face in his hands. “What am I going to do now?”

“Are they giving you any severance?”

“Yeah, three month’s salary and benefits until the end of the month. That’s better than some of the others. Anyone who’s been here less than five years is getting tossed with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

“How many people are we talking about?”

“About three hundred here and another hundred in Research and Development in the plant. They can’t touch the blue collar guys though without pissing the union off. You and I are in the wrong business.”

“Shit. They just started this on Monday?”

“Yeah, but you know they’ve had it in the works for a while now.” Nate remembered all the files in Eva’s office and her mentioning something about downsizing. He just hadn’t expected it so soon or to include his friends. “They aren’t done yet either from what I’ve heard. IT and Customer Support are being farmed out to India next year and you know they’re going to demand some concessions from the union when it comes time for the next contract.”

“Jesus, are things that bad?”

“I heard from someone in Accounting that the costs of this building are weighing down the bottom line, but there’s no way they can find a buyer. So all us poor suckers on the bottom of the food chain get to suffer.”

“I wish there was something I can do. Maybe I can talk to Eva. She’s still mad at me, but…”

“Thanks for the thought, but it wouldn’t do any good. She’s already gone.”

“They fired her?”

“I don’t know, but her office is locked. There’s no nameplate on the door either.”

Nate leaned back in his chair and sighed. Eva had left because he’d embarrassed her. He’d ruined her career. He turned to his friend and tried to force a supportive smile. “How about we meet up for some drinks at the Safari tonight? I’ll buy.”

“I don’t think I should tonight. Maybe some other time.” They stood up and shook hands as though completing a business transaction. “Give ‘em hell on that InLarge campaign for me.”

“I will.” After Scott had gone, Nate took out his cell phone and dialed Eva’s number; he let it ring a dozen times before hanging up. As soon as he finished, the phone rang on its own, but he heard Tina on the other end instead of Eva.

“Nate? I’m sorry about last night. I sort of lost control. I was just upset, you know?”

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone along with it.” In the background he heard Tina’s boys arguing followed by the brass rumble of a truck horn. “Where you at?”

“We’re on our way to Petoskey. I have some cousins up there.”

“How long are you going to be up there?”

“I don’t know. Until I get things figured out.”

“Oh. Well, look, you and the kids are welcome over at my place any time you want.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now.” Before Nate could say anything, Tina hung up. He turned in his chair to watch a parade of tiny men and women pass through the front doors of the Herbert Tower armed with cardboard boxes containing their personal treasures accumulated over the years. When he squinted, he thought he could see Scott, but knew that was impossible.

Gina came into his office at five o’clock with her box under one arm and a plate of cookies outstretched in her other hand. “I’m really going to miss these,” Nate said and took a bite of one cookie that tasted like dirt in his mouth.

“You’re going to waste away with me gone.” She kissed him on the cheek and refused his help when he offered to take her box. “You’ve done enough.”

When Gina had gone, Nate had the department to himself and walked along the empty cubicles, a third now permanently vacant. Unable to concentrate on work, he locked his office and took the elevator to Personnel, finding Eva’s former office dark, her nameplate removed from the door. She had left without saying goodbye, just as he’d done the night they’d spent together.

He climbed the steps to her apartment only to find the door locked. He pounded on the door and waited for Eva to answer, but she never came. When he pressed his ear to the door, he heard no sound coming from within Eva’s apartment. She’s not here, he thought and sagged against the doorway. She’s gone.

Nate descended the stairs and went around to the other side of the building on the bank of the Ojibwa River. The dark water twinkled orange from the streetlamps next to the sidewalk while the first flakes of snow began to fall. Nate pressed his overcoat tighter around his body as he continued down the sidewalk until he could see the windows for Eva’s apartment, all dark. She’s gone.

He laid his head against a lamppost, watching the river through tear-stained eyes. Danny had become a fugitive and returned as a corpse. Abby had taken off to Florida and never come back. His mother had gone to Jacksonville and they saw each other only on holidays or occasions such as Danny’s burial. Tina had fled to Petoskey and he would never play with his godchildren again. Scott and Gina had been let go from Herbert Chemical and he wouldn’t ever see them either. Now Eva had disappeared with no note and no warning. He had no one left.

The snow intensified as he drove home, but the ground had not yet cooled enough for the flakes to accumulate. He passed a group of children walking along Herbert Avenue, trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues and thought of his godchildren frolicking in the snow up in Petoskey, creating a snowman that would resemble their mother with its spherical belly. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and squinted through his tears to see the road.

His mother met him at the door with a bright orange shoebox. “A girl dropped this off for you this afternoon.” she said. “She was very pretty. Is she your girlfriend?”

“She was, I guess.” He took the shoebox to the couch and sat down before opening the lid of the box. Inside, he found an envelope lying atop a pair of red sneakers, the laces and heels discolored gray from heavy use.

“Old shoes? Why would she give you those?” His mother wrinkled her nose and he wondered if the sneakers smelled as bad as they looked.

“I don’t know.” He opened the envelope and a gold necklace fell out. The angel pendant confirmed Eva had been the visitor at his door earlier in the day. The golden angel had its wings outstretched, forever posed to flee as its owner had from Nate. He found a slip of Herbert Chemical stationary in the envelope, the words written in Eva’s no-nonsense block print.

Dear Nate,

I’m sorry to leave this way, but I think it’s for the best. The time I spent with you reminded me of what’s important in my life. I’ve decided to go home, but I thought I would leave you these as a reminder. I think you need them more than I do.

As he studied the pendant, Eva’s words rang through his mind and he had to stifle a scream of recognition. The girl in the corridor of Freepoint Central as the Three Stooges dragged him half-naked across the floor. He had latched on to red shoes just like the ones in the box and when he looked up, he had seen the golden angel against her shirt. Thinking back to her face, he took away the glasses and deducted a little baby fat from her cheeks and came up with Eva. “It was her,” he whispered.

He took one of the sneakers and held it at eye-level like a carpenter evaluating the straightness of a board. The last time he had seen a pair of shoes like this, they had been hurrying out of the ladies room of Freepoint Central after leaving him with a pair of sweatpants so he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself by calling his parents for a pair of pants to wear home. She had saved his life that day without ever letting him know.

“What is it, Nate?”

“There’s something I have to do.” He took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the airport to find every flight leaving for Pittsburgh. “When did she bring these by?” he asked his mother.

“About five o’clock.”

“Maybe there’s still time then.” As he waited on hold the next available operator, he unfastened the latch of the pendant and wrapped the chain around his neck. His mother helped him with the clasp and then he gave her a wave before hurrying out the door.

Fog had begun to roll in from the river as he climbed into the Lexus, the cell phone still pressed to his ear, playing the flute version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Snow continued to fall, slushy traces of it accumulating on his windshield wiper blade. He finally heard a live, human voice and inquired about flights going to Pittsburgh.

“There’s an eight o’clock flight, but I’m sorry, all flights are delayed because of the weather right now. Could I interest you in one for tomorrow?”

“No, that’s fine.” He hung up the phone and dropped it into the seat next to him as he plunged on through the snow and fog. Divine intervention, he thought.

He left the Lexus in the short-term parking and wished he’d brought a hat as the cold wind blew snow into his ears and eyes. He passed through the doors and into the terminal, where white drifts clung to the glass dome like a snow globe, the miraculous snow that he hoped had kept Eva from disappearing. His eyes scanned the businesspeople complaining on their cell phones, the harried mothers trying to calm anxious children, and the college students slumped over their seats while he searched for Eva.

He searched the airline and rental car counters, the gift shops, and even the women’s bathrooms, but could find no sign of her. At a security checkpoint, a guard clamped a hand around Nate’s arm and said, “Is this your flight?”

“No, but I’m looking for someone. I really need to find her.”

“Sorry, no one’s allowed past this point.” The guard’s free hand touched the pistol at his hip and Nate nodded. He backed away from the checkpoint and continued to wander around the terminal in case Eva happened to appear.

A child screamed when her mother tried to take her hand. “Take my hand. You don’t want to get lost,” the mother said. Nate hurried to the nearest airline counter and shoved his way to the head of the line. He mustered his best approximation of a concerned parent’s face as he approached the clerk.

“You’ve got to help me. My daughter is missing.”

“Where’d you last see her?”

“Over there, by the gift shop. I turned my back for just a second and she wandered off. Could you page her? Let her know where I am? Please.”

“What’s her name?”

“Eva. Eva Perdilla.” The clerk paged Eva’s name and asked her to report to the airline counter. Nate fidgeted as he waited, touching the angel pendant around his neck. He checked his watch after five minutes and grimaced. She must smell a rat, he thought.

“Would you like me to try again?” the clerk said.

“No thanks. I’ll look around again. Maybe someone’s seen her.” He trudged off to resume pacing the terminal. He considered asking a guard to try the missing child routine again, but thought better when he imagined the firearms at their sides. After another circuit of the airport, he sighed and headed back to his car. She’s gone.

As he neared the Lexus, he stopped and rubbed his wet eyes in disbelief. Eva leaned against the hood of the car, her fluttering tresses of dark hair speckled with snow. The lamps in the parking lot gave her a heavenly aura like one of her figurines. She had returned to him.

She had a pair of suitcases at her feet and a carry-on bag around her shoulder that she set on the car’s hood as he approached. “You’re here. I don’t believe it,” he said.

“I heard your page. It’s not nice to take advantage of the system like that.”

“I wanted to see you again.”

“Why?”

He searched for words and held out the angel pendant. “It was you that day in the bathroom. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to make you feel guilty about it. Not until I knew where we stood.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’m going home, Nate.”

“You quit, didn’t you? You quit your job because of me.”

“I don’t want to waste my life filling out personnel evaluations and firing people. You made me see the light again.”

“Again?”

She wrapped her arms around herself as she said, “I went to Freepoint Catholic High until the middle of my sophomore year. That’s when my family found out the priest in our church had been making my brother and the other altar boys undress while he videotaped them. I refused to go to mass after that, even when they transferred the priest to another parish. So I transferred to Freepoint Central.”

“When I saw you in the hallway, it reawakened something in me. It brought back my faith not in the Church, but in God.” She motioned to the angel pendant. “It made me remember that we can do something good to make a difference.”

“So you left me the pants. But why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t need to. I didn’t need a reward.”

He tried to touch her arm, but she shrugged his hand away. “No, but I needed a friend.”

“I didn’t know how to approach you. I thought you might be embarrassed. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything when you asked me out.” Tears sparkled in her violet eyes and she shivered underneath a suede jacket.

“Let’s get out of the cold. We could go back inside, or to your place since you aren’t going anywhere tonight.”

“Nate, it’s over.”

“Why?”

“Things have changed too much in the last nine years. I thought maybe it could work, but it can’t. I’m sorry.” She slung the carry-on bag over her shoulder and picked up the suitcases.

As she brushed past him, he said, “Eva, don’t go. I…” The rest of the words strangled in his throat.

“You what?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“Goodbye, Nate.” While the snow continued to fall and build around Nate’s feet, Eva disappeared into the terminal. She’s gone. This time, she had gone forever.

CHAPTER 23

2007-06-14T11:34:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 23

Nate shoved his hands into the pockets of his overcoat as he watched Danny’s coffin lower into the ground. The gray coffin provided as a courtesy by the government—no doubt as a bribe to ward off a formal complaint over losing the body—reached the bottom of the rectangular plot, where it would forever rest. The pastor said the Lord’s Prayer in a hurried voice and then motioned for Nate to take the shovel lying on the grass next to the plot. Nate took the shovel and sprinkled black soil over the coffin.

The ceremony complete, the pastor nodded to Nate and took his mother’s hands. Nate couldn’t hear their mumbled words before the pastor hurried back to his car, one hand plunged into his pocket and the other holding a Bible out as though to ward off demons. Dry leaves swirled in the wind blowing across the cemetery and the gray clouds above threatened to bring snow as the air continued to cool. Beside him, Nate’s mother shivered underneath a flimsy purple coat better suited to Florida’s climate than Michigan’s. She looked healthier and more vibrant than Nate had ever seen, having lost weight since moving to Jacksonville and gaining a deep tan that remind him of Eva. He wrapped the overcoat tighter around his body to ward off a shudder. “Do you want to say anything?” she said.

“I guess we should.” He looked around the plot, but saw no one except the work crew busy excavating another grave down the path. He had not submitted an obituary for his brother, nor told anyone about the funeral in order to keep the ceremony private so his mother wouldn’t have to answer unseemly questions about how Danny had met his end. Nate squatted down and stared at the gaping hole that would soon swallow his brother. “I’m sorry about all this. I wish I could have understood what was going on to make you leave. Maybe I could have stopped you then and none of this would have happened.”

He stood and felt his mother’s arm on his shoulder. “Goodbye,” she said and then looked up at Nate. “Let’s go.” On their way towards the path, they passed the grave of Nate’s father to Danny’s left. Nate ran a finger along the cold tombstone, a shiver running through his body. He had not visited his father in five years, having less to say to him in death than in life.

He helped his mother into his car and pulled away from the cemetery. He stared straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Two o’clock.”

“I’ll take you to the airport.”

“You don’t have to. I wouldn’t want you to miss more work.”

“It’s all right. I have a lot of unused vacation anyway.”

“Maybe you could come down for a visit sometime.”

“We’ll see.” He pulled into the parking lot of Big Joe’s Steakhouse, where he had first learned of his father’s cancer. His mother, perhaps unaware of the symbolism, had insisted on eating there. She sat at a table while Nate stood next to the buffet with an empty plate, trying to decide what to serve.

When he returned with a plate of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and carrots, he found his mother staring at an old family photograph. She continued to examine the picture as he set the plate in front of her. Peeking over her shoulder, he saw himself at perhaps three years old with Danny next to him and his parents behind. They stood before a white beach dotted with palm trees and turquoise water in the background. “Do you remember the first time we went to visit your Aunt Shelley?”

“Not really,” Nate said. He sat across the table from his mother and nibbled on a roll.

“It was so beautiful. Your father tried to teach you to swim, but you didn’t want to go into the water. Danny…” Her voice caught and tears came to her eyes. Nate tossed the dinner roll away and reached out to take his mother’s hand.

“Mom, it’s all right.”

“It’s not fair. He was so young. Too young.”

As Nate took a handkerchief from the pocket of his suit jacket, he saw everyone around their table sneaking glances between mouthfuls. He gave the handkerchief to his mother and said, “Come on, Mom, let’s go home.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She leaned against him as they wound their way through the tables and out to the car. She continued to cry the entire way back to Woodhaven; he supported her weight as they climbed up the stairs. Nate led her to the bedroom, guiding her onto the bed.

As he tucked the covers around her, she sniffled and said, “I love you, Nathan.”

“I know, Mom.” He kissed her on the forehead and took her glasses to put on the end table. “Try to get some rest.”

After closing the door, he went into the living room to sit before the television with a Heineken. Propped next to the TV, Abby’s paintings remained as he’d put them when he’d returned home from Eva’s. He ran a hand through his hair and groaned as he thought of that night, sneaking away into the night just as he’d done with Michelle Kapanen. He looked back towards the bedroom and then over at the telephone. The answering machine had only one message, a call from Scott asking him about meeting up at the Safari Club. Nate shook his head and started for the door. The only woman he wanted to see couldn’t be found at the Safari Club.

Nate had never ventured inside Precious Moments or any of the other three jewelry stores in the mall. His relationships, most measured in hours, never required lavish gifts. He took a deep breath and lowered his head before stepping from the mall’s white tiles to the jewelry store’s black floor.

Each circular glass case held a galaxy of gold and silver that winked at him, pleading for his attention like a puppy at the pound. His knees weakened at the sight of engagement rings and he wiped sweat from his brow as he passed by a stack of brochures explaining how to buy the perfect diamond for a fiancé. A salesman materialized, looking like an undertaker in a black suit and necktie. The man’s lupine face contorted into an approximation of a smile and Nate took a step back, pressing against a display case. “Can I help you?” the salesman said, his voice like the growl of a predator.

“I’m looking for something for my girlfriend.”

“Ah, I see. Have you set a date yet?”

“Oh no, we’re not that far.” He cleared his throat and again had to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’m sort of in the doghouse right now.”

“You’ve come to the right place then. Did you have anything particular in mind?” When Nate shook his head, the salesman motioned to the case Nate leaned against. “We have a wide selection of rings for any occasion.”

“No rings.”

“Very well. We also have an assortment of watches, necklaces, and broaches.” Nate followed the salesman to a cross-shaped case and examined one arm littered with necklaces from strings of pearls to elaborate diamond pendants. A jewel-encrusted crucifix caught his attention, but he couldn’t see Eva wearing something so flashy. He paced around to another arm of the case stocked with watches, but moved after only a brief glance.

Nate spied the perfect gift amidst a cluster of broaches. It was a silver angel, perhaps two inches tall, with a circular diamond cupped in its outstretched hands and diamond chips along its halo. “How much for that?” Nate asked the salesman and gasped for air when he heard the price.

“We can arrange a convenient financing plan to meet your needs.”

“That’s not necessary.” He took a credit card from his wallet and handed it to the salesman. “By the way, what’s your return policy?”

After the salesman had set the pin into a box of burgundy felt, Nate tucked it into his pocket and bolted from Precious Memories before someone could convince him to buy a ring. He rested on a bench outside American Male Outfitters—he had not seen Michelle Kapanen working there since their night together—and practiced what he would say to Eva. When he’d stumbled through the apology a half-dozen times, he decided to find a florist and add a bouquet of lilies to the offering.

He pulled up to her building and stood before the door leading upstairs with the gifts in his numb hands. The wind threatened to tear the lilies from his grasp, prompting him to seek cover in the stairway while he contemplated taking the last step. If he left now, he could still get to the jewelry store before it closed and tell the salesman he’d made a mistake. Or he could give the gifts to his mother to comfort her in the wake of Danny’s burial.

Instead, he ascended the stairs one hesitant step at a time until he reached the top and knocked on the door. While he waited for an answer, he glanced back down the stairs to his getaway car. He still had time to escape the inevitable entanglements.

She opened the door as he still contemplated his decision and had closed the door behind her by the time he thrust the flowers into her bosom. “I want to apologize for what happened,” he said.

She refused the flowers and crossed her arms over her breasts. When she spoke, her voice sounded drained of all emotion as though coming through the speaker of The Burger Man. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“I know and I’m really sorry. I’ve been a complete idiot.”

“Is that all?”

“Well no, I bought you this,” he took the felt box from his pocket and when she wouldn’t open it, he showed her the angel inside. “I saw this and thought of you.”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s like I said, I want to apologize for the other night.”

“And you thought some jewelry could buy me off, right?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like? If I let you in that door, are you going to sneak off as soon as you get what you want?”

“No. This isn’t…you aren’t like the others.”

“I see.” She shook her head like an exasperated parent. “I was wrong about you. I believed everything you said; I thought you were sincere. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

“Wait,” he said, but she darted back inside the apartment and he heard the lock click. He remained on the doorstep for a minute, hoping she would return, but then started down the steps. In the car, while he stared at the angel broach, his cell phone rang.

“Nate, I need to see you,” Tina said.

“Can’t it wait?”

“Please, meet me at work. This is important.”

“Fine.” He snapped the felt box shut, the sound reminding him of Danny’s casket.

The Bountiful Beauty resided in a strip mall across from the Freepoint Café, between a video store and the Dumpster for both shops. As Nate crossed the gravel parking lot, he remembered the monthly trips he and Abby had undertaken from her eleventh birthday to their senior year in high school. He had not come back since, but the store had not changed. One of the plus-size models in the display window wore the same pink pants and flowered shirt Abby had purchased the day their friendship ended.

Tina had already closed the shop and he kept his eyes on the ground as he waited for her to open the door. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Could you make it quick? My mom’s over and I don’t want to leave her alone for too long.”

“Come on, let’s get out of the cold.” As they walked towards the counter at the back of the store, Nate saw orange clearance signs posted atop every rack. “That new Fashion Bug in the mall is killing us. We’ll probably go under in a month or two.”
“Have you considered some new merchandise? Maybe something a little more stylish than muumuus. You could revamp your entire image, maybe even find a spokeswoman for some commercials.”

“Sure, and then I’ll hop on the company jet for a fashion show in Milan.”

“So what is it you want me to see?”

Tina reached under the counter and handed a stack of bills to Nate. He found a cell phone statement on top, with a block of calls highlighted. The area code didn’t match Freepoint and he raised an eyebrow. “What is this?”

“Those are calls made on Vincent’s phone to his whore in Grayling.”

“You think he’s cheating on you?”

“I don’t think, I know. I called the little slut myself and got a full confession. He’s been seeing her for the last three months now.”

“Maybe she was lying to you. You can’t be sure just because of some phone calls.”

“I know he’s cheating. I’ve seen the way he looks at me. Like I’m disgusting.” Her voice sounded like Louise’s when she explained why she didn’t want to play with the other children. “We haven’t fucked in almost a year now. That’s all the proof I need.”

“There’s probably another explanation…”

“After I had the kids, I let myself go and now my husband doesn’t want me anymore. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“Tina, no, you’re still beautiful.”

“I have something else to show you, something that will prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s back here.”

In the storeroom, she locked the door behind Nate and then pulled off her black T-shirt. Under the glare of the single bare bulb overhead, her stretch marks stood out like red worms along her white flesh. “What are you doing?” he said and backed into a plump mannequin.

“You said I’m still beautiful. Prove it.”

“But you’re married.”

“So’s Vincent, but that didn’t stop him.

“We can’t do this.” She cut him off before he could reach the door and pulled him into an embrace. Her lips touched his and when he closed his eyes, he forgot about the belly pressing against his waist; he was transported back to The House, when they’d first kissed in the attic.

“Make me feel beautiful again,” she whispered into his ear. “Take me now.”

He guided her down onto the floor, turning out the light with one hand as he did so, and straddled the vast expanse of her hips. She unhooked her bra, releasing a pair of breasts that still sagged as though laden with milk. After he lowered his pants and thrust himself between her bloated thighs, he had to use both hands to hold back the folds of her stomach, his fingers kneading the flab like dough.

“Oh my God!” she said, her voice echoing through the storeroom. While her stomach continued to quiver in time with his movements, the rest of her body remained motionless, both arms flat against her love handles. “Oh my God,” she said again, her eyes bulging as she came.

“Oh, Abby,” he said at the moment of climax and then fell beside her sweaty body.

Tina’s eyes had a rim of moisture around them when she turned to him. “Who’s Abby?”

“What?”

“You called me Abby. I heard you.”

“She’s no one. Just someone I used to know.”

Tears continued to flow down Tina’s red cheeks as she gathered their clothes. “Get out.”

“Tina, I’m sorry…”

“Just go.” Nate donned his shirt and zipped up his pants, leaving her to sob in the darkness of the storeroom. He climbed into his Lexus and fled the scene as quickly as he had that day on the beach.

CHAPTER 22

2007-06-14T11:34:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 22

The village of Hayford consisted of a gas station, a McDonald’s, and a handful of other shops all arranged along one rural route leading from Freepoint to Mount Pleasant. A banner strung over the road proclaimed the Hayford Expo every weekend from May through October. Nate’s mother had taken he and Danny to the flea market when they were children and, given Eva’s collection of figurines, he thought she would enjoy a trip to the country to hunt for more collectibles. When he had proposed the idea in her office, he had to resist an urge to scream in triumph when she agreed.

“So where is this place?” she said from the passenger’s seat of his car.

“Not much farther.” After passing the Marathon station, an F-4 Phantom rose into view on the right side. A steel pedestal held the warplane in the air, forever posed as if doomed to crash. As a boy, Nate and his brother had often talked about stealing the plane and using it bomb real and imaginary enemies, but as he passed by it now, he saw the fighter no longer had its twin engines beneath the tail section.

Ahead of the Lexus, rows of tents stood in rows like a slumbering army. Nate pulled off into the gravel parking lot, a bored teenager in an orange vest steering him within an inch of a Silverado’s rear bumper. “This is it?” Eva said.

“I know, it’s not exactly one of those European marketplaces, but you can still find some good deals.”

They walked down a line of grass trodden into a path to the first row of tents, where middle-aged women hawked pies and hand-carved spice racks. Eva passed these without pausing to browse, but stopped at a vendor selling glass ornaments to handle some of the bulbs. Nate kept a step back to admire the way Eva caressed each one as though it were her child. “See anything you like?” the vendor said.

“I’ll take this one.” Eva held up a clear sphere with a miniature angel imprisoned inside. She reached into the pocket of her jeans, but Nate handed the right amount of cash to the vendor. “You don’t need to do that,” she said to Nate as they continued to stroll along the row.

“Please, it’s a gift.” She shrugged and cupped the ornament in her hands. “So is the figure from your grandma the reason you like angels so much or is there another reason?”

“I think they’re beautiful and what we should all aspire to be. Pure, doing only good in the world.”

“I don’t think I’d like being an angel. No cursing, no drinking, no sex.”

“I suppose that would be a problem for you.”

“It wouldn’t for you?”

“If I were an angel, devoting my time to helping people, then it wouldn’t be a problem for me. But since I’m not…” She let the thought hang in the air. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Not really. Even Superman had Lois Lane.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“No I’m not. You don’t think Mother Teresa had a fling every now and then.” He stopped at a junk dealer and held up a wand with a massaging head. “Maybe she had one of these.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“I’m just saying, even the best of us are still mortal.” He tossed the vibrator back onto the table and turned the corner to the next row. He tried to take Eva’s hand, but she kept both on the ornament. The issue of sex had initiated a surge between his legs and he yearned to take Eva into the trees at the edge of the park, to lay her down in a bed of fallen leaves and strip off her bulky Pitt sweatshirt. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Eva giving him a questioning glance.

“Are you all right?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“We can go home if you want.”

“I just zoned out for a minute, that’s all.” Along the row of tents, vendors sold old toys, comic books, and sports cards. He passed by these without stopping to browse, which Eva seemed to take as further proof something was wrong. They sat on park bench and he crossed his legs to keep from revealing what had given him pause. The crisp autumn breeze ruffled Eva’s hair as she stared into the heart of the ornament. “It’s very beautiful. Just like you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say such things.”

“What? The truth?”

“Is it the same truth you say to everyone?”

“I know this sounds cliché, but you’re not like the other girls. You’re smart, you’re pretty, and you’re sweet. It may sound like a line, but it’s true. You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known.”

“We’ve known each other for only a couple weeks now.”

“That’s what makes it so special.” He leaned closer to her on the bench and took one hand in his. “The others are just a game, but this is different.”

“What is this?”

“It’s real.” As he turned to kiss her, he saw something in the tent behind them. A painting of the beach near the Herbert Chemical plant where he and Abby had spent so much time. Nate left Eva on the bench and ran over to the tent. In the corner of the painting, near the spot where Abby and Cade’s clothes had rested, he saw her initials.

The vendor, a greasy man with a ponytail and bifocals, said, “You like that one?”

As Nate looked around the tent, he saw the paintings that had hung in Abby’s bedroom. “Where’d you get these?”

“I saved them from someone’s garbage. They were sitting there right on the curb, ready to go to the dump. Can I interest you in one?”

Abby’s parents had thrown away her paintings, leaving their daughter’s dreams along the road like an old couch. Nate reached into his pocke for his wallet. “I’ll give you twenty for all four.”

“Fifty.”

“Thirty-five.” The vendor nodded and Nate gave him the money. He carried all four paintings under his arm and turned to find Eva with the same questioning look as earlier.

“I didn’t take you as an art lover,” she said.

“I’m not. These were painted by a friend of mine.”

Eva motioned to Abby’s self-portrait. “Flabby Abby Pederson, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“I heard of her. Every kid at Freepoint Central knew about her. I never realized she had such talent.”

“Neither did her parents.” Neither did she, he added to himself. He hauled the paintings to the trunk of his car, the image of the beach resting on top. For a moment the autumn air warmed to summer and he heard the squawking of Canada geese. As he slammed the trunk shut, the warmth evaporated and left him shivering.

Halfway back to Freepoint, as they passed by a cider mill next to one of the Ojibwa River’s tributaries, Eva said, “You and Abby were friends?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever more than friends?”

“No. We couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.” His hands clenched down on the steering wheel as he thought of Abby’s paintings in the garbage, abandoned by the parents who’d never loved her. He thought of the last time he’d seen her parents, how happy they seemed since their daughter had gone. They hated her and made her hate herself.

“Complicated? How?”

“It was my fault. I couldn’t be friend like that to her.”

“I don’t understand.” He looked over at Eva and saw the concern tugging at the corners of her mouth. He told her then about his Kallmann’s Syndrome, about the disastrous first encounter with Michelle Kapanen at Meijer, and finding Abby with Cade on the beach. When he finished, they’d crossed into Freepoint and he turned onto Main Street. “That’s terrible. You two haven’t spoken since then?”

“She sent me a couple of letters after she and Cade broke up.”

“You didn’t answer them?”

“I didn’t really know what to say.”

“Maybe you could say that you forgive her.”

“But I don’t. I don’t think I ever can.”

As he pulled up to Eva’s building, she ran a hand along his arm. “You’re still her friend. Why else would you buy those paintings?”

“Because she deserved better than that. She deserved parents who loved her.” Before he could stop himself, tears came to his eyes. He tried to wipe them away before Eva could see, but she touched his cheek, collecting one drop on her finger.

“It’s all right. Come on, let’s go upstairs.” He followed her up the stairs and lurked in the doorway as she placed the ornament on the bottom shelf of the hutch. She turned around and motioned for him to come forward.

“I should go,” he said.

“Nate, I want to help. Don’t run from me.” She took his hand and pulled him towards the futon, where she held him close like a mother. “I know what you feel. She betrayed your trust, but you have to let it go. We’re all mortal; we all make mistakes.”

While she stroked his hair, he turned to study the figurines lined on the shelves, all the angels frozen in positions like the fighter outside the park in Hayford. “If I were an angel, I think I’d go back in time and change things. Make Abby’s parents love her, or just smite them so she could live with someone who didn’t make her feel so worthless. I’d stop Danny from robbing Andromeda Comics so he wouldn’t have to run away to Mexico. I’d have my father go to the doctor sooner so they could kill the cancer. I’d end all the suffering in the world so no one would ever be unhappy. There wouldn’t be a Flabby Abby or bullies to pick on her. Everything would be perfect.”

“But you can’t, Nate. We can only change things in the present. That’s what you have to do with Abby. Make things better for her now. Tell her what you feel.”

He slid up the futon until his lips could reach hers. This time, she opened her mouth, allowing his tongue inside. His hand reached up to pull the headband from her hair, a dark wave falling into her eyes. When he had to come up for air, she said, “Not here.”

They stumbled across the floor, still clinging to each other until they brushed past the rice paper screen delineating the bedroom. Eva took a step away from him and pulled the sweatshirt over her head, followed by the T-shirt underneath. He dropped his shirt to the floor and slipped out of his pants as she unhooked her bra. She stood before him naked, her breasts more perfect than he’d imagined. No implant in the world could match what nature had given her.

She had only a full-size bed with flannel sheets that chafed Nate’s skin as he laid down. He kicked the wool blankets off the bed before she climbed on top of him. “I’ve wanted this for a long time,” she said.

“So have I.” She kissed him again, the ends of her hair falling against his cheek like a silky flood. Her crucifix touched his chin and he turned the chain backwards so it became lost within the inky confines of her hair. Then she thrust herself forward and her eyes bulged in surprise.

Despite the string of women he’d fucked in the last five years, Eva was like nothing he’d experienced before. She had the virginal wonder of Michelle, the sensuality of Tina, and the gorgeous Latin body of Maria. She cried the same words Abby had on the beach when she came and then collapsed next to Nate. “You are amazing,” he whispered into her ear as they fell asleep together.

When Nate awoke, the apartment had become dark, save for the orange glow of streetlights along Main Street. Eva pressed against him, her magnificent breasts resting above his left elbow, her hair falling across his throat, and her right hand digging into his shoulder. Even after compacting herself, one foot still dangled over the edge of the bed. Still not as bad as Michelle Kapanen’s place, Nate thought.

Eva moaned and Nate reached up with his right hand to caress the warm flesh of her arm. With only the streetlights to see by and with her hair spread out, he couldn’t see her eyes to determine if she’d awakened. Her whispered her name, but received no answer. An ache in his bladder informed him of a new problem—how to extricate himself from the bed without waking Eva. The way she clung to him, he would have no choice, but to wake her if he wanted to get up and use the bathroom.

The predicament reminded him of all the rules Scott had shared with him, rules he had ignored with Eva. Now he found himself stuck in her bed with her clinging to him like a leech. He had fastened the proverbial ball and chain around his ankle the moment he’d agreed to follow her upstairs. Eva was no college girl he could send home in the morning with twenty dollars for cab fare; he would have to see her every day at Herbert Chemical.

The grim scenario played itself on the rice paper screen like a movie. They would have breakfast tomorrow morning before he left, followed by a telephone conversation later to set up another date. In time, another date and another would follow, until he would have to propose to her. They’d get married in a big cathedral with all her family watching and his mother glowing now that Nate had “settled down.” The kids would come shortly after that. Eva’s body would grow soft, swelling like Tina’s until she looked forever pregnant. He’d either become sexless like his father, treating his wife like a sister, or sneak around to have affairs in the backseat of his car like Scott. He would grow to detest his wife and his chubby pack of children, creating a swarm of Flabby Abbys, if cancer or a heart attack didn’t kill him first.

He had thrown away his freedom for one night with Eva. The crucifix winked at him in the light, mocking him. This woman, this beautiful, smart, sensitive woman would never let him go. She had trapped him, sunk her claws into his flesh, and would keep him forever. He swallowed a lump of bile and stared up at the ceiling to find some way out.

A poster taped over the bed depicted the angel Gabriel expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, his flaming sword pointing towards a world of dark clouds and sharp rocks. He kept his eyes on the poster as he swept aside Eva’s hair. When she didn’t react, he took her hand and eased it over his head, to lie against the top of the headboard. Through a series of slow, careful movements, he crept from the bed without disturbing her. He used the lights from the street to gather his clothes and padded into the bathroom to dress.

After relieving his bladder and donning his clothes, he peeked around the edge of the rice paper screen to find Eva still asleep as he’d left her. He blew her one final kiss before slipping out the door, into the darkness of the stairs. He sat behind the wheel of the Lexus for a minute, waiting for her to come running out the door after him, but when nothing happened, he pulled away from the curb. He’d escaped, won his freedom, but that didn’t stop tears from coming to his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said and wished she could hear him.

He drove across the black Ojibwa River, past the deserted parking lots of the shopping centers. His hands shook as he pulled up to his condominium; he needed both hands to pull the key from the ignition and to open the front door. He checked out the window to make sure Eva had not followed him before he locked the door.

A red light blinked on his answering machine and his finger hovered over the button to play the message. Had she woke up to discover him missing and called? He took a deep breath and then stabbed the button. The voice he heard belonged to his mother, not Eva. “Nate, it’s Mom. They found him. It is Danny.” Her voice faltered and he imagined her stifling tears. “We’ll be coming up there. Call me back so we can make the arrangements.” The message broke off, leaving Nate to stare at the red light on the machine. So it was true. Danny was dead.

He went to the refrigerator, stared at the green bottles of beer, and then slammed the door. Staggering into the bedroom, he collapsed onto the silk sheets and let out the tears he’d saved for his brother for the past nine years. As he cried, he thought of returning to Eva’s, to crawl back into her embrace. He could say he’d gotten up to use the bathroom, or maybe fetch some breakfast as a surprise. But, like Adam and Eve, he’d banished himself from Paradise forever.

CHAPTER 21

2007-06-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 21

Nate sighed into the receiver and clenched his free hand into a fist. “They lost the body? How could they lose it?”

“I don’t know,” his mother said, her voice quivering. “They think it got transferred to the wrong plane.”

“So they haven’t tracked it down?”

“Not yet. They’re going to check the other planes when they land.”

“That’s just great, Mom. Why don’t you let me come down there? Maybe I can get them to speed things up.”

“There’s nothing you can do right now. They’re doing the best they can.”

“They lost Danny’s body. If it’s even him. At this point I wouldn’t give them that much credit to even lose the right corpse.” When his mother gasped, he added, “I’m sorry, Mom. It’s just frustrating. I want to do something to help.”

“I know, honey, but just be patient. I’ll need your help with the arrangements. If it comes to that.”

“Is Aunt Shelley at least around to help?”

“Nathan, I’m fine. Stop worrying about me.”

“All right, Mom. Call me as soon as you hear anything.” After his mother hung up, Nate leaned back in his chair and turned to watch the lunch traffic creep past his office window. He unclenched his fist slowly, easing the pressure as he cursed the United States government for misplacing his brother’s body. He could understand losing a suitcase, but a corpse? How could anyone be so fucking careless?

Spinning around in his chair, he punched Scott’s extension. “Hey buddy, I’m going home early today. I’ll finish the first draft and E-mail it to you later.”

“You feeling all right?”

“It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

“OK, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Take care.”

As soon as Nate hung up the phone, it rang. He expected Scott to have some additional questions, but he heard Eva’s voice instead. “Are you busy?” she said.

“No, I was just about to go home for the day.”

“Oh, are you a little under the weather?”

“I just need some peace and quiet to get some work done. Is something wrong?”

“I was hoping we could go out to dinner again tonight, but we can do it some other time.”

Nate straightened in his chair and almost dropped the receiver. “No, tonight’s fine. Just meet me at home and we can go from there. I’m sure you know where it is, since you’ve read through my file.”

“I should be able to find it. About seven then?”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you then.” Nate hung up and swallowed a joyous whoop, all the pain and anger about his brother’s missing body forgotten for a moment. He shoveled papers into his briefcase and hurried out of the office before someone else could call, or before Eva could change her mind. He stopped at Gina’s desk on the way out and explained that he planned to go home to finish some work.

“I could bring some chicken soup by later,” she said.

“That’s not necessary. I just need a little rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.” As he waited for the elevator, Nate couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across his face. Another chance with Eva. Maybe this time he would get more than a brief touch. His smile faded when he thought of Danny lying in a crate in a strange airport while his mother waited by the phone for any news. After boarding the elevator, he stared at the buttons for a moment, considering whether to go upstairs to tell Eva that he needed to be alone. No, he thought. The last thing he needed right now was to be alone.

At home, he spread out all the notes he and Scott had concocted for the InLarge campaign on his bed, but he couldn’t focus. He pulled up the search engine on his laptop and searched for headlines that might relate to what happened to his brother. In a [border town] newspaper, he found an article detailing a joint Mexican-American sting to crack down on American citizens smuggling drugs across the border. At least one of the “mules” tried to resist arrest, leading police on a high-speed chase along a Mexican highway until his car spun out of control. The driver—Danny, if Nate could believe the DEA officials—had tried to elude his pursuers on foot, but was shot eighteen times in the back.

The number rang in Nate’s mind and he swallowed a wad of bile in his throat as he imagined Danny collapsing onto a dusty Mexican road while police from both sides of the border emptied their guns into his body. Eighteen times. He heard Danny’s final gasp echo through the bedroom as his body went limp.

Nate swept the laptop from the mattress and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. Eighteen fucking times. “Danny, you stupid shit. Why didn’t you just surrender?” He would never know; he would never have an opportunity why his brother had chosen to keep running.

He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to compose an advertisement for the InLarge implants. Each time he began, the image of his brother lying face-down with eighteen bloody holes would rise before Nate’s eyes and he had to go to the fridge for another Heineken. By the end of the day, he had written nothing he could keep.

When he saw the numbers on his alarm clock turn to six o’clock, he rolled off the bed and dragged himself into the bathroom for a shower before Eva arrived. He didn’t want to meet her looking and smelling as though he’d spent half the day drinking. He let the warm water cascade down his body, his head pressed against the tile wall. A stream of water dripping down his face replicated the tears he could not force himself to produce for Danny.

After he stepped from the shower, Nate stood before the mirror to dry off with a towel. He ran through a series of smiles, but each time, he saw the dullness reflected in his eyes, the lines of fatigue at the corners. Eva would notice and then he would have to either lie to her or tell her the truth about Danny. Perhaps she knew already; she knew a lot about him already. The Andromeda Comics robbery had never been front-page news, but it was a matter of public record. With a sigh, he turned from the mirror and went to the bedroom to change.

He had finished tightening his belt when he heard a knock on the door. She’d come a half hour early. He wished he could smell his breath, to determine if the beer scent lingered, but he could do nothing about it as he ran to the door. On the doorstep, he found Tina and her three children instead of Eva. Tina, Louise, and Bailey all held blankets and pillows that hinted this was more than a brief visit. “Tina, this really isn’t the time,” he said.

“I know, but I need someone to watch the kids overnight. I have to go up to Grayling.”

“Something wrong with Vincent?”

“Maybe. Can you just watch them tonight?”

“I would any other time, but tonight…”

“Please, Nate. There’s no one else.” He looked down at the three children: Louise with her belly hanging out from under her shirt, Bailey with his nose running, and Max with chocolate stains on his fidgeting hands. Not tonight, Nate moaned to himself. Still, he couldn’t leave them to ride in Tina’s rickety truck all the way to Grayling. He nodded and Tina kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. I promise I’ll be back in the morning to take Louise to school.”

“That’s fine. Have a good time.”

“You kids behave for Nate. No trouble like last time.” Nate winced at the mention of his failure the last time he’d watched the kids. He waved to Tina as she left, but his arm froze when he saw Eva across the parking lot, waiting next to a maroon Impala.

“Kids, wait inside for a minute. I’ll be right back,” he said and let Louise shepherd the boys into the condo. Then Nate jogged out to Eva and smiled. “I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t expecting her, trust me.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I know it won’t be the same, but maybe you could join us. Give me a hand with the monsters.”

“You probably could use the help.” She stifled a laugh with the back of her hand. “Come on, I have an idea.”

After Nate had managed to get all three children settled into the back of Eva’s car, he dropped into the passenger’s seat. The Impala went down the road to the mall and Nate’s mind filled with images of the boys running through stores, screaming. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

“Trust me.” She took Max’s hand and led them towards the entrance while Louise and Bailey slammed against each other’s shoulders until Nate had to position himself between them.

The GameCave had expanded since Nate had last visited the arcade with his brother nine years earlier. The store had bought and renovated the former lingerie shop next door, turning it into a playground and eating area. Eva reached into her purse to hand Louise a wad of bills. “You kids have fun and meet us back here in half an hour for dinner.”

Nate followed Eva to a table decorated like a pizza, squatting on a mushroom-shaped stool that made his rear end ache. “You come here often?” he said.

“Not this one, but I used to take my brothers and sisters to the one in Pittsburgh.”

“Are you sure we can trust them to run around loose? Remember what happened the last time.”

“They’ll be fine. There are attendants watching the kids.”

“I guess this wasn’t how you imagined our second date would be.”

“I wouldn’t call it a date, but you’re right. I wasn’t expecting this.” Eva stood up from her stool and flagged down a waiter dressed like a cartoon bear. While she ordered their dinner, Nate searched the busy playground for Tina’s children. He saw Louise standing next to a tank full of rubber balls, where her brothers swam amongst the rainbow-colored balls like a pool. Nate crept up behind Louise and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Don’t you want to go in?”

“No.”

He took her hand and led her back to their table. “Look, if it’s about what I said, forget about it. You’re fine just the way you are.”

“I’m ugly.”

“You’re a very pretty little girl.”

“Am not.”

Before Nate could scramble to find something to say, Eva returned to the table. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I’m a big fat pig,” Louise said and began to cry. Nate shrugged to Eva, helpless to do anything except pat the girl on the shoulder.

“Oh, you are not. When I was a little girl, I was chubby too. All the kids used to tease me.”

“Really? You were?” Louise studied Eva’s trim body and wiped her eyes. “What did you do about it?”

“Well, I prayed every night for God to make me skinny like the other girls. Then every morning I would wake up and see myself still fat and I would cry. But one day, my grandmother explained that God made all people different, just like He made all animals different. If He’d made all the animals the same, we wouldn’t have pretty zebras and giraffes and pandas. My grandmother told me that to God, every animal is beautiful in its own way, just like every person is beautiful in their own way. So even though the other kids thought I was ugly because I was chubby, to God I was always beautiful.”

“But you aren’t chubby anymore.”

“No, when I got older, I started to eat healthier and exercise. Not because the other kids picked on me, but because I wanted to, so I could live to be an old, old lady. Just remember, that no matter what you choose, God will always think you’re beautiful.” Louise bolted into Eva’s arms and hugged her. “Now, go play with your brothers.”

After Louise had gone, Nate said, “Is that really true?”

“Most of it. My sister Rosa was fat as a little girl.”

“Did she lose the weight?”

“No, she’s still heavy, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth a little for kids.”

Nate leaned across the table and kissed Eva on the lips. Her cheeks blushed and then turned pale at his touch. “Thanks for lying for me.” After the pizza arrived and the children returned, she said nothing to him for the rest of the evening.

Nate stood in the doorway of his little-used study, watching Tina’s children sleep on the floor. Max and Bailey’s Pokemon sleeping bags rested atop a layer of garbage bags in case they wet the bed during the night, though both protested they never did. In her Barbie sleeping bag, Louise sucked her thumb as she snored. After Eva’s talk, Louise had eaten two slices of pizza, but refused anything else for the rest of the night. Nate blew the sleeping kids each a kiss before retreating to the living room, where Eva sat on the couch, staring at the blank television.

“Can I get you anything?” he said. “Wine? Beer? I think I’ve got some leftover Thai food I could reheat.”

“No, I’m fine. Did the kids get to sleep?”

“They’re all safely in Dreamland.” He went to the refrigerator to open a bottle of red wine. After a night of drinking soda the wine had a bitterness that caused him to make a sour face. He checked the date on the bottle, shrugged, and refilled his glass. Eva accepted the glass he offered, but put it on the end table.

“I shouldn’t drink. I’ve got to drive and I have work in the morning.”

“So call in sick.”

“I can’t. I’m still on probation.”

“Oh, right.” He sipped from his glass before setting it on the table next to him. “I guess I should apologize about kissing you. I didn’t mean to be too forward. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“No, it’s not your fault. I forgot what it felt like to be kissed by a man.” She sighed and stood up. “I’d better get going.”

“Please, don’t go. Let’s talk. Just talk, I promise.”

She sat down on the couch and gave him a skeptical look. “About what?”

“Well…” Before he could finish, he heard a knock on the front door. Tina stood outside, her eyes red and puffy and her mascara smeared from tears. Her eyes were dry at the moment, but she still wiped at them as she composed herself. “I thought you were going to Grayling.”

“I was, but I couldn’t do it. I got up to Standish and turned around. Are the kids asleep?”

“Yes. They were all well-behaved this time.”

“I guess I should take them home.”

“You can let them sleep. If you want, take my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. I think it folds out.”

“I don’t want to put you out. I mean, more than I already have.”

“It’s no trouble. They’re just down the hall. Second door on the right.” Nate moved aside so Tina could enter. Before he could turn around, Eva almost ran into him on her way out. “You’re going?”

“I think that would be best.”

“Now that Tina’s here to watch the kids, maybe we could continue the conversation at your place?”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“It’s complicated.”
“Look, I promise I’ll be good. I won’t even touch you without asking.” He leaned closer to her and smiled. “I just want to get to know you. What’s the harm in that?”

“Fine, but we’ll take separate cars.” She wrote her address down on a slip of paper and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “In case you get lost.”

“I’ll see you there.” He watched Eva go out to her car and then went back inside to let Tina know he was leaving. She stood in the doorway of the study as he had, but with tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. They’re just so beautiful,” she said and darted into Nate’s bedroom, closing the door behind her. Nate shut the door to the study with only a quiet click and then hurried out to his car.

The address Eva had given him was on Main Street, along the river. A developer had taken a block of boarded-up shops and converted them into loft apartments for young people who didn’t want to live in the prepackaged communities like the subdivisions across the Ojibwa River. Eva had written ‘#2’ on the paper, which he assumed meant she lived upstairs. He went in through a side door that led to a creaky stairway and climbed it to the second floor. He knocked and waited for Eva’s voice to respond before he turned the tarnished brass doorknob.

Boxes still lay scattered across the hardwood floor amongst a black futon and a wooden hutch laden with angel figurines in a variety of colors and poses. He had a clear view of Eva in the kitchenette, standing over the sink as she washed an apple. “Can I get you anything?” she said. “I really don’t have anything except water and fruit, but it’s yours if you want.”

“I’m fine. I take it you haven’t had time to unpack yet.”

She came into the living room, the futon squeaking as she sat down. “I have, but once you unpack, everything takes on a sort of permanence. I like to take my time.”

Past the living room, in the opposite direction of the kitchen, only a rice paper screen separated the bedroom from the rest of the apartment. Taking two steps to his left, Nate saw a vanity and set of drawers both made of cherry. “Not a lot of closet space.”

“The super is supposed to come by next week to install a pole along the back wall so I can hang my clothes.”

“No offense, but I think you could find somewhere better than this.”

“Maybe, but I like this place. It’s affordable and unique. It has personality.”

Nate sat on the couch and licked his lips as Eva’s white teeth sunk into the red flesh of the apple. He motioned to the angel figurines on the hutch. “Did you collect all those?”

“Some are gifts, but I bought most of them myself.” She went over to the hutch and from the top shelf removed an angel in a flowing white robe trimmed in gold with wings extended in flight. “This is the first one I ever got. My grandma gave it to me when I was still a baby. It’s a miracle it survived the trip from Buenos Aires.”

“Wow, that is amazing. You must really believe in all that stuff then.”

“Don’t you?”

“I suppose. It just seems a little odd to think of someone with wings and a halo hovering around me.”

Eva caressed the figure in her hand as she said, “Most people think angels are little cherubs flying around like Cupid, but that’s not true. I think there’s an angel in all of us, telling us to do the right thing. Guiding us, if we listen.”

Nate shifted on the futon and looked towards the door. “Do you listen to your angel a lot?”

“Most of the time.” After she put the figurine back on the shelf and turned around, he saw her blushing. “You probably think I’m crazy now. Like I’m a serial killer hearing voices in my head.”

“No, I don’t think that at all. I think it’s sweet.”

“It does sound a little crazy to believe in spirits talking to me, but there is something that tells us to good. An angel, a conscience, an instinct, it’s something in us that compels us to do the right thing.”

Her tan skin had turned cinnamon from heat and he reached over to take her hand. “You’re right. I don’t mean to belittle your faith or anything. I just haven’t had a lot of reason to believe in angels lately.” The redness drained from her face as he explained what had happened with Danny. How he had robbed Andromeda Comics, disappeared, and then resurfaced nine years later after being gunned down in Mexico, only to have his body misplaced.

“That’s terrible, but I think sometimes we have to suffer. It’s the struggle that makes us better people. If we always had it easy, we’d never aspire to do anything with our lives.” She leaned forward across the futon and kissed him on the lips. Surprised, he hesitated for a moment before returning the kiss. She kept her lips closed, resisting the thrust of his tongue and his fingers ran through her hair as she pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

“Right. I’ll just get going then. Can I see you again?”

“I’d like that.” He kissed her again, this time on the cheek, before heading for the door. He glanced back at the angels arranged on the shelves and wondered if Danny were up there right now, looking down on him.

CHAPTER 20

2007-06-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 20

Scott shook his head as Nate finished relating his conversation with Eva. “You just couldn’t resist, could you? The kid’s been here a week and you’re already pouncing on her.”

“I’m not pouncing on her. I wanted to thank her for being so nice to my godson.”

“Yeah, I bet that’s all you have in mind.”

“What’s eating you? She a friend of yours or something?”

“No, it’s not that.” Scott lowered his voice and looked back towards the door. “I know what happens in this scenario. I’ve been through it before.”

“When?”

“It was maybe three years before you got here. There was this really hot young thing working in the mailroom. She was working for the summer, maybe nineteen or twenty. Every day she’d come up here with this cart of mail and I’d watch her shake her sweet ass as she went by. Then one day she stops to give me an envelope and we get to talking.”

“And you asked her out?”

“No, worse than that. We wound up fucking in the mailroom, on the table where she’d sort the mail, after everyone else had gone.”

When Scott said nothing further, Nate asked, “What happened? Did she bring you up on charges or something?”

“She didn’t do anything, but she stopped delivering the mail to my floor after that. I sweat bullets all summer, waiting for her to tell Legal or my wife.”

“But you got away clean. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is things could have gone differently. I could have lost my job and my family. I could have been forced to pay that girl for the next twenty years.”

“I’m not going to screw Eva in the mailroom.”

“Maybe, but here it’s a whole different game than at the Safari. You take her home, you can’t just forget about her the next morning. She’s going to be here every day. You hear what I’m saying? You can’t use the same game plan here or you’re going to lose.”

“I won’t,” Nate said and shoved a portfolio across the desk to end the conversation. They discussed the list of magazines that would carry the print advertisements, agreeing to start with trade publications before expanding into more general magazines. They spoke in clipped sentences, without the usual banter, until Scott agreed to go make some phone calls.

After his friend left, Nate checked the clock on the wall. He had three hours before he had to meet Eva in Personnel. With a sigh, he turned to the computer to examine the cost projections one more time. He glanced at his watch every few minutes, always disappointed at how little time had progressed. At five o’clock, Gina asked through the intercom if he needed anything before she left. “No, I’m fine,” he said. He wiped sweat from his forehead and took a deep breath to calm his stomach.

By the time he left the office at a quarter to six, everyone else had gone for the day. He again waited for the elevator, but this time saw no one inside when the doors opened. He went up to Personnel on the tenth floor; it looked no different than his department. The same cubicles in the center of the room surrounded by a ring of offices.

He found Eva’s office in the same relative position as his own, and when he opened the door, saw her office had the same lack of decoration. On her desk, manila folders sat in neat piles while she typed information from them into the computer. She looked up at his approach, silver-rimmed glasses perched at the end of her nose. “You’re early,” she said.

“A little bit. You almost finished?”

“I’ve got a few more to do. Can you wait outside? I hate having people stare at me when I’m working.”

“Sure, I’ll be right outside.” He closed the door and paced in circles around the cubicles until he came to a halt in front of the window. Outside, the sky had turned a bright shade of red that made him cringe, almost as if the air were bleeding. He looked back towards Eva’s office, wondering if he should back out now as Scott had suggested.

Instead, he did another lap around Personnel, this time measuring the size of the desks. The tabletops in the cubicles couldn’t support a body lying flat, but with some creative positioning, he imagined it could work. The desk in Eva’s office—or his own desk—would leave more room to maneuver. As he imagined laying her on the desk surface and pulling away the headband to free her lustrous hair, he felt a growing bulge against his pants.

“Are you ready?” Eva asked.

He blushed, grateful in such times to have a small penis, and nodded. “I’m ready.”

Her eyes narrowed and he waited for her to run for the elevator, but she only said, “Where are we going?”

“I was able to get a table at Viviano’s. It’s probably next to the kitchen or out in the alley, but it’s all I could do on short notice.”

“As long as the food’s good. I’m starving,” she said as the elevator doors parted. In the confines of the elevator, he turned to conceal his erection. “Are you all right? You look warm.”

“It’s just a little stuffy in here. I’ll be fine.” As they walked through the parking garage, he closed his eyes, trying to bring forth an image other than Eva sprawled naked on her desk.

Conceived at the same time as the Herbert Tower and located only two blocks away, the Somerset Hotel looked like a half-size replica of the chemical giant’s headquarters. The green awning of Viviano’s stood out against the polished black glass and inside the restaurant’s décor contrasted with that of the hotel. The owner of Viviano’s had moved the complete interior—including the hardwood floors—from the restaurant’s old location on the other side of Freepoint. Nate stopped Eva at the maitre’d’s pedestal and waited for the man to look up their reservation.

“Ah yes, Mr. Colbrunn. I see you have brought a lovely guest this evening. I will show you to your table.” The maitre’d guided Nate and Eva through an aisle between circular tables with unsoiled white tablecloths and booths surrounded by shimmering brass framework. The parties occupying the tables made up Freepoint’s social elite, including Mr. Pahlsson, who laughed at an obscene joke while Nate slunk by. He didn’t need his boss to drag him into some boy’s night out that would inevitably turn to a discussion of cost controls.

As Nate feared, his late reservation had landed the smallest booth in the corner of the dining room, between the kitchen doors and a potted plant. At least Pahlsson won’t see us over here, he thought as he waited for Eva to slide into one side of the booth before taking the other. The maitre’d left them with menus printed in both English and Italian, the native language of the restaurant’s founders according to the brief history printed on the inside cover.

Nate pretended to scan the menu for a moment before turning to Eva. “Have you ever been here before?”

“No, have you?”

“A few times.” In actuality, he had dined at Viviano’s twice: once for lunch during a seminar in the hotel conference center and then again a year ago for the CEO’s birthday dinner. “The pasta is really good.”

“Maybe I’ll try that.”

“So how long have you been in Freepoint?”

“I grew up here until my senior year in high school. My family still lives in Pittsburgh.”

“It must be nice to come home.”

“I forgot how small this town is.”

“I guess that can be a drawback, but it also makes things comfortable.” He edged closer to her in the booth and smiled. “It’s easier to make friends.”

“Is that why you never left?”

Before he could answer, a waiter probably still in college arrived to take their orders. Nate opened his mouth to speak, but Eva blurted out a steam of Italian that kept the waiter bobbing his head of wet hair. “I’m sorry, ma’am, could you repeat that?”

“I’ll have the Caesar salad, no dressing, and the steamed vegetable platter. We’ll also have a bottle of your best white wine.”

“And I’ll have the chicken primavera,” Nate said. The waiter jotted down the order and left the couple alone. “So where’d you learn Italian?”

“I spent my sophomore year of college in Italy. Going to Rome or Venice is like traveling back in time.”

“I’ve been meaning to take a trip to Europe, but I just can’t find the time.”

“You’re working on the InLarge line, aren’t you?”

“You sure know a lot about me.”

Her laugh sounded like a cross between a snort and a cough. “It’s my job to know things about people.”

“So you read my personnel file. Found out all the bad stuff on my permanent record. My criminal past.”

“Nothing like that. I heard more interesting things in the ladies room than anything in your file.”

“Oh, like what?”

“Just about your exploits with Scott Glaser at the Safari Club.”

“I’m sure they exaggerate.” The waiter returned with the wine and poured them each a glass. While Nate drank half his glass at once, Eva sipped hers in such a reserved fashion that she still had three-quarters left when the entrées arrived.

Through the meal, Eva told of her travels in Italy to the Grand Canals of Venice, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Coliseum in Rome. “Everywhere you go is like a piece of history. It really is amazing,” she concluded.

“It sounds like a wonderful experience.” The crucifix at her neck reflected the light and he asked, “Did you ever get up to the Vatican to see the Pope?”

“No, I never did,” she said, her voice tinged with an iciness that made him slide back an inch.

“Maybe next time.” He finished a glass of wine and poured another. “So I guess it must have been tough living with five other kids. I only had one brother and it was terrible.”

“It wasn’t so bad most of the time. One of my sisters is thinking of moving back to the area for school.”

“Freepoint State? I could think of a lot better schools, although I shouldn’t disparage my alma mater.”

“No, Michigan State down in Lansing. She wants to be a veterinarian.”

“That’s not too far away. You could go see her on weekends. Make sure she’s not getting into trouble.”

“You mean with someone like you?”

He dropped his fork as though she’d slapped him. “What’d I do?”

“I’m sorry. I just worry about her. And everyone else.”

Nate reached over to touch her hand; her skin had a chill as though they were sitting outside. “I understand. There are a lot of bad people out there.”

“I didn’t mean to imply…”

“No, it’s all right. I’m sure there are a lot of wild stories floating around.” He tried to give her hand a squeeze, but she slipped it away to spear a carrot. “So when you weren’t in Italy, where did you go to school?”

“I went part-time to Pitt. I had to waitress at this greasy little diner to make enough money for tuition and books. That was just for my BBA. When I went for my MBA from Penn State, I delivered pizzas to the dorms and frat houses. You wouldn’t believe the things I saw.”

Thinking of The House, Nate said, “I don’t know, I could believe a lot.”

“Did you have to work when you went to Freepoint State?”

“Oh yeah, I worked at The Burger Man. It wasn’t so bad after a while.” Nate signaled for the check and gave his credit card to the waiter. “My dad always said a job like that builds character.”

“Mine said the same thing.” After Nate signed the credit card bill and tucked it into his wallet, he held out a hand to Eva. She slid from the booth and leaned against him on the way out. His hand wandered to her back so he could stroke her hair that had the softness of down. At the touch, the erection present before dinner returned. He smoothed the front of his suit jacket in the hope of concealing the bulge.

In the car, he turned to her and said, “You want me to drop me off at your place?”

“No, just leave me at the parking garage. I still have some work to do.”

“Oh, sure, that would work.” After letting her out at the entrance to the parking structure, Nate watched her fade into the night. She paused to wave and he returned the gesture before accelerating away from the building. The erection refused to fade as the memory of touching her repeated in a continuous loop. He groaned and hoped he made it home before he ruined his pants.

Nate lay in the center of the queen-sized bed, his sweaty body taut while Eva ran her hands along his chest. Her hair tickled his crotch and he sucked in a breath as she tossed back her head. She reached back to unhook her black bra to give him access to breasts more perfect than any model for InLarge inserts. Then she let the bra drop…

Eva dissipated as the telephone rang, leaving Nate holding his bare penis. “Damn it!” he shouted into the darkness and took the receiver from the nightstand. “Mom? Isn’t it a little late?”

“Were you asleep?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m sorry, but I just got home from the police station.”

“Police station? What’s wrong?”

“They might have found your brother.”

“Danny? Where?”

“In Mexico. They think he was helping to carry drugs across the border.”

“Did they arrest him?”

“No. He’s dead. If it’s him.”

Nate said nothing for a minute, until his mother asked if he’d lost the connection. “Dead? They killed him?”

For the first time, Nate could hear his mother crying. “They said he tried to run and someone fired.”

“Jesus. But they don’t know for sure it’s him, right? It could be someone else?”

“They’re shipping the body here to identify. We won’t know for sure until then.”

“I’ll be on the first plane there.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Mom, I’m not going to let you do this alone.”

“There’s nothing you can do right now except to wait. I’ll be fine,” she said with the forcefulness she’d always used to order him to clean his room. “I’ll let you know when I know more.”

“All right, Mom. I’ll talk to you later then.” After he hung up the phone, Nate stared down at his limp penis for a moment before hiking up his underwear. He rolled out of bed and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of Heineken. As he drank the beer, Nate paced around his empty condo in angry circles. “Danny, you stupid fuck,” he said aloud.

In his circuit of the entire house, he couldn’t find a picture of his brother anywhere. The only family photo depicted a still-chubby Nate kneeling with his parents standing above him, their hands resting on his shoulders. Taken only a year after Danny had vanished, Nate’s father still looked healthy and both Nate and his parents wore bright smiles. No one who looked at the photo would guess his father had cancer or their oldest son had become a fugitive.

Nate shook his head and drained the rest of the beer. He collapsed into an office chair next to a roll-top desk and turned to stare out at the night sky colored a brown-orange from the lights of the shopping centers. “You stupid fuck,” he said again. An ache began in eye and ribs as he thought of Danny robbing Andromeda Comics for less than four hundred dollars. He had thrown away his life in that one instant.

Nate thought back to the time when Danny had saved his life. When Nate was seven, their parents had taken them camping near Houghton Lake. During the night, when everyone else had gone to sleep, Nate slipped out of the tent to go to the bathroom. His mother had told him to wake her when he had to go, but he was old enough now to go potty by himself.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud, plunging Nate into complete darkness as he stumbled into the forest. He had to find somewhere far enough away so no one could see him and kept going until he could no longer see the tent or the others around it. As he unzipped, he heard the shriek of a bird and whimpered. There’s nothing to be scared of, he told himself. There’s no monsters out here.

After he finished peeing, he started back towards where he expected to find the campground, but found only more trees. The bird shrieked again and Nate began to cry. He ran in circles through the dark forest, branches exploding beneath his feet and leaves sounding like rattlesnakes poised to strike. No matter what direction he went, he couldn’t find the tent. Finally, he threw himself to the ground and curled into a sobbing heap next to a decaying log until he fell asleep.

When he awoke the next morning, he found Danny standing over him. “How’d you get out here, dummy?”

“I got lost going potty.”

“You’re just lucky I found you before a bear did. Or a cougar. They’re all over these woods.”

“They are?”

“Of course. Next time you better be more careful, because I might not be around to save you.” Danny took Nate’s hand and they set off for the camp. When they got back, his parents had no idea how long Nate had been gone; they never found out about Nate sneaking away in the night.

“You should have been more careful,” Nate said to the darkness. In the end, no one had been there to save Danny.

CHAPTER 19

2007-06-14T11:31:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 19

After watching Maria climb into a cab from the front steps, Nate opened his mailbox and, mixed in with the junk mail, found an envelope from Abby. She had continued send him letters in the five years since moving to the Keys, though his responses were infrequent and brief. He took the letter into the kitchen to open while he waited for the coffee to brew.

Dear Nate,

Bobby is dead. They think it was a heart attack last night as we were dancing. One minute he was fine and the next he keeled over onto the floor. I’ve never had anyone I care about die before. Bobby and I weren’t even going out anymore, but we were still friends—like you and I used to be. I’m not sure what to do.

I know we haven’t even spoken in almost ten years, but whether you like it or not, you’re still my best friend. The service is on Tuesday and I thought maybe you could show up. Please, I really need someone right now. I need you.

He felt inside the envelope for a picture—he’d thrown away an album’s worth over the years of Abby on the beach, in the club, or at sea on a yacht owned by Bobby’s friend—but she hadn’t sent him one this time. The coffee machine beeped and Nate poured himself a cup as he decided what to do. He couldn’t go off to the Florida Keys to comfort a friend he hadn’t talked to in nine years. The idea was absurd. She hadn’t flown back from Miami when his father died. Yet he didn’t want to seem like an uncaring ghoul.

In the drawer of an end table in the living room, he found a telephone book and looked up the number for a florist that could deliver to the Keys. He selected a standard assortment, but hesitated when the operator asked about the card. “It should read, ‘Abby, I’m sorry I can’t be here at your time of pain. Try to remember how much Bobby meant to you and when you’re ready, move on with your life.’ I guess that’s it.” He thanked the operator and settled onto the couch.

Except for the bedroom, he spent so little time in the condo that the coffee table and television had a layer of dust. Other than the bed, all the furniture had come with the place, so that as he sat in the living room, he couldn’t shifted on the beige couch to get comfortable. With a sigh, he gave up and went back to the kitchen to throw Abby’s letter into the trash. Nine years and she still thinks of me as that chubby kid from high school, he thought. He had never sent her a photograph of himself or given her any but the most cursory details of his life: working at Herbert Chemical, not married, and no children.

He opened his briefcase to take out a legal pad to draft a letter in the hope of settling matters between them, but a knock at the door stopped him before he could write a word. Peeking through the peephole, he watched Tina grab one of her three children by the scruff of his neck. The boy yelped and looked down at the steps with teary eyes. Nate waited for Tina to knock again before he opened the door.

In the five years since they’d broken up, Tina had married Vincent and, after the birth of their first child eight months later, had put on a hundred pounds. She still looked nine months pregnant, as when she’d first appeared at Nate’s door. After settling herself on the couch, she explained, “Nate, I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me see the error of my ways. For bringing Vincent and I together.”

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess.”

“I’m sorry about what happened between us, and I wanted to make amends. I’d like you to be the godfather for our first child.”

“I don’t know, that seems like a big responsibility.”

“You just have to be there at the christening unless something happens to Vincent and I.” She heaved herself from the couch and touched his shoulder with the tenderness when they’d first started dating. “I know it’s a lot to ask after what happened, but I still care about you, Nate. Please, just do this one thing for me.”

Looking into her eyes again, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Sure, I’ll do it.” Three weeks later he’d become godfather to Tina’s first child, Louise May Hanson. The little girl stood on Tina’s left, already fat like Abby had been when they had discovered the beach. He predicted young Louise would spend her teenage years making monthly visits to the Bountiful Beauty, where Tina worked as the assistant manager.

Nate cleared his throat and said, “Tina, what a surprise.”

“Sorry to bother you, Nate, but the babysitter cancelled on me. Can you watch the little monsters for the day?”

“What happened to Vincent?”

“He’s tearing down an overpass up by Grayling this month. Did you have plans or something?”

“No, not really. I suppose I can take care of them for a few hours.”

“Thanks, Nate, you’re a lifesaver.” Tina looked down at her children, ranging in age from five to two years old. “You kids be good and do what Mr. Colbrunn says.”

“We will,” the kids said as one. Tina shoved the children forward and planted a kiss on Nate’s cheek as payment. As soon as Nate closed the door, the youngest children—Bailey and Max—began to run screaming through the condo while Louise planted herself on the couch and turned on cartoons.

Max, with a case of the terrible twos, opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of ketchup. Before Nate could pry the bottle away, the boy had sprayed a line across the kitchen floor. “Don’t do that,” Nate said. The child began to cry, his face turning as red as the ketchup. “Come on, don’t cry. I’m sorry.” He scooped up the boy and set Max next to Louise on the couch. The older child whispered a joke Nate couldn’t hear into the younger’s ear and Max burst into laughter.

Nate found Bailey in the bedroom, jumping on the bed. “Get down from there,” Nate said. He reached out to corral the boy, but Bailey hopped away at the last moment. Then the child reached down and help up a pair of black panties.

“Who’s are these?” the boy asked.

“No one’s. Now, who wants to go to the park?” As he shepherded Tina’s children into the car, he regretted ever letting his former lover back into his life.

In the shadow of the Herbert Tower, the company had gifted the city of Freepoint two acres of land to turn into Herbert Memorial Park. Rumors in the halls of the company—and on numerous Internet sites—suspected the park land had been contaminated land otherwise worthless to Herbert Chemical, but environmental tests had shown no signs of any danger. Nate sat on a bench in front of the playground and let Tina’s children run wild.

The boys began to throw handfuls of sand at each other while Louise sat alone on a swing. The girl wavered in circles while the other children laughed and screamed like normal, happy kids. In the sadness written on Louise’s pudgy face, Nate regretted the message he’d sent Abby. He walked across the playground and squeezed into the swing next to his goddaughter. “It’s a nice day.”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t you want to play with the other kids?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll make fun of me.”

“No they won’t.”

“They’ll call me Miss Piggy. They always do.”

Nate touched the girl’s blonde hair and pinched one chubby red cheek. “You’re not a pig. I think you’re cute.”

“No you don’t. You think I’m a big pig like Mommy.”

“I like Mommy. And I like you too.” Louise shook her head and tears came to her eyes. “Come on, don’t cry.”

When she reached into a pocket and produced a candy bar, Nate shivered at the memories of Abby. Louise bit off a third of the bar, melted chocolate staining her lips. Nate wiped the smudge away with a finger and found the words he should have said over twenty years ago. “If you don’t want to be fat, then don’t be fat anymore. You have a choice. Just stop eating the junk food and go play. You can do it if you want, but it’s up to you. Understand?”

“Yes.”

He took the candy bar from her hand and threw it into a nearby garbage can. “Now, how about…shit, where are your brothers?” He looked around the playground, but saw no sign of Bailey or Max. At the sound of a child’s scream, he leapt from the swing and ran down the sidewalk, fearing he would discover one of Tina’s boys in a bloody heap underneath a car.

Instead, he found the two boys in the company of a goddess. Eva Perdilla wore only a black sports bra that bulged in an inviting way, with matching shorts that hugged her firm thighs. Her hair was pulled into a blue-black ponytail and sweat dribbled down her tan face, pooling at the base of clear sports goggles. She hummed a tune Nate didn’t recognize to Max, who’d torn a bloody hole in the right leg of his jeans. While the boy cried, his brother stood by in silence as though a stranger. “What happened?” Nate said to Bailey, but Eva answered.

“I was jogging by when I saw these two running. Max tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and skinned his knee. Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right.” It took Nate a moment to realize the last sentence was addressed to Max. “Are they yours, Mr. Colbrunn?”

“Oh no, they’re a friend of mine’s. She needed someone to watch them for the day.”

“It doesn’t look like you watched them very closely.”

“No, they kind of got away from me. It’s lucky you were here.”

“There is no luck. Only the hand of God.” She reached beneath the sports bra to rub a crucifix. “You had a guardian angel watching over you today,” she said to Max, and the boy nodded.

Nate helped Max to his friend and they started for the car. “We’d better get home and put something on that. Bailey, go get your sister and tell her we’re going to the car.” The older boy ran off in silence, leaving Nate and Max alone with Eva. “Thanks again, Ms. Perdilla. I’m sorry to interrupt your run.”

“It’s no bother. Just be more careful next time.” She resumed her job, Nate watching her barely-clad body retreat from view. He didn’t move until Max tugged at his arm.

“I want Mommy,” the child said. Nate scooped up the boy and went out to the Lexus. Louise sat next to her injured brother, whispering words of comfort into his ear. At home, after Nate had listened to Max howl at the sting of peroxide, he ordered a pizza and left the kids on the couch to manage themselves while he scanned the telephone book.

He couldn’t find a listing for an E. Perdilla and dialed the operator for help, but the phone company didn’t have a number for Eva Perdilla in Freepoint. Giving up on that route, he dialed the Herbert Chemical employee directory and listened to the menu drone on before getting the chance to type in her name on the keypad. The computerized voice echoed the operator at the phone company. Must be too new to have her set up yet, he thought. He would have to wait until later to find Eva.

In the living room, he found only two slices of pizza missing and Max asleep on the couch. “Aren’t you kids hungry?”

“No,” Louise said, and shook her head with decisive force. “I’m not hungry.”

He held out a slice of pizza to her, but she batted it away, onto his white carpet. “Come on, you have to eat something. You can’t starve yourself. Just a little piece.”

“No.” Nate collapsed into a beige armchair he didn’t remember ever seeing before and shook his head. It’s a good thing I’m sterile, he thought and wondered how Tina would react when she found out he’d injured one of her children and turned another into an anorexic.

Nate’s cell phone rang as he pulled into his parking space on the eighth floor of the Herbert Tower parking structure. He had begun his career with the company on the sixteenth level, just below the helipad at the top, and moved down farther each year as spots became available. On a Saturday night, though, his was one of only a handful of cars in the entire structure. “Hey buddy, where are you?” Scott said when Nate answered the phone; he had to shout over the pulsating beat of techno music in the background. “You coming to the club tonight?”

“I thought I’d get some work done tonight. Get a head start on things.”

“Are you sick or something?”

“No, I’m just not up for any action tonight.”

“This is about that new girl at the office, isn’t it? You going to spend the night pining after her?”

“It’s not like that. I’ll see you Monday.” Nate turned off the phone and left it on the passenger’s seat before getting out. He walked down the ramp, to the skywalk on the third level connecting the parking structure with the tower. Along the building, he saw scattered signs of life in the lights of office windows, while outside, searchlights around the mall swept the sky. An autumn chill came in through the tinted glass of the skywalk and Nate hurried to the entrance on the third floor that lacked the grandeur of the lobby. A granite-topped reception desk, unmanned at the moment, and a trio of potted plants stood before a pair of glass doors.

Nate swiped his card through the reader next to the doors and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. He unlocked the door to his office and sat in the dark room for a minute before turning on the computer. He faced out the window to watch the streams of traffic flow down I-775 like a swarm of fireflies. With a sigh, he clicked on the lamp at his desk and took a stack of papers from his briefcase.

Alone in the department, the steady hum of the computer and the rattle of pages amplified into gunshots and explosions that made Nate flinch. In the near-silence, he heard the echoes of Max screaming and Louise crying on the swings. He had made a mess of things with Tina’s children, and though he tried to focus on work, he couldn’t throw off the heavy chains of guilt. It will be all right in time, he tried to tell himself. Max’s skinned knee would heal. Louise would start eating again and wind up bigger than Tina or Flabby Abby. He hadn’t scarred them forever, at least not yet.

Hours passed as he went back through the presentation Pahlsson had approved and broke the implementation into tasks for he and Scott to work on. If everything went as planned, the first advertisements would hit newspapers and magazines by Christmas, with the television ads coming out before the spring growing season. Only after the product—a herbicide designed with less toxicity than competing brands—arrived in stores would Nate know if he’d worked in vain or not.

The computer shut down and Nate sat in darkness again, looking out at the thinning traffic below. He could still make it to the Safari Club and find someone to take home for a romp, but decided against the idea. Maria had given him enough sex to last until next week.

He locked the door and trudged to the elevator to wait, the memory of arriving at Freepoint General for the MRI at five in the morning flashing before his eyes. Why’s it taking so long? he remembered asking his brother, who no one had heard from in nine years. There’s probably only one running, he answered himself. One set of doors opened and he took a step back when he saw Eva Perdilla inside. She had thrown on a sweatshirt and jeans, but he still saw her in the sports bra and shorts.

“Hi. You must be working late, too,” he said.

“I’m just trying to catch up.”

“Yeah, that first week is tough.” He pressed the button for the third floor and the elevator doors closed. He steadied himself as the car began to move. “How do you like it so far?”

“It’s about as tough as I expected.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I love a challenge.”

“So do I.” The elevator doors opened and he followed her through the glass doors. “By the way, I’m really sorry about what happened at the park today. I’m not used to looking after kids.”

“I gathered that.”

Her rebuke silenced him until they began to ascend the parking structure ramp towards the fourth level. “I hope we haven’t got off on the wrong foot.”

“No, I’m glad I was there to help. You just need to be more careful with young children. They get in trouble before you can even turn around.”

“You have kids?”

“I have six brothers and sisters, five of them younger than I am. I had to help look after them.”

“That must not have left a lot of time for fun.”

“I didn’t mind.”

Nate spotted his car and stopped in the center of the ramp. “I was just thinking, maybe I could take you out to dinner some time as kind of repayment for what you did for Max.”

“You mean like a date?”

“No, just dinner between co-workers. Between friends.”

She considered the proposal for a full minute before nodding. “Dinner is fine. How about after work on Monday?”

“Sure, that works for me.”

“Meet me in Personnel at six. Just so you know, I don’t eat meat.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

“See you then.” She left without even a handshake and Nate retreated to his Lexus. He smiled as he backed out of the parking space. With all that had gone wrong in the day, something had at last gone right.

Dear Nate,

“For what?”

“For letting me see the error of my ways. For bringing Vincent and I together.”

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess.”

“I’m sorry about what happened between us, and I wanted to make amends. I’d like you to be the godfather for our first child.”

“I don’t know, that seems like a big responsibility.”

Nate cleared his throat and said, “Tina, what a surprise.”

“Sorry to bother you, Nate, but the babysitter cancelled on me. Can you watch the little monsters for the day?”

“What happened to Vincent?”

“He’s tearing down an overpass up by Grayling this month. Did you have plans or something?”

“No, not really. I suppose I can take care of them for a few hours.”

“Thanks, Nate, you’re a lifesaver.” Tina looked down at her children, ranging in age from five to two years old. “You kids be good and do what Mr. Colbrunn says.”

“Who’s are these?” the boy asked.

“No one’s. Now, who wants to go to the park?” As he shepherded Tina’s children into the car, he regretted ever letting his former lover back into his life.

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t you want to play with the other kids?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll make fun of me.”

“No they won’t.”

“They’ll call me Miss Piggy. They always do.”

Nate touched the girl’s blonde hair and pinched one chubby red cheek. “You’re not a pig. I think you’re cute.”

“No you don’t. You think I’m a big pig like Mommy.”

“I like Mommy. And I like you too.” Louise shook her head and tears came to her eyes. “Come on, don’t cry.”

“Yes.”

“Oh no, they’re a friend of mine’s. She needed someone to watch them for the day.”

“It doesn’t look like you watched them very closely.”

“No, they kind of got away from me. It’s lucky you were here.”

“There is no luck. Only the hand of God.” She reached beneath the sports bra to rub a crucifix. “You had a guardian angel watching over you today,” she said to Max, and the boy nodded.

“It’s no bother. Just be more careful next time.” She resumed her job, Nate watching her barely-clad body retreat from view. He didn’t move until Max tugged at his arm.

In the living room, he found only two slices of pizza missing and Max asleep on the couch. “Aren’t you kids hungry?”

“No,” Louise said, and shook her head with decisive force. “I’m not hungry.”

He held out a slice of pizza to her, but she batted it away, onto his white carpet. “Come on, you have to eat something. You can’t starve yourself. Just a little piece.”

“I thought I’d get some work done tonight. Get a head start on things.”

“Are you sick or something?”

“No, I’m just not up for any action tonight.”

“This is about that new girl at the office, isn’t it? You going to spend the night pining after her?”

“Hi. You must be working late, too,” he said.

“I’m just trying to catch up.”

“Yeah, that first week is tough.” He pressed the button for the third floor and the elevator doors closed. He steadied himself as the car began to move. “How do you like it so far?”

“It’s about as tough as I expected.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I love a challenge.”

“So do I.” The elevator doors opened and he followed her through the glass doors. “By the way, I’m really sorry about what happened at the park today. I’m not used to looking after kids.”

“I gathered that.”

Her rebuke silenced him until they began to ascend the parking structure ramp towards the fourth level. “I hope we haven’t got off on the wrong foot.”

“No, I’m glad I was there to help. You just need to be more careful with young children. They get in trouble before you can even turn around.”

“You have kids?”

“I have six brothers and sisters, five of them younger than I am. I had to help look after them.”

“That must not have left a lot of time for fun.”

“I didn’t mind.”

Nate spotted his car and stopped in the center of the ramp. “I was just thinking, maybe I could take you out to dinner some time as kind of repayment for what you did for Max.”

“You mean like a date?”

“No, just dinner between co-workers. Between friends.”

She considered the proposal for a full minute before nodding. “Dinner is fine. How about after work on Monday?”

“Sure, that works for me.”

“Meet me in Personnel at six. Just so you know, I don’t eat meat.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

CHAPTER 18

2007-06-14T11:31:00.001-07:00

BOOK III:

ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER 18

Nate checked his watch and then looked over at the door leading to Stevens’s inner sanctum. Twenty minutes of waiting and still the nurse hadn’t opened the door to let him in. He took his cell phone from the holster on his belt and flipped it open. “Hey, Gina, it’s Nate. Look, I’m still at the doctor. Think we can push back that meeting a half hour?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Colbrunn,” his secretary said. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just the usual shit. If I’m not there in an hour, have Scott stall them until I get there.” He closed the phone and looked towards the receptionist’s station, wondering if he could persuade the girl to speed things along.

Nate kept his distance from the coughing, wheezing patients around the waiting room as he swaggered over to the receptionist. The girl had the pale, mousy look Scott had always warned him against, the type who would attach herself like a leech after the first date. He flashed a smile and met her bespectacled gaze. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Well, I hate to be a nuisance, but I’ve got an important meeting in about an hour. Is there any chance I could get in there to see the doctor?”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“I know, and it’s not that I want special treatment, but this is really important. It would mean an awful lot to me.”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on, just ask the nurse to call my name next.” He lowered his voice and indicated the elderly patients with his head. “It’s not like they have somewhere else to go. It’s probably the highlight of their day.”

The receptionist covered her mouth with a pale hand to conceal her smile. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

“That’s all I ask.” He returned to his seat and checked his watch again. He took a deep breath and tried to reassure himself that Scott could stall Pahlsson for a few minutes, but Scott didn’t know the details well enough to make the presentation alone. The receptionist had disappeared from her post, which Nate took as a good sign that his strategy had worked. He perched on the edge of the seat, and when the nurse opened the door to call his name, he was already on his feet.

In the examination room, he ran through the presentation again in his mind, focusing on the cost figures Pahlsson would ask for—the division vice-president always looked disinterested in a presentation until it came time to discuss the numbers. Then his eyes would light up and he would lean forward in his chair. The man’s voice became orgasmic when he asked, “How much will this cost us?”

The door opened and Doctor Stevens bounded into the room. The urologist’s golden hair had begun to thin in the last three years, a fact he tried to hide by combing the hair from the back forward. “How are we doing today?”

“Just great,” Nate said. He dropped his pants without prompting and waited for Stevens to finish reviewing his file.

“How’s the gel working out?”

“It’s good. A little messier, though.” In the last year, Nate had started to use a gel called AndroGel every morning to avoid coming in once a month for shots, but Stevens insisted on seeing him every three months to renew the prescription. The urologist donned a glove and wheeled forward on his stool to examine Nate’s genitals.

The rate of growth had slowed over five years, and Nate supposed he would have as much between his legs as he ever would without the aid of surgery. It’s more than enough, he told himself. He closed his eyes at the surge that always came when the doctor coaxed Nate’s penis from its den. “You still want to go that route?”

“Yeah, that’d be fine.”

Stevens took off the glove and wheeled away from Nate to scribble something in his file. As Nate pulled up his pants, he said, “So whatever happened to Doctor Klein?”

“She started her own practice out in California. I haven’t really kept tabs on her, though.”

“Good to hear things are going well for her. Guess I’ll see you in three months then.”

“Right, but let me know if you change your mind in the meantime.”

“I will.” Nate took the slip of paper the urologist handed to him and shoved it into his pocket. He followed the doctor out of the examination room and back to the receptionist’s station. The girl refused to meet his gaze as she made the next appointment and took his money for the co-pay.

“You’re all set.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you next time.” He smiled to her one last time on his way out, glad she didn’t have the courage to ask him out. The last thing he needed was another Michelle Kapanen, an anchor weighing on his conscience.

In the parking lot, he turned off the alarm on his Lexus before dropping behind the wheel and starting the engine. The clock in the car said he still had a half hour before the meeting. More than enough time, he thought and accelerated out of the parking lot. He saw the Herbert Tower rising in his windshield and smiled. He’d survived for another three months without entangling himself with Stevens or his staff.

Nate spread the notes for the presentation around his otherwise-clean desktop to go over the material one final time before the meeting. Scott sat across from his desk in a padded gray chair with a pad of paper, leaning forward to study the computer-generated slides like game film. Nate’s office, the smallest in the marketing department, contained only charts taped to the walls for decoration, and he pointed to a pie graph on his left. “We’ll want to hit him with the demographic numbers to soften him up before getting to the costs,” Nate said.

“You know he’ll want to do this cheaper.”

“Right, I already got that covered.” Nate took a sheet of paper from underneath the pile with revised projections. “We’ll grudgingly lower our production budget by two million.”

“Except you’ve already padded our estimates by that much, right?”

“Bingo. The old man will be so happy, he’ll cave in and give us what we want anyway.”

“So I guess this is why they promoted you instead of me.”

“I can’t take all the credit. I had a good teacher.”

“Damn right. I didn’t want the job anyway, too much pressure.” They reassembled the notes and left the office, stopping at Gina’s desk. The secretary had a headset over her orange bouffant, and put her hand over the receiver at Nate’s approach.

“You have the handouts copied?”

“Right here, Mr. Colbrunn,” she said and handed a thick pile of papers to him. “I got a call from Mr. Pahlsson’s office. He’s running a little late.”

“Probably stuck on the eighteenth hole,” Scott said.

“Great, that just gives us more time to practice. Thanks, Gina. You’re a wonder.”

She smiled and adjusted her bifocals at the complement. At first Nate had thought it would be difficult to have a secretary—he’d never had to lead anyone before—but he’d found it an easy adjustment. It helped the Herbert Chemical brass had assigned him one of the oldest, chubbiest secretaries in the pool; he never entertained the thought of having sex with Gina for even a moment. She motioned to the plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies on the edge of her desk. “You should eat a couple of those. You’re too skinny.”

“Maybe after the meeting. Thanks.” He and Scott went to the elevators and waited for one of the black doors to open. Studying the city out the window as he reviewed the presentation, he didn’t notice the woman getting off the elevator until she’d walked past. She wore a gray suit with a skirt that afforded him a view of muscular calves. Black hair streamed down to her shoulders, radiating with a blue glow. Scott pulled at Nate’s arm, but he didn’t move, too hypnotized by the swaying curves of the woman’s body.

“Who’s that?” he asked Scott.

“That’s the new girl in Personnel they hired when Jamison retired.”

“What’s her name?”

“Eve? Ann? Something like that. I’d love to open that jar of salsa, though, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I think I do.” Nate pressed the handouts into Scott’s arms. “I’ll take the next one.”

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

Nate pursued the woman as she walked down the row of cubicles at a fast walk. He passed Gina’s desk, hurrying by before his secretary could finish asking if he’d forgotten anything. The woman stopped at the end of the hall and turned so he could see her face in profile. Her skin had the look of polished oak and she had her hair pulled away from her face, kept in place by a gray headband. She looked around the marketing department, in search of something.

“Can I help you?” Nate asked and flashed his warmest smile.

“I’m looking for Mr. Henderson’s office,” she said, her voice tinged with irritation.

“Oh, he’s up on the next floor in Benefits.”

“Thank you.” She began to move past him, but he extended his hand to check her.

“You’re welcome. My name’s Nathan Colbrunn. If you need anything else, let me know. I remember how long it took me to get my bearings around here.”

“I’m sure.” Her violet eyes narrowed with annoyance. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m already running late.”

“No problem. Hey, what’s your name?”

“Eva. Eva Perdilla.”

“Nice to meet you Eva.” She nodded to him on her way past and he sighed as he watched her retreat from sight.

When he reached the conference room, he found Scott had the laptop running and the projector focused for the presentation. “How’d it go, Ace?”

“Nothing yet, but I think I made some inroads. Established the beachhead.”

“Yeah, it’s tough getting that foot in the door. You going to the Safari later?”

“Sure. I thought you had that Bible study group on Fridays?”

“I begged off tonight. Told the wife I got to work late on this presentation.” Scott clapped Nate on the shoulder as they spread the handouts around the marble-topped conference table. “I think you could use a little interoffice romance lecture anyway.”

“I can hardly wait.” When Pahlsson came in and the lights dimmed for the presentation, Nate cleared his throat, trying to banish Eva Perdilla from his mind, but he couldn’t. He stumbled through the figures and finally stopped to take a drink of water. Thinking of Doctor Stevens’s receptionist, he remembered the danger of entanglements. Don’t get involved, he told himself. Focus on the numbers. “Sorry about that,” he said, resuming the presentation with precision.

Nate and Scott sat in the upper level of the Safari Club, where they could look down upon the women at the bar, scanning for potential targets. “So you got the new girl’s name?” Scott said.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“You do realize the company has policies about sexual harassment? You better watch it or she’ll end up garnishing your wages for the next twenty years.”

“I didn’t harass her. I helped her find Benefits.”

“I’m sure you’d like to help her find your bedroom.”

“So? Come on, you admitted you want her.”

“Yes, but my lust is idle. You’ll probably end up whipping your dick out the next time you see her.”

“I will not.” Nate paused as the waitress arrived to take their orders. After she left, he continued, “Give me a little credit.”

“OK, maybe you won’t whip out your dick. You’ll probably just try to ram your tongue down her throat.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need your advice on this one. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Right, that’s why you were so flustered during the presentation. You almost blew it right in front of the old man.”

“I recovered and we got it, didn’t we? So what are you complaining about?”

The waitress returned with two beers, and Scott took a sip of his before saying, “Nothing. Just don’t let it become a problem.”

“All right, I promise it won’t become a problem. Now, how about tonight? What looks promising?”

“A pair of live ones just came in the door. Couple of party girls looking for a good time.” Nate followed Scott’s gaze to a pair of girls who didn’t look old enough to be admitted to the club. One had short blonde hair and a tight red dress; the other had black hair and a silver dress. “Let’s hurry and get to the bar before they try to pass off their fake IDs.”

They hurried downstairs, arriving before the girls reached the bar. “Four beers, please,” Nate told the bartender. “Two for us and two for our new friends.”

“How are you ladies this evening?” Scott said.

“A lot better now,” the blonde said and attached herself to Scott. The brunette stayed apart from Nate, accepting her beer at arm’s length.

“We have a table upstairs,” Nate said. He led the others up the steps and they deployed themselves so the girls sat on one side, with Nate next to the brunette and Scott next to the blonde. Nate soon learned the brunette was named Maria and the blonde named Annette. As Scott had suspected, the girls were only sophomores at Freepoint State.

“Are you still in school?” Maria asked Nate, her words tinged with a Latin accent.

“Not anymore. Scott and I work at Herbert Chemical. We’re in marketing. I bet you’ve seen some of our work.”

“Did you guys come up with those adorable talking scrub brushes?” Annette said.

“No, that was a little before our time,” Scott said.

“Oh, that’s too bad. I love those.”

“So what brings you two here?” Nate said.

“Maria’s going back to El Salvador in a week. This is sort of our farewell party.”

“Well, it’s a shame to lose such a beautiful woman,” Nate said. Maria blushed at the remark, and Nate thought perhaps Scott had misjudged her; she seemed more like the shy type Scott had warned him against, but since she was leaving the country, it shouldn’t make too much of a difference. “I guess all we can do is make this an unforgettable night.”

They continued talking until they finished the beers, and then went down to the dance floor, where Nate found Scott hadn’t made a mistake in his assessment of Maria. She ground against Nate as the music played, hair covering his face. They both had sweat dripping down their faces before the song ended, but Maria asked for one more dance. Nate stood in place, letting her slither against him like a cat. At the climax of the song, she pulled away enough so that through the pulsating strobe lights he could watch her roll up the hem of her skirt. She didn’t have on any panties, giving him a view of her dark pubic hair. He took her hand and drew her close. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.

They said little on the drive from the club to his condominium in Woodhaven, a community separated from the Best Buy parking lot by a row of pine trees. He led her up the front steps of the colonial-style building and she rested against the red brick wall as he fumbled for the keys to open the door. They hurried down the hall to the bedroom without preamble and he laid her down on the bed without a word.

As he climbed astride her, he said, “Is this how they do it in El Salvador?”

“You should come with me to find out.”

“I would, but I need to renew my passport,” he said as he kissed her neck. He slid down her dress and kissed the brown flesh of each breast. The moonlight coming through the blinds gave her hair a blue glow that reminded him of Eva. Maria’s face transformed into that of Eva as he leaned forward to kiss her lips. When he came, he strangled his voice to keep from shouting Eva’s name. While Maria slept, Nate stared at the ceiling, pondering the near-mistake in bed and his almost disastrous performance in the conference room. No matter how hard he tried, the brief memory of their encounter would not leave his mind. He sighed and fondled Maria’s right breast, but couldn’t help imagining it belonged to Eva.

CHAPTER 17

2007-06-14T11:29:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 17

Ms. Jamison deposited Nate on the sixth floor of the Herbert Tower and he settled into the padded gray chair of a waiting area reminiscent of Doctor Stevens’s office. The receptionist for the marketing department kept her gaze on Nate as she answered the telephone. She and Nate were alone, but he made sure to avoid eye contact, turning his head to watch the frosted glass door behind her desk.

He rubbed his eyes and hoped the lack of sleep didn’t show. After leaving Michelle’s apartment, he had spent the rest of the weekend awaiting the police to arrest him for rape, but no one came. He had tried once to call her, the phone ringing a dozen times with no answer. The newspapers and television never reported a distraught girl throwing herself from the Herbert Tower or the corpse of a young woman found with slit wrists in her apartment. Perhaps in a few days one of her neighbors would report a foul stench coming from under the door and they would find Michelle still curled into a ball.

He looked over at the receptionist and considered asking her to use the telephone to call Michelle’s apartment again, but then discarded the idea. Nothing he could say would help the situation. In time she would get over what happened and realize that he’d set her free from the shackles of sexual repression. She would in time understand the silliness of “saving herself” for Mr. Right. I’ve done nothing but help her along, he thought and sighed.

The clothes she had picked out for him hung rigid and unnatural as though he’d never worn them before. They remind him of Michelle—simple, understated, and awkward yet somehow still elegant. He ran his hand along the fabric and the memory of their date replayed in his mind, ending with her lying in the fetal position while he slunk away. He had run from her again.

The door opened and when Nate looked up, he saw a man in an identical suit approach with one arm extended in greeting. Nate found the proffered hand dry and firm, but tinged with an iciness that made Nate withdraw in a hurry. “You must be Nate,” the man said, his voice reedy. “I’m Scott Glaser. The Boss is out of town, so he asked me to show you around.”

“Oh, sure.”

“You’re already familiar with our waiting area where we receive the visiting dignitaries. And of course you’ve met our receptionist, Sherry. She’s the backbone of our operation.” Nate didn’t know whether to laugh or not at the last remark and decided upon a weak smile. “Now, let’s go through the looking glass so you can meet the rest of our team.”

Behind the door, Nate found rows of gray cubicles ringed by offices, their wooden doors shut and the Venetian blinds closed. A window at the end of the cubicles provided a view of the city out to the Herbert Chemical plant and Saginaw Bay. Scott took Nate’s arm and stopped him in front of the first cubicle. Nate flinched as Scott whistled and his new co-workers emerged from the cubicles like shell-shocked troops. “Everybody listen up. This here is Nate Colbrunn, our newest acquisition. Nate, how about a few words?”

“Well, um, thanks. I’m glad to be here.”

“Hey with a speech like that you should run for office.” Scott jabbed Nate in the ribs and smiled. He introduced the men and women of the marketing department one at a time, the names and faces jumbling in Nate’s anxious mind. He shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before everyone returned to their work, leaving Scott and Nate alone. At an empty cubicle, Scott motioned for Nate to sit down. “This is where you’ll be working. Get nice and cozy, because you’ll be spending a lot of time in that chair.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m just trying to scare you. We got to loosen you up a little bit.” Scott showed Nate the copying room with its Xerox machine up one wall, surrounded by reams of blank paper. Next door, the conference room had a gray Formica table surrounded by utilitarian chairs; on a whiteboard someone had scrawled, “People don’t sell products, Marketing sells products.”

Scott sat on one of the chairs and motioned for Nate to take a seat. “How much did they tell you about what you’ll be doing?”

“Nothing really.”

“Just as well, because they’d screw it up. You and I are going to devise the roll-out for a wonderful new plastic bag with a zipper that’s easier to close. I guess too many people couldn’t master something so complicated as a bag so this one’s idiot-proof.”

“That sounds good.”

“Yeah it should be a slam dunk. Great way to get your feet wet, kid. Where’d you go to school?”

“Freepoint State.”

“Local boy, huh? I went to Syracuse. The Orangemen, whatever the fuck that means. Don’t really like orange myself.” Scott held up a hand to show off a gold ring topped by an orange stone. “So where do you think we should start?”

“Maybe by establishing the basic parameters. Our target audience, our message, our target audience. Stuff like that.”

“Good. You local boys aren’t as dumb as I thought. But first, let’s get some coffee. Then, after you fill out a bunch of shit for Personnel and the geniuses in System Administration get your computer running, we can get some work done.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a blast. By the way, you got any plans for Friday?” Nate shook his head. “How about I take you out for a little welcoming party?”

“Sure, that sounds fine.”

Scott stood and clapped Nate on the back. “Come on, let’s go kick some ass.”

Nate sat in a dark corner of the End Zone Bar & Grill beneath an autographed Gordie Howe jersey and listened to Scott reflect on his career as a safety for Syracuse while empty beer bottles accumulated. “I had six interceptions my junior year, two of them returned for touchdowns, when I ruptured my Achilles trying to return that sixth one. All I can remember is some fatass lineman hitting me and then the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. I would have chewed my fucking leg off to make it stop.”

“So you didn’t play anymore after that?”

“I tried, but I just didn’t have it anymore. Like I was missing a step.” Scott finished another beer and sighed. “Not a day goes by when I don’t wish I’d just laid down when I caught that last pick, but I wanted to be a fucking hero. Impress the scouts and get some pussy.”

“It’s not so bad though.”

“Yeah, at least I got my health, right?”

“Right.”

“Bullshit.” Scott took a family portrait from his wallet; in it a woman with spiky hair glowered at the camera, surrounded by three teenage girls who all looked flushed as though ready to cry at any moment. “This is what I got. You’d need a fucking tow truck to get my wife’s legs apart and those whiny brats around her are only good at asking for money.”

“Well, it could be worse.”

“I’m sure it could.” After pushing aside his beer, Scott leaned back in his chair. “But hey, I didn’t bring you here to bitch about my problems. You seem like a nice guy, so I thought I should give you some advice. Words of wisdom from my years of experience.”

Nate hadn’t finished his first beer and took a cautious sip while he waited for Scott to continue. “First off, nice guys get shit on,” Scott said and paused long enough for Nate to wonder if that was the some of his co-worker’s advice. “You want to be a patsy all your life, then keep on being nice.”

“What should I do?”

“Look, this fucking company is no different than football. We play to win. And we don’t win by patting each other on the back. We knock the shit out of the other guy because if we don’t, then he sure as hell will.”

“So I should be mean?”

“Shit, kid, maybe you’re not as smart as I thought. You got to be smart about it. Wait for an opportunity and then make your move. I got those interceptions not just because I was fast, but because I could read what the QB was doing. I knew where he was going to throw the ball and I made sure to put myself right there. That’s what you do in business. You see a chance to take credit for something or to discredit some other poor schmuck, you make the play. Don’t feel all guilty about it and shit, because every asshole in that place would sell his mama into slavery for a key to the executive washroom.”

“I don’t know…”

“Hey, if you want to be the guy everyone shits on, then you listen to all that shit your mom told you about playing nice. I’m just telling you this for your own good, because I can see you’re the Boy Scout type. Out to save the world and all that.”

A shaft of white light fell upon the polished wood of the bar and reflected into Nate’s eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw a group of girls collapse into seats at the table next to Nate and Scott. “Now women are the same way,” Scott said, lowering his voice. “Don’t buy into any of that chivalry bullshit. You see a nice piece of ass, go for it.”

“I don’t think I could do that.” Nate looked down at the tabletop, studying the nicks made by other patrons.

“Why not? You becoming a priest or something?”

“No, it’s not that. I had a bad experience recently.” He explained his date with Michelle Kapanen, concluding with his leaving her in the fetal position. Through the story, Scott’s face remained impassive, his head canted so he could follow the girls at the next table as they speculated on the recent demise of The House. “I don’t know what I should do.”

“Forget about that uptight little princess and find yourself a real woman.”

“I mean, what I did was wrong, wasn’t it?”

“Well yeah, but I can help you. It’s like I said, you got to be smart about it.” Scott motioned for Nate to turn his chair around and then pointed to a brunette wearing a gray suit in the opposite corner. The woman turned the pages of The Wall Street Journal between sips of coffee, a briefcase at her feet. “Now see that one there, she looks nice, doesn’t she?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“She is a fine piece of ass, but you got to look closer. Read the play. She’s the kind who can’t stop thinking about her job long enough to come. Like my wife. Now, what about the one two tables over from her?”

Nate followed Scott’s eyes and gripped the edge of the table when he saw the girl from the Freepoint State library. She read a copy of Charlotte Bronte’s book, pausing to nibble on a basket of chicken fingers. “What’s wrong with her? She looks nice.”

“That, my friend, is your problem. She’s just like your girl from the other night. The hard-working, studious type. The kind who want every guy to serenade them with poetry. She wants the Great Love Affair, which means you won’t get to round the bases until she handcuffs you with one of these.” Scott held up his ring finger, the gold band tainted orange by the lights.

“You think so?”

“I know so, kid. Don’t waste your time with her unless you’re ready for a lifetime of pain and misery, or marriage as most people would say.”

Nate shook his head. “I’m not ready to go that far.”

“Great to hear. Now these girls under our noses here, they’re choice pieces of meat. No baggage, just out having fun and before long they’ll have knocked back a few to boot. Easy in, easy out.” Scott put a hand on Nate’s shoulder and whispered, “Give them a few more minutes and then follow my lead. This will be like taking candy from a baby.”

Scott removed his wedding ring and slipped into a shirt pocket. Nate tried to keep his eyes on his co-worker’s intended target, but he kept sneaking a glance at the girl from the library. She looked so much like Michelle that his stomach tightened with guilt. For her sake, as well as his own, he would leave her to her fanciful romances. He turned back to the girls at the table next to him and prepared for game time.

Nate awoke covered in sweat, the green numbers of the digital clock telling him it was five in the morning. A shrouded lump moaned and Nate reached under the covers to stroke the girl’s silky flesh. He pulled back the blue comforter to study her sleek body that lay coiled like a question mark, dark hair splayed over her face. The temptation to wake her and resume their activities pulled at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to break the spell of her sleep.

In the moonlight slipping through the cracks of the vertical blinds, Nate found his clothes and began to dress. The girl—her name continued to elude him—stirred as he leaned down to kiss her forehead, but did not wake. The door squeaked as he opened it and he paused like a burglar to listen for any sounds from the bed. “You leaving without breakfast?” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

She shed the blankets and the light gave her the blue glow of an apparition as she crossed the room. “Am I ever going to see you again?” she said and ran a finger along his jaw.

“Sure you will.”

“Liar,” she said and kissed him on the lips. “Something to remember me by.”

“I could stay for breakfast.”

“I think you’d better go.” She followed him down the hall and through the living room. He hesitated at the door, but she pulled it open and stood naked in the doorway, the blue glow of the moon replaced by a harsh orange security light that transformed her eyes into dark recesses. “It’s been fun.”

The door slammed behind Nate as he descended the steps of her apartment and found the Vega in the parking lot. Across the street, the lights of Freepoint State gave the air the same harsh orange glow as the hallway of the girl’s apartment. He left the false cheeriness of the apartment complex’s Alpine décor behind and drove along the empty streets to Ridgewood Manors.

Nate took the mail from the box and stopped at an envelope with Abby’s name in the top corner, although he didn’t recognize the return address. He opened the envelope in the driveway and found a single piece of stationary from the Hemingway Tavern in the Florida Keys. Attached to the stationary, a photo showed Abby again in a bikini with her arm around a balding man with a gray beard and dressed in a Hawaiian shirt.

Dear Nate,

I got your message the other day and I have to admit you don’t give yourself enough credit as an artist. I just wish I could make you understand that the girl you knew is never coming back. She’s dead as far as I’m concerned. If you can someday get over the past and accept who am I now, I’d still like for us to be friends. Maybe you could visit me in the Keys. I think you’d enjoy yourself.

Just so you know, Bobby and I met a week ago when I came down here to get away from Cade and all his friends. Bobby runs the bar and last year he took second-place in the Hemingway look-alike contest. We’re having a lot of fun together and he said I can stay as long as I want. I think I will.

Nate folded the letter and walked across the ankle-deep crabgrass to the driveway of Abby’s old house. Both of her parents’s cars sat in the driveway and he decided to leave the photo and letter underneath the wiper of the hatchback for her mother to find later. If anyone from her old life should remember her, it should be her parents, he decided.

As he made his way back to his house, he saw that someone had slapped a sticker proclaiming, ‘SOLD’ on the real estate agency sign on the lawn. Inside, he found a message from his mother on the answering machine. “Nate, the agent said she sold the house today and they’re going to close in two weeks. I’ll fly up next weekend to finish moving. See you then.”

The echo of the last syllable faded through the empty house and Nate leaned against a wall for support. He no longer had a home. Even as his mother had put the house up for sale, it had never sunk in that someone else would eventually live in the home he had shared with his parents and Danny for most of his twenty-two years. Now the end had come and he listened in the dark for the sounds of ghosts but heard nothing.

Still in his clothes from Friday morning, Nate ran out to the Vega and roared down Pleasantview Court, leaving behind the Pedersons, the Beckmans, and all the other families of Ridgewood Manors he had known. He had no destination in mind as he drove the streets of Freepoint as it awakened, the clouds of smoke from Herbert Chemical changing from orange and gray to red as the sun began to rise. He needed to find a new home, one that wouldn’t be bound by the chains of the past.

He followed Ojibwa Road across the river, where tracts of new homes waited for buyers. Though one-story ranch homes like Ridgewood Manors, the houses in the new subdivisions with names like Bayview Estates and Sunnyvale Commons, had manicured lawns of green grass and brick facades with mortar still a virgin white. The freshness of the houses invited him to stay a while. “I think I will,” he said.

CHAPTER 16

2007-06-14T11:29:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 16

At the entrance to the Freepoint Mall, Nate paused to check his reflection in the glass and smoothed back an unruly lock of hair. Michelle Kapanen’s business card rested in his pocket like a boulder, causing his feet to drag as he passed through the food court. As he approached American Male Outfitters, he squared his shoulders, straightened his back, and flattened his shirt collar. After blowing out a deep breath, he went inside.

“Can I help you?” a salesman, dressed like a Secret Service agent in a black suite and tie, asked.

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Nate said without breaking stride, his eyes locking on Michelle as she stood before the fitting room doors with another customer, a man with a balding head of gray hair trying on a tuxedo jacket. Nate hovered out of sight behind a clearance rack of sweaters like a predator stalking its prey.

“It’s a little tight,” the customer said.

“If you like, we can try something else.”

“Nah, I think I’d be better off renting.” The bald man crumpled the jacket into Michelle’s arms and her smile wavered as he left the store.

Nate jumped out from behind the clearance rack and Michelle took a step back. The smile returned to her face and she brushed an imaginary strand of hair away from her face. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” she said.

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Wait here a second and I’ll get everything.” From a dark blue garment back hanging behind the counter, Michelle removed his clothes one piece at a time and handed them to him. “Try these on so we can make sure they fit.”

“There’s no need. I trust you.”

Her face reddened and her eyes darted to the floor. “It’s company policy.”

“Well, in that case I don’t want you to get into trouble.” He winked at her before taking the clothes into the fitting room. The legs of the pants and sleeves of the jack and shirt fit as they should and he nodded to his reflection. When he emerged, he spun around with his arms outstretched. “Ta da. What do you think?”

“It’s very nice. I guess you won’t be needing any more alterations then.”

“No, I guess not.” An awkward silence sucked the air from the room as Nate searched for the words to bridge the gap. “How would you like to help me try out these new duds? Maybe a little dinner somewhere so I can break them in.”

Michelle looked over Nate’s shoulder and he turned to see the other salesman circling the area near the door, ready to swoop in on the next customer through the door. “Sure, I’d love to,” she said.

“Great. How about Friday night at eight?” She nodded and he took her business card from his pocket. She printed her address and home phone number on the back and he tucked the card into his wallet. “I’ll see you then.”

“Wait, aren’t you forgetting something?” She indicated the garment bag and he blushed at his clumsiness. He took the bag into the fitting room and after changing, found her leaning against the counter. “Bye.” She gave him a shy wave and he nodded, slinging the garment bag over his shoulder in what he hoped was a roguish style.

In the food court, he laid the garment bag across a table and opened his wallet to look at the precious card. Behind it he saw only a pair of dollar bills and searched through the receipts and old ticket stubs, but found no hidden treasure. His final paycheck from The Burger Man wouldn’t arrive until next week and he couldn’t ask to borrow money from Tina again after what had happened. With no other choice, he found the payphones at the end of a corridor of blue lockers and dropped the proper change into the slot.

He sighed as he dialed the operator to place a collect call to his mother. “Nate, is something wrong? You aren’t in trouble are you?” she said by way of answering the phone.

“No, Mom, it’s nothing like that.” He cleared his throat and he tried to force more cheer into his voice. “I’m just a little short on cash right now. You think you could send me a little money? I’ll pay you back when I get paid next week.”

“How much do you need?”

“Oh I don’t know, a hundred or so.”

There was a long enough pause that Nate thought the connection might have broken until he heard his mother say, “I guess I can do that.”

“Do they have somewhere around where you can wire it?”

“I’m sure there’s a Western Union someplace. Is it that bad?”

“Well, I have about two dollars to my name right now.”

“OK, I’ll call your aunt. She should know somewhere to go. Call me back in a few minutes.” His mother hung up and Nate waited in the food court, the garment bag spread over his legs like a blanket. After five minutes, he went back to the phones and placed another collect call to his mother. “Don’t worry, I’ll be on my way in just a minute.”

“Thanks Mom.” He hung up and went across the street to Meijer and loitered around the customer service counter like the salesman at American Male Outfitters. When the money came through, his mother had attached a note. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” the note said. Nate tucked the money into his wallet behind Michelle’s card. She’ll be worth it, he told himself.

The tree-lined street had once been the heart of Freepoint, but in recent years disease had killed half the elm trees and the paint along the picket fences had begun to chip. Nate pulled up to a white Victorian with elaborate blue trim reminiscent of a doll house and checked the back of the business card again to make sure he had it right. The owner had split the home into apartments and he found Michelle’s on the second floor, in the turret. He rapped on the door and heard a crash from inside before the door opened a crack. “I’ll be right out,” Michelle said, the sliver of face visible pale and panic-stricken.

Nate waited by the rail for the stairs and ran his fingers along the intricate scrolls of the banister. Down the hall, a door opened and a middle-aged woman with a pink bandana over her head paused at the stairway. “Waiting for someone?” she said.

“Uh, yeah,” he said and pointed to Michelle’s door. “She’s just getting ready.”

“About time that girl found herself a man.” The woman descended the stairs and disappeared into the sitting room, the laugh track of a television show echoing up the steps.

Michelle’s door opened and she ran her hands along an emerald-green dress with the puffy sleeves and frilly hem of a bridesmaid’s dress. Her hair, pulled back and kept in place by a green headband, shimmered in the dim light of the hallway. A smile came to Nate’s face and he thought of asking her to forego dinner. “How do I look?” she said.

“You look great.” He took her arm and as he led her towards the staircase, she stumbled in high-heeled shoes that matched her dress. Nate caught her before she fell and she laughed too loudly at her clumsiness. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to these.”

“No, it’s all right.” He kept a hold of her hand and they went down the stairs one at a time, pausing at each step for Michelle to correct her balance and apologize. When they reached the bottom, she pulled her hand from Nate’s and he opened the door for her. He watched her reaction as they approached the Vega, but she showed no outward sign of disappointment at its spray-painted hull.

In the car, Nate turned on the radio to let music obliterate the awkward silence. He turned onto Main Street and his eyes stopped at the former Andromeda Comics, where he and Michelle had first met. By the time they reached the bridge to cross the Ojibwa River he still had thought of nothing intelligent to say. He settled for, “So how long have you been working at the American Male?”

“I started last semester.”
“How do you like it?”

“Some months are better than others. It depends on the commissions.”

“That must be tough.”

When she turned her head, he saw a shy smile on her lips. “Not always,” she said.

Next to Meijer and across from the Freepoint Mall, Nate stopped at Ernie’s Hideaway, which he had picked from its advertisement in the telephone book. The restaurant had the feaux-log siding and wooden deck of a lakeside cabin, but the largest body of water nearby was a pothole in the Meijer parking lot. Michelle almost tripped again at the front door, but Nate again caught her, alerted to her awkwardness in the high-heels.

Inside, Nate squinted in the light cast by candles on each of the round tables topped with a blue checkered tablecloth. He jumped when the hostess appeared from the darkness and said, “Smoking or non-smoking?”

Over the jazz combo playing from a stage before an imitation fireplace, Nate had to shout as he said, “Are there any tables outside?” The hostess nodded and led them out to the deck, where the sounds of piano and saxophone were replaced by that of traffic passing by. They sat at a table in the corner of the deck, Nate facing Meijer while Michelle’s seat gave her a view of the foundation for another restaurant. After giving them menus, the hostess left and Nate took a deep breath. He used the menu to hide his face while he attempted to regain the confidence he’d shown at the American Male Outfitters.

“Any idea what’s good here?” he said and scanned the price list. With its promise of ‘Quality Food at Reasonable Prices’ Nate had selected Ernie’s Hideaway as the place he could maximize the hundred dollars his mother had wired. A waitress squeezed between the tables, a pregnant belly pushing against her blue skirt. As she took a notepad from her apron pocket, the waitress turned her stomach towards Nate and it trembled for an instant from perhaps a kick. “Can we get a bottle of wine?” he said.

“Red or white?”

“Red I guess. And I’ll have the salmon.”

“Salmon sounds good for me too,” Michelle said. The waitress nodded before heading off, leaving silence once again.

“It’s a nice night,” he said and watched the breeze ruffle the ends of her hair. “Not too hot yet.”

“It’s very nice.” They said nothing more and Nate realized that while Tina had taught him the intricacies of sex, he had learned almost nothing about dating. The wine arrived and they both gulped down half a glass right away. Michelle finished her glass and said, “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“About kissing you. You were the first boy I ever really felt that way about.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He poured her another glass and she took a more reserved sip. “You’re the only one I’ve ever felt that way about.”

“It was all my fault. I wasn’t ready for that yet.”

“And now?”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “Now, I’m ready.”

They had finished the wine before dessert and Michelle’s cheeks had become flushed. Her laugh had become a runaway cackle that drew stares from the tables around them. “And he went all day with this huge ketchup stain on his crotch,” Michelle said and broke down into uncontrollable laughter.

“That’s nothing. My best friend in high school wore the same clothes every day for at least a month without ever washing them. Instead of cleaning them, she’d just go out and buy a new set.”

“Oh my God, what a slob!”

“I know, it used to drive me nuts. You should have seen her eat, though. It was like one of those whales at Sea World.” Nate tried to imitate a whale song and burst out laughing. “She’d go to the buffet and come back with a plate like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”

Michelle’s face turned serious. “Sounds like you didn’t like her very much.”

“I did, but I guess it’s because all we had was each other. Two geeks against the world.”

“That’s so sad.”

“But that’s all in the past. On Monday, Boom! Into the future!” He squeezed her hand and smiled. “And I hope you’ll be a part of that future.”

“I’d like to.”

“Well, let’s get out of here.” Nate signaled for the waitress and made sure to leave an extra tip in deference to the woman’s condition. When Michelle stood, she wavered on her heels before Nate put an arm around her shoulder. She kicked the shoes over the railing and weaved through the restaurant barefoot.

In the car, her face again turned serious as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Nate, how many girls have you kissed?”

“Counting you?”

“Yes.”

“Two.”

“Really?” When he nodded, she took off the headband and shook out her hair so it covered her face. “You’re the only boy I’ve ever kissed.”

“I was that good, huh?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. There are lots of boys I wanted to kiss since then.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I think I was a little scared after what happened with you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to permanently scar you or anything.”

“I think it was just a sign to wait until the right one comes along.” He stopped in front of her house and leaned across to give her a kiss, but she turned her head at the last moment so he got a mouthful of silky hair that tasted like coconut.

“What about me? I’m not the right one?”

“We’ll see.” She opened the door and stumbled as she got out, despite being barefoot.

“You want me to walk you to your room?”

“I’ll be fine. ‘Night.” She zig-zagged along the front path towards the house and Nate followed after her to steady her. He guided her inside and carried her up the stairs, planting her at the door to her apartment.

“Here we are,” he said. “You going to be all right?”

“I told you already, I’m fine.” She brushed away hair from her face and attempted to fit her key in the lock. Nate took her wrist and opened the door.

The turret was a circular space with room for only a twin-size bed and a desk with a computer older than the director of the Goodwill store used. Instead of curtains, she had posters of famous actors over the three windows with the remaining wall space taken up by blueprints of houses. “Did you do those?” he said as she collapsed onto the bed.

“Yes. Someday I’m going to design and build my own houses. And none of them will have turrets.”

“I think this is nice. Real cozy.”

“It’s all I could afford. It’s freezing in winter.” She began to cry and he sat on the bed to stroke her hair. “You must think I’m such a loser.”

“No, of course not.”

“Well I am. I’m a virgin who lives in a closet. A closeted virgin.”

“Come on, don’t talk like that.” He wiped tears from her cheeks and turned her chin to face him. “We can do something right now about one of those problems.”

“I don’t know…”

His hand caressed her neck before darting underneath her bra to squeeze her left nipple. Michelle’s body straightened as though electrocuted and her face turned a livid red. “Don’t worry, this will be something you’ll never forget.”

He kissed her on the lips and she made no attempt at resistance as he began to peel back her dress. As he stood up to take off his clothes, she stripped the dress off and lay back on a pink comforter edged with white lace. He climbed on top of her and unhooked her bra to reveal the pale nubs of her breasts. “Nate…”

He put a finger to her lips and smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said and climbed astride. It was only after he came and heard her cry out that he looked down at her face, at the auburn hair pasted to her cheeks by tears and red lips frozen in a scream. He lay beside her and brushed the hair from her face and whispered soothing words into her ear. “It’s all right. You’re fine,” he repeated like a mantra.

Sometime in the night he awoke and found her curled into a ball at the foot of the bed like a sleeping dog. Her body rocked in time with muffled sobs and she mumbled something unintelligible over and over again. When he reached out to touch her, she lifted her head enough so he could hear her. “Go away. I don’t ever want to see you again,” she said.

Nate gathered his clothes and left without a word. He padded down the stairs and vanished like a demon into the night.

CHAPTER 15

2007-06-14T11:28:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 15

Nate awoke in Tina’s bed in the attic and felt next to him, but she had gone. In the week since his dismissal from The Burger Man, he had refused to take part in any games in the Dressing Room or anywhere else. With final exams approaching, he’d taken to cloistering himself in the attic to study all night while Tina spent the time downstairs—he dared not ask if she was sleeping with someone else. As he sat up, the door leading to the attic opened and Tina appeared with a tray of waffles and orange juice. “I’m sorry about what happened,” she said and set the tray on the table. “I brought a peace offering.”

“You embarrassed me,” he said and wrapped the blankets around his bare chest. “You made me betray a friend.”

“I didn’t make you. And you were the one who wanted to do it in there anyway.” She sat down at the table and dug into the peace offering herself. The ferocity of her fork reminded him of Abby during one of her parents’s arguments. He thought of warning her, but then decided not to make the situation worse. The telephone rang and Tina threw down the fork to grab the receiver. She still chewed a mouthful of waffle as she answered and held it out to Nate. “It’s for you.”

He let the blankets slip away as he reached out to take the phone and put it to his ear. When he recognized the voice on the other end, his stomach did a backflip. “Nathan, I called to say you got the job. When can you start?” Ms. Jamison said.

“Well, um, how soon do you need me?” She proposed a date of two weeks from Monday and he nodded before remembering she couldn’t see the gesture. “That sounds good.”

“Congratulations, Nathan. When you come in, be sure to leave your name with the receptionist and I’ll take you to meet your new supervisor.”

“Sure, all right.” After Ms. Jamison hung up, Nate kept the phone in his hand, too shocked to return it to Tina.

“You got the job?” Tina said.

“I got the job.” She bolted forward to hug him and kiss him on the neck and cheek with the same passion she’d used against the waffles. “I got the job!”

“That’s so great.” He kissed her on the lips, all their problems evaporating in a single moment of pure joy. He had a job with Herbert Chemical in the great building overlooking the entire city like a mountain of black glass.

“Thank you,” he said and kissed her again.

“What’d I do?”

“You saved me.” He didn’t need any costumes or other prompts to take her in his arms and lead her to the bed. This time he remained on top and she lay silent beneath him except for an occasional moan or grunt. He let out a whoop and her hands grabbed the mattress as though afraid he might push her through the material

Even as his eyes fixed on hers, his mind began to drift far away, drawing up a list of things he would have to do in two weeks. He needed to find a new car to replace the tired old Vega. He would have to buy new clothes that fit and would make him appear professional. A haircut, a briefcase, an organizer, a new pen, the list kept growing in his mind while he continued to work. “Oh my God!” Tina shouted as she came and Nate pulled back. Sweat coated her naked body and her eyes had the wild look of a caged animal. “That was unbelievable.”

“Not too rough?” he asked and laid down next to her, one hand reaching down to vanquish his erection.

“I like it rough.” She made a growling noise and laughed while he wiped the mess between his legs with a sheet. “I wasn’t sure if you were ready to go that far.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you tonight.” Before he could press further, she fell asleep and he left her on the bed while he ate the breakfast she had brought him. After eating the last of the waffles, he took a pen and paper from his backpack to write down the list he’d prepared in his mind. When he finished, he picked up the phone and dialed the number for his mother in Jacksonville. As the phone rang, his heart thumped loud in his ears, the grim scenarios playing in his mind. On the day he began a new career, she had fallen in the shower or had a heart attack or been murdered by an intruder.

She answered on the tenth ring and his heart slowed. “Mom? Where were you?”

“Planting flowers. I didn’t hear the phone ring. Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing at all. Guess what?”

“What?”

“I got a job at Herbert Chemical.”

“That’s wonderful. What kind of job?” As he tried to describe the position, he realized he didn’t know much about it himself. He only knew it was in marketing and in the Herbert Tower; the rest Ms. Jamison had mentioned, but he’d been too excited to listen.

“It starts in two weeks,” he said. “I guess I’ll find out more then. So how are things down there?”

She told him in a huff about her Cuban neighbors arguing in Spanish the way the Pedersons had in English and then went on to describe the various flowers she planned to plant all along the trailer. “So it won’t look trashy,” she said.

“That’s great, Mom.”

“So, I guess this new job means you won’t be able to come down to visit.”

“Not for a little while.”

“Well, that gives the flowers time to grow then so it’ll be beautiful when you do come down.” After they say goodbye, Nate looked over his list and added a plane ticket to Jacksonville for Christmas so his mother could see her new, successful son.

In the Freepoint Mall, Nate had always slunk past the upscale men’s clothing stores for two reasons: his chubby physique made it impossible to fit into clothes from those stores and his lack of financial resources made it impossible for their clothes to fit his budget. Living with Tina had cured the first problem and the ball of cash she’d let him borrow had cured the second. He marched through the food court and came to a stop at the display window of American Male Outfitters.

Peering through the glass, he saw rows of suits in every color and style imaginable and wished Tina would have come to help, but she said she needed time to plan a surprise for him. He glanced up at the poster of a male fashion model wearing a three-piece suit and tried to smooth the wrinkles from his white dress shirt and pinstriped pants before he went inside. At the rack of suit jackets, he stopped to check the price tag and his cheeks reddened. Even with the money Tina had given him, he couldn’t afford much, but he had determined he couldn’t go into the Herbert Tower in second-hand rags bought from a thrift store or in ill-fitting garments from Meijer or Target. You have to make a good impression, his mother had always responded when he or Danny had whined about having to dress up for church.

“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice said and Nate felt a shiver of déjà vu at the words and the voice. He dropped the price tag, turned around, and almost bolted from the store.

Michelle Kapanen had grown into a plain, but attractive woman. Her face had lost the pimples, but still retained a pallor as though she had spent two weeks in a dark room. Her hair, shortened to shoulder-length, had unnatural touches of blonde while her eyes had the cat’s eye-green of someone wearing contacts. She wore a gray suit with only a slight bulge in the chest—a late-bloomer who had never quite bloomed. “Michelle?”

She squinted and then took a step back. “Nate?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Wow, I didn’t recognize you. It’s been a long time.”

“So you’re working here?”

“Until graduation. What about you?”

“Well, that’s sort of why I’m here. I got a new job and I need some clothes.”

She waved a hand to the racks of suits, shirts, and pants and said, “Well you came to the right place. Anything particular you have in mind?” Her voice, having recovered at the shock of seeing him, had regained the chipper tone of a salesperson in search of a commission, an ordinary transaction instead of a ghost exhumed from the past.

“I need something professional. A couple suits I guess.”

“Sure thing, we have plenty of suits. First, let’s get some measurements.” She led him down the main aisle and back to the cash register, where she grabbed a measuring tape before motioning to the mirrored fitting room doors. “If you’d feel more comfortable, I can have someone else do this.”

Nate thought of Doctor Kline observing him as Stevens probed his genitals and smiled. “No, I don’t mind. Go ahead.” Michelle had him spread his legs apart so she could run the tape from the inside of his thigh down to his ankle and Nate turned his head to stare at a headless, silver mannequin clad in a tuxedo. After she finished, Michelle scribbled the numbers onto a pad of paper that brought forth memories of his job interview.

“So where is it you’re going to be working?”

“Herbert Chemical.”

“Oh, we get a lot of them in here.”

“What do they usually pick out?”

“Let me show you.” She led him to a tree of suits and took a dark blue one from a branch to hold against his body. “I think a dark blue would look good on you. It’s conservative but not too drab, especially if you go with a nice tie.”

“I need one of those too,” Nate said and ran his hands along the smooth fabric as he wondered how much the suit would cost. He took the suit and they moved next to a stack of button-down shirts, where she took a white one and removed it from the cellophane. She offered it for him to touch and he felt the sleekness of the fabric. “Is that silk?”

“That’s right. It’s a little more expensive, but more comfortable than other fabrics.”

“I don’t know, my budget is a little tight right now.”

She nodded and took another shirt from the pile, this one also white, but of a coarser texture. “Can’t go wrong with cotton.”

“Yeah, that’s nice,” he said as he read the price tag. “How about a tie?” She led him to carousel of neckties that hung like snakes dyed in whirling patterns of color. When Michelle gave a burgundy-and-white-striped tie to him, he shuffled the clothes in his hands to see the ensemble together.

“How about you go try those on and tell me what you think.” He nodded and locked himself in one of the fitting rooms to change. Despite the solid doors, he still had a feeling of someone watching and made sure to aim his privates at a corner as he’d always done in the shower after gym class.

The suit pants fit snug around the waist, but the legs drooped to the floor. The sleeves of the shirt and suit jacket ran past his fingertips, the outfit making him look like a child playing dress-up. He blushed in the mirror and toddled out of the fitting room. “It’s a little big,” he said.

“That’s fine, we’ll just have to make some alterations. Hold still for a moment.” She got down on her knees and marked the at a spot above his heels with a piece of chalk. She did the same with the sleeves of the shirt and suit jacket and then instructed him to button the jacket. She ran her hands along the jacket to get out the wrinkles and then adjusted the collar and necktie.

When she stood next to him in the mirrored door of the fitting room so he could have a look at himself, he saw what might have been if he hadn’t run away that day in Meijer. She had her hands pressed over her waist and he couldn’t see any rings visible. “So, how long do alterations usually take?”

“About three days. We’ll call you when they’re ready. What’s your phone number?” He gave her the number for Tina’s turned so he could look into her cat-green eyes.

“Will you be here when they’re done?”

“I should be,” she said and from the counter took a business card. “You can call me if you have any questions in the meantime.”

“I will,” he said and flashed a smile before waddling back into the fitting room. When he emerged, she bent her head as she rang up the order so that hair covered her face. Even she brushed it away to tuck behind her ears, she refused to meet his gaze. “I’ll see you in a couple days then.”

“I’ll be here,” she said, her voice for an instant regaining the squeakiness of a teenager’s.

When Nate arrived at The House, he found the usual activities underway, a fleet of cars parked on the muddy lawn. He held up the cuffs of his pants to avoid getting them dirty as he made his way through the cars and up to the empty porch. As he opened the door, he paused and listened, but heard nothing except the tinkle of glasses. “What the hell,” he said to himself and crept to the living room door.

Inside, the lights came on and he found a crowd of strangers shouting, “Congratulations Nate!” Tina emerged from the throng, wearing a black turtleneck that bulged at the neck, to kiss him on the lips. “Surprised?”

“A little,” he said. “Who are all these people?”

“Friends. I invited them for a little party.” She cracked open a can of beer and handed it to him. “Come on, let’s have some fun.” The crowd parted and on the plywood stage, a band launched into an unintelligible cover of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebrate.” As Tina and Nate spun around the dance floor, someone spilled beer on the back of Nate’s shirt and he swore.

“Did you have to invite so many people?”

“I thought you’d like it.” Her lips pouted and they stopped dancing, other couples bouncing into them until Nate and Tina retreated into the dining room. “Are you mad?”

“I just need to change my shirt.”

“I got a better idea. Why don’t I show you the other half of my gift?” She took his hand and they navigated through the crowd in the living room that was oblivious to the guest of honor leaving. Upstairs, they turned left and she stopped at the door labeled, ‘Master Bedroom.’

“What’s in there?” he asked as she unlocked the door.

“You’ll see.” When she opened the door, his eyes widened and bile rose into his throat. Above a king-size bed with leopard-print sheets, padded manacles dangled from the ceiling and whips lay coiled above the headboard. She removed the turtleneck and underneath she wore a black leather bra and a studded dog collar around her neck. “What do you think?”

His mouth moved without creating sound and he backed against the door. “What is this?”

“It’s your surprise.” She took his shoulders and moved him away from the door to leave it open. Inside came a man dressed only in a leather thong and a black hood. The man wielded the kind of paddle schools had once used on the backsides of rowdy children, holes drilled into the board so it would have greater effect. Tina pushed Nate onto the bed and began removing his pants while the hooded man stood in a shadowy corner, waiting to dole out punishment.

In a mirror above the bed, Nate saw the reflection of Tina hunched over him with the studs of the dog collar winking like diamonds while he lay on his back in a beer-drenched shirt, his face a pale mask of horror. He contrasted it of the image of he and Michelle Kapanen in the mirror of American Male Outfitters and the choice lurked before him like the man in the corner. He took Tina’s hands as they began to pull down his boxer shorts and said, “No.”

“What?”

“This is too much.”

“Well, from this morning, I thought you were ready to get a little rough.”

“Maybe a little, but this is sick.”

“Sick? You calling me a pervert?” She rolled onto her feet and stood over him in the bra and matching panties, the hooded man shifting in the corner. “You better than me now or something?”

“No, but I can’t do this anymore.” Nate stood and motioned around the room to indicate the entire farmhouse. “I can’t stay up until five in the morning and wake up at noon anymore. I can’t go into work with beer-stained clothes. That was fine when I was at The Burger Man, but things are different now.”

“So you want to leave? Then go. Just remember that before I came along you only thought that little thing of yours was good for pissing.”

At this, Nate saw the hooded man focusing on Nate’s crotch as though he had X-ray vision. “Maybe so, but I’ve changed now. I don’t need all this.” He brushed past Tina and shook his head at the hooded man on the way out. He stormed up to the attic to gather his things and wasn’t surprised when heavy footsteps came up the stairs.

“You better hurry up,” Vincent said. “You really leaving?”

“Yeah. Guess I’ll have to find my own place now.”

Vincent grabbed him from behind and squeezed Nate’s arm hard enough to make Nate cry out. “You come back here again and I’ll kill you.” Only then did Nate see that the hooded man had been Vincent, though he had since discarded the hood, but still had the paddle, which he used to tap Nate in the chest.

“Why the hell would you participate in something like that? It’s gross.”

“Because I love her, which is something you wouldn’t understand.” Vincent escorted Nate to the base of the stairs, but didn’t follow him downstairs. When Nate reached the living room, the party continued unabated, but the banner hanging over the stage had collapsed.

Nate threw his suitcases in the Vega’s trunk and looked up towards the window of the Master Bedroom. He thought he saw Tina standing there, with Vincent’s arm around her shoulder, but he couldn’t tell. He climbed into the car and roared away from The House.

His parents’s house had a haunted feel when he walked through the door. The furniture was all gone courtesy of Goodwill, including the beds. The power and telephone no longer worked, the accounts lapsed while the house sat on the market, unwanted. Nate took the old throw pillows from the living room and carried them back to his old bedroom, where he lay down on the floor and watched the shadows. The loneliness weighed upon him as it had the day his mother left, but he knew this time it would not last. He took Michelle’s business card from his pocket and squinted at the numbers in the moonlight before masturbating to the image of he and Michelle in the fitting room mirror, only this time he imagined what lay underneath her gray suit. On his list, he added a new girlfriend.

CHAPTER 14

2007-06-14T11:28:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 14

Nate groaned and with eyes closed flailed around to determine his location. His hand banged against a metal bedpost, atop which he touched coarse fabric and the stiff brim of a hat. Each object brought back a different piece of the night before: the metal bedpost of the Dressing Room, where he and Tina had gone after the band left; the coarse fabric of the red Mountie coat with its brass buttons he had unfastened one at a time; and the stiff-brimmed Mountie hat she had worn until she tossed it on top of the coat, her laugh inviting him to scale her Great White North.

His head pounded from a combination of alcohol and loud music in honor of Tina’s birthday, though she had never told him her exact age. She lay tangled in the sheets, her head pressed into the pillows and bare legs dangling over the mattress. He froze as she stirred, snorted once, and then resumed sleeping. Careful not to disturb Tina’s precarious sleeping position, he slid his feet away from the pillows before straightening and feeling his way to the door. In the hallway he found beer cans, cigarette butts, and condom wrappers littering the hallways, remnants from the birthday gala.

More evidence came as Nate opened the bathroom and found a boy sprawled on the floor, the flower-print shower curtain wrapped around his body like a blanket. Nate recognized the boy from his Economics class last semester, but couldn’t remember his name. He toed the fellow student in the ribs with a scuffed boot and the boy swatted at the air before rolling over. Nate kicked the boy harder, this time succeeding in waking him. “What, is it time for school?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s time for school. You don’t want to be late.” Nate helped the boy up, gave him a shove out of the bathroom, and then locked the door before anyone else could wander in.

As he ran water for a shower, he strung up the shower curtain again and threw away the beer cans and paper plates of half-eaten pizza someone had left along the edge of the tub. Steam began to fill the room as he stripped off the black suspenders and puffy Mountie pants. He stepped into the bathtub and bowed his head so that wet hair fell into his eyes. As he shut his eyes, he swayed under the showerhead and sleep threatened to suck him down like a riptide.

The sound of the water filled his ears like the waves along the beach he and Abby had once shared. The memory of the beach yielded another of more immediate concern. He had an interview this afternoon with Herbert Chemical for an entry-level position in their marketing department. Recruiters had visited Freepoint State last week to arrange hundreds of interviews for perhaps a dozen jobs scattered throughout the Herbert Chemical empire.

The pending interview shook Nate to full alertness and he clawed a glob of shampoo into his hair before washing it away and jumping from the shower. Having forgotten a towel, he used the Mountie pants to dry off with and then burst from the bathroom naked to lower the attic steps. He streaked upstairs and searched the suitcases he had never unpacked for his only suit.

The garment, wrinkled from laying in a heap on the floor, fit as though designed for someone two sizes larger, which it had. A month of living at Tina’s, away from his mother’s cooking, had stripped the last fat from his body. When he buttoned the suit, it billowed in the midsection like a sail and he grimaced. “Shit.”

“I thought I heard you up here,” Tina said and leaned over his shoulder to kiss his cheek. “What’s wrong?”

“I have an interview.” He turned around so she could see his fashion predicament. “I can’t go like this.”

“You don’t have anything else?”

“No. Maybe there’s time to stop on the way.”

“I think I have a better idea.” She took his hand and led him downstairs. He thought they’d turn right towards the Dressing Room for one of the costumes, but instead she took him downstairs. They passed by a pair of stragglers on the couch in the smoking room before cutting through the deserted dining room and into the kitchen. She flipped a light switch and then opened a door to stairs leading down into the basement.

The basement had piles of cardboard boxes stacked against one wall, opposite the water heater and a pot-bellied furnace no longer in use. She took an open refrigerator box from one side of the pile and held it under the bare bulb that lit the room. Inside he saw discarded clothes—skirts, T-shirts, jeans, and mismatched shoes. “What’s this?” he said.

“The lost and found.”

“You think someone left a suit?”

“You’d be surprised what people leave here.” She tossed a pair of high-heeled boots away and then smiled as she held up a pinstriped suit jacket. Nate left his old one in the box and whistled at the fit of the new coat. “I told you.”

“What about pants?”

She continued to rummage through the box and stopped to hold up a pink feather boa. “I’ve been looking for this.” He cleared her throat and she resumed the search until she tossed the pants into his face. “There you go.”

The pants hung slack between his legs and after smoothing the fabric looked up at Tina. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice.”

As they headed for the stairs, he looked at the rows of boxes. “What’s in all those boxes anyway?”

A shadow crossed her face and her voice became icy. “It’s just stuff that belonged to my parents.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Come on, let’s go upstairs.” In the kitchen, she wet her hand and used it to sweep back his hair. She brushed dust from his shoulders and a shy smile came to her face. “That looks better. Maybe you can wear that when you get back.”

“Sure.”

She kissed him on the lips and then wiped away the lipstick. “Good luck.” As he bounded down the front porch steps and climbed into the Vega, he knew he would need it.

The overcast sky cut off half the Herbert Tower and Nate thought of the time his family had gone to Chicago when he was six. He had stood at the base of the Sears Tower and stared up into the sky, searching for the top, but the building seemed to go on forever. At the time he thought if he climbed all the way up he would find himself in Heaven, surrounded by angels. As he opened the Vega’s door, he wondered what awaited him in the Herbert Tower.

He’d parked his car in the back of the visitor’s lot, in the shadow of a seedling, where the ancient vehicle with its spray-paint finish wouldn’t stand out as much amongst its sparkling neighbors. Nate doubled his pace before anyone could see that he owned such a clunker and kept his head down as he crossed the lot. He paused to take a deep breath in front of the revolving door leading into the building and then pushed his way inside.

The ground floor served in part as a lobby for visitors and also as a museum dedicated to the company’s history. Behind a marble half-moon reception desk, a pudgy woman looked up from a computer screen. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here for an interview.”

“Your name?” He had to repeat his name twice until she managed to type it into the computer and nodded. “Ms. Jamison will be down to see you shortly. You can have a seat over there.” The receptionist waved to a group of toffee-colored couches arranged in a semi-circle around a coffee table stacked with Forbes and Fortune magazines. Nate sat facing the elevator doors and watched the steady flow of traffic.

He had no idea what Ms. Jamison looked like and after a minute his attention strayed to take in a brine well identical to those Henri Herbert had built to found his company a hundred years earlier. Beside the brine well, a replica of the founder’s lab had a mannequin of Herbert forever holding a test tube aloft to study its contents. As Nate focused on the lab, sweat dripped into his eyes and he tried to wipe it away with a casual motion. His stomach fluttered and when he stood up, he crossed the lobby to feign a closer examination of the brine well.

While he pretended to read the plaque describing the company’s early years as a producer of chlorine, he smoothed imaginary wrinkles from his suit and tried to paste back a lock of hair that had slipped its moorings. Then he closed his eyes and searched for the surge that had came over him when he donned one of the Dressing Room costumes and masqueraded as someone else. This isn’t any different, he told himself. “Mr. Colbrunn?” a crackling voice said from behind him.

He turned and saw a woman who looked more suited to a library or classroom than a Fortune 500 corporation with her silver hair pulled into a tight bun and square-framed bifocals that dominated her face. She extended a liver-spotted hand and Nate shook it, bracing for her to kiss him on the cheek like a grandmother. “Yes, that’s me,” Nate said.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Ms. Jamison led Nate towards the row of silver elevators and he forced in another deep breath. As they waited for one of the doors to open, they waited in uncomfortable silence until Jamison said, “It looks like rain.”

“It does.” An elevator opened and disgorged its passengers, sparing Nate from any further awkward conversation. One of Jamison’s wrinkled fingers stabbed the button for the fifteenth floor and Nate stood next to her on one side while a courier with an armload of packages took up the other half.

When the doors to the fifteenth floor opened, Nate waited for Jamison to go first and followed her down a corridors with windows overlooking the parking structure and surrounding area on the right and another set of windows on the left that gave him a view of gray cubicles, one of which he hoped to occupy after the interview. Jamison led him farther down the hall to a single door that led to a windowless room, a round table and pair of padded chairs its only furniture. On the table Nate saw a manila folder that reminded him of the file Doctor Stevens kept and as soon as Jamison sat down, she made a note in the folder just as the urologist did.

The old woman made a tent of her fingers and leaned forward as Nate sat in the chair opposite her and hoped his nervousness didn’t show. “First off, do you go by Nathan or Nate?”

He paused a moment before saying, “Nathan is fine.” With those words, the fluttering in his stomach ceased and he remembered all of the things Tina had taught him. He looked into Jamison’s syrupy brown eyes and forced a smile to his lips as he imagined the story of Nathan, the young business student seducing the doughty Ms. Jamison.

“Well Nathan, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself.”

“I’m a student at Freepoint State graduating with my BBA in Marketing next month…”

“Now would you consider your greatest strengths?”

“I’m a very creative person and I’m also very organized…” Jamison wrote in the file as Nate talked, but he kept his eyes focused on hers and maintained an inviting smile. He continued to answer her questions without hesitation and after a few questions she removed her glasses and returned his grin. When she asked about transportation, he said, “My old car has enough miles to have gone to the moon and back, but it still runs.”

Jamison laughed, the sound like a wheeze punctuated with a hiccup and put a hand against her heart. “I take it you plan on buying a new car if you get the job?”

“Maybe not right away. It may be old, but it’s still a lot of good years left.” As he said the last sentence, he saw the way Jamison’s cheeks reddened and he imagined she would faint if he reached across the table to stroke one of her gnarled hands.

She cleared her throat and made a show of closing the file and tapping it against the table to align the paper. “I have to say, your résumé and grades are impressive. We should be done with the interviews in a week or so and then we’ll let you know.” When they shook hands, Nate maintained eye contact and ran his thumb across the papery flesh of her hand for an instant before releasing her. Then he turned and left the room with a swagger he had never known before, the swagger of the Three Stooges after they had made off with his lunch money.

With no time to go back to Tina’s to change for his shift at The Burger Man, Nate stripped his shirt in the Vega’s front seat and donned the purple polo and yellow baseball cap he hoped would not be his uniform after next week. He whistled and bounded through the parking lot before slipping in the back door to punch in. Bill, standing at the grill, looked down at Nate’s pinstriped pants. “You have a funeral or something?” Bill said.

“No, just a thing for school,” Nate said. “It ran a little late. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. I put Kyle on drive-thru. You can stay back here tonight.” Bill’s tone contained some of the hardness he used on the non-collegiate employees. Nate took the turner from Bill’s hand and stood watch over two hissing patties accepting his demotion without comment. I won’t be here much longer anyway, he thought.

A handful of orders came in through the next hour between lunch and dinner and as Nate wrapped the greasy sandwiches in paper, he replayed the interview over and over again in his mind. Ms. Jamison blushing. The grainy texture of her hand. Taking off her bifocals so he could get a better view of her eyes. He could have taken her right then on the desk and the image of her body naked—dried and wrinkled like dehydrated fruit—made him shiver. When Kyle tapped on the rim of the heat lamp, Nate dropped the Double Colossus in his paralyzed hands down the chute.

As he leaned against the microwave to await more orders, Nate took off his cap to wipe the seat from his forehead and wondered if he would have fucked Ms. Jamison on the desk if she’d asked. He put the baseball cap back on and shook his head; he had not gotten that desperate yet. It had been only a game with her, like the scenes he acted with Tina in the Dressing Room.

He heard the sound of her voice and ducked under the heat lamp to find her at the front counter. She waved and motioned for him to go around to meet her. He passed Bill in the office, counting the money to deposit in the bank, and went up to the front counter, where Tina kissed him before he could say anything. “So how did it go?” she asked.

“Fine,” Nate said.

“That’s all? Just ‘fine’?”

“I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Come on, nothing’s going to happen.”

“I thought it went pretty well,” Nate said. “I think she liked me.”

“Well who wouldn’t in that suit?” She smiled and leaned across the counter to whisper in his ear. “How about taking my order?”

“I’m not on cash right now.”

She punched him in the arm and he winced. “I’d like one Nate Colbrunn to go,” she said and Nate looked around to see if Kyle was listening, but the cashier was leaning out the window to smoke a cigarette while Bill was in the office.

“I can’t right now. When I get home…”

“You get a break around here, don’t you?”

“Sure, but…”

“That’s all the time we’ll need.” Nate heard the side door to the kitchen slam shut and Bill rounded the counter. Kyle dropped the cigarette and turned away from the window while Nate pretended to check the supply of barbecue sauce packets. After Bill disappeared, Kyle took out another cigarette and Nate nodded to Tina before heading back into the kitchen. When he opened the side door, he found Tina standing there and she pushed him back inside.

“What are you doing? You can’t be in here.”

“Isn’t the customer always right?”

“I guess so.” He let her into the kitchen and they looked around for somewhere private. Light reflected off the silver door of the walk-in refrigerator and he took her hand. The familiar surge overtook his body and a bulge hardened in his pants. He whispered into her ear, “The intrepid young fast food worker and his girlfriend took shelter in the refrigerator to avoid the zombie horde sweeping through town.”

“I like that,” she said. He held open the door and looked around to make sure no one was watching before he closed the door. Inside, boxes of tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese were stacked on wire shelves, a separate door leading to the freezer, where the hamburger and chicken patties were kept. “I think we’ll be safe in here.”

He pushed her against a stack of tomato crates as he kissed her, his hands reaching underneath the hem of her shirt. She unfastened his belt and let the pinstripe suit pants fall to the steel floor. Goosebumps formed on their flesh from the cold as she hung her red halter top on the shelf along with her flesh-toned bra. He used the shelves as steps to allow him to straddle her while she stood, her hands digging into his back for support.

Nate froze in mid-pump, Tina’s back arching against the boxes, as the door opened. Bill stood in the doorway and Nate’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. “Get the hell out of here,” Bill said. “Right now!”

“I’m sorry,” Nate said. “We were just…”

Bill balled his fists, but his voice had an icy calm as he said, “Get the fuck out of here and don’t let me catch either one of you in here again.” Tina put on her shirt, stuffing the bra in a pocket, while Nate pulled up his pants. As he left the walk-in refrigerator, he saw a tear in Bill’s eye at the betrayal; he imagined it a mirror of his own face when he’d seen Abby with Cade on the beach.

“That guy was sure uptight,” Tina said.

“Let’s just go home.” When they arrived back at the farmhouse, Tina tried to lead Nate up to the Dressing Room, but he pulled down the steps for the attic and climbed into the bed with his clothes still on and face turned to the wall.

CHAPTER 13

2007-06-14T11:27:00.002-07:00

CHAPTER 13

Nate held the throbbing rob between Tina’s legs and averted his eyes from the scene. He focused instead on the sky blue wallpaper dotted with pink bunnies that had been Tina’s nursery and later sealed off when it became apparent her parents would not have a second child. Dusty rag dolls and rattles still lined the top-most shelves on the walls, but below them were toys of a different sort.

Tina lay on a white queen-size mattress with brown spots from a variety of bodily fluids; Nate had pressed her to at least put a sheet over the mattress, but she told him it required too much effort to keep changing the sheets. He knelt on the floor next to the mattress, with his arm extended as though interviewing her genitals. Her head cocked to the right and she said, “Nate, look at me. Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m not, I just…”

“You keep looking away and I’ll start thinking you see me as just a piece of meat. You have to involve your whole self.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She slid back and rolled into a sitting position to put an arm across Nate’s shoulders as he turned off the vibrator. “It’s all right. You just have to remember that this isn’t like at The Burger Man where I give you an order and you hand it out through the window. This isn’t a transaction, it’s an art. You have to learn to enjoy the moment with me, so that we can feel connected.”

“I’ll try.”

She kissed him on the cheek and patted his crotch. “Nate, you’re a sweet guy, but you have to stop being afraid. Sex is about more than just fucking, it’s about passion. You have to be willing to let yourself go, to free everything you keep bottled inside.”

He looked down at the gray carpet that also had dark spots showing. “This is all new to me.”

“I know, but it’ll come.” She laughed at the pun and struggled to her feet. “How about we go downstairs for a drink? That might help loosen you up.”

“Sure, but what if I can’t?” He tossed the vibrator onto the mattress and sighed. “What if I can’t ever get the hang of it?”

“Nate, just because you’re a late bloomer doesn’t mean anything. Plus, you’ve got a really good teacher. Look how much you’ve learned already in just three weeks.”

“I guess you’re right.” When he opened the door, he found a woman accompanied by a pair of men loitering in the hallway. They shuffled inside without looking at him and after Nate closed the door, a pink bunny stenciled with ‘The Nursery’ mounted on its center, he heard the whirring of the vibrator.

By the time they arrived in the dining room, Vincent had cleared a table for them and fetched a pair of beers from the bar. Nate stared into his can without looking and when a tray of chicken wings arrived, he picked off the breading. “Is something wrong?” Tina said.

“My mom called from Florida today.”

“She’s not sick or anything, is she?”

“No. She said she found a trailer down there not far from my aunt’s place. She’s putting our house on the market.”

“That’s pretty sudden. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll have to find somewhere until graduation and maybe then I can go down there or wherever I find a job.”

She reached across the card table to pat his hand. “Look, instead of some crummy apartment, why don’t you just stay here with me?”

His eyes glanced up at the ceiling and then over Tina’s shoulder to the mysterious smoking room. “Are you sure you’ll have room?”

“You can stay in the attic with me.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose on you or anything.”

“It’s not an imposition. It would be a great way to allow us to become closer.”

“I don’t know, it seems like a big step.”

Tina leaned forward and lowered her voice so that no one at the other tables would hear them. “What did I tell you about being afraid? Stop holding back.”

“I’m not sure what my mom would say.”

“Then don’t tell her.”

“I don’t want to lie to her.”

“Fine, then just tell her the truth. You’re staying with a friend. She doesn’t need to know all the details.”

“Can I have some time to think about it?”

“No, don’t think about it! Stop thinking so damned much!” Her voice had risen to the point where the patrons around them turned to witness the spectacle. She hissed, “Embrace the moment.”

Nate leaned back in his folding chair as though she’d launched electrical currents from her eyes. Tina’s last words echoed in his mind as he thought of the moments he hadn’t embraced. Rescuing Michelle Kapanen’s fish. Then her sudden kiss at Meijer. The girl in the library. All those nights sitting at the bar and leaving without a word. His first date with Tina. Pushing her away in the hospital bathroom. The only time he had embraced the moment, he had scaled the porch swing in an attempt to reclaim Tina’s affection. Even then, in the bed he had closed his eyes, too afraid to do anything.

He pushed away from the table and said, “You’re right. Let’s do it.”

“You need any help?”

“No, this is something I have to do alone.”

He awoke the next morning and again stood in the doorway of his parents’s bedroom, where everything remained unchanged from the last time. Beside the night stand he found a wastebasket and filled it with prescription bottles in one sweep. He tossed his mother’s book into the trash and then balled the sheets and blankets at the foot of the bed. From the closet he took a trio of battered suitcases that still had his grandfather’s name on a tag affixed to the handle.

In his bedroom he opened the drawers of jeans, T-shirts, underwear, and socks arranged in neat rows and threw a handful of each into the suitcases along with his only suit, an extra dress shirt, and a necktie that he vowed he would master. The bottom two drawers of the dresser held the elastic-waist chinos and polo shirts that had been the staples of his life in high school. He opened these drawers and dumped them over his bed.

In the closet, he took out the boxes of old school papers and emptied them onto the carpet to make room for his old clothes. He packed the relics of his former life and in the dining room, as he searched for a roll of tape to seal the boxes, he saw the letter he had composed to Abby along with her photograph. As he reread the message, he began to read the words aloud. “I don’t need you anymore either,” he said and wadded the paper into a ball. While rummaging through a drawer for the tape, he came across a black marker and turned back to Abby’s photo.

Over her wavy hair he drew black spirals to approximate her curls and sketched bulky lenses around her eyes. He added a line of black dots to her cheeks to simulate zits and frowned at his handiwork; Abby had always been the better artist. On the back, he wrote in blocky letters, ‘This is my Abby’ and underlined ‘my’ twice. He located an envelope and stamp and slid the picture inside with no letter of explanation. After addressing the envelope and stuffing it into his pocket, Nate found a roll of packing tape and returned to the boxes piled up in his bedroom.

He hauled the boxes out to the Vega and filled first the trunk and then the backseat with the remains of his childhood. He put the three suitcases on the passenger’s seat and slammed the door with finality. Before he could pull out of the driveway, he heard the front door of Abby’s house bang open and witnessed a sight he had never seen before—her parents held hands and laughed as they bounced out to the patchwork hatchback. Her mother’s face, which he remembered as sharp and rat-like, gained a softness around the edges when she smiled. Abby’s father, from whom she’d inherited her weight problem, held open the car door and laughed like a department store Santa Claus. Embrace the moment, Nate thought as he watched the hatchback disappear down Pleasantview Court.

Nate caught a glimpse of their taillights before he turned in the opposite direction onto Ojibwa Road and wound his way downtown. Among the boarded fronts of Main Street, he found the Goodwill thrift shop that had been a furniture store at the time Nate still used the toys contained within the boxes. He pulled down an alley to the white donation box someone had defaced by scrawling their initials in black spray paint.

As he unloaded the Vega, a side door opened and a man with a sandy moustache that gave his face a walrus-like appearance stopped and motioned to Nate with a pair of garbage bags. “Need any help with that?” the man asked.

“Maybe a little,” Nate said. The man dropped the garbage bags in the alley and took a box from the trunk.

“What you got in here?”

“Just some old stuff. Toys and clothes mostly. I don’t want them anymore.”

“Well, I’m sure we can find them a good new home.”

“I hope so.” Nate took the last box from the trunk and used his elbows to bring down the lid. He stacked the final box on top of its brethren and dusted imaginary dirt from his hands. “Thanks for the help.”

“It’s no problem.”

As the man picked up the garbage bags again, Nate called for him to stop. “You take furniture and stuff too, don’t you?”

“Yes, as long as it’s in good shape.”

“Should I just leave it here? Or do you have a special place?”

The corners of the man’s moustache lifted as he smiled. “Well, if you’d like, we can make an appointment to send a truck out to your place for pickup.” Nate helped the man take the trash to the Dumpster and then went into the back of the thrift shop, where the man kept his office—a desk with three legs that needed telephone books to support the fourth side and an ancient computer with a monitor that displayed everything in stark green letters. On a calendar stained with coffee rings, the man scribbled in a date and time for someone to come by Nate’s house to remove the furniture he would no longer need. “You’re a very generous man, Mr. Colbrunn,” the man said and shook Nate’s hand.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Nate said.

“Don’t be so modest. It’s a great thing you’re doing.” The man clapped Nate on the back and after exchanging pleasantries, Nate went back out to the Vega and pulled down the alley and onto the empty street. In front of the brick post office dating from the Great Depression he pulled alongside a mailbox and took the envelope from his pocket. He dropped it into the slot and roared away, towards his new home.

The House by daylight looked abandoned and desolate like the site of a horror movie. When Nate went up the front steps, he found the living room haunted by Vincent and the bartender, both sitting on stools and drinking a beer. The bouncer rose from his stool and eyed Nate’s suitcases. “Checking in?” Vincent said.

“Tina said I could stay here for a while.”

“She did? She didn’t mention anything.”

“Is she around?”

“She should be somewhere.” Nate hefted the suitcases and Vincent offered a paw. “Want some help with those?” Nate gave him one of the bags and they began their search in the dining room, but all the chairs were folded up or stashed in the corners.

“When does this place open?”

“People start drifting in around four, when the afternoon classes get out. It doesn’t really get going until after the evening classes about nine or ten.” Vincent opened the door to the smoking room, where Nate saw overturned hubcaps full of both kinds of cigarettes and, between the cushions of a tattered plaid couch, what looked like a ceramic dragon’s head with a pipe jutting from the back of its skull. The bouncer’s nose wrinkled and he doubled his pace until they came to the entryway. “She must be upstairs.”

“Does she, uh, spend a lot of time in the smoking room?”

“Nah, she doesn’t touch that stuff.” Nate sighed with relief and followed Vincent upstairs, where he knocked on the bathroom door before opening it and finding no one inside. While Vincent repeated the same procedure with The Nursery, Nate thought he heard something from one of the other rooms.

He stood in front of a linen closet with a door on either side, one labeled ‘Master Bedroom’ in a medieval script and the other ‘Dressing Room’ in swirling print. He pressed an ear against the Master Bedroom door and heard nothing. A low snarl came from under the other door and he turned the handle. As he eased the door open, the suitcase slipped from his hand and banged to the floor.

Tina lay sprawled on a wrought-iron bed, the folds of a black skirt flipped over her buttocks so he could tell she wasn’t wearing any kind of panties. With her legs spread apart, her genitals were pointed in his direction like an invitation and he turned away, red-faced and sweating. She stirred on the bed and from the corner of his eye he saw her roll over. “Nate?” she said, her voice garbled as though she had a sandwich in her mouth.

“I’m sorry, I should have knocked,” he said.

The bed creaked as she jumped off and came around to press against his body, a lace-fringed apron tied around her waist. Platinum tufts stuck out like stands of weeds amidst a frilly maid’s cap cocked at an awkward angle and her eyeshadow had smeared so that she seemed to have two black eyes. “What have I been trying to tell you? Don’t be so scared all the time.”

Nate kept his arms at his sides and said, “Were you sleeping with someone in here?”

She hugged him and kissed his neck. “No, of course not.

Vincent cleared his throat behind them and held out the suitcase to Nate. “Everything all right in here?”

“We’re fine, Vinny,” Tina said. The bouncer nodded and slammed the door as he left. “I see you decided to take me up on my offer.”

“Well, it makes a lot of sense.” He dangled the suitcase and smiled. “Where should I put them?”

“We’ll take them upstairs later.” She sat him on the bed and took a feather duster from the stand next to the bed. The feathers made him sneeze when she ruffled it against his face. “How about you lie back and let me do some housekeeping?”

He seized the duster in mid stroke to keep it out of reach of his skin. “Maybe we should wait until later. How about we unpack and then get some lunch, or I guess for you it’d be breakfast.”

She let the duster fall to the floor and sat next to him on the bed. “Come on, Nate, get in the spirit. Embrace the moment.”

“I’m just not in the mood right now.”

“I have an idea,” she said and went across the room to slide open the heavy doors of a closet. Inside, Nate saw rows of costumes on hangers—clothes from every era, nation, and occupation—accompanied by an array of matching shoes, hats, and other equipment. “Maybe a little make believe would help.” She reached into the closet and held a Freepoint Central High cheerleading outfit against her chest. “What do you think?”

“That’s nice.”

“Nice?” She shook her head. “Who do you want to be?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You want to be my jock boyfriend? Or how about a cowboy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, there has to be something you always fantasized about. Someone you always wanted to be.”

“Well…”

“What?”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Try me.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “When I was a kid I always wanted to be a superhero.”

She rummaged through the closet and tossed a black leather cowl onto the bed. Nate ran his hand along the spiked ears and slipped the mask over his head. The leather pinched his cheeks and he struggled to adjust the cowl to a comfortable fit. “How’s this?” he asked.

“I like it.” She threw him a black cape and boots along with a gray bodysuit, a yellow utility belt painted on. By the time he had finished changing, she already had on the cheerleader outfit and shook a pair of pompons. “Oh, save me, Mr. Batman!” she said, her voice rising an octave.

“From what?”

“I don’t know, whatever. Just pretend for God’s sake.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat to reach Batman’s usual rasp. “Take your hands off her!” he said and stumbled as he leapt from the bed to land in her arms. He straightened and feigned a punch over her shoulder. “You’re safe now.”

She took a step forward, exaggerating a limp. “Oh, I don’t think I can make it.”

“Don’t worry.” He grunted as he took her into his arms. His knees almost buckled, but he managed three steps towards the bed and then pitched her forward onto the mattress. He spread his cape wide with both arms as he dove onto the bed. They rolled around in the sheets, laughing and exchanging kisses until she rolled on top.

“How can I ever thank you, Mr. Batman?”

Nate wrapped his hands around her neck and pulled her forward so that he could kiss her on the lips. “I can think of a way,” he said. He kept his eyes open during the kiss and then as he pulled off the cheerleader’s sweater. Underneath she didn’t have a bra and his hand stroked the smooth curves of her breasts.

She rolled off his gray bodysuit, but when her hands reached for the cowl, he stopped her. “I can’t reveal my secret identity,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“My hero,” she said and pressed him back against the mattress. As she instructed him where to put his hands and when to thrust, he focused on her eyes, the way they widened as he entered and contracted as she groaned. All sense of himself melted away as he stared into her eyes; he performed as her voice and his body directed, his mind empty of any other thoughts. When she came, her brown irises rolled back so he could only see white and then she pitched forward to lie next to him.

“How was that?” he said, his chest heaving and sweat pooling around the edges of the mask. He didn’t know how long it had taken, but it had seemed they had been joined for an eternity. “Better?”

“Amazing.”

CHAPTER 12

2007-06-14T11:27:00.001-07:00

CHAPTER 12

The bag around Nate’s neck slapped against his rear end, the grooves of the strap biting into his neck and his knees buckled, ready to collapse. He stumbled forward and then stopped his momentum by dropping the suitcase in each hand to the sidewalk before throwing his arms back. He straightened and as someone in the parking lot applauded at his performance, Nate adjusted the bag.

“At least let me help you with those,” his mother said.

“I got them, Mom.” Nate picked up the suitcases and resumed his death march across the parking lot of Freepoint International Airport. The airport’s domed roof seemed to grow ever more distant and Nate sagged under the weight of his mother’s luggage, but he would not let her help. He was the man of the family now and would prove himself capable. “I can handle it.”

“Suit yourself.” By the time the front doors slid open, two black spots had formed under his arms and he had to drop the luggage to wipe the sweat dripping into his eyes. His mother seized the opportunity to snatch one of the suitcases; he didn’t have the breath to command her to stop.

They wandered through the terminal, shafts of sunlight lancing through the glass dome to find the gate for his mother’s flight. After completing a circuit of the terminal, his mother stopped a rental car desk to ask for directions. Nate stared down at the cobalt tiles, a dull ache in both arms and a knot forming in his stomach as the time for his mother’s departure neared. She thanked the clerk and they proceeded down an arched corridor with a cluster of people in business suits milling about before their flights.

As they passed the gift shop, Nate wondered if he should buy something for his mother, something to commemorate the occasion. “You need a book or anything?” he said.

“No, but there should be something to read on the plane.”

He dropped the suitcases and said, “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

Inside the gift shop, he scanned a rack of postcards depicting sunsets over the bay, a bin of stuffed bears dressed in leather jackets and aviator goggles, and a shelf of porcelain bells decorated with silhouettes of the Herbert Tower. On the counter next to the cash register, he saw a snow globe, the city of Freepoint reduced to a perfect miniature underneath a royal blue sky. He shook the sphere and watched bits of glitter float over the city before drifting back to the plastic surface. He thrust the snow globe at the cashier and paid with one of the twenties Bill had given him.

When he left the store with the snow globe swaddled in cellophane, he found his mother sitting in a plastic chair with the luggage stacked so she could prop her feet. “What’s that?” she asked.

“I got you a going away gift.” He handed the bundle to his mother and her eyes narrowed as she watched the glittery flakes. “Just something to remember me by.”

She looked up from the globe and shook her head. “I’m only going to be gone a couple of weeks.”

“Well, you never know,” he said and let the unfinished thought fade into the echoes.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I just need a little time away, to think.”

“I know, Mom.”

She tucked the snow globe into a suitcase and they resumed their search for the gate in silence. When they found the gate for the United flight to Jacksonville, Nate dropped the luggage and his arms hung limp. Past his mother’s shoulder, he watched a young couple embrace, but he couldn’t will himself forward to hug his mother. The awkward silence that had prevailed in the wake of his father’s death five days earlier continued.

“Do you have Aunt Shelley’s number?”

“It’s in the address book by the phone, isn’t it?”

“It should be.” She patted her pockets, but then abandoned the search. “Don’t worry, I’ll call you once I get there.”

“Right.”

“It shouldn’t take too long to get there.”

“No, I guess not.” The loudspeaker announced his mother’s flight and Nate leaned forward to drape his arms around her neck, the gap between them wide enough for a third person to slip through. She patted him on the back and then they disengaged. “Have a good flight.”

She waved to him before disappearing down the boarding tunnel and he waited at the window until the plane took off. The jet dissolved into a pair of contrails and once those too had faded, he trudged back to the Vega. As he sat behind the wheel, the keys dangling from his hand, he thought of what he should have said.

At the funeral he had sat next to her in the pew of St. Mark’s, the gunmetal coffin reflecting light from the stained glass windows into his eyes. They had never touched, never spoken, during the service or on the ride to the cemetery. After the pastor said a brief prayer and the assembled friends and family had begun to drift away, his mother remained behind to say her final words. Nate waited behind a tree, far enough away that he couldn’t hear what she said, and stared at the line of headstones, his eyes jumbling the letters on one until it formed his mother’s name.

When she finished, his mother found him behind the tree, but said nothing. They walked in silence along the dirt trail that snaked around the emerald plots adorned with flowers in varying states of decay. Nate’s right hand twitched and rubbed against his mother’s, the coldness of her skin surprising him; the icy touch of Death ran along the back of his neck. As he started the Vega’s engine, Nate cursed himself for all the things he had left unsaid then and now.

Nate watched the shadows fade along the empty walls as the last bits of pink became twilight blue. He sat on his bed, the occasional creaks of the twin mattress providing the only sounds in the house, alone in the growing darkness. Even as a child, when he had woke up in the middle of the night, he would hear the growl of his father’s snoring to reassure him he was not alone, but now he had nothing. He no longer had even the paper heroes on the wall, just an empty void of wood paneling.

The ring from the telephone became amplified by the emptiness of the house so that it sounded as though he were standing next to a church bell. He picked up the receiver on the second ring and heard his mother’s voice on the other end. “How’s Florida?” he said.

“Sunny and warm. You’d like it,” she said.

“Maybe. How was the flight?”

“A little bumpy and the couple next to me kept making trips to the bathroom.”

“You should get a window seat next time.”

“I suppose so. How are things up there?”

“Fine.”

“Did you have dinner yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I left some pot roast in the fridge that you can warm up. It’s the dish with the red lid.”

“Thanks.” He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “How long do you plan to stay there?”

“I don’t know, a couple weeks I guess. Just until things settle down a little.”

There was another pause and he squeezed his eyes shut as he concentrated on what he wanted to say. “Mom?” he said, his voice raspy and faded like an old recording.

“Yes?”

“I…I was just wanting to know how Aunt Shelley’s place is.”

“It’s very nice and green.”

“Oh.”

“I better let you go so I don’t run up your aunt’s phone bill. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Goodnight, Mom.” Nate hung up the phone and shook his head at failing again to tell her what he wanted to say. “I love you and I don’t want to lose you,” he said to the darkness.

He heaved off the bed and wandered into his parents’s bedroom. The lines of pill bottles still lurked on the nightstand, soldiers waiting for orders from a slain general. The sheets remained wrinkled, as though his father had only gotten up to use the bathroom. He found a book on his mother’s side of the bed, a dog-eared page in the middle signifying her final progress. He ran a hand along the page to smooth the paper, but then refolded it and tossed the book onto the sheets before resealing the tomb.

In the kitchen, the light inside the refrigerator turned the air golden and he breathed it in for a minute before finding the plastic dish his mother had indicated. While he waited for the meat to warm in the microwave, he scanned the counter, a pile of dishes cleaned but waiting for someone to put them away. He left the dishes alone and drifted into the dining room, where he found Abby’s blue envelope lying atop a stack of sympathy cards. His mother must have rescued Abby’s letter from the trash and left it for him to find after his initial anger had worn off.

Nate reread the letter and sat down at the dining room table with a pen and paper, the photograph of Abby propped against a candleholder. Dear Abby, he began and wondered if he shouldn’t send his letter to the famous advice columnist instead of his former best friend. I received your letter and I’m sorry about you and Cade. This struck him as disingenuous and he crossed out the line before starting again. My father is dead and I don’t know who else I could talk to. He stopped and focused on the photo, on the tightness of her tan flesh across her stomach, arms, and legs and the face no longer encumbered by glasses and acne. He turned over the paper and began again.

Dear Abby,

I read your letter, but I don’t know why you addressed it to me. Our friendship died that day on the beach when you betrayed our most precious commodity: the trust we had shared for almost fifteen years. There’s no way to reclaim that or to pretend that nothing happened. That day on the beach and the four years since have made us strangers.

In looking at your picture, I see you’ve become a beautiful woman. I’m sure in no time you’ll have all sorts of new friends who are just as shallow and vain as you’ve become since high school. You don’t need me anymore.

He paused and, seeing his keys on the edge of the table, concluded the letter. I don’t need you anymore either. He rose from the table and burst into the bathroom to run water for a shower. As steam began to fill the room, he focused on the mirror in the same manner as on Abby’s photograph. Four years had changed him as well, although not to the same extent. His skin still hung pale and limp over his bones, but the roll of flab the Stooges had often poked no longer existed. Then his eyes worked down to the patch of brass hair marking the greatest change.

He stepped into the shower and let the water run over the body Abby would not recognize. Time had erased the childish forms they had known during their friendship and he had no doubt they could pass on the streets of Miami without identifying each other. Perhaps they would have a spark of déjà vu, a feeling of something familiar that could no longer be placed, but it would pass with a shrug or chuckle of dismissal.

After drying off, he went into his bedroom and donned the clothes he had worn for his second date with Tina and at his father’s funeral. With his father’s hands no longer able to guide the silk of the necktie, he left it in the closet and tried to rub the wrinkles from the shirt and pants. When he finished dressing, he hesitated at the dining room table for a moment before tipping Abby’s photo face-down and heading out the door to reclaim the only woman who would know him.

Nate stood on the front porch of The House, the bass from the music inside making the boards thump beneath his feet, and tried to work up the courage to go inside. In the darkness, the prone forms of a couple lay on the swing, a moan or grunt escaping from the crevice between their bodies. As a man sighed, Nate threw open the front door and lunged inside.

Vincent waited in the doorway to the living room, his bulk eclipsing the lower half of the entrance. “I can’t let you in,” the bouncer said.

“What? Why not?”

“I got my orders. They say you’re persona non grata around here.” Vincent took Nate’s arm and steered him back towards the front door. “You better get out of here.”

“No, look, I came to apologize to Tina. Please, you have to let me talk to her, just for a few minutes.”

“I can’t do it.” Vincent opened the door and tried to plunge Nate back onto the dark porch with its fornicating couple, but Nate grabbed both sides of the doorway and refused to let go.

“Look, if I can’t talk to her, then maybe you can tell her that I’m really sorry about what happened. I want her back.”

Vincent lowered his shoulders and popped Nate from the doorway like a cork in a champagne bottle. The momentum carried Nate tumbling over the porch steps, into the dirt. “I’m sorry, Nate, but she doesn’t want you back.”

The front door slammed and Nate stared at it for a moment before stumbling back to the Vega, his back aching from the fall. He tried to fit the key into the lock, but it missed and the whole keyring clattered to the ground. Nate looked back at the house and searched for some way to gain access to The House. If he could just talk to Tina, then he could make her understand.

A woman’s shout echoed through the still air and Nate thought of the porch swing. He scooped up his keys and pounded up the porch steps, where the shadowy couple, having finished, sprawled on the swing with contented smiles. The woman let out a startled cry as Nate jumped onto an armrest of the swing and then jumped upwards with his arms at full extension. His fingers caught the edge of the sloping roof over the porch and he grunted louder than the couple during their exertions as he hauled himself onto the roof. His feet skidded on the shingles until he found purchase and crawled towards the nearest of the two forward windows.

The first window was locked and when he tapped on the glass, no one answered. He stood and tightrope-walked over to the next window, a numbness overtaking his limbs as he looked out over the black sea surrounding the farmhouse. He squatted before the second window and yanked it upwards, the straining of his muscles building up enough force that he almost spilled over the roof when the window rattled open.

He parted floral print curtains that evoked a shiver at the memory of Abby’s shirt and crawled through the window. Landing on a brass bed with a comforter that matched the curtains, he sunk into the feathery depths of the mattress, the pain in his back subsiding. Then he heard steps pounding towards the door like a cavalry charge and rolled onto the floor to hide underneath the bed. A sound like thunder filled the room and Vincent said, “I wish you hadn’t done that, Nate.”

Underneath the bed, Nate slithered back until his feet touched the wall and turned his head to the right to follow Vincent as he stomped around the room. The closet doors creaked open and shapeless frocks landed around the bed. “Come on out. I know you’re in here.” Nate held his breath and waited for Vincent too bend down and find him cowering under the bed. Then he heard another set of footsteps come into the room.

“Leave him alone, Vinny,” Tina said.

“He broke in here…”

“I’ll handle it.” Vincent’s feet sent shockwaves through Nate’s body as he left the room and Tina said, “You can come out now.”

Nate slid from underneath the bed and after standing dusted cobwebs from his shirt. “I’m sorry about breaking in, but I had to see you.”

“Maybe you should have taken the hint. I don’t want to talk to you.” She eased the door shut and then folded her arms across her chest.

“I’m sorry about what happened at the hospital too. I was just angry; it wasn’t anything against you.” He rushed forward and tried to put his hands on her shoulders, but she brushed him away. “Please, you’re all I have left. I can’t lose you too.”

“You already have lost me.”

“No, please, just give me another chance to make things right.”

She shook her head and he saw tears at the edge of her plum-shaded eyes. “I tried to help you and you pushed me away. You aren’t the only one who’s lost family, you know. My parents died in a car accident three years ago and every day when I wake up I miss them so much it makes me want to cry.” At this she did begin to cry, but still wouldn’t let Nate touch her.

“I didn’t know, but I’m here now and I’m not going to push you away again.” He stepped forward and grabbed her wrists so he could force his body against hers. “Give me a second chance.”

The world around him stopped as he waited for her answer, which came as a nod. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

“I missed you too, it just took me a while to realize it.” Before he could say anything else, she pressed her lips to his and his startled body became limp. She pushed him back to the bed and laid him flat against the mattress. Her left hand crept down to his zipper and he took hold of her wrist. “Don’t.”

“Nate, let me in,” she whispered into his ear. “Don’t push me away again.”

His grip loosened and while she pulled down his pants, the laughter of the Three Stooges echoed through his mind. Tears ran down his cheeks as she reached for the waistband of his plaid boxer shorts. “You haven’t done it before, have you?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “There’s something you have to know…” She put a finger to his lips and with one hand slid down his boxers. He closed his eyes and waited for her laughter to rip through his soul. Instead, he felt her tongue against his cheek, licking away his tears.

“Is that all?” she said into his ear.

“Yes.”

She ran a hand through his hair and he opened his eyes to find her smiling. “Size isn’t everything.”

“It’s not?”

“Let me show you.” When she threw aside her zebra-striped shirt and unhooked her lacy black bra, his eyes widened at the sight of two white globes, a brown nub standing out in relief at the center of each. The twin suns dangled before his eyes, but his mind felt like a separate entity floating above the scene, unable to direct his movements. He did nothing as she unbuttoned his shirt and ran a hand over his pasty chest.

Then she hopped off the bed and let her pants slip to the floor, followed by her black panties. He whimpered as she squatted over his waist and laid a hand on his quivering erection. When she leaned forward, she said, “Put your hand between my legs.”

His hand responded as if of its own will and she guided the limb, a sigh hissing into his ears. He continued to watch the experience as though from a telescope, his eyes transfixed on a line of sweat forming along her nipples. As he entered her, he closed his eyes and his universe narrowed to that one pulsating organ. She rocked side-to-side and hummed a tune he couldn’t name while she continued to manipulate his hand.

When he came, there was an explosion in his mind, a feeling he couldn’t name, and he groaned. Then he opened his eyes, his probing extremity becoming limp. His mind reunited with his body and, panting, he watched her continue to sway even as he grew smaller beneath her. She sighed again and then dismounted, a smile forming on her lips. “Not bad for a first time,” she said. “I think you’ll learn quickly.”

“Is that…it?”

She brushed hair away from his face and kissed him on the lips. “Don’t worry, there’s a lot more to come.” She lay down beside him on the floral comforter and put an arm across his chest as he imagined himself as having lain there like Abby on the beach.