Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

He turned and faced her, pressing her back against the brick building. Now the snub was in his belly. He almost went in for a kiss, but veered off at the last second. She’d flattened her lips, still trying to read him and figure out what she was dealing with. It was good to know he wasn’t the only one who was confused.

“This is a helluva dangerous way to woo a girl,” Lila said.

“Yeah, but is it effective?”

“I’ve had worse dates,” she told him.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t want to hear about them and I don’t want to relive ’em.”

“No, I suppose not. Well, here we are at the halls of justice.”

“Yeah,” she said, showing just a flash of teeth.

“Time for your just reward.”

The gun in his guts didn’t hurt that much, but the smile-like a knife in the heart.

A few days later, while they lay in bed in a rough-and-tumble spot called the Skeeter Motel-these people just didn’t think their names through down here-Lila asked him about his parents, how he’d wound up such a young outlaw. He was starting to like it when she called him that.

Chase had already told her a lot about Jonah, but this was different. He did what he’d trained himself to do, separating himself from his emotions and keeping memories of his childhood as blunt as possible, letting the words drop from him like stones.

He lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags. His voice took on the hollow ring he expected, and he smoked and listened to the person speaking as if it was somebody familiar whom he hadn’t heard from in a long time. The man spoke fast.

“Nine years ago my mother was murdered, shot through the head in our kitchen. She was eight months pregnant.”

“Sweet Jesus-did you…?”

“No, I didn’t see it. I was at school. So was my father. He was a college professor who taught world literature. After her funeral, we’d visit her grave every day. He was wrecked. It was a bad winter, but we’d go out there and stand in the snow, sometimes for hours. Even back then I knew it was at least a little crazy.”

“He was grief-struck,” Lila said.

“There are only so many prayers you can say. He was out of his head and stayed there. He’d recite poetry and scenes from Greek plays. He was soft.”

“He was doing the best he could.”

“Sometimes that’s enough and sometimes it’s not,” Chase said. “He’d get drunk on whiskey. So would I. It was all we had to keep us warm out there in the cemetery. He used to sink to his knees and hold on to me while he wept. Sometimes he’d pass out from exhaustion or just because he was bombed. I’d stand there with ice in my hair, loaded on scotch, and try to keep him from freezing to death.”

Not exactly the best postcoital topic of conversation, but he knew Lila was the one, and he was glad she’d asked. He had his arm around her and raised his hand to brush the hair from her face.

She reached for his cigarette and took a few puffs, handed it back to him. “And you’re angry with your father for that?”

“I guess I sound like it, don’t I?”

“Because he acted weak in front of you. Because you were so young, and he put all of that responsibility on your shoulders. So you hated him.”

“Not about that so much as what came next,” Chase admitted. “After the cops hit a brick wall with their investigation, my father asked a newscaster if he could go on television and appeal to the killer. The newscaster said he thought that instead of my dad doing the pleading, I should do it instead. Maybe I’d warm the murderer’s heart. Like he’d suddenly crack and give himself up.”

A tiny groan drifted from the back of Lila’s throat. “And I said that thing to you about your being struck with a case of conscience and turning yourself in.” She gently pressed her lips to his neck. “I’m sorry for that.”

“When you said it, it was funny.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“But what they wanted me to do, it was stupid, just a ratings ploy. But I was a kid and had no say. They put cameras and lights on me and instructed me on what to do. When my eyes didn’t look wet enough they made me repeat my performance. When they still weren’t wet enough, they used glycerin on my cheeks. There was a makeup woman and somebody kept coming over and brushing my hair. It was like a movie set. Me doing twelve takes begging the man who killed my mother to give it up. Looking left, then right, then straight on while they decided which was my best side.”

“I like ’em both.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Now that the mustache is gone, anyways.”

“They put mascara on me to thicken my eyelashes.”

“It was callous and cruel,” Lila said, “that’s for sure, but still, it’s understandable. If they had no hard evidence or suspects after the first few days, the police would’ve been willing to try damn near anything. They wanted to get the killer.”

“That’s the logical, adult way of thinking about it. But my head is still wrapped up in what I saw and felt back then. That afternoon, my old man, he looked like he’d swallowed rat poison. Later, my father and I watched the news together. He sat around waiting, like the killer might phone him up and apologize. My dad was already mostly out of his head but now he went even further. I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“You were just a little boy.”

Chase shrugged, ground the cigarette out against the side of the nightstand.

Lila sat up, propped by the pillows and took his face in her hands. It felt like the most natural kind of touch in the world, and he knew he’d never felt it before. “You were already proving yourself tough and strong, bearing up under that kind of pain.”

“Maybe that’s why Jonah came back for me. Just because I made it through. Even my father buckled and went out the easy way.”

She stiffened and frowned. “I’m not sure that’s such a generous comment to make about your own daddy.”

“It’s not, but it’s hard to feel charitable to someone who quits the game and leaves you on your own at ten years old.”

“I’m guessing if he could’ve found another way, he would’ve. Not everyone is made of the sternest stuff.”

“No.”

“So what happened to him?”

There was the question. He saw his father again, holding a bottle of whiskey to his chest as if it might somehow save him. The snow mounting on the tombstones, the man as cold outside of her grave as she was in it.

“He had a sailboat. We used to go out on the Great South Bay during the summers. One morning, about a month after the murder, we were expecting another blizzard. I got ready to go to the cemetery as always, but instead he drove down to the marina. He started to dig his boat out of the ice with an ax. The bay itself wasn’t frozen, just the edges of the channel where the boats were docked. People drove by and called to him but he ignored everyone. He didn’t say a word to me. I said nothing either. When he got too tired, he looked at me like he might begin crying again, so I took over chopping the ice. Eventually the boat got loose. He left me on the dock. Climbed on board and took it out of the bay and toward the ocean channels. I lost sight of him fast. The storm hit maybe an hour later. I hitchhiked back to the house.”

Lila’s lips drew together, bloodless.

Chase said, “You’re not liking him so much anymore, are you.”

“I just wish he’d found another way. One where you weren’t dragged in so deep.”

“The wreckage washed up on Fire Island that night. His body was never found. Probably threw himself overboard as soon as he was far enough from shore that the tide wouldn’t take him back in. Has a romantic kind of quality to it, I think. Going out like Shelley and Hart Crane.”