Derek Haas - Dark men

Their marriage was comfortable if not comforting, and she was happy to have the television to herself when her husband went away on frequent business trips. They had no kids, confessing early in their courtship neither cared for children, and she never heard her biological clock tick the way so many other women did. Between her husband’s commissions and her speech salary, they established themselves in the upper middle class and had a nice two-story home, the customary accoutrement of couples earning their income.

Her husband had one quirk. Miniatures. He had a basement full of miniatures-airplanes, trains, cars. In fact, he built elaborate cityscapes, with model skyscrapers and model traffic congestion and model construction equipment and sometimes little model pedestrians walking the model streets. She didn’t mind him down in the basement, building his tiny worlds; she figured having him home when he was in town was better than having him out at bars or running around the way some husbands did. Besides, she could watch her shows while he was building and painting down there. She never had to fight him for the remote control.

A text changed her life. A simple text from her friend Michelle. I DIDN’T KNOW D OUGLAS WAS IN C LEVELAND. H E’S NOT. O H. S WORE I SAW HIM. H OW R U?

She didn’t respond, and when the TV suddenly sprang to life, she realized she’d been sitting there for the full thirty minutes it took TiVo to override the pause. She looked at her hand and realized she had chewed her thumbnail to the quick.

Doug wasn’t in Cleveland. He was on a business trip, yes, but he said he was going to New York to see his client. What was the name he had said? Damn, why didn’t she listen to him? Smith Barney? Something like that.

She was being silly. Why was her imagination running wild? Why did she watch stupid trash like Desperate Housewives and Young and the Restless, where every husband was philandering around like it was Roman times? People in real life didn’t act like that, right?

She should just call him on his cell and see where he was. He’d probably said Cleveland anyway. Maybe she had mixed it up. Cleveland and New York?

“Hello?”

“Hey, hon, I can’t talk right now.”

“Are you in a meeting?”

“Walking into one right now. I’ll call you when it’s over…”

“Are you in…” But he hung up before she could finish the question.

She got online and found a number for a Smith-Barney branch in Cleveland. There were three so she picked the first one and dialed the main line.

“Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Financial…”

“Yes, hello… my name is Carla Spilatro… I have to… is my husband Doug there right now?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Doug Spilatro with Valsoft?”

“Hold one moment.”

She waited, chewing that thumbnail down until she tasted blood.

A new voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Matt Chapman, may I help you?”

“Hi, sorry to bother you. My husband works for Valsoft and I think he has a meeting with someone in your, uh, firm. His name is…”

“Don’t know any Valsoft. You sure you have the right branch?”

Her heart beat harder. “No, I guess I’m not sure.”

“Well, we have two other branches in Cleveland. I’ll have Melanie come back on and give you the numbers…”

“Thank you… oh, wait. Mr. Chapman…?”

“Yes?”

“You said you don’t know Valsoft? It’s my understanding they produce and manage the software you use on your computers?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. We use good ol’ Microsoft.”

“Do all the branches use Microsoft?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

She had moved her teeth off the thumb and on to the cuticles on her ring finger. “Okay, sorry to bother you.”

“No problem.”

She looked up the Valsoft corporate webpage. It wasn’t more than a few pages, but there was her husband’s name and contact info under the “outside sales” banner. Sure, the number listed was his cell phone, but he worked out of his car most days. The corporate office’s main address was listed as Deerfield, Michigan, and she realized she had never been to Michigan, much less Deerfield. There was a main office phone number, so she picked up the phone to call again.

Then she stopped. What was she doing? One little text from her friend saying she’d seen Doug somewhere other than where he said he was-she was certain he had said New York-and she’s running around checking on him like he’s some sort of dual-life soap opera character. She put the phone down. She’d wait and talk to him when he returned and just ask him where he went and how the meetings went.

She plopped on to the couch but couldn’t concentrate, so she ate an entire quart of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia but still couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She flipped channels and all the networks were breaking in on the soaps to talk about a “major accident” in Cleveland. The Cleveland of it caught her eye. Doug might be in Cleveland and there was an accident there too?

She grew up near there, in Shaker Heights, and knew the skyline well. It seemed a section of light rail track above a highway had collapsed and an RTA train hadn’t been able to brake in time. It dove over the edge and killed fourteen people. Such a random, odd event. An act of God. One day you’re riding a passenger train, maybe worried about making a meeting on time or concerned about the job interview you’re headed to or wondering whether or not you’re going to have time to pick up a snack on the way home from work and what stops you cold? A piece of track giving way and it’s bye-bye to all those plans you made. Incredible.

A news camera in a helicopter was showing the accident under a “LIVE” banner, a bird’s-eye view of dozens of emergency vehicles surrounding the aftermath of the crash like moths circling a flame. As the chopper hovered, it settled on a particular angle, that view of God looking down from above on the carnage, and suddenly she felt as though she’d been jolted with electricity. She shot straight up on the couch and overturned her carton of ice cream as she sent the spoon clattering across the wooden floor.

That angle. The precise angle of the news footage. She’d seen that angle before. She’d seen this accident before.

She had gotten off her ass yesterday to do a bit of cleaning, and decided to vacuum the carpet in the basement when she wouldn’t be under her husband’s feet. The door was locked, which was odd, but she didn’t think too much about it. She knew where her husband stored his keys, even if he had never outright told her. She imagined there wasn’t a square inch of this house she didn’t know intimately, and so had retrieved the key from its hiding place and gone down below so she could surprise Doug with a clean work area when he returned from New York. Or Cleveland.

She realized her tongue had turned to chalk, thinking about yesterday. She rose from the couch and headed to the basement door. Slowly, she descended the stairs as though she were in a dream, each step bringing her a better view of the table where Doug built his miniatures.

From the back, it looked like any of the dozens of skylines he’d built over the years, though this one had a familiarity to it she hadn’t noticed yesterday.

She reached the basement floor without realizing it, her eyes fixed on the model city, crafted with such precise detail. Doug had grown into an accomplished designer; how had she not noticed it before? The level of detail. The precision of the streets and buildings. The photographs pulled from the internet and attached to the corkboard on the wall to serve as blueprints for the model.

She kept gliding around the model, following the path she’d taken with the vacuum cleaner, and her jaw dropped as her eyes led her around the cityscape.