James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

You want inversion? Try it with your face completely covered by a wet cloth that they keep soaking and soaking with a steady stream from a canteen until your breathing is so restricted that you’re sucking nothing but water into your lungs, and it hurts so much and you’re so sure you’re gonna die that you’d confess to any-

Jamal shook off the thought.

A woman at the bar was checking him out, peering over the sugar-coated rim of her cocktail glass. She appeared to be alone, which was a little strange, since women in South Beach typically arrived in groups. Maybe her girlfriend had already hooked up for the night, and she was on her own. Jamal made eye contact but kept cool about it. She was a dark-haired beauty wearing a clingy white dress and a gold necklace that played off her brown skin. He could feel the pulse of the music beneath his feet, almost smell the mix of perfume and perspiration wafting up from the crowd. Albino Girl was on stage at the other end of the club, a Vegas-style act in which a dancer managed to keep time to the music while a thirteen-foot lemon-yellow albino python coiled around her sculptured body.

The woman at the bar tossed her hair, and then she glanced again in Jamal’s direction. Three years of detention had made him rusty, but not oblivious. He walked toward her. She smiled and said something as he approached, but it was impossible to hear her over the music. He could have texted her, but after being off the hookup circuit for so long, he wondered if it was no longer cool to text someone who was standing right next to you. He gestured toward the dance floor, and she followed, leaving her drink at the bar.

They danced to Lady Gaga, and Jamal liked what he was seeing. It was bizarre to think that if it weren’t for Jack Swyteck he’d be in prison tonight, and he wondered how many other guys in the club were wearing ankle bracelets with GPS tracking.

Probably more than anyone would guess.

“I’m thirsty,” she said, shouting into his ear.

Jamal led the way through the crowd, and she had her thumb in his belt loop as they headed back to the bar. Then she gestured toward the restroom and shouted something. After a momentary delay it registered: “Order me another drink.”

He nodded and walked back to the bar. Her half-empty cocktail was exactly where she had left it, but there was another beside it. He could only surmise that some other dude had ordered her a fresh drink, and Jamal wondered who the competition was. Then he looked closer, and he froze. The new drink was resting atop a paper cocktail napkin, and the napkin came with a handwritten note:

Are you afraid of The Dark?

His gaze swept across the bar, but it was a sea of unfamiliar faces. He turned the napkin over, and the message continued on the other side.

You should be, it read.

The music pounded, and the crowd around him was into it, but Jamal could barely breathe. The capital letters-the T and the D-were a familiar signature, even if this was the first time he’d seen it in over three years.

He glanced toward the ladies’ restroom, where his best shot at a hookup for the night was making herself even sexier. He liked this girl, and he wanted her as badly as any man fresh out of prison would. But if the Dark was here, it was better to leave her out of this.

Jamal stuffed the napkin into his back pocket and headed for the exit.

Jack kissed his grandfather good night at eleven.

The west wing of Sunny Gardens of Doral was entirely for Alzheimer’s patients. Jack’s grandfather lived on the ground floor with other “mild to moderate” residents, those with no track record of wandering off in the middle of the night. Soothing colors brightened the interior walls, sound-absorbent carpeting quieted the floors, and calming music played in the hallways. It was an instrumental version of what Jack thought he recognized as an old Cat Stevens song. His own version of another vintage 1970s hit by the same artist came to mind.

Another Saturday night, and I ain’t got no Andie…

With Andie out of town, it had seemed like a good idea to spend time with Grandpa. Unfortunately, he’d slept the whole time, and after two hours of channel surfing through some really bad Saturday-night television, Jack decided to try another day.

His cell rang as he crossed through the lobby toward the exit. It was Andie, and it made him smile to know that he wasn’t the only one feeling lonely.

“You read my mind,” said Jack. “I was just thinking of you.”

“Me, too.”

Jack heard music in the background. It sounded like a nightclub. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Jack,” she said, in that tone that said, You know I can’t tell you.

“Right. Sorry,” he said.

“Tell me how you’re doing,” said Andie.

Jack seated himself on the couch next to the birdcage in the lobby. The sleeping parakeet didn’t seem to notice. “Yesterday was horrible,” he said.

“Horrible?”

“The court held a hearing on bail for Jamal Wakefield. We won, but I had to cross-examine Vincent Paulo.”

“Had to, huh? Like somebody was holding a gun to your head?”

“Andie, come on. Don’t be like that.”

“I told you how I feel about that case.”

Jack heard laughter in the background, and then the muffled sound of Andie speaking to someone else-“Just a couple more minutes”-with the phone away from her mouth.

“Are you on duty?” asked Jack.

“What?” asked Andie.

“It sounds like a party going on,” said Jack. “I was just wondering if you were on or off duty.”

“I’m always on,” she said.

Always. For an instant, Jack wondered if she was with her “sexually deviant boyfriend,” but he caught himself

It’s her job, Swyteck.

“Jack, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you again, next chance I get.”

“Sure.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Love you, too,” he said, and then the line was silent.

The Sunny Gardens lobby was quiet as a mausoleum, which was the very next stop on the route for just about everyone who lived there. Most were lonely widows or widowers, and probably all of them would have given up their six months or a year at Sunny Gardens for another week or even a day with the spouses who had left them. Jack had all the respect in the world for Andie and her career. But hanging around a place like Sunny Gardens did make him wonder about her readiness to volunteer for assignments that reduced their relationship to weeks or perhaps even months of catch-as-catch-can phone conversations.

You knew this was her job when you popped the question.

Jack was parked in the Sunny Gardens private lot, but without a handicapped parking pass, he had a long walk to his car. He counted thirty handicapped spots in the first row of parking alone, not a single one of them being used. It made him want to stake out South Beach and confront the twenty-five-year-old triathlete who was using his eighty-seven-year-old grandmother’s pass to grab the best parking spots all over town.

Jack followed the sidewalk toward the overflow lot. The first phase of Sunny Gardens was vintage 1970s construction, which meant that there were plenty of mature olive trees along the walkway to block out the street lighting. Jack dug into his pocket for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Jack continued toward the lot, but tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. The row of olive trees had given way to even larger ficus trees, whose relentless root system had caused entire sections of the sidewalk to buckle. The canopy of thick, waxy leaves made the night even darker, forcing Jack to locate his car more from memory than sight.