John Hart - Down River

“Not since college,” I said.

She lit the joint, sucked in a lungful. “Well, I smoke,” she said tightly. She extended the joint toward me, but I shook my head. She took another drag, and the smoke moved out over the water.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked.

“No.”

“A girlfriend?”

“No.”

“What about Robin Alexander?”

“Not for a long time.”

She took one more drag, stubbed the joint out, and dropped the charred end back into the plastic bag. Her words were soft around the edges.

“I’ve got boyfriends,” she said.

“That’s good.”

“Lots of boyfriends. I date one and then I date another.” I didn’t know what to say. She sat up, facing me. “Don’t you care?” she asked.

“Of course I care, but it’s none of my business.”

Then she was on her feet.

“It is your business,” she said. “If not yours, then whose?” She stepped closer, stopped an inch away. Powerful emotions emanated from her, but they were complex. I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing that I could.

“I’m sorry, Grace.”

Then she was against me, still wet from the river. Her arms circled my neck. She clutched me with sudden intensity. Her hands found my face, squeezed it, and then her lips pushed against mine. She kissed me, and she meant it. And when her mouth settled against my ear, she squeezed me even tighter, so that I could not have stepped away without forcing her. Her words were barely there, and still they crushed me.

“I hate you, Adam. I hate you like I could kill you.”

Then she turned and ran, down the riverbank, through the trees, her white suit flashing like the tail of a startled deer.

Some time later, I closed the door of my car as if I could shut off the world. It was hot inside, and blood pounded where the stitches held my skin together. For five years I’d lived in a vacuum, trying to forget the life I’d lost, but even in the world’s greatest city the brightest days had run shallow.

But not here.

I started the car.

Everything here was so goddamned real.

Back at Robin’s, I cut the tape from my ribs and stood under pounding water for as long as I could. I found the Percocet and took two, thought about it, and then swallowed another. Then, with all of the lights off, I climbed into bed.

When I woke it was dark outside, but a light shone from the hallway. The drugs still had a grip on me, and deep as I’d been, the dream still found me: a dark curve of red spatter, and an old brush too big for small hands.

Robin stood next to the bed, dark against the light. She was very still. I couldn’t see her face. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she told me.

“What doesn’t?”

She unbuttoned her shirt, then slipped it off. She wore nothing else. Light spilled through the gaps between her fingers, the space between her legs. She was a silhouette, a paper doll. I thought of the years we’d shared, of how close we’d come to forever. I wished that I could see her face.

When I lifted the blanket, she slipped in, on her side, and put a leg over me. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“Don’t talk.”

She kissed the side of my neck, rose to kiss my face, and then covered my mouth. She tasted as I remembered, felt the same: hard and hot and eager. She rolled on top of me, and I winced as her weight came onto my ribs. “Sorry,” she whispered, and shifted all of her weight onto my hips. A shudder moved through her. She rose above me and I saw the side of her face in the hall’s light, the dark pit of one eye and the dark hair that gleamed where the light touched it. She took my hands and placed them on her breasts.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” she repeated; but she was lying, and we both knew it. The communion was immediate and total.

Like stepping off a cliff.

Like falling.

When next I woke, she was getting dressed.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself.”

“Want to talk?” I asked.

She whipped on her shirt, started on the buttons. She could not bring herself to look at me. “Not about this.”

“Why not?”

“I needed to figure something out.”

“Do you mean us?”

She shook her head. “I can’t talk to you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Naked, tangled in my sheets. Put on some pants, come into the living room.”

I pulled on pants and a T-shirt, found her sitting in a leather club chair with her legs drawn up beneath her. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Late,” she said.

A single lamp burned, leaving most of the room in shadow. Her face was pale and uncertain, eyes filled up with hard gray shadow. Her fingers twisted together. I looked around the room as silence stretched between us. “So, how’ve you been?” I finally asked.

Robin came to her feet. “I can’t do this. I can’t make small talk like we saw each other last week. It’s been five years, Adam. You didn’t call or write. I didn’t know if you were alive, dead, married, still single. Nothing.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “And even with all of that, I still haven’t moved on. Yet here I am sleeping with you, and you want to know why? Because I know that you’re going to leave; and I had to find out if it was still there between us. Because if it was gone, then I’d be okay. Only if it was gone.”

She stopped talking, turned her face away, and I understood. She’d let her guard down and now she hurt. I stood up. I wanted to stop what was coming, but she spoke over me.

“Don’t say anything, Adam. And don’t ask me if it’s gone, because I’m about to tell you.” She turned to face me, and lied for the second time. “It’s gone.”

“Robin…”

She shoved her feet into untied running shoes, picked up her keys. “I’m going for a walk. Get your stuff together. When I get back we’ll see about finding you a hotel room.”

She slammed the door behind her, and I sat down, awed again by the force of the passions that had grown in the wake of my flight northward.

When she returned, twenty minutes later, I had showered and shaved; everything I owned was either on my back or in the car. I met her in the foyer, by the door. Her face was flushed. “I found a room at the Holiday Inn,” I told her. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

She closed the door and leaned against it. “Hang on a second,” she said. “I owe you an apology.” A pause. “Look, Adam. I’m a cop, and that’s all about keeping control. You understand? It’s about logic, and I’ve trained myself that way since you left. It’s all I had left.” She blew out a hard breath. “What I said back there, that was five years’ worth of control slipping away in under a minute. You didn’t deserve it. You don’t deserve to be tossed out in the middle of the night either. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

There was no irony in her.

“Okay, Robin. We’ll talk. Just let me get my bag. Do you have any wine?”

“Some.”

“Wine could be nice,” I said, then went outside to collect my things. I stood in the parking lot. The sky spread out, a low blackness propped up by small-town light. I tried to figure out how I felt about Robin and the things she’d said. Everything was happening so fast, and I was no closer to doing what I’d come here to do.

I dropped my duffel in the foyer and walked toward the living room. I heard Robin’s voice, saw that she was on her cell. She held up a hand, and I stopped, realizing that something was wrong. It was all over her.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

She snapped the phone closed, reached for the gun in its shoulder holster, shrugged it on.