Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

“There’s no rule about not calling the Foundation the ‘place.’” She returned to her journal.

He looked over the distant mountains. “This isn’t a coincidence. Me coming up here.”

“I know. I saw you looking at me at the Discourse.”

“Just wanted to say sorry. I screwed up. Got you in trouble.”

Silence bled between them.

Shaw finally said, “That curfew — ten o’clock. Do they really have bears and wolves here, you think?”

“I don’t know. You hear howls sometimes.”

A moment passed. “Anyway. Screwed up. Sorry. That Hugh — I met him. He’s pretty... tough. Wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”

She didn’t stiffen at the mention of his name — which Shaw had dropped to begin to build an alliance between them. But her eyes stopped scanning her notebook for a moment.

Victoria then softened. “There weren’t any serious consequences. I was careless. It was my fault.” She glanced down at her open notebook, which was filled with dense jottings, a few sketches too. Clumsy ones. Her handwriting was abysmal. “Last night at the table, I had a thought about a Plus. A good one. It felt important and I was concentrating on that.”

“A ‘Plus’?” And hadn’t somebody referred to a “Minus” too?

She was confused for a moment, then nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You haven’t met with your trainer yet.”

“No. That’s next.”

“You’ll find out. I can’t say anything. We can’t give away any of the Process to a new Companion.”

He sat. He wasn’t close but her shoulders narrowed.

“This is all pretty strange,” he said.

Colter Shaw was taciturn by nature but he found that being talkative was a helpful tool in his reward-seeking efforts. Chatting put people at ease and gave him a chance to gauge reaction to his words, maybe exposing subjects to probe. He continued to ramble. “I’ve never done, you know, group therapy. And this place seems so... I don’t know what to call it. Focused, maybe. Intense. I thought it’d be more casual. Free to come and go, maybe play some Frisbee.”

“Master Eli feels that to true up you can’t be distracted. You need to be contained for the Process to work. He says the genie gets his power from the lamp he’s confined in.”

“I like that,” Shaw said. He fell silent and looked at the distant peaks. The view was similar to the vista as seen from Echo Ridge, though there the mountaintops in the distance were like rotting teeth. Here, they were gentler, their light gray summits rising above skirts of green forest. He pivoted toward her.

“He’s something, Master Eli. I get restless usually. Don’t like to just stand around. But I could listen to him for hours. And that experience he had, the death experience.”

“Oh, Master Eli is the smartest and most generous man in the world.”

Which were, Shaw believed, the exact words of blood-spattered Adelle.

“This better work. I don’t have a lot of options, you know. I’ve tried everything. Meds, shrinks. Nothing really works.” Shaw lifted a hand and let it rest on his thigh. He sighed.

Don’t overact.

Victoria asked, “All your life? Have you had problems all your life, or did something happen?”

He told her about Carter Skye’s lifelong issues — wrong side of the tracks, dabbling in drugs, fights, glancing involvement with gangs when he was doing day labor. “Been in jail. Have to tell you.”

She had no reaction to this.

He told her that what caused the nosedive recently was the death of his father in a tragic accident. If she’d asked, he would have assigned the tragedy to a car crash, not the truth: a tumble from ten stories in the air. That would be a bit close to home.

Victoria didn’t ask.

“I hope this works.” He watched her face closely. “Guy I knew told me about it. Adam Harper. You know him?”

“No.”

Shaw couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth. There’d been the slightest of hesitations before the word. If she in fact had not known him, that would be a setback. He’d hoped to learn more about the young man and what had happened in his stay at the camp.

His death was a question that had to be answered...

She absently riffled the notebook pages. Her fingernails were pink. “The Process’ll help. Just takes work.” Her face grew animated. “Master Eli’s Second Discourse is this afternoon. It’s so... inspiring. You’ll see. Everything’ll be made clear.”

“Why’re you here?” Shaw supposed it was okay to ask. Journeyman Quinn had urged them to share last night. Maybe being candid was part of truing up.

She answered without hesitation. “I’m the director of a private library in Portland. I’ve loved books all my life. I have a degree in library science. One in philosophy too.”

One of Shaw’s father’s hobbies, a curious one certainly but — to Ashton — exciting. Shaw, as Skye, asked, “You... I mean, they give you a degree for that?”

Victoria continued without responding, “I was married to a great guy, had a beautiful son. Everything was going... perfectly.”

Shaw had already spotted the past tense verbs.

“Last year I was visiting my mother. She’d had surgery. Don and Joey were home. They were watching a movie in the den. A superhero movie. So they’d shut the lights out. They think — the police think — that the man who broke in thought the place wasn’t occupied. They’d paused the movie to get some snacks. He walked into the house. He got spooked when he ran into my husband and son. He started shooting. He didn’t need to. But he did.”

Her voice was as emotion-free as Adelle’s when she’d told him about losing her baby.

“Goddamn. Sorry. How’re you...” His voice faded.

“Then came the drinking. Some painkillers too, but mostly the bottle.”

And here Shaw had been joking about bartenders last night.

She said, “I have days, hard ones. Really hard. It all comes back to me.”

Like when she saw Adam, lying dead on the rocks below her. He could picture her face.

“But I’m working on it.” She tapped the notebook.

He was going to continue the conversation, get to know her better, but he’d lost track of time. The heavenly tones sounded and the voice gave the hour and echoed: “Novices, report to your trainers.”

When he hesitated, she looked slightly alarmed. “You can’t be late. That’s rule—”

“Twelve. I’ve learned some of them.”

He’d hoped for a smile.

Shaw waited a moment but she’d returned to her notebook once more, and he had ceased to exist.

Walking down the hill, along the path bordered with trees and bushes, Shaw noticed a golf cart pull up to the back of Building 14.

What was inside the structure?

He veered off the path and crouched behind a dense boxwood, which radiated its characteristically tart smell. The three men inside climbed out. He was curious why they were not wearing amulets though their outfits were the regulation blue and black uniforms. That was a breach of the rules.

One looked up and down the grassy area behind this building and the dorms. He nodded. Another unlocked the back door, while the third, donning work gloves, picked up a cardboard carton from the back and carried it inside. They all marched in and the door closed.

He was still curious if there might be weapons inside. The box seemed heavy and was being carried gingerly; ammunition?

From the angle, Shaw hadn’t been able to see clearly, though he believed he caught a glint of metal before the door closed.

He returned to the path and walked across the Square to Building 7, where he would meet with his trainer, Samuel. He entered the building. A whiteboard on an easel reported that his session was in Room 4. He knocked and it opened.