Sarah St.Vincent - Ways to Hide in Winter

Yes, I thought. I knew that kind of fear, the one so sharp it left only exhaustion in its wake, a kind of indifference to fate. It was dangerous, that feeling. It led to a certain kind of decision-making, like a sleepwalker choosing to leave the doors unlocked when she goes to bed.

“I don’t mean to sound like a broken record,” I told him, picking at a streak of mud on my thigh, “but I’d think the obvious thing to do would be—”

He raised his hands and then dropped them. “Martin says they will not be back right away. In the meantime, I’ll think about what would be best.”

For a moment, I felt a shadow of what I suddenly understood Beth must feel whenever she tried to make me see reason. Exasperation mixed with pity.

“All right,” I said finally. “I’m going to dinner. But I’ll knock when I come back—if you’re still awake, maybe we can talk then.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“What?” I did a double take. “No. No, no, no. That’s not happening.”

“Why not? I would like to.”

“No,” I said again, shaking my head. “Absolutely not. I’ve watched you spend all this time trying to make yourself disappear up here. I may not think that was the world’s best idea, but I’m not going to help you fling it away on an impulse. No.”

He laughed self-consciously. “You’re a good friend. And I’m grateful for your concern. But…well, it seems to me that it makes no difference. If I stay here, I’m a sitting duck, as they say. Besides…” He glanced around the small, square room with the bare floor and gray furniture. “If I sit in here, you know, I just…”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. I could picture him sitting there, gazing at the blank white walls, thinking the same thoughts over and over. Jumping at every sound.

“I understand that,” I said. “I do. But it can’t be a good idea.”

“I’m not certain anything I do is truly a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, that may be, but—”

“Please,” he said softly.

The word hung in the air, delicate and suspended, like a moth that had flown into a web.

I let my head fall back and looked up at the ceiling. “All right,” I said at last, trying and failing to quiet my better judgment.

“Thank you. Just—if you could—maybe somewhere—”

I understood. “Yeah, I could take us to the twenty-four-hour diner up on the interstate. They get a lot of travelers. They’d probably be less likely to notice us.”

It had begun to rain, and the drive was a slow one. The stranger sat in the passenger’s seat in silence, watching the road as it unfurled in front of us, turning his face every time we passed a house or a barn even though it was impossible to see anything more than shadows. He smelled like soap.

As we pulled onto the highway, he looked at me. “You seem troubled,” he said.

“I’m driving around with a crazy person. How should I seem?”

“No, I mean it looks like it’s something more than that.”

“Oh.” I glanced at the headlights in my mirror. “No, it’s nothing.”

I slipped into the traffic, not that there was much. This stretch of the highway was usually empty at night except for the trucks, eighteen-wheelers that barreled down the interstate on their anonymous way to Allentown, Scranton, New York. Elsewhere.

“These guests at your house,” the stranger went on cautiously. “You don’t like them?”

“I can’t believe that’s what you’re worried about right now.”

“Well, I’m not worried, exactly. You just look a bit—”

“No.” I gave in. “It’s not that I don’t like them. They’re my family. We’re just different people.”

“How are they different?”

“It’s not important—they’ve just done some things I wouldn’t have done. Or that I hope I wouldn’t have done.” I flicked my turn signal to pass a slow pickup.

“Yes, families can be like that. Believe me, my father—well, that’s another story for another time. And of course it isn’t good to disrespect one’s parents. Not that I’m blaming you,” he added quickly.

I smiled briefly at his politeness. “It’s fine,” I said.

“What did they do, if I may ask?”

“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.” We passed a rest stop, its entrance lined with parked trucks, the drivers probably sleeping in their cabs. Several of the rigs had shapes on their grills done in what looked like Christmas lights, mostly crosses. The stranger turned in his seat to look at them, but within moments the trees that lined the highway had cut off the floating apparitions, and we were left in darkness.

The diner’s neon sign shone down on the parking lot. A strip of bells clanged when we pushed open the door, and the stranger jumped, stumbling into me. I felt him go tense. “Careful,” I murmured, and asked the hostess—a pert, sharp-looking woman with a pen in her mouth—for a table in the smoking section. She nodded and plucked two menus from a pile, pen remaining pressed between her lips.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” the stranger said as we slid into a booth. He curled forward, his hands in his pockets, looking around him.

“I don’t. Well, not usually. But apparently nobody else does tonight, either.” I lifted my chin at the empty booths and tables around us. “We can talk without worrying about who’s listening.”

“I see.” He opened the menu, glancing at it doubtfully. “I’m actually not very hungry, I’m afraid.”

“Pick something anyway,” I advised. “Otherwise they’re more likely to remember you.”

I watched him think about this. “All right.” He stared at the menu again as if it were written in hieroglyphics. “What should I choose?”

“Well, none of it’s exactly fine cuisine, but the roast beef’s not bad. In my opinion.”

“Okay. I’ll get that.” He closed the menu and leaned back against the booth. Whatever it was that had been buoying him up seemed to be draining away now that we were here; I watched him cast his eyes over our surroundings, doing a very poor impression of someone who wasn’t nervous.

When the waitress came, I ordered for both of us, the beef for him and an omelet for me. Two coffees. A lifetime ago, when Amos and I had been dating, we’d come here often, ordering scrambled eggs and hash browns late at night for no particular reason. Like the teenagers we were, I thought, and then pushed the memory from my mind.

“So,” I said when the waitress had put our food on the table and left. “What are you going to do?”

He turned his fork upside down the way British people did on TV, nudging at his meat. “Do?”

“You can’t stay. Not if you’re worried about someone finding you. You have to know that.”

All at once, the skin around his mouth seemed to sag. “As I said, I—there’s nowhere I can go.”

“But you came here. To the park, I mean.”

He took a sip of coffee and looked at his plate. “Yes. I was lucky.”

I found myself looking at his frayed cuffs, the tarnished buttons of his coat, all the small things I had come to know so well and that cried out, in their own way, with an unmistakable desperation. I pushed my plate aside.

“I’m not going to beg,” I said, “but I really could take you somewhere. Even another rural area, if that’s where you want to be. I don’t care how far we have to drive; I’ll do it.”

He spread a layer of mashed potatoes onto his fork and examined it without answering. His hair had fallen over his eyes. Maybe it was something about being in a new place, I thought, but I had never seen him look so fragile or so worn.

I took a deep breath, bracing myself.

“What exactly did you do that was so bad?” I asked finally.