Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

He gave her a broad and beautiful smile. “I see you’ve spent time in my head.”

“Ha.” She shook her head. “Just mine.”

They said nothing for a minute. They finished their drinks, ordered two more.

“And yet,” she said, “you project confidence amazingly well. You handled that d-bag in the bar like you were his hypnotist.”

“He was an idiot. Idiots are easy to outwit. That’s why they’re idiots.”

“How do I know you weren’t in on it together?”

“In on what?”

“You know,” she said, “he makes me feel scared, you come to my rescue.”

“But I got you out of there and I stayed behind.”

“If he was in on it with you, you could have been out that door five seconds after me and followed me.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. He nodded. “That’s a good point. Are you often approached this elaborately?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It would take an awful lot of work on my part. Wasn’t that guy with a girlfriend at one point? They were fighting?”

She nodded.

“So I would have had to — let me order this correctly — known you were coming to the bar tonight, hired a friend to pretend he was there with a girlfriend, start a fight with her, get her to leave, then approach you and be belligerent, all so I could step in and buy you the time you needed to leave so I could then—”

“Okay, okay.”

“— run across the bar the moment you left it, slip out the door behind you, and follow you through the city on empty, quiet streets in hard-heeled shoes.”

“Okay, I said. Okay.” She gestured at his suit, his white shirt, his handsome raincoat. “You’re just very put together so I’m trying to wrap my head around the part where you don’t really like yourself. Because you, my friend, exude confidence.”

“In a dickish way?”

“Actually, no.” She shook her head.

“Most times I am confident,” he said. “The rational adult me? He’s got his shit squared away. There’s just this tiny splinter-me that can be accessed at midnight in a dark bar by a woman who asks what I don’t like about myself.” He turned fully toward her again and waited. “Speaking of which...”

She cleared her throat because for a moment she feared she’d tear up. She could feel it threatening, and it was embarrassing. She’d covered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on an island already racked by poverty beyond most humans’ ability to imagine. She’d spent a month in a housing project walking solely on her knees in order to duplicate the perspective of a child in the same circumstances. She once climbed to the canopy of a tree, two hundred feet above the ground in the Brazilian rain forest, and slept there overnight. And today, she’d barely managed to drive thirty miles from the suburbs to the city without cracking up.

“I got divorced today,” she said. “I lost my job — no, correct that, my career — six months ago, as you well know, because I had a panic attack on the air. I’ve grown terrified of people, not particular people, but in general, which is worse. I’ve spent the last few months a virtual shut-in. And honestly? I can’t wait to get back to it. Brian, there’s nothing I like about myself.”

He said nothing for a minute. Just looked at her. It wasn’t an intense stare, didn’t feel like a come-on or a challenge. It was an open look, forgiving, uncolored by judgment. It was impossible for her to characterize until she realized it was the look of a friend.

She noticed the song then. It had been playing for maybe half a minute. Lenny Welch, one of the earliest but most enduring one-hit wonders, singing “Since I Fell for You.”

Brian’s head was cocked to it, his gaze gone to another place. “This played on the radio once when I was a kid at this lake we’d go to. All the adults were funny that day, a blast to be around. Took me years to realize they were all high. I couldn’t understand why they kept sharing the same cigarette. Anyway, they danced by the lake to this, a bunch of stoned Canucks in nylon bathing suits.”

Where did it come from, what she said next? Could that impulse be traced? Or was it simply chemical? Neurons firing away, biology trumping intellect.

“Wanna dance?”

“Love to.” He took her hand and they found the small dance floor just past the bar itself in a dark room lit only by the glow of the jukebox.

Their first dance then. The first time their palms and chests touched. The first time she was close enough to smell what she would always identify as Brian’s essential smell — a hint of smoke entwined with the smell of his unscented shampoo and a vaguely woodsy musk to his flesh.

“I sent you the drink because I didn’t want you to leave the bar.”

“Because you had to go to the bathroom, I know.”

“No, I went to the bathroom because right after I sent the drink, I freaked out. I just, I dunno, whew, I just didn’t want to see you look at me like some fucking stalker. So I went to the bathroom to, I dunno, cringe? I just went in there and stood with my back against the wall and called myself stupid about ten times.”

“You did not.”

“I did. I swear. When I used to watch you on the news, you were honest. You didn’t editorialize, you didn’t wink at the camera or wear your biases on your sleeve. I trusted what you said. You did your job with integrity. And that came through.”

“Even with the cat that barked?”

His face grew serious though his tone remained light. “Don’t minimize what I’m saying about you. I go through a day, sometimes a week, where everyone lies to me, everyone’s trying to play me. From the car salesman, to the vendors, from my doctor trying to upsell me drugs because he’s trying to fuck the pharmaceutical rep, to the airlines and the hotels and the women in the hotel bars. I would get back from a trip, and I would turn on Channel 6 and you — you — wouldn’t lie to me. That meant something. Some days, particularly after my marriage blew up and I was alone all the time, that meant everything.”

She didn’t know what to say. She was unaccustomed to compliments lately and unfamiliar with trust.

“Thanks,” she managed and looked at the floor.

“This is one sad song,” he said after a bit.

“It is.”

“You want to stop?”

“No.” She loved the press of his palm at the small of her back. It made her feel like she’d never fall. Never be hurt. Never lose. Never be abandoned again. “No, let’s keep going.”

The beginning of their love affair injected her with a false sense of calm. She almost convinced herself the panic attacks were a thing of the past, even though their most recent onset had been the most acute.

Her and Brian’s first official date was a cup of coffee the morning after they met. Too buzzed to drive the night before, Rachel had splurged on a river-view room at the Westin Copley Square. It had been over a year since she’d stayed in a hotel; in the elevator, she’d imagined ordering a snack from room service and watching a movie on-demand, but she fell asleep somewhere between kicking off her shoes and pulling back the bedspread. At ten the next morning, she met Brian at Stephanie’s on Newbury. Tendrils of vodka still shivered in her blood and in the mild gumminess of her brain. Brian, on the other hand, looked great. He was actually better looking in daylight than in bar light. She asked him about his job and he told her it paid the bills and let him indulge his love of travel.

“There’s gotta be more to it than that.”

“Not actually.” He chuckled. “Here’s what I do, day in, day out — I negotiate terms with lumber suppliers based on whether there’s a lot of lumber this month or a little. Was there a drought in Australia or did the rainy season last too long in the Philippines? Those factors change the price of lumber, which changes the price of — where do we start? — that napkin, this tablecloth, that sugar packet. I’m falling asleep talking about it.” He took a sip of coffee. “What about you?”