Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

“Me?”

“Yeah. Will you ever go back to journalism?”

“I doubt anyone would hire me.”

“If they would? Say someone who never saw that video?”

“And where would I find them?”

“I hear Chad has terrible Internet service.”

“Chad?”

“Chad.”

She said, “Well, if I can ever get on a plane again, I’ll take a run at the news stations in...”

“N’Djamena.”

“Capital of Chad, yes.”

“On the tip of your tongue, I’m sure.”

“It was .”

“No, I know.”

“I would’ve gotten it.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“Not with your mouth maybe,” she said, “but with your eyes.”

“Yours are remarkable, by the way.”

“My eyes.”

“And your mouth.”

“You can hang with me anytime.”

“That’s the plan.” His face grew a bit somber. “Did you ever think you might not have to go as far as Chad?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wonder if you’re as recognizable as you think.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I was on the news five nights a week in this city for almost three years.”

“You were,” he said. “But what’s the viewership? About five percent of a city of two million? So that’s a hundred thousand people. Spread out over however many square miles make up the greater metro area. I bet if you polled everyone in this restaurant, only one or two would recognize you and maybe only because we asked and made them take a second look.”

She said, “I can’t decide if you’re trying to make me feel better or worse.”

“Better,” he said. “Always better. I’m trying to get you to see, Rachel, that, yeah, a few people remember that video and a smaller percentage of those connect it to you when they see you out in public, but it’s a shrinking demographic and it shrinks further every day. We live in a world of disposable memory. Nothing’s built to last, not even shame.”

She crinkled her nose at him. “You talk pretty.”

“You are pretty.”

“Awwwww.”

Second date was a dinner on the South Shore near her place. Third date was back in Boston, another dinner, and afterward they made out like high school kids, her back against a lamp pole. It started to rain, not the soft mist of the night they’d met but a pelting that coincided with a plummet into raw cold, as if winter was taking one last desperate bite out of them.

“Let’s get you to your car.” He tucked her under his raincoat. She could hear the drops hitting the outside of the coat like small stones, but everything remained dry except her ankles.

They passed a small park where a homeless man lay on a bench. He stared out at the street as if he were trying to spot something he’d lost there. He’d covered himself in newspaper, but his head shook persistently in the wet. His lips quivered.

“It’s a mean spring,” the man said.

“And almost June too,” Brian said.

“Supposed to clear by midnight.” Rachel felt anxious and guilty about owning a bed, a car, a roof.

The man gave that news a hopeful pursing of his lips and closed his eyes.

In her car, she got the heat turned on and rubbed her hands together. Brian leaned into the open window for a short kiss that turned into a long one and the rain battered her roof.

“Let me drive you home,” she said.

“It’s ten blocks in the wrong direction. The coat’ll keep me dry.”

“You don’t have a hat.”

“Ye of little faith.” He stepped back from the car and produced a Blue Jays ball cap from his coat pocket. When he put it on, he curved the bill with a snap of his fingers and saluted her with a cocked grin. “Drive careful. Call me when you get home.”

“One more.” She crooked a finger at him.

He leaned into the car one more time, kissed her, and she could smell the faintest hint of sweat from the underside of his cap brim and taste scotch on his tongue and she pulled hard on the lapels of his coat and deepened the kiss.

He walked back the way they’d come. She turned on her wipers and went to pull away from the curb, but her windows had fogged up. She turned on the defrost and sat watching the glass clear before she pulled onto the street. At the next corner, she was about to turn right when she looked to her left and saw Brian. He stood in the small park. He’d removed his coat to lay it over the homeless man.

He stepped out of the park, turning his shirt collar up against the rain, and ran up the street toward his home.

Her mother, of course, had a whole chapter devoted to what Rachel had just witnessed: “The Act That Causes the Leap.”

Their fourth date, he made dinner at his apartment. While he was loading the dishwasher, she removed her T-shirt and bra and came to him in the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of tattered boyfriend jeans. He turned just as she reached him and his eyes widened and he said, “Oh.”

She felt in complete control, which of course she wasn’t, and free enough to dictate the terms of their bodies’ first engagement. That night they started in the kitchen but finished in his bed. Started round two in the bathtub and finished on the counter between the his-and-her sinks. Then went for the trifecta in the bedroom again and did surprisingly well, although there was nothing left to come out of Brian at the end but a shudder.

Throughout that summer, the giving of the body went spectacularly well. The giving of everything else, however, was a slower process. Particularly once the panic attacks returned. For the most part, they descended when Brian was out of town. Unfortunately, the first rule of accepting him as her boyfriend was accepting that he was out of town a lot. Most of his trips were quick two-nighters to Canada, Washington State and Oregon, twice a year to Maine. But others — to Russia, Germany, Brazil, Nigeria, and India — took much longer.

Sometimes when he was first gone, it felt good to return to herself. She didn’t need to see herself in terms of being half of a couple. She’d wake up the morning after he’d left and feel ninety percent Rachel Childs. Then she’d look out the window and fear the world and remember that ninety percent of herself was still at least forty percent more than she liked.

By the second afternoon, the thought of going outside came laden with barely suppressed hysteria swaddled in more manageable everyday dread.

What she saw when she pictured the outside world was what she felt when she dared enter it — that it came at her like a storm cloud. Encircled her. Took bites of her. Inserted itself into her body like a straw and sucked her dry. In return, it gave her nothing. It thwarted all her attempts to engage it in kind, to be rewarded for her attempts to be a part of it. It sucked her up into its swirl, spun her, and then spit her out of its maelstrom before moving on to its next victim.

While Brian was in Toronto, she froze in a Dunkin’ Donuts on Boylston. For two hours she couldn’t move from the small counter that looked out onto the street.

While Brian was legging back from Hamburg one morning, she got into a cab on Beacon Street. They’d driven four blocks when she realized she’d entrusted a complete stranger with carrying her safely across the city for money. She had him pull over, overtipped him, and got out of the cab. She stood on the sidewalk, and everything was too bright, too sharp. Her hearing was too acute, as if the ear canals had been cored; she could hear three people on the far side of Mass Ave talking about their dogs. A woman, ten feet below on the river path, berated her child in Arabic. A plane landed at Logan. Another took off. And she could hear it. Could hear the cars honking on Mass Ave, and cars idling on Beacon and revving their engines on Storrow Drive.