Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

But what is my alternative? Pretend I didn’t see him?

This wouldn’t be the first time you saw something that wasn’t there.

Those times were different.

How?

They just were.

The cabdriver never said a word during the drive. She glanced at his hack license. Sanjay Seth. He looked sullen in the photo, one step short of scowling. She didn’t know this man and yet she allowed him to transport her, just as she allowed strangers to prepare her food and go through her trash and give her a body scan and fly a plane. And she hoped they didn’t fly that plane into a mountain or poison her food just because they were having a bad day. Or, in the case of this cab, she hoped he wouldn’t accelerate and drive her to a remote spot at the back of a failed industrial park and climb in the backseat, telling her just what he thought of women who didn’t say “Please.” The last time she’d taken a cab, this line of thinking had compelled her to abort the ride, but this time she pressed her fists into the sides of her thighs and kept them there. She maintained a steady inhale and exhale that was neither too deep nor too shallow and looked out the window at the rain and told herself she’d get through this just like she got through the subway ride and the mall.

When they neared Harvard Square, she asked Sanjay Seth to pull over at the corner of JFK and Winthrop because Winthrop was a one-way heading in the wrong direction. She didn’t feel like waiting while the cab slogged through 4:50 traffic for another five or ten minutes to come around the block just so he could get her a hundred feet closer.

As she approached the building, Caleb Perloff exited it. He tugged on the door to make sure it had locked behind him, his raincoat and Sox ball cap as wet as everyone else’s in the city, and then turned to see her standing on the sidewalk below him.

She could tell by the look on his face that he couldn’t put the two together — Rachel here on the other side of the river in Cambridge, outside their offices, when Brian was overseas.

She felt ridiculous. What possible explanation could she have for standing here? She’d had the cab ride over to think about it and she hadn’t managed to come up with one viable reason she’d need access to her husband’s office.

“So this is where it all happens,” she tried.

Caleb shot her that wry smile of his. “This is the spot.” He craned his head to look up at the building and then back at her. “Did you know that the price of timber went down one-tenth of one cent yesterday in Andhra Pradesh?”

“I did not, no.”

“But on the other side of the world, in Mato Grasso—”

“That’s where again?”

“Brazil.” He rolled the r as he came down the steps toward her. “In Mato Grasso, the price rose half a cent. And all signs point to it continuing to rise over the next month.”

“But in India?”

“We get that tenth of a cent discount.” He shrugged. “But it’s also kinda volatile right now. And shipping costs are higher. So who do we make a deal with?”

“That’s a dilemma,” she admitted.

“And what about all the timber we export?”

“Another wrinkle.”

“Can’t just let it rot.”

“Couldn’t do that.”

“Let the bugs get to it. The rain.”

“Heavens. The rain.”

He held his hand up to it, a soft drizzle at the moment. “Actually, it’s been dry in BC this past month. Odd. Dry there, wet here. Usually works the other way.” He cocked his head at her.

She cocked hers at him.

“Brings you by, Rachel?”

She never knew how much Brian had told anyone about her condition. He’d said he didn’t mention it, but she figured he had to tell someone, if only after a few drinks. They had to wonder at some point why Rachel hadn’t been able to join them at this party or that, why she’d skipped out on the Fourth of July fireworks with everyone last year at the Esplanade, why they rarely saw her out at the bars. Someone as bright as Caleb would have realized at some point that the only time he saw Rachel was in controlled environments (usually the condo) with small groups. But did Caleb know she hadn’t driven a car in two years? Hadn’t taken the subway in almost as long prior to this past Saturday? Did he know she once froze in the food court of the Prudential Center Mall, that she’d had to sit, surrounded by well-meaning security personnel, short of breath and certain she’d pass out, until Brian arrived to take her home?

“I was shopping in the ’hood.” She gestured toward the square.

He looked at her empty hands.

“Couldn’t find a thing,” she said. “Turned into a browse day.” She squinted through the mist at the building behind him. “Thought I’d take a look at the competition for my husband’s attentions.”

He smiled. “Want to come up?”

“I’ll just pop into his office to...”

“He left something in his drawer that he...”

“So this is his command center. Mind if I just hang out here for a bit? You can close the door behind you.”

“Did you remodel?” she said.

“Nope.”

“Then there’s nothing I need to see. Just thought I’d stroll by before I headed home.”

He nodded as if it all made perfect sense. “Want to share a cab?”

“That’d be great.”

They walked back up Winthrop and crossed JFK. It was close to five and the traffic heading into Harvard Square had clotted. To catch a cab heading out of the square, their best chance was to walk a block to the Charles Hotel. But what had been a flat pewter sky just a minute before had turned swollen and black.

“That’s not good,” Caleb said.

“I wouldn’t think so, no.”

They came to the end of Winthrop and could see from there that the cab stand in front of the Charles was empty. The traffic snaking toward the river was as bad as, if not worse than, the traffic heading into the square.

The black above rumbled. A few miles to the west, a bolt of lightning split the sky.

“A drink?” Caleb said.

“Or two,” she said as the sky opened. “Jesus.”

The umbrellas were poor protection once the wind kicked in. The rain fell with weight and clatter, the drops exploding off the pavement as they ran back up Winthrop. It sliced in from the right and the left, the front and the back.

“Grendel’s or Shay’s?” Caleb said.

She could see Shay’s on the other side of JFK. Close, but still another fifty yards in the rain. And if traffic moved, they’d have to work their way to a crosswalk. Grendel’s, on the other hand, was just to their left.

“Grendel’s.”

“Good choice. We’re too old for Shay’s anyway.”

In the vestibule, they added their umbrellas to the dozen or so already leaning against the wall. They removed their coats and Caleb took off his Sox cap, which had soaked through. His brown hair was cut so tight to his scalp he freed it of moisture by swiping his palm across it. They found a place to hang their coats by the hostess stand and were led to a table. Grendel’s Den was a basement-level place and they ordered their first round as shoes of every variety ran past on the cobblestones outside. Soon the rain had grown so heavy no one ran past.

Grendel’s had been around so long that not only could Rachel recall being turned away from the door with a fake ID in the nineties, but her mother had recalled frequenting the place in the early seventies. It catered mostly to Harvard students and faculty. Out-of-towners tended to wander in only on summer days when management placed tables out front by the green.

The waitress brought a wine for Rachel and a bourbon for Caleb and left menus. Caleb used his napkin to blot his face and neck dry.