Dennis Lehane: Since We Fell

I’ve watched my life away, she thought. I’ve failed to act at every step of the way, and I’ve justified that by claiming I was here to bear witness. But in reality I was just choosing not to act.

Until now.

And look what that’s gotten me. I am alone. And then I die. All else is window dressing. Wrapping paper. Sales and marketing.

She found a pack of Kleenex at the bottom of her bag, past the stacks of money, and used a couple of tissues on her face. She found herself staring back in the bag, the money taking up the left side, and on the right, her keys, her wallet, the gun.

And as long as she stared at it, and it could have been ten minutes or one, she had no idea, she knew in the end she could never point a gun at him and pull the trigger a second time. She didn’t have it in her.

She was going to let him go.

Without his passport — fuck him, that was staying here — and without his money, because she was walking off with that.

But she couldn’t kill him.

And why?

Because, God help her, she loved him. Or at least the illusion of him. At least that. The illusion of how he’d made her feel. And not just during the false happiness of their marriage, but even in these last few days. She would rather have known the lie that was Brian than the truth of anything else in her life.

She dropped the pack of tissues back into her bag and pushed the stack of money in over it and that’s when she saw the flash of dark blue vinyl. It slipped out between two stacks of bills like a card used to cut the deck.

She pulled it out of the bag. It was a United States passport.

She opened it.

Her own face stared back at her — one of the photos taken that rainy Saturday in the Galleria Mall three weeks ago. The face of a woman who was trying hard to look strong but hadn’t gotten all the way there yet.

But she was trying.

She put all six passports into her bag with the money and left the room.

Leaving the bank, she again looked for the woman with the neck tats and the perfect posture but, if she was in the building, she wasn’t anywhere Rachel could see her. She turned right past the waiting area and saw Manny behind the teller’s window, speaking to Ashley with his chin tilted toward her shoulder. They both looked up as she turned left at the door, Manny’s mouth opening as if he were about to call after her, but she went through the front door and into the parking lot.

Now she had the perfect angle on the cars under the tree, and the sun was cooperating too. Of the four cars that remained, only one was clearly occupied. It was the Chevy that had backed into its spot, and a man sat behind the wheel. It was still too shady to see his features, but it was definitely a man’s head — squared off at the top and at the jaw, ears the size of change purses. No way to tell if he was there to kill her or survey her or if he was simply a middle manager ducking out on his work, a john getting a blow job, or an out-of-town salesman who’d arrived early for an appointment to beat the traffic that clogged I-95 in Providence between eight and ten.

She looked straight ahead as she passed between the Employee of the Month’s car and a van parked in the handicap spot. It too had backed in, the sliding door by her left shoulder now, and she imagined the sound it would make as it was pulled open and hands reached out and yanked her inside.

She passed the van and a long black SUV approached from her right. She watched with a strangely detached fascination as the driver’s tinted window slid down and the driver thrust his arm through the opening even before the window had completed its journey down into the door slot. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt cuff peeking out at the wrist. She hadn’t thought to reach into her bag for the gun or at least try to run back behind the van for cover before his arm reached full extension, a cigarette nestled between the index and middle fingers as he exhaled a grateful plume of smoke, his head pressed against the headrest. He shot her a lazy grin as he passed, as if to say, It’s all about the little pleasures, ain’t it?

After he rolled past, she put her hand in her bag, thumbed the safety off the P380, and kept her hand there as she reached the Range Rover. She opened the door with her left hand and climbed inside. Put the bag on the front passenger seat and the gun on the console beside her, finger still on the trigger, safety off. She said, “You still there?”

“Had a few birthdays while you were gone,” he said mildly. “Fucking took you so long?”

“Really?” She removed her finger from the trigger, thumbed the safety back on, and put the gun in the space between her seat and the console. “That’s my greeting?”

“Gosh, hon, you look beautiful. Is that a new something? You look like you dropped a few pounds too. Not that you ever needed to.”

“Fuck you,” she said, surprised to hear a chuckle trail the words.

He laughed. “My bad. How’d everything go? Should probably start the engine, by the way, and do the phone trick if we’re going to keep talking.”

She turned the car on. “Couldn’t they assume I’m going hands-free on the cell?”

“You’re not wearing a headset and you’re driving a car from 1992.”

She put the phone to her ear. “Touché.”

“Was there a plant in the bank?”

She pulled out of the slot, turned toward the exit. “Hard to tell. There was a girl in the waiting area I’m still unsure about.”

“How about the parking lot?”

“One guy in a car in the employee section. Couldn’t tell if he was watching us or not.”

She reached the road.

“Turn right,” Brian said.

They drove up a mild incline and then passed a cluster of clapboard houses — most red, a few blue, the rest faded to the brown-gray of old baseballs. Once they passed the houses, they hit a straightaway between two pastures that unfurled for miles. The sky that rose before her was a blue she’d seen only in dreams and old Technicolor movies. A bank of white clouds formed in the southeast corner but cast no shadow on the fields. She could see why Brian had chosen this road — there were no crossroads for miles. What was left of Johnston’s farming community, it appeared, was right here.

“Well,” Brian said after about two miles.

“Well what?” She laughed for some reason.

“You see anyone in the rearview?”

She glanced up. The road behind her was a gunmetal ribbon with nothing on it. “No.”

“How far back can you see?”

“I’d guess about two miles.”

After another minute, he said, “Now?”

She looked again. “Nothing. Nobody.”

“Rachel.”

“Brian.”

“Rachel,” he said again.

“Brian...”

He sat up in the backseat and the smile that broke across his face was almost too big for the car.

“How do you feel about yourself today?” he asked. “Right now? Pretty fucking bad or pretty fucking good?”

She caught his eyes in the rearview and presumed hers were as adrenalized as his. “I feel...”

“Speak it.”

“Pretty fucking good.”

He clapped his hands together and whooped.

She stepped on the gas and punched the roof and let out a howl.

In another ten minutes, they reached another small strip mall. She’d clocked it on the way in; it contained a post office, a sub shop, a liquor store, a Marshalls, and a Laundromat.

“What’re we doing here?” Brian peered at the low-slung buildings, all gray except for the Marshalls, which was white fading to eggshell.

“I need to run a quick errand.”

“Now?”

She nodded.

“Rachel,” he said, and failed to keep a whiff of condescension out of his voice, “we don’t have time to—”