Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

“What do you remember about Monica Farr?” Jason asked.

Frankie stood in front of the solarium windows in her penthouse condominium on O’Farrell. It was almost midnight. She watched the city, and she could feel the city watching her. The art deco building between Leavenworth and Hyde was tall, with an east view toward the bay. When the Giants played at home, she could see fireworks over the stadium. In the distance, the lights of the Bay Bridge stretched toward Oakland, and she shivered as she thought about Brynn Lansing. Heights had never bothered Frankie, but she wondered what it was like to die that way, at the mercy of gravity. Like Brynn did. Like her father did.

Jason came up next to her and handed her a new glass of red wine. She’d already drunk too much this evening, and she felt the world floating, but she wanted more.

“Monica was an emergency-room nurse from Utah,” Frankie told him. “Three children arrived at the hospital after a house fire in Salt Lake. All of the kids were badly burned, and all of them died. Monica couldn’t get the episode out of her head. She moved to San Fran to get away from it, but she kept having flashbacks. She couldn’t do her job anymore.”

“How did you deal with it?”

Frankie pictured Monica in her head. Young. Redheaded. Slightly overweight. Monica’s face lit up when she talked about patients she’d helped. They had that in common. Frankie remembered the treatment strategy she’d chosen for her. The strategy was the most delicate part of therapy; that was where she had to read her patients and create a new reality that their minds would embrace.

“I didn’t want her to forget that the kids had died,” she said. “She dealt with loss every day. It was too much a part of who she was as a nurse. Instead, I helped her believe that she wasn’t really in the room when it happened. She didn’t see them die with her own eyes. I was hoping that would be enough to let her work through it. Monica wasn’t fragile. Nurses are tough. This was simply one tragedy too many.”

“Did the treatment work?” Jason asked.

“I thought it did. Monica called me a few weeks later. She was working as a nurse again. Graveyard-shift ER. It doesn’t get harder than that. But she sounded happy. She was calling to thank me.”

“So you did your job, Frankie. Don’t second-guess yourself.”

“Yes, but now she’s dead, and so is Brynn Lansing. That’s two of my patients showing signs of severe brain dysfunction.”

Jason shook his head. “Whatever happened to them wasn’t your fault.”

“How do you know?” Frankie asked.

He had no answer for her. He was just trying to make her feel better. He put an arm around her waist as they stood by the windows. She liked the closeness of him. She could see his reflection in the glass — his short, gelled dark hair; his sharply angled chin; his arching eyebrows and intense stare. He wore gray dress slacks and a slim-fit forest-green shirt. Her fingertips drifted onto his thigh, making soft circles, but then she pulled away, and she could feel his disappointment.

“Is it possible?” she asked.

“What?”

“Could I have harmed these women with my memory treatment?”

Jason scowled. It was late, and he didn’t want a clinical discussion. She knew what he really wanted. Sex.

“I can’t say it’s impossible ,” he admitted. “There aren’t any absolutes in brain chemistry, you know that. People behave in unexpected ways. All I can tell you is that it’s very unlikely that your treatment could have produced such an extreme reaction, particularly so long after the therapy ended. I’m not saying the possibility is zero, but the risk is low.”

“Risk,” Frankie murmured. She was thinking about her father again.

It was funny how everything eventually led her back to him and their last weekend together. She couldn’t escape it. The theme of the discussion he’d chosen for their annual camping trip was risk . What chances are you willing to take to get what you want? What dangers do your choices create for other people? She could hear her father’s voice in her head; it had no intonations, no ups, no downs. He lectured and posed questions the way a professor would, rather than a father with a child. He jabbed with his finger to make his points. His grizzled face didn’t move.

Question. Is it acceptable to pursue your own selfish satisfaction when it causes risk to someone else?

Question. Is it okay to risk another’s life or happiness simply because you really want something?

“My father thought I was playing games with people’s lives,” Frankie said. “He said what I was doing was immoral.”

Jason reacted with impatience. “What did Marvin understand about morality? He was the least emotional person I ever knew. Forget about all of his academic posturing.”

“I would, but now I wonder if he was right. Maybe Brynn and Monica are dead because of me. Maybe I’m playing with fire.” Her voice turned smoky. “Remember Darren Newman?”

He didn’t like hearing that name, and she couldn’t blame him.

“You didn’t make Darren Newman the man he is.”

“Tell that to the girl who was killed,” Frankie said.

“Newman manipulated you. And a lot of other people, too.”

Frankie didn’t say anything more. Jason was right. Darren Newman had come to her as part of a deal to stay out of prison, and she wasn’t responsible for the consequences.

Except they both knew that wasn’t the whole truth.

She turned and faced her husband. Between the wine and the darkness of the solarium, she felt herself getting aroused. That was a rare experience this year. Her mind and her body had been strangers to each other, but right now, she wanted an escape from everything else. From memories. From loss. From her past. Her inhibitions fell away. Her fingers played with the down on the back of his neck. She kissed his lower lip and then teased him with her tongue, and she felt him respond. Her hands undid a button on his shirt, then another, and one of her fingernails explored his chest. She didn’t care if the world was watching them through the windows. It had been way too long, and she needed him urgently. He sensed it. His hand tugged at the zipper of her dress pants, and when it was down, his fingers fished inside, rubbing her through the lace of her panties. Her breath caught in her chest. Her legs slipped apart. She braced herself against him.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the living room, and she froze in embarrassment.

Pam.

She’d come out of her downstairs bedroom. She wore her shorty nightgown, with a mug of tea cradled in her hands. Her blond hair was mussed. She stood there, watching them, a smirk on her lips.

Frankie stepped away. Trying to be discreet, she zipped up and smoothed her hair and blouse. Jason’s face screwed up in annoyance, until he glanced over his shoulder. Pam wiggled her fingers in a sarcastic greeting, and then she returned to her bedroom and closed the door loudly. They were alone again, but the moment was broken.

When Frankie kissed him again, she didn’t get the same erotic response.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “Bad timing.”

“We could go upstairs,” she suggested.

“Actually, I need to finish a project. I’ll work in my office for a while.”

“Should I wait up?”

“No, you’re tired. Go to bed.”

His voice had a cold, dismissive quality. Once he’d shut the door, it didn’t open again. His rejection left her humiliated but still aroused. She kicked off her heels and picked them up in one hand. She climbed the spiral staircase in her stockinged feet to the loft, where they kept their master bedroom suite, and she slipped inside and closed the door behind her. It was dark. More windows faced the bay.