Kim Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below

Frank waited for a few minutes, looking at the building and the street outside. He didn’t want it to be over. Suddenly he saw what to do. He went up the steps to the apartment door, jabbed every little black doorbell on the panel to the left of the door, then hustled across the street and stood under a streetlight casting a cone of orange light on the sidewalk and part of the street. He stood under one edge of the light, pulling the hood of his windbreaker far forward. His face was sure to be in shadow, a black absence, like a gangster hit man or Death itself. He thrust the pointed end of the hand axe forward in the windbreaker pocket until it pushed at the cloth.

The curtain in the window on the top floor twitched. His quarry was looking down at him. Frank tilted his head up just enough to show that he was returning the gaze. He held the pose for a few seconds, long enough to make his point: The hunter hunted. Hunted by a murderous watcher, always there to haunt one’s dreams. Then he stepped back and out of the cone of light, into dark shadows and away.

After that Frank walked back out to Wisconsin.

He started to shiver in his thin sweater and windbreaker. Up Wisconsin, back to the Metro.

He felt stunned. Some of what he had done in the heat of the moment now shocked him, and he reeled a bit as he remembered, growing more and more appalled—throwing the hand axe at him? What had he been thinking? He could have killed the guy! Good, good riddance, that would have taught him— except not! It would have been terrible. The police would have hunted for Caroline. They would have been hunting for him too, without knowing they were; but Caroline when she heard about it would have known, and who knew what her reaction might be, he couldn’t actually be sure but it was bound to be bad. No matter what, it would have been terrible. Crazy. Leap before you look, sure, but what if your leaps were crazy? He didn’t even want to be out there! He had broken a date with Diane to do this shit!

On Wisconsin again. He didn’t know what to do. He wondered if he would ever see Caroline again. Maybe she had used him to help her get away, the same way he had used the bros to help him. Well sure. That was what had happened, in effect. And he had offered to do it. But still…

Down into the Metro, nervous waiting, down to Van Ness, out of the Metro. Back in his van Frank changed clothes again. Despite the cold his shirt was soaked with sweat. Pull on his capilene undershirt, thick sweater; in the van’s side mirror he could see that once again he looked fairly normal. Incredible.

He sat in the driver’s seat. He didn’t know what to do. His hands were still shaking. He felt sick.

Eventually the cold drove him to start the engine. Then, driving north on Connecticut, he thought of going to the Quiblers. He could sit there and drink a beer and watch the fucking election results. No one would care if he didn’t say anything. Warm up. Play chess or Scrabble with Nick and watch the TV.

He got in the left-turn lane at Bradley. Waiting for the light he remembered the bros and pulled out his FOG phone, hit resend.

“Hey Nosey.”

“Zeno are you guys okay?”

“Yeah sure. Are you?”

“I’m okay. Hey listen, my clothes I left there at the tables are chipped with some kind of microwave transmitter.”

“We figured as much. So you got parole officers too, eh?”

“Yeah I guess.”

“Ha. We’ll dee-ex your stuff. But what was with that gal, eh? Don’t you know not to mess with parole officers?”

“Yeah yeah. What about you, what was that shooting, who did that? I didn’t think you guys were carrying.”

“Yeah right.” Zeno snorted. “We kill those deer with our teeth.”

“Well there is that.”

“Shit’s dangerous out here. I can’t hardly keep Andy from popping people in situations like that. Everyone’s a gook when he gets excited.”

“Well, it did put those guys on the run.”

“Sure. Better than getting hit in the face with a two-by-four.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the help.”

“That’s okay. But don’t do shit like that to us anymore. We get enough excitement as it is.”

“Yeah okay.”

Charlie answered the doorbell and was happy to see Frank. “Hey Frank, good to see you, come on in! The Khembalis came over on their way home too, and the early returns are looking pretty good.”

“My fingers are crossed,” Frank said, but as he took off his windbreaker he looked unhopeful. Inside the entryway he stopped as he saw people sitting in the living room by the fire. He went over and greeted Drepung and Sucandra and Padma, done with their own party, and then Charlie introduced him to Sridar. Again it seemed to Charlie that Frank was unusually subdued. No doubt many of his big programs at NSF were riding on the election results.

Charlie went out to the kitchen to get drinks, and circulating as he did in the next hour, he only occasionally noticed Frank, talking or playing with Joe, or watching the TV. Results were coming in more quickly now. The voting in every state was tight, the results as predicted: the red states went to the president, the blue states to Phil Chase. The exceptions tended to balance out, and it became clear that this time it was going to come down to the western states and whoever was delayed in reporting a winner due to the closeness of the results. Chase had a decent chance of winning the whole West Coast, and if some of the late-reporting states went his way, the election too. It was all hanging in the balance.

Charlie sat above Nick on the couch, watching the colored maps on the TV, talking sometimes on the phone with Roy. Joe was sitting on the floor, putting together the wooden train tracks and babbling to himself. Charlie watched him very curiously, not sure what he was seeing yet. Anna had taken Joe’s temperature when they got home, curious at the effect of the snow, Charlie assumed. It had been 98.2; she had shaken her head, said nothing.

Charlie felt a bit drained, perhaps even a bit exorcised, as it were—as if something strange had been inside him as well as in Joe, and Drepung and Rudra’s ceremony designed to remove them both. That was a new thought for Charlie—he had not considered the matter in any such light before—but it was certainly true that a feeling of oppression that had been weighing on him for a long time had lifted somehow, leaving a lightness that felt also a bit empty perhaps. He didn’t know what he felt.

He saw that Drepung too was keeping an eye on Joe.

Frank sat on the couch across from them, chewing a toothpick and looking tense. The evening wore on. Eventually the Khembalis said their goodbyes and left. “I’ll be home in a bit,” Frank said to them.

When they were gone, Frank glanced at Charlie. “Mind if I stay and see it out?”

“Not at all. As long as it doesn’t go on for three months.”

“Ha. It is looking close.”

“I think California will put us over the top.”

“Maybe so.”

They watched on. Eastern states, central states, mountain states. Joe fell asleep on the floor; Nick read a book, lying sleepily on the couch. Charlie went to the bathroom, came back downstairs. “Any more states?”

Anna and Frank shook their heads. Things appeared to be hung up out west. Frank sat hunched over, eating his toothpick fragment by fragment. Anna sighed, went out to the kitchen to clean up. She did not like to hope for things, Charlie knew, because she feared the disappointment if her hopes were dashed. You should hope anyway, Charlie had told her more than once. We have to hope.

Hopes are just wishes we doubt will come true, she always replied. She preferred waiting, then dealing with whatever happened. Work on the moment.