Harlan Coben - Six Years

“Not at all,” I said. “I just thought you were being a pretentious ass.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What better disguise to blend in with this crowd?”

I shook my head. “And I thought you were a genius when I saw your paintings.”

“Really?” She seemed caught off guard by the compliment.

“Really.”

She cleared her throat. “And now that you see how deceptive I can be?”

“I think you’re a diabolical genius.”

Natalie liked that. “You can’t fault me. That Lars guy is like human Ambien. He opens his mouth, I’m out.”

“I’m Jake Fisher.”

“Natalie Avery.”

“So do you want to grab a cup of coffee, Natalie Avery? Looks like you could use one.”

She hesitated, studying my face to the point where I think I started to redden. She tucked a ringlet of black hair behind her ear and stood. She moved closer to me, and I remember thinking that she was wonderfully petite, smaller than I had imagined when she’d been sitting. She looked way up at me, and a smile slowly came to her face. It was, I must say, a great smile. “Sure, why not?”

That image of that smile held in my brain for a beat before it mercifully dissolved away.

I was out at the Library Bar with Benedict. The Library Bar was pretty much exactly that—an old, dark-wood campus library that had recently been converted into a retro-trendy drinking establishment. The owners were clever enough to change very little of the old library. The books were still on the oak shelves, sorted in alphabetical order or the Dewey Decimal System or whatever the librarians had used. The “bar” was the old circulation desk. The coasters were old card files that had been laminated. The lights were green library lamps.

The young female bartenders wore their hair in severe buns and sported fitted conservative clothes and, of course, horn-rimmed glasses. Yep, the fantasy librarian hottie. Once an hour, a loud librarian shush would play over the loudspeaker and the bartenders would rip off their glasses, let loose their bun, and unbutton the top of their blouse.

Cheesy but it worked.

Benedict and I were getting properly oiled. I threw my arm loosely around him and leaned in close. “You know what we should do?” I asked him.

Benedict made a face. “Sober up?”

“Ha! Good one. No, no. We should set up a rousing tournament of condom roulette. Single elimination. I’m thinking sixty-four teams. Like our own March Madness.”

“We aren’t in Barsolotti’s, Jake. This place doesn’t have a condom vending machine.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No.”

“Shame.”

“Yeah,” Benedict said. Then he whispered, “Pair of red-hot spank-worthy honeys at three o’clock.”

I was about to turn to my left, then to my right, and suddenly the concept of three o’clock made no sense to me. “Wait,” I said, “where’s my twelve o’clock again?”

Benedict sighed. “You’re facing twelve o’clock.”

“So three o’clock would be . . . ?”

“Just turn to your right, Jake.”

You may have guessed that I do not handle spirits well. This surprises people. When they see someone my size, they expect me to drink smaller folks under the table. I can’t. I hold my liquor about as well as a freshman coed at her first mixer.

“Well?”

I knew the type before my eyes even had a chance to settle on them. There sat two blondes who looked good-to-great in low Library Bar light and ordinary-to-frightful in the light of the morning sun. Benedict slid toward them and started chatting them up. Benedict could chat up a file cabinet. The two women looked past him and at me. Benedict signaled for me to join them.

Why the hell not?

You made a promise.

Damn straight I did. Thanks for the reminder. Might as well keep it and try to score me a honey, right? I weaved my way toward them.

“Ladies, meet the legendary Professor Jacob Fisher.”

“Wow,” one of the blondes said, “he’s a big boy,” and—because Benedict couldn’t help but be obvious—he winked and said, “You got no idea, sweetheart.”

I bit back the sigh, said hello, and sat. Benedict “macked” on them with pickup lines, specifically handpicked for this bar: “It’s a library so it’s perfectly okay to check you out.” “Will I be fined if I keep you out late?” The blondes loved it. I tried to join in, but I have never been great with superficial banter. Natalie’s face kept appearing. I kept pushing it away. We ordered more drinks. And more.

After a while we all stumbled to couches near the former children’s section. My head lolled back, and I may have passed out for a bit. When I woke up, one of the blondes started talking to me. I introduced myself.

“My name is Windy,” she said.

“Wendy?”

“No, Windy. With an i instead of an e .” She said this as though she had said it a million times before, which, I guessed, she had.

“Like the song?” I asked.

She looked surprised. “You know the song? You don’t look old enough.”

“‘ Everyone knows it’s Windy, ’” I sang. Then: “My dad loved the Association.”

“Wow. My dad too. That’s how I got the name.”

It turned into, surprisingly enough, a real conversation. Windy was thirty-one years old and worked as a bank teller, but she was getting her degree in pediatric nursing, her dream job, at the community college down the road. She took care of her handicapped brother.

“Alex has cerebral palsy,” Windy said, showing me the picture of her brother in a wheelchair. The boy’s face was radiant. I stared at it, as if somehow the goodness could come out of the picture and be a part of me. Windy saw it, nodded, and said in the softest voice: “He’s the light of my life.”

An hour passed. Maybe two. Windy and I chatted. During nights like these, there is always a time when you know if you are going to, ahem, close the sale (or, to stay within the library metaphors, if you are going to get your library card punched) or not. We were at that time now, and it was clear that the answer was yes.

The ladies left to powder their noses. I felt overly mellow from drink. Part of me wondered whether I’d be able to perform. Most of me didn’t really care.

“You know what I like about both of them?” Benedict pointed to a shelf of books. “They’re stacked. Get it? Library, books, stacked?”

I groaned out loud. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Amusing,” Benedict said. “By the way, where were you last night?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“I went up to Vermont,” I said. “To Natalie’s old retreat.”

He turned toward me. “Whatever for?”

It was an odd thing, but when Benedict talked after drinking too much, a hint of a British accent came through. I assumed that it was from his prep school days. The more he drank, the more pronounced the accent.

“To get answers,” I said.

“And did you get any?”

“Yep.”

“Do tell.”

“One”—I stuck a finger in the air—“no one knows who Natalie is. Two”—another finger—“no one knows who I am. Three”—you get the point with the fingers—“there is no record at the chapel Natalie ever got married. Four, the minister I saw conducting the wedding swears it never happened. Five, the lady who owned the coffee shop we used to go to and who first pointed Natalie out to me had no idea who I was and didn’t remember either Natalie or me.”

I put my hand down.

“Oh, and Natalie’s art retreat?” I said. “The Creative Recharge Colony? It’s not there and everyone swears it never existed and that it’s always been a family-run farm. In short, I think I’m losing my mind.”