The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 (27 page)

—Return of the phoenix?

Nish waved this idea away.

—You’ve won a few big awards in your time, the Giller, the GG, and you even came close to the Impac, but you’ve never gotten a Torngat. This is your third nomination. Any thoughts on how this evening might play out?

The Ceeb exiled you here to punish your incompetence, didn’t they?
  —No. All I can do is write the best book I can.

—Thank you, Mr Flannigan.

—Nish, please.

She smiled.
Friendly Newfoundlanders, my ass
.

Nish watched her navigate the crowd to reach Patrick and Paulette. The reporter’s look and tone as she’d thanked him reminded Nish of the librarian at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies. She’d squinted but kept her face straight when Nish asked to see his own papers and notebooks, donated ten years before.
They’re still mine
, Nish had explained.
I have every right to see them
. That had been two years ago, around the time he’d argued with Paulette about her wanting to publish as Paul Tiller.
Jesus, Paulette, what are you tryin to prove? This is St. John’s. Everyone knows who you are
. She’d done it, though, Paul Tiller, all long hair and lipstick in the author photo.

She wore a short and sleeveless black dress tonight, showing off her arms and legs. Nish knew the dress, and those ugly flat boots. The expensive clutch beneath her right arm had been a gift from him, but those fancy patterned tights were new. Her hair, pinned up in a chignon, salon-fresh and red to the roots, shone.

Jesus, Paulette
.

He needed a drink.

Patrick sipped his ginger ale, and his dark hair fell into his eyes. —No one?

—Foster care, right? When I was in a home, it was me and half a dozen other kids, most of them already in trouble with the law, and only the one adult home most of the day. Then I lived in a hotel, me and a social worker, so really, who had time to read to me?

—Spose, girl.

Paulette smiled, looked at the floor. —I think it’s sweet, a sign you really want to look after someone, if you read aloud to them.

—My grandfather read me a story every night, guaranteed.

Paulette glanced at the crowd. —Arts reporter, three o’clock.

—Where ya goin? You’re nominated for this too.

—She wants to talk to
you
.

—Patrick O’Mara? Hi, I’m from the CBC.

Paulette smirked into her drink. Patrick’s bad-boy charms were mellowing as he approached forty, but his dark eyes still flashed, and his snug jeans fit well. Many women, and more than a few men, got a bit gooey about the brain when talking with him. This evening, in character, he’d not rented the expected tuxedo. Instead he wore his biker boots, dark jeans, a white silk shirt, and a velvet jacket, black and blue, that made Paulette think of Elizabethan portraits.

A delicate flush spread over the reporter’s upper chest as she asked Patrick about his stonework: was it just a hobby, or was it serious competition for his writing? Patrick laughed. He then answered what Paulette considered a particularly stunned question about ideas and inspiration by saying he didn’t know what
roman à clef
meant.

Frowning at this, the reporter shoved her mic at Paulette’s mouth. —Paulette Tiller—or Paul, I guess—you’re nominated for your first book. Wow. You got your start under Nish Flannigan?

Swallowing, Paulette tried to avoid memory: Nish on top, insistent, artless.
Heave away, me jollies
. —I suppose.

Patrick gestured to Paulette that he’d get them both fresh drinks.

The reporter’s eyes followed Patrick’s reflection in the glass behind Paulette. —People are calling you a female Patrick O’Mara.

—
What?

—Shouldn’t you be flattered?

—For the love of God!

Paulette strode off. The reporter glared after her.

Nish, leaning against the bar, half hearing a drunk poet who only ever discussed “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” watched Paulette leave the reporter and watched Patrick smile and accept congratulations from woman after woman. Wondering what Paulette might be overreacting to this time, Nish ordered two drinks and waited.

—Young fellah Paddy.

—Nish, how are ya?

—Here, you take this.

Patrick accepted the drink, held it up: some fruity cocktail, finished with a maraschino cherry impaled on a little plastic sword, a straw, and a paper umbrella. He said nothing.

—Balls-out and fuck-black-tie in that fancy jacket, aren’t ya? I read your novel. I recognized the bit where your adolescent protag entraps the pedophile teacher. I think that was the first thing you ever brought to one of my workshops. God, time flies. Remember askin me to blurb your first book?

Patrick studied Nish’s drink: malt whiskey, neat.

—I spent the whole night on your manuscript, Paddy. I never told you that. It was like sittin up with a sick child.

—At least my new one here tonight doesn’t read like I devoured my old notebooks, all my used-up ideas, and then puked up the mess. Be awful if that happened.

Nish took a good swallow. —You know what your trouble is? You can’t decide. Are you a writer or a rock-breaker? Man up, my son, and figure it out.

—Yeah, really fuckin dreadful, havin more than one talent. Dunno how I bear it, some days.

Nish said nothing as he walked away. Patrick knocked back the girly drink—out of spite, he told himself.

Two men in their fifties, famous Atlantic Canadian writers who’d made the Torngat longlist, jumped in fright at the urinals as Paulette banged the men’s room door off the wall. Staggering, she helped Patrick to a stall. He made it, falling to his knees. Paulette dampened some paper towel and tried to ignore the man on her right as he turned red.

The man on her left snorted. —O’Mara can’t handle his liquor?

Paulette nodded at the man’s open fly. —Isn’t that awfully small to be out by itself?

Hearing the phrase
Bitter cunt
, Patrick retched.

Not long after, Paulette helped Patrick get into a cab. He’d slurred when calling for it, then gone quiet. On a summer night like this, west wind stirring the trees and beating off the fog, he’d walk home. Right now, however, he felt quite separate and in some danger, as if he’d been tucked in a glass box and placed on the edge of a deep hole. Despite all his gifts with language, he could not explain this.

He dug his credit card out of his wallet and handed it to the driver, who told him to put it away for now, because they hadn’t even left yet.

Paulette touched Patrick on the shoulder. —What is the
matter
with you?

Patrick struggled to get the card in his jacket pocket. —You’re—wait—

—Shove over.

Back inside The Rooms, at the upper windows, the arts reporter stood near Nish. Angry with Paulette still, and spying the departure, she’d made sure to bump into Nish and, in her stumble, draw his attention to the scene outside.

Nish took a sharp breath.

—Wait.

Patrick rolled off his bed, got to his feet. Stonework glittered in lamplight, hurting his eyes. He did not remember leaving his lamp on. Nor did he remember placing that big bowl near the bed. Sweaty, not sure if he’d vomit or urinate first, he got to the bathroom.

Seat’s down. Did I—

He looked down: fully dressed, boots and all.

He washed his hands, checked his phone, swished mouthwash to chase off a shocking foulness, and shuffled to the living room. Turned away from him, dozing on the futon, red hair down: Paulette, curled in a tight fetal position, fists near her face. She also wore her clothes from last night. Patrick lifted the blanket on the rocking chair and draped it over Paulette.

—Jesus! Patrick! I thought you were Nish.

—Oh, thank you very much.

She’d rolled over and thrown off the blanket. Perched on the edge of the futon, she took some deep breaths. —What time is it?

—Just gone six. You know, normally when I bring a beautiful woman home, I expect to find her in the bed
with
me.

She rubbed her bare arms. —You’re lucky you fuckin
got
home. What the hell happened to you last night?

—I remember you gettin in the cab. Here, you’re frozen.

Patrick took off his jacket and passed it to her. She tugged it on, relishing warmth and scent. Patrick, picking the blanket up off the floor, muttered about a virus or maybe a migraine, but his head felt fine, which made no sense, because the scattered times he got a migraine . . . He peered at her. —Wait, who won?

—I did.

—
You
did? That’s excellent. That’s—ah, Jesus, everyone’s gonna think I left because I got pissed off it wasn’t me. And Nish would have said—I’m sorry—I mean—I only had the one drink.

—You look ghastly. You want to go see a doctor?

—I’m fine. Let me make you some tea. I could do some eggs too.

She nodded.

Once in the kitchen and out of Paulette’s sight, Patrick scowled. He felt like his blood had gone gelatinous. —You did the right thing, leavin Nish. It’s none of my business. I’m just glad you didn’t hang around for months on end, like some women do. At least he wasn’t beatin ya.

—What did the police say about your break-in?

Patrick thought about what he’d just said; he thought about the blanket. —I never went to the police after.

Buttoning the jacket, Paulette walked into the kitchen. —For the love of God, Patrick, someone broke in and stole your gear!

—So I lost a bush hammer and some stone out of it. Thief’s a wannabe mason, I spose. He left the upstairs alone, though. I figured he knew no one’s livin there. Drugs, girl, guaranteed.

—And you don’t think the Constab should know that maybe some arsehole drug dealer’s got a spiked hammer?

—Cops won’t listen to the likes of me.

She rolled her eyes. —The likes of you?

—That little punk who ambushes the pedo in my novel, beats the livin shit outta him: scattered bit autobiographical.

She accepted a mug of tea. —I figured that.

—Young offender’s record out of it.

—Patrick, think it through. That record’s sealed, and you’re almost forty.

—This is Newfoundland, Paulette: the only secrets we got are the ones everybody knows. Besides, I’m after tellin the story, now, aren’t I?

—Paranoid much?

He dropped sugar in his tea. —Pragmatic.

Maybe an hour later, head down to avoid the drizzle and fog, Paulette left the old house where Patrick rented his basement apartment. She noticed the flimsiness of his door, a late addition to the house obscured by a concrete stairwell: an easy break-in.

Parked around the corner, at the far end of a private lane between houses, Nish watched her. —Walk of shame, right down to the goddamned jacket.

He let her go a good two blocks before driving to catch up.

Rain started; Paulette groaned.
The jacket
. A pickup truck pulled over.

Nish’s truck.

The passenger-side window descended, and Nish leaned over, smiling his peaceful smile. The dark circles beneath his eyes crinkled. —You’re gonna get soaked. You want to come back to the house and call a cab from there? Just to the porch?

A rainy Sunday morning, empty streets, drawn curtains: the entire neighborhood bore down on Paulette, like the presence of someone hungover, someone whom she feared to disturb. She patted her dress, knowing even as she did so that she’d left her damn phone in that damn clutch back at The Rooms—putting it down when she saw Patrick stagger—left it on the cushioned bench under the painting of the eighteenth-century soldier whose red coat frayed into a hundred threads.

A half-hour walk. I say no, he can follow me, find out where I’m living
.

She’d slept so badly, thrilled about the award, angry about not being able to celebrate, worried about Patrick.

—All right.

Nish said nothing as they drove, and Paulette just looked out her window.

At the house, Nish held the door for her and then hurried to the kitchen, as if not wanting to eavesdrop. He didn’t know she didn’t have her phone, and she almost called out to him.
I don’t need his damn permission to use the phone. This was my house too
. She zipped off her boots—Nish hated dirt on the carpets—and tiptoed to the living room.

For the love of God, Nish
.

He’d piled a month’s worth of mail, newspapers, and magazines around the sofa. She caught an odor she’d not known since living in the crowded foster home: old piles of dirty laundry. She looked for the phone book, unable to recall a single taxi company’s number as other memories plagued her: Nish buying her roses on their first date when she said she’d never gotten flowers; Nish praising her writing in a workshop; Nish carrying her into the bedroom; Nish proposing to her the night he won the Giller; Nish telling her off for leaving his side at a party; Nish punching her belly and dragging her to the living room floor, where he kicked her and—

Not rape. Bad as it got, she couldn’t call it rape. The kicks had been more or less by accident too; she’d been rolling on the floor, snotting and begging. The punching? A problem, yes, but then she’d pissed him off somehow.

Tea things clinked. Nish bore a tray. —Could we talk? I just want to talk.

Neck stiff and kinked, eyes raw and swollen: she’d been crying, and her face slid on her own tears and sweat, on plastic. She wanted to vomit.
Patrick must have picked up a virus, and—

Clammy plastic stuck to her bare legs, her upper chest, her face. Pain: breasts, shoulders, wrists, ankles, labia, vagina. The weight of her hands bore down on the small of her back.

Paulette, you stupid cunt!

She’d feared a little setup like this for months, telling herself she was overreacting, because no matter how he looked at her, spoke to her, or even how he struck her, Nish would never try to
keep
her. The futon down in his study, his finished office in the basement, his precious little windowless sound-insulated room all cut off from the world so he might create in peace, handy bathroom nearby—had to be the futon, had to be the study. Nish sometimes explained things to Paulette in the study. She did not enjoy her visits. Hands behind, ankles together: whatever he’d tied her with felt sharp and hard. She rolled onto her side, pressing her strained shoulder. She rolled back, trying to look around. Nish had removed his desk. He’d sealed the futon in plastic and tacked some more plastic sheeting on the walls, leaving the sound foam bare. Words uttered in Nish’s study became sterile and solitary; the sound foam sucked the room dry of echo. Paulette groaned. Then she shouted the only word that mattered.