The Black Hour (31 page)

Or it was nothing, my imagination, another thing I’d gotten wrong. I remembered Nath’s hands on me. I could get things very wrong.

“What I mean is,” he said, recovering. “I’m the casual observer. An uninvolved third party.”

“You’ve climbed over too many backyard fences for casual.”

“I can see the things you can’t.” A drop of water hit his shoulder, plopping a dark blue circle onto his sleeve. He glanced at the sky, surprised. Another drop. He brushed at himself. “For instance, you and the kid aren’t working together very efficiently.”

I had to call Cor. Maybe she’d remember what I couldn’t—but it was such a long time ago. She hadn’t been in a bed for the ten intervening months with nothing to occupy her. She’d gone on with the year; she’d covered for my absence, taught an extra course, advised my handful of thesis students and all of my undergrads. Not to mention that she’d visited me, taken out my trash, brought me Thai noodles and celebrity mags. She probably wouldn’t remember, and I already knew what she’d say.

Leave it alone, Melly.

But now I wondered: For my benefit or, somehow, for her own?

I let out a deep breath. “The kid and I aren’t working together at all, unless you mean our section of Sociology 101. We—well, we had an idea.” I waved it away. “We decided against it.”

He scraped me with his eyes. “You don’t even know.”

The tension had flattened, his embarrassment gone. The pitying tone in his voice made me want to cower for what he would say. All the power belonged to him, and I didn’t remember handing it over. “What?”

“You decided against it, but here you stand in Leonard Lehane’s hometown. Curious enough to hunt down his town, his mother,” he said. “But I know one little Indiana farm boy who’s out-Miss Marpleing you at least two to one.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“So he’s really out on his own? Didn’t know the scamp had it in him.”

Corrine, everything. It all fell away. Nath? He couldn’t be. Everything he’d seen, everything I’d let him see. That night—

“No.” I sounded strangled. “No, we talked about it, and—it wouldn’t have worked, and it was too much to ask.”

“Do you really believe that? That anything is too much to ask of him? For you to ask, that is, Professor Emmet?”

I burned. “He’s just a kid.”

“A kid with more than a passing interest. Who would do anything—”

“No.” All the weakness I’d let him see. All the mistakes. All the—oh, God. The tears, the pills, the bathroom scene. He’d seen me drink myself into a stupor. He’d seen my scar. I’d nearly devoured him whole in some ridiculous—

Psychotic break. That’s what the student paper would call it. A
student
, after all this business with Lehane, after all the denials of wrongdoing. No one would believe me now. Nath had everything he needed to ruin my life. I’d given my power away, but I hadn’t given it to Rory McDaniel.

McDaniel watched me. I could feel the fireworks display going off on my face. “What’s he doing?” I said.

“Not sure, but I was right that
you
were up to something, wasn’t I?”

I would never admit it. But if I never talked to him again, I wouldn’t have to.

“I’m going to try to beat this rain,” I said. Though I knew that the road would lead me into the rain, and the storm would blow down on me the entire way. More punishment. More and more. I still didn’t know why this had all happened, what Corrine hadn’t mentioned or maybe didn’t even realize, or why Nath had gone against my wishes.

The sky opened. I dodged past McDaniel. From the safety of my car I saw him jump into his Jeep and jerk the flimsy zippered windows into place. Taking his time on purpose? I wasn’t sure. I started the car, cranked the wipers to full speed, backed up, and began the slow crawl out of McDaniel’s sight and back through the town toward the highway and home. I watched for the yellow Jeep for a long time before I relaxed.

I knew he’d let me get away, and for a moment I felt such a rush of gratitude that it surprised me.

The phone rang, late. Or early.

“Gottabekidding,” Kendall moaned from his loft.

I fumbled for the phone. “Hello.”

“What was all that shit?”

“What?” I sat up. The clock said 5:00 a.m. I rubbed my eyes clear. Still 5:00 a.m. I only knew one person who’d be on that schedule. “What do you want, Win?”

“That ‘Phillip doesn’t think much of me’ crap. You on some kind of undercover mission? Feeding us lines so we’ll tell you all our secrets? Did Phillip tell you to talk to us? Are you with the
Reader
?”

I remembered that Dr. Emmet had asked me that once, and I’d not understood the question until her photo appeared on the front page of the student newspaper. “I’m not a reporter, but even if I were, you didn’t tell me anything—”

“The thing about the call log could get me strung up in front of the university ethics board. Suspended. And then the press, and then my dad, and then I’m dead, OK? So don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

The press? I finally caught up. “Your dad, the senator.”

A long groan from Kendall’s direction. He’d come home early from a party, so drunk I’d had to leave my desk to help him into his loft. I’d given him some pain reliever from a bottle he left on my side of the dresser, a glass of water, and an empty trashcan to tuck into the covers up there, just in case.

“US representative, dumbass, but in the Beltway they like to hear about badly behaved Rep kids as much as they do badly behaved Senate kids. I’d make CNN if it was a week my dad’s trying to get something passed.”

Forget the boat incident, forget all the ways he’d made me feel bad. He was a guy who cared what his dad thought of him. That I could understand. Yesterday I’d had to call my dad and let him know that I wasn’t coming home to help with the auction. I’d had less comfortable conversations, but only with Bryn when she broke up with me. He’d taken it well. Too well, saying that he understood and, no, he could manage. He wouldn’t be disappointed in me, but I could be disappointed in myself. I felt tender and bruised from it, as bad as I’d felt freshly dragged from the lake.

“I won’t tell anyone about the call log,” I said. “I’m not there to get you into trouble.”

“Why
are
you there?”

“It’s—” From where I sat, I noticed my St. Valentine’s Day Massacre photo missing from the bulletin board. “Complicated.”

“Please, no sad stories of friends you couldn’t save. I’ll puke.”

“I’ll spare you if you let me get back to sleep. I’ve got a lot to do before I sit through hotline training.”

“Yeah, I noticed you passed the first hurdle pretty quick. But there’s no shortcut on the training. It’s like a job interview with a bonus rectal exam.”

“Don’t ruin the surprise,” I said. “Good night.”

I hung up but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. A gray light poked at my eyes through the blinds.

The phone rang.

Kendall moaned.

I swung my legs out of bed and pulled the telephone line out of its jack.

Enough.

I’d grabbed my robe and towel from my closet when I remembered the photo, fallen from the wall. But when I looked under the desk, it wasn’t there. A thumbtack still stuck in the board. I glanced over in the half-light at Kendall. He lay on his back, snoring in long, wet swipes at the ceiling. I’d have to ask him about it later. Or—I pulled my drawer open. It lay there, face up, on top of the file on Dr. Emmet. I didn’t remember losing the last argument about the photo.

I left it there but closed the drawer a little louder than I needed to and slipped out for the shower.

I wasted all the time I could, sitting down to an early breakfast in Smith Hall’s empty cafeteria and ambling across campus with my eyes on the sky, a gray blanket overhead. I paused at a bulletin board and noted some roommates needed, a band looking for a drummer, a flier for Night Sail festivities. I checked the date on my watch. Night Sail was tonight.

All that time wasted, and still I arrived at the hotline door early and fidgeting. After a few minutes waiting in the dank lobby, I pressed the button. It was a 24-hour hotline, wasn’t it? Somebody would be in.

Phillip came to the door. “Eager. We like that.”

“Am I the first one here?”

“You, my friend,” he said. “Are the only one.”

“Oh?” Somehow I hadn’t seen that possibility. “Did you have some cancellations?”

“More like we attract interest in dribs and drabs.”

“I’m a drab.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Phillip held the door for me. “OK if we use the natural light? Budget reasons.”

The overheads were off. The natural light came from a couple of ceiling-level slot windows on the far wall, but they lent the room an unnatural grayness, turning the Hope Hotline headquarters into a black-and-white version of itself.

He went to the coffee station and started two mugs. “Sugar and creamer, right? We’re down to nondairy, I’m afraid. You didn’t have any trouble getting the morning free, did you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, yes, cream and sugar. No trouble.”

The door to his office had been left open. While he took his time with the drinks, I tried to get a better look inside.

“You’re sure? You seem a little distracted.” Phillip turned the handle of one of the mugs toward me. “We can do this some other time, if you want.”

Of course I was distracted. I imagined where the call log might be, how it might be any help to me at all. I had pinned all my hopes on this meeting, and now there weren’t any other volunteers to distract Phillip. And some other time? I’d already let my dad down and still suffered from a low-gut feeling from it. I didn’t want to talk about it, but what else did I have to offer at this point? A story about Dr. Emmet that would get her fired? “I was supposed to go home this weekend.”

I understand, Dad had said. But he didn’t, because I hadn’t given him a good reason or a truthful one. But he’d said he did, which made me feel worse.

“Where’s home?”

“Indiana.”

“Big family over there?”

I stirred the grit of nondairy creamer off the rim of my mug, missing the fancy cream from my last visit. The coffee seemed to be a lesser brand this time, too. The whole room seemed ugly and lonely, not at all what I remembered. I wished Win would swipe his pass card and launch through the door. “Just me and my dad.”

“You two must be very close.”

“Sure.”

“Hope you didn’t have plans down there you had to cancel?”

“What’s—look, should we get started?”

“We’ve already begun,” Phillip said. “When we pick up calls, this is what we do—draw people forward, talk about whatever presents itself to avoid long pauses. We remind them of the relationships that sustain them.”

I sipped at my mug to keep from having to say anything. The coffee wasn’t just a lesser brand. It was awful.

“So you and your dad were going to hang out this weekend?” He nodded encouragingly.

“I was supposed to help him clean out my grandpa’s barn. He—my grandfather, I mean—he was a farmer and a mechanic.”

He stood back, giving the answer more space than it required. “He died? That’s tough.”

“I guess.”

“Were you close with your grandfather?”

I tried not to scratch my forearms. I didn’t know why, but I really wanted to scratch my forearms. Phillip’s voice had dipped into the talk show host murmur. “Not really.”

“And your dad is a farmer and mechanic, too?”

“A factory mechanic. He also fixes stuff for fun. Cars, mostly.”

“Do you fix stuff? For fun?”

The training already had the feel of that probing exam I’d been promised. No wonder that James Baker hadn’t wanted the attention of the Hope Hotline. It was hot, all right, under this spotlight. “So, this is the—training course? The whole thing?”

“This is it.” Phillip retreated to a set of the comfy chairs in the corner, adjusted one so that it pointed directly at the other. “All we do is talk. You need to learn patience with the process, whether you’re on one side of the conversation or the other. These are often long, tedious conversations. You have to be able to withstand them. Come sit.”

I took a last glance at the open office. Inside: a desk, a chair, some inspirational posters, books in a wall shelf. Would I even recognize the call log if I saw it? I joined Phillip in the little circle of trust he’d constructed. “Who’s answering the phones right now?”