The Innocent Sleep (25 page)

Crouching to one side of the car, I stayed as still as I could, a stinging pain starting in my thigh muscle. With one hand, I reached down and felt the rip in my jeans and the smarting pain of a flesh wound. My hand came away wet with blood. It must have happened when I jumped the fence. Wincing, I tried to keep the wound clear of the ground. The effort of staying still was exhausting; every inch of me strained toward this man, this stranger, exhaling a solitary plume of smoke into the night sky. Someone must have called out to him from within the house, for he turned and answered, “Just getting the fireworks from the car.”

Fuck, I thought, panicking as I heard the car door creak open. Without thinking, I threw myself onto the snow and rolled underneath the car. I held my breath. Staring up at the shadowy undercarriage, I strained to hear the voice again. It had a familiar ring—a self-assured tone, the accent a curious mixture of places. I knew the voice, or it was recognizable to me at least, but I couldn’t place it. I thought of Cozimo and what he had said.
Very unlikely. But not impossible.
In a way, his words had carried me here.

A woman came to the porch. I could make out her outline only. It resembled that of the woman I had seen on O’Connell Street. “Find them, Dave?” she asked.

“Got them. It’s freezing out here. Go back inside.” The man’s voice again; I knew it. But from where?

The creak of springs above me, and then his feet on the gravel beside me. Brown hiking boots. I let out a silent breath and held it again, as if I were underwater. I tried not to move a muscle.

The light from the porch went as far as the car, but beneath it I remained in shadow. I let out another silent breath and inhaled the dank smell of rust and oil.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Gimme one sec,” she said, disappearing into the house, and panic rose up inside me while the man leaned against the car, his feet crossed at the ankles, waiting.

A wave of nausea came over me. What was I going to do when he started the car? I opened my eyes to see if there was anything on the undercarriage that I could hang on to if the car did move. There wasn’t. The muffler was old and rusty. Maybe I could just lie still and pray the fucker wouldn’t drive over me.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. Maybe I should just step out and confront them right now? But I hadn’t formulated a plan. Before I did anything, I wanted to see Dillon. I didn’t know whether I was going to take him or talk to him or what. I needed to think, but there was no time. The man, Dave, who was he? I’d known Daves, and at some time, I knew that voice, but no, I couldn’t be sure. He had sat down into the driver’s seat and was turning the key in the ignition. I closed my eyes and braced myself.

But then, as the engine hummed above me, I felt the undercarriage lift again, and saw the man’s feet emerge. I watched those feet walk away through the snow, back to the house. I didn’t watch for long. No sooner were his feet out of the range of my vision than I shuffled out from beneath the car and hid among the fir trees that lined the driveway.

Crouching beneath the dense boughs, I let out a sigh of relief. Still no sign of Dillon, but at least I had not been seen. I waited for my breathing to slow, trying to collect myself. My mind was all over the place. I reached into my pocket. Thank fuck I had remembered to stash the flask of whiskey. Left pocket: whiskey. Right pocket: gun.

The silence was interrupted by the chirruping of my phone. The damn thing nearly gave me a heart attack. I fumbled to silence it and saw the caller ID. Spencer. Shit! One way or another, he seemed determined to get me killed. I peeked out through the bushes, but there was no sign of either the man or the woman. Then my phone lit up with a text.

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

Rich, coming from him. But that thought died as I watched the front door open again. The man stood in the doorway, smoking another cigarette. He had a hood pulled over his head, so I couldn’t make out his features. His shoulders seemed square within his jacket, and he held his body tensely, like a boxer. He finished his cigarette, tossed the butt aside, walked to the car, its engine still running, and sat in the driver’s seat. The woman locked the front door, hurried down the steps, and opened the gate. There was no sign of the boy. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or crushed.

I waited until the red taillights had disappeared down the blackened driveway. I gave it a couple of minutes more, just to be sure they were not returning. At first, when I went to move, nothing happened. I thought I had been paralyzed. I tried to move again, and this time I managed to slowly crawl from the undergrowth. I was stiff and aching. I stood up carefully. The cold felt like it had seeped into my bones. I took one step and then another. Gradually, sensation returned to my legs. Then I crossed to the house. All the lights were out. I was enveloped in the thick black cloth of darkness you find only deep in the countryside. There was no sound of a television and no voices.

I walked around the house. It was a small, ivy-clad cottage, with maybe two or three bedrooms. I tried peeking through the windows, but all the curtains were pulled. I saw nothing but the pale moonlit outline of my own frightened face.

My feet crunched on the gravel. The gravel yielded and carried me around the cottage. I thought about getting in, wandering around, tiptoeing through someone else’s life. I went around to the back door and reached for the handle and the door creaked open. For a moment I stood stock-still. There was no movement from within the house. I stepped in and felt for a light switch and found one, then flipped it. There was nothing unusual about the kitchen—other than the fact that it looked like a couple had been in the middle of dinner and had left suddenly. Plates with half-finished food lay on the wooden kitchen table. A bottle of wine stood uncorked. Chairs were pulled out.

In a room adjoining the kitchen, a number of canvases leaned against the wall. The first paintings I inspected were bright, garish abstract things. I flicked through the work, which seemed to be a catalog of fads and fashions in contemporary art. There was nothing real or original in there—that is, until I stumbled upon a large canvas. My breath quickened when I saw it because the thing was, it was one of mine.

I remembered making this painting like I had painted it only yesterday, in fresh and running watercolors, confident strident strokes full of the vibrant, pulsating light of Tangier. But more important than the context was the subject: it was the first painting I had ever done of Dillon. He must have been only six months old. I had no memory of selling this painting, no recollection of parting with it, and as I contemplated how it had arrived here, at this most unexpected place, something moved within my chest, the shifting of my understanding, and it came to me at once who Dave was.

We had never known him by his first name, if what he went by back then was indeed his name at all. But the low intonation, the self-satisfied inflection—it all spoke of one person. I knew then that it was Garrick, the American in Tangier, the miracle man, the man with a Christmas tree in the desert, the poet, the painter, the dilettante, and that he was living in Ireland, with this woman and Dillon. I felt suddenly weak. My stomach heaved. I was weary, worn, and exhausted. I remembered again the photo in Cozimo’s flat: me, Robin, Cozimo, Simo, Garrick, and Raul. Cozimo saying,
There were things I knew which perhaps I should have told you.

I walked about the house, a dread fear rising within me. Down the hallway I went, tripping into one room and then another. I was a reckless visitor, an intruder really, a shivering man in search of his son. And after all these years, down one dead end and then another, moving through back streets, through alleyways and lanes, through tears, prevarications, bitter arguments, hospital appointments, and Christmas dinners, here we were; here I was, walking through a stranger’s house at night.

It did not seem the kind of house Garrick would live in; it had none of his style. Besides, what was he doing in Ireland in the first place?

The last room I came to, at the end of the corridor, was Dillon’s. I just knew it. It was a small, rectangular room. There was no furniture but for a small single bed and a chair in the corner. Some books lay beside the bed. On the floor a box of toys was turned over, and clothes were scattered over the chair. I walked into the room and felt a strange quiver run through my body. I was overcome with exhaustion.

I climbed into the bed and covered myself with the Spider-Man duvet.

The bedroom was flooded with an otherworldly moonlight. I took the gun from my pocket and placed its cold steel beneath my shirt, on my chest. How cold, how comforting. More comforting than I would have imagined. I felt it sink into my skin. I felt it imprint itself, tattooing itself into my being. It was heavy, and with the rising and falling of my chest it seemed to almost become a part of me.

I felt myself drifting. Instead, I took a long drink of whiskey, let it course through my veins. It didn’t give me the energy I wanted. It sent me in the other direction. It sent me to sleep, the deep stone of the gun weighing on my heart. Before I dropped off to sleep, I made one last call to Cozimo. Was he my last friend? The last friend I had in the world? How I missed him then. The phone seemed to ring more slowly than it might have in real time. This didn’t seem to be real time. This was something else.

A woman answered. “Yes?”

“Cozimo?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Harry for Coz.”

“He’s not here.”

“When will he be back?”

“He…”

“Who is this? Is this Maya?”

“Yes.”

“I want to speak to my friend.”

But I knew it before she even said it. I knew it from the pause on the line—that tiny silence, the blood in my ears rushing in to fill the space.

“Harry, I’m sorry. Cozimo is gone.”

I couldn’t speak, pushed to the very edge of something dark and consuming.

“He passed earlier tonight.”

I’m not sure what else she said or what I said. The darkness thickened. My mind was fading or breaking apart, like a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere. Or something, I don’t know. It was all coming apart, reaching an ending. With Cozimo gone, I felt the last vestiges of my happiness in Tangier trickle away. I had never been more estranged from what I thought was my life. Cozimo, dear friend, how could you take your leave of me now?

Outside, the stars shone bright, brighter in the countryside than the city. The silence of the night had a texture to it. I could touch it. I could sink into it. My arms and legs felt like dead weight, and they brought me down gently, gradually, like heavy anchors to the bottom of a dream-sleep sea.

It was strange, though. I knew my son was here. Or did I? I had not seen him. I had no idea what to do. I may have pretended not to have expected this moment, this time, this day, but there was something in me, from day one, from before I had even met Robin, my beloved Robin, something from before that suggested yes, he is here, alive, waiting, ready for me, always.

I sank my head into his pillow and inhaled. I dreamed of Garrick painting my portrait.
Keep still,
he is telling me.
Keep still. Now hold it.
I am caught by his gaze, caught in it, held there, suspended, paralyzed like some wild animal in a cage—and then I am a panther pacing. Keep still, he warns. At one moment, he is raising the paintbrush; at another, he is pointing a gun. Will he fire? And then suddenly, it is Spencer who is aiming the gun at me, painting me, and then as quickly it is Dillon, ablaze. He has a deep and serious voice. Not his voice; it’s the voice of a thwarted older man. It is Jim’s voice. And there is Cozimo holding his two hands to me, intoning the words “It’s so good to see you.” The dream spins and whirs and takes me deeper into the dark and questioning caverns of my mind or some other place I cannot even name.

I emerge, still in sleep, at some other place, some other time. Tangier, of course. Our old bedroom. The curtains are blowing in the breeze. The sky is a burnished blue. The buildings are chipped and flaking, falling apart. The sun loves me here, but the afternoon is not for walking. The afternoon in Tangier can be bedtime. With Robin. Robin, my love. In my arms again. Then. When we made love, I closed my eyes. Open them, she said to me. Brave, brazen Robin. Look into my eyes. Open them. And I did and I would lose myself there. In the deep oval grayness of her mysterious eyes. And we would move this way and that, shadowing each other, knowing where and how, as if we were following directions, but it was intuitive, it was natural, and then I would move deeper inside her and she would hold me in her gaze, and bite me and twist and turn, and we moved like that, as if we knew every move there was, and still she held me in her gaze, but I could not hold hers, and before our lovemaking ended I would close my eyes and travel, it seemed into another galaxy, traveling at speed through space and time, and Robin would grip me tighter and release me and let out the sigh that said both pleasure but disappointment too, because I had not managed to keep my eyes open. And she would drape her arms over me and chastise me.
You didn’t keep them open,
she would say, gulping for air, laughing, inhaling the entire world. That’s how it felt back then, but for that one time, the night we made Dillon.

Outside there was rain. I remember the coolness it brought with it, a temporary coolness. That night, I knew we had done something, made something, someone. In those years, we seemed to have all the time in the world to make love. And after Dillon, in Ireland, it had gone, all that sensuousness, all that passion. My dream avoided the dullness of Dublin and tunneled through to its own Tangier heart, the hot and heavy days when our mouths sought each other out and our tongues were insatiable. It was the kind of intimacy that felt like nourishment. And in the afternoon, lazily out of bed, we drank mint tea, and later in the evening, we left the city for where the roads were lined with trees and sunflowers.

When I woke, I didn’t know where I was. My mouth was parched. I reached for water, but what I noticed was that the gun had shifted from my chest. I did not know where it was. And I must have been sweating. My clothes had stiffened, and I was shivering. And most surprising of all was that when I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked up, above me stood Garrick.