A Bridge of Years (11 page)

"Probably."
He added, "I'm still broke."

"Well—I
can buy us breakfast. But I have to meet Lawrence at noon.
Lawrence might not appreciate knowing you slept here." Tom
nodded his acceptance without asking who Lawrence might be—very
courteous, Joyce thought.

She
locked up and they descended to the street. The sky was bright and
the air was almost warm—which was good, because Tom didn't have a
coat to throw over his cotton shirt. She started to recommend a
thrift shop she knew about —"Once you get some cash." But
he shrugged off the problem. "I'll worry about money
later."

"That's
a good attitude."

"First
I have to see about getting home."

"You
don't need money for that?"

"Money's
not the problem."

"So
what
is
the
problem?"

"The
laws of physics. Mechanical mice." Joyce smiled in spite of
herself. He went on, "I can't explain. Maybe I will someday. If
I find my way back here."

She
met his eyes. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

She
ordered up a coffee-shop breakfast for both of them. Cutting into her
budget a little—but what was money for? Tom insisted on buying a
newspaper and then he sat marveling at it, turning the pages
reverently . . . not reading it so much as
inspecting
it,
Joyce thought. Personally, she hadn't picked up a paper since the
John Glenn launch in February. She said, "Are you just a car
salesman or are you a poet too?"

"I've
never been accused of poetry before."

"What
you said about mechanical mice. And, hey, this is the Village. Poets
are like cockroaches around here."

"My
God, it
is,
isn't
it? 'The Village.' " He looked up from the paper. "You play
music?"

"Sometimes,"
Joyce allowed.

"I
noticed your guitar back at the apartment. Twelve-string Hohner. Not
too shabby." "You play?"

"A
little bit. From college. It's been a few years, though."

"We
should play sometime. If you come back."

"Guitar
players must be as common as poets around here."

"Well,
they're like snowflakes. No two the same." She smiled.
"Seriously, if you come around this way again . . ."

"Thank
you." He looked at his watch and stood up. "You've been
awesomely generous."

"De
nada.
Besides,
I like you."

He
touched her hand for a moment. The touch was fleeting but warm,
and she felt a little internal tingle—mysterious, unexpected.

"I
might be back," he said.

"Goodbye,
Tom Winter."

He
walked into the pale sunlight, wavered a moment in the doorway, then
headed unsteadily east.

Find
what you're looking for,
she
thought. A parting wish. Though it didn't seem too likely.

Probably,
she
thought,
I'll
never see him again.

She
sipped her coffee and glanced at the paper, but it was all bad news:
two men had been murdered in an alley not a block from her apartment.
While she slept, Death had been out walking the streets.

This
was a shivery thought and she looked up once more, craned her neck to
spot Tom down the street; but he was already gone, lost in the
morning traffic and out of reach.

The
desk clerk glanced at the ledger as he handed her the key. "Room
312, Mrs. Winter."

Barbara
was startled. Had she really signed that name? She took the key and
shot a sidelong glance at the page where she had, yes, written
Mrs.
Barbara Winter
in
neat script.

The
motel was a three-story brick bivouac set back from a dismal stretch
of highway maybe an hour's drive from Belltower. She had considered
driving straight through; but Tony's call had reached her this
afternoon at a conference in Victoria, B.C., and it was late now; she
was tired; her car was tired, too. So she had stopped at this bleak
roadside place at 10:30
p.m
.
in a light rain and signed her married name to the register.

Room
312 smelled of dry heat and disinfectant. The bed creaked and the
window blinds opened on a view of the neon
vacancy
sign
reflected in the slick wet parking lot. Cars and trucks passed on the
highway in clusters of three or four, their tires hissing in the
rain.

Maybe
it's stupid to see him.

The
thought was unavoidable. She'd been having it intermittently
since she climbed into the car. It echoed as she shrugged out of her
jeans and blouse and stepped into the shower stall, washing away road
dirt.

Maybe
it
was
stupid
to see him; maybe useless, too. Rafe had taken it well, with a
minimum of pouting; but Rafe, twenty-three years old, saw the
six-year gap between them as a chasm, was threatened by the notion of
her lingering affection for Tom. She had obliged him by keeping
contacts to a minimum . . . until now.

It
was stupid to risk her relationship with Rafe—which was all the
relationship she had at the moment, and one she was desperate not to
lose. But she remembered what Tony had said on the phone:

/
can't do anything for him this time.

The
words had gone through her like a shot of cold air.

"Please,"
she said out loud. "Please, Tom, you dumb bastard, please
be okay."

Then
she climbed under the cold motel sheets and slept till dawn.

In
the morning, she tried the phone. He didn't answer.

She
panicked at first. Scolded herself for having spent the night here:
it wouldn't have been that much farther to drive. She could have gone
on, could have knocked at his door, saved him from—

What?

Well,
that was the question, wasn't it? The great unanswered question.

She
checked out, stowed her luggage in the trunk of the car, pulled into
the sparse dawn traffic droning down the highway.

Since
she left Tom she had spoken to his brother Tony exactly twice. On
both occasions he had asked for her help with Tom.

The
first call had been months ago. Tom had been drinking, the job
had fallen through, he owed back rent on his apartment. If Barbara
had known she might have tried to help . . . but by the time Tony put
in his call the situation was nearly resolved; Tony had arranged for
a job in Belltower and Tom had dried out. "I don't think there's
anything I could do to help," she'd said.

"You
could come back to him," Tony had said. "Much as it pains
me to say so. I think that would help."

"Tony,
you know I can't do that."

"Why
the hell not? For Tom's sake, I mean."

"We
broke up for a reason. I have another relationship."

"You're
shacked up with some teenage anarchist. I heard about it."

"This
isn't helping, Tony."

And
Tony responded, "You must be the best cooze in Washington State,
Barbara, because I can't figure out why else my brother would be
racked up over you," and hung up. Barbara hadn't expected to
hear from him after that. Surely only desperation would lead him to
call again.

Presumably,
desperation had. Tony's second call—yesterday's call—had
been routed up to the Conference on Forestry and the Environment
in Victoria by one of the board members at World Watch, an advocacy
group Barbara worked for. First came a warning call from Rachel, her
coworker: "Barb, do you really
know
this
guy? He says he's related to your ex. He says, 'I know she works for
this pinko organization and I need to talk to her
now.'
Some
family
thing.
He said it was urgent so I gave him the hotel number, but I
wondered—"

"It's
okay," Barbara said. "That's fine, Rachel. You did the
right thing."

She
waited ten minutes by the phone, standing up Rafe at the Jobs or
Oxygen seminar. Then Tony's call came up from the switchboard. "It's
about Tom," he said.

Barbara
felt a sudden weight at the back of her neck: a headache beginning.
She said, "Tony . . . didn't we have this conversation once?"

"It's
different this time." "What's changed?"

"Just
listen to me, Barbara, will you do that? Save up all the
psychological crap until I'm finished?"

Barbara
bit her Up but said nothing. Underneath the insult was some urgency:
from Tony, a new thing.

"Better,"
he said. "Thank you. I'm calling about Tom, and the reason I'm
calling is that I think he's going off the deep end in a serious way
and this time I don't know what to do about it."

Urgency
and this confession. Barbara said, "Is he drinking again?"

"That's
the weird thing. I don't think he is. He'll disappear for days at a
time—but he comes back clean and he's not hung over. He's holed up
in this house he bought out on the Post Road. Hardly sees anybody.
Reclusive. And it's cutting into his life. He's missed time at the
lot and the sales manager is seriously pissed at him. Plus, it's
things I don't know how to explain. Did you ever meet somebody who
just didn't give a fuck? You could say hello, you could tell them
your uncle died, and maybe they say something sympathetic, but you
can tell they just don't care?"

"I've
met people like that," Barbara said. Like you, you asshole, she
thought.

"Tom
ever strike you as one of those?"

"No."

"Well,
that's what he is now. He has no friends, he has no money, he's on
the brink of losing his job—and none of this
matters.
He's
out in some other dimension."

Didn't
sound like Tom at all. Tom had always been a second-guesser—obsessed
with consequences. Because of the way his parents had died, she
guessed, or maybe it came from some deeper chamber of his
personality, but Tom had always feared and distrusted the future. "It
could still be alcohol."

"I'm
not stupid," Tony said. "I don't care how subtle he is
about it, I know when my brother is juicing. This is something
altogether else. Last time I went to the house, you know what
happened? He wouldn't let me in. He opened the door, flashed me a big
smile and said, 'Go away, Tony.' "

"He's
happy, though?"

"Happy
isn't the word.
Detached.
You
want me to say what I think? I think he might be suicidal."

Barbara
swallowed hard. "That's a big leap."

"He's
signing off, Barbara. He won't even talk to me, but that's the
impression I have. He doesn't care what happens in the world because
he already said goodbye to it."

The
phone was a dead weight in her hand. "What does Loreen think
about this?"

"It
was Loreen who convinced me to call you."

Then
it
was
serious.
Loreen was no genius but she had a feeling for people. Barbara said,
"Tony,
why?
What
brought this on?"