Cold (37 page)

“We should have power by now,” Norman said.

“You’d think so,” the constable said.

“Could be anything.
 
Maybe something froze up.”
 

“Or maybe he slipped and knocked himself out,” the constable said.
 
“He’s had enough to drink.
 
Before the vodka, he had a bottle of schnapps and a beer on the drive out.”

“One thing about my brother is he can hold it.
 
Schnapps—he
still
drinks that stuff?”

The constable leaned back in his chair.
 
“If he’s unconscious out there, it’ll only be a few minutes before he starts to go numb.”

Norman looked out the window again.

“I’ve seen it more than once,” the constable said.
 
“Drunks slip on the way home from the bar and next morning somebody finds them frozen solid.
 
We usually have to break them out of the ice.”

Norman glanced at Noel.
 
“There must be some rope around here.”

 
“Why?”
 
She sounded frightened.

“Noel.
 
Find something to tie him up with.”

She sighed dramatically and went into the Great Room.

•

Del sat in the chair in the nearly dark kitchen and he and Norman listened to Noel.
 
She had opened a door, Del assumed the one to the closet next to the bathroom, and she rummaged through it, saying, “Raingear, wading boots, coats, canoe paddle—
rope!”
 
She came back to the kitchen.
 
“Now what?”

“What do you think?” Norman said.

“I don’t know how to do this.
 
You tie him up.”

“All right.
 
Come over here.”

She put the rope on the table and went around to the windows.
 
When Norman handed her the gun, she said, “If he tries something, what?”
 
She laughed.
 
“I’m supposed to shoot him?”

“No.
 
Just whack him in the head again.”
 
Norman began to uncoil the rope.

“Why don’t
I
go out and look for Warren,” she said.
 
“And you stay here.”

“If he’s out there lying in the snow, you going carry him back in here?”
 
Norman came around the table and stood behind Del.
 
“Put your arms behind you.”

Del did as he was told, and he could feel his wrists being tied together.

“You know, that woman,” Norman said, “she tied me in a chain and locked it to a radiator.”

“What woman?” Noel asked.

“This woman I met when I first got out.”

Norman began to wrap the rope around Del’s chest and arms.
 
It was thick cordage, at least a half-inch, and it was stiff and cold.
 
After each turn, Norman pulled the rope tight.
 
Del kept his chest filled with air, but he knew it wouldn’t help.
 
“The hard part is keeping still,” Norman said.
 
“You get an itch and it’ll drive you nuts.
 
Keeping still is—it takes something:
 
concentration.
 
I knew this guy inside, he was into Buddha and meditation and all that, and he’d sit on the floor with his legs crossed and not move—I mean not
move
—for nearly an hour.
 
Then he’d get up, bow and walk very slowly around in a circle for several minutes.
 
And then he’d sit down and do it again.
 
I once asked why he did it and he said it was because it didn’t matter whether he did it or not.
 
I don’t know exactly what that meant, but he was about the only guy that didn’t seem to mind being inside.
 
I don’t think he cared where he was.”

 
“No wonder you had to get away from there.”
 
Noel sat down at the table and said to the constable, “You aren’t a Buddhist, are you?”

He shook his head.

Norman finished tying the knot.
 
He’d done a good job; Del couldn’t move his arms, and his back was strapped tight to the chair.

Putting on his coat, Norman said to Noel, “Just watch him.
 
We’ll be right back.”

•

Noel didn’t like holding the gun.
 
It wasn’t that it was heavy but its weight seemed so concentrated.
 
The black rubber grip felt larger than necessary; its curves had been well configured to fit the hand, and there was a grid of small bumps designed to keep the gun from slipping.

“Those aren’t the stock grips,” Del said.
 
“Bianchi Lightning Grips.”

“Good for large hands.”

“They help accuracy and reduce recoil.”

“You ever shoot someone with it?”

He shook his head.

“Ever try?”

His eyes met hers for a moment she thought he might actually smile.
 
“No.”

Laying the gun on the table, she said, “I used to meditate.”

“Really?”

“I only did it for a little while.
 
It’s hard, you know?
 
With a baby you only get a little peace when she’s asleep.”

“I’ll bet,” the constable said.
 
“What kind?”

“Huh?”

“What kind of meditation?”

She turned her head toward the window as a gust of wind hit the side of the house.

“Aren’t there different kinds of meditation?”

“I guess so,” she said.

“What kind did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s TM.”

“TM?”

“Transcendental Meditation.
 
And there’s several kinds that Buddhists practice—”

“I don’t remember.
 
It was just for a couple of weeks.
 
There was this guy who stayed a week at the motel while his car got fixed—had to wait for parts to be sent up from Detroit.
 
He’d walk out into the field behind the motel and meditate.
 
He showed me how to sit and everything.”
 
She leaned back in her chair watching the constable in the dark.
 
He seemed to be waiting.
 
He seemed to know that there was something else she wanted to tell him.
 
“All right, I thought about going to bed with him, if you want to know.
 
Something about him told me that he’d be the longest, slowest fuck imaginable.”

The constable didn’t move.
 
He looked pretty uncomfortable, strapped to the chair.
 
It was hard to see his face in the light that came through the door from the fireplace.
 
“But you didn’t?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think I’m making it up.”
 
Noel got up from the table, picked up the gun and faced the window.

No, it’s not that—”
 
He hesitated until she turned around.
 
“Why are you telling me?”

After a moment, she said, “Because you asked about meditation.”
 
She came around the table.

“That’s right, I did.”

Noel shifted the gun to her left hand and held it at her side.
 
With her right hand she reached out and gently touched the scarf around the constable’s forehead.
 
“How’s it feel, baby?” she said softly.

He didn’t move.

She ran her hand down his cheek to his chin.
 
The stubble of his beard crackled underneath her fingertips.
 
“It’s usually older men like you that notice me.
 
I don’t know why.
 
Sometimes I’m in a restaurant or a store or going to the movies, and I’ll catch someone watching me.
 
I guess it’s because I remind them of twenty years ago.”
 
He wrinkled his nose.
 
“What’s that with the nose?”

He didn’t answer.

“You don’t like it that I think about a perfect stranger?”

“It’s not that at all,” he said.
 
“No, I just have an itch.”

“You do, an itch?”
 
He nodded.
 
“Where?”

“The side of my nose.
 
Right side.”

“And you want me to scratch it?”

“Would you mind?”

“Maybe you can reach it with your tongue.”

“It’s not long enough.”

She laughed.
 
“You trying to do something?
 
Break
free?”

“I doubt it,” he said.
 
“I’m really tied in this chair.”

“You know, if you meditated you’d know how to deal with itches.”

“How?”

“You empty your mind,” she said.

“I see.”

“And if you start to think of something you concentrate on your breathing.”

“Does it work?”

“You tell me.”
 
Noel turned and walked back around the table to the windows.
 
She could see two sets of tracks in the snow running along the back of the lodge, but there was no sign of Norman or Warren.
 
Suddenly she felt very alone.
 
“I don’t know how this happened,” she said quietly.
 
“I’m standing here in a dark kitchen
way
out there, I have this gun in my hand—with Bianchi
Lightning
Grips—and you’re sitting there like that.
 
I just don’t
know.
 
I’m doing this because I love Norman, and because, well, I
really
need to get away.”
 
She turned around and faced him across the table.
 
“Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I do.
 
It happens to people who live up here.
 
It’s the winters, the light.”

“Has it ever happened to you?”

His head tilted back for a moment.
 
“It did, yes.”

“Really?
 
Or are you just
saying
that?”

“It did, really.
 
Once.”

“When?”

“A number of years ago.”

“Really?” she said.
 
“I mean,
really?”

“Yes, really.
 
It was after my wife left.
 
For a long time I thought about leaving, going somewhere south.
 
I realized that this is a very hard place to live.”

Noel came around the table.
 
“You were alone?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you didn’t just go, by yourself?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Was it because you were by yourself?”

He thought about this for a moment.
 
“Yes, it was.
 
Because I knew that no matter where I went it would be the same.”

“You’d be alone.”

“Yes.”

“Know what you are?”

“No.
 
What?”

“You are the perfect stranger.”
 
Noel put the gun down in the middle of the table and walked over to his chair.
 
She took his face in both her hands, being careful of the side where he’d been struck with the butt of the pistol, and leaned down to him.

•

At first, Del held absolutely still.
 
Somehow he knew this was coming.
 
He didn’t know how long he had known it, but when she leaned down toward his face he felt relief.
 
When he was younger it had usually been the other way around—he had kissed the girl—and he never really appreciated what she must have been going through, waiting for it to come.
 
Noel’s mouth was full and forceful on his, and something in the way she pressed her face to his suggested both a dare and a plea.
 
Both seemed to be saying
accept me.
 
As she worked his mouth open with her tongue, he could feel the moisture and heat of her mouth fill his.
 
There was a hint of salt and perhaps chicken broth.
 
And as though trying to obliterate all these, his very effort at sorting it out, she suddenly kissed him hard, rolling her head so that her cheek first spread across his chin, then pressed against his nose.
 
Closing her lips around his tongue, she seemed to want to climb into his head, but then she grabbed his tongue and sucked it into her mouth, taking it deeper and deeper, sucking on it till his tongue began to ache.
 
When he was about to pull back, to try and stop her, she let go of his tongue and, opening her mouth wide, brought his lips together.
 
Squeezing them tightly, she ran her tongue over them, as though to seal them closed.