Night Owl (22 page)

I removed my glasses and rubbed at my eyes. I couldn't believe, after almost three months, how much raw emotion I felt.

"I didn't come here to bring you pain," Nate said quietly. I ventured a glance at him and he smiled gently. "I've heard so much about you. I wouldn't have come if I had any other option. I need your help. You must know this is about Matt."

I blinked rapidly.

"How is he?" I whispered.

"Not good." Nate shook his head. "Not good, Hannah." He turned and walked to the window, gazing down at the street. I studied his back while I collected my wits. Geez, the gene pool was seriously skewed in the Sky family's favor. Go figure.

"He's drinking. I don't know how else to put it." Nate's voice was low and full of feeling. "Hannah, he's my brother. He's my little brother..."

It was weirdly comforting not to be the only person at a loss for words.

We were both silent for a while, fighting our emotions.

"What can I do?" I said at last.

"Maybe nothing. I don't know. I could always pull him back from these ledges. Not this time." Again, Nate shook his head. He was so somber; it was like we were talking about a dead man. I shuddered and my heart lurched. How bad was Matt?

"Where is he? What's happening?"

Nate turned and met my eyes.

"I knew you would help," he said. "He told me so much about you. I knew you had to be—" Whatever Nate was going to say, he let it go. A Pam-like efficiency came over him. This, I could see, was far easier for Nate than emotion.

"Good," he said. Had I agreed to something? "He's staying at our uncle's cabin in Upstate New York. I got you a one-way ticket to the nearest airport and a rental car. Anything can be moved, date-wise, but I don't see why—"

"Wait, what?"

Nate produced a folder from his laptop bag and began spreading documents on my desk. He looked earnestly between me and the papers, his dark brows raised.

"Hm? I've cleared your schedule with Pam, don't worry. She and I have spoken. We all have a common interest here, which is—"

"Excuse me? Look, I—"

This had to be a joke. Incredulity was quickly replacing my fear. Matt's brother just sauntered into my office and was now strong-arming me into flying to New York to rescue Matt's alcoholic ass (that was doing god knows what in some random cabin), and oh, before I even agreed to this crackpot plan, he'd talked to
my
boss and cleared
my
schedule—

"...some spending money," Nate was saying, "travel expenses, anything you need above and beyond the car and the ticket. All my contact information is here. I insist you keep the change as I know this is something of an inconvenience."

 I turned my deer-in-headlights look on the envelope Nate was pressing into my hands. Thoughtlessly, I rifled through the bills. Brand new Benjamin Franklins. Okay, I was counting. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand—

"Five," Nate murmured.

My head shot up.

My god, this wasn't for travel expenses. This was a bribe.

Nate moved toward the doorway, leaving the money in my hands and the travel information on my desk. I was paralyzed with anger. That was fortunate for Nate, because otherwise I would have brained him with my stapler.

"I'll be in touch," Nate said. "I'm staying in the city for a few days. Call me if you have any questions. Hannah, I knew you would help. The way Matt spoke about you..."

There it was again, that guileless vulnerability. This asshole loved his brother, at least, who also happened to be an asshole.

Briefly, I envisioned Matt and Nate sitting together and discussing me. Conspiring? Was this a ploy to send me running back to Matt's arms?

No, no way. Matt was drinking. Matt was in trouble. I needed to think.

"You're both the same," I fumed.

Nate glanced over his shoulder.

"Of course we are." He smiled and shrugged. "We're brothers."

CHAPTER 23

Matt

_____

THE FINGER LAKES
are wine country.

Fuck, they even have this thing called the Seneca Wine Trail. You go around the whole goddamn lake hitting up wineries until you pass out. It's like a hall crawl for cultured adults.

Granted, I wasn't about to hit the trail. I did hit up a few wineries, though. I'd borrowed my brother's bike, a silver Icon Sheene, and I tore all over Geneva like a maniac.

Not caring is really damn liberating.

I kept the cabin stocked with wine, bourbon, and Dunhills. Nate stopped pestering me around the middle of September—thank god. He'd had a damn good idea, me getting some time alone in nature or whatever, but I didn't need him to mother hen me the whole time.

So I was drinking again. So what? I forgot how much I loved it.

And fuck, I wrote
Ten Thousand Nights
drunk off my ass. It's still my most popular novel. I could write
The Surrogate
wasted, no problem.

I wrapped myself in an afghan and sat out on the porch. I made my weekly call to Pam.

"Matthew," she sighed.

God, that bitch. What did she always have to be such a bitch? I was starting to expect her oh-no-it's-Matt-again tone, like damn, too bad I have to talk to my most famous author.

"Yeah, sorry to rain on your goddamn parade," I slurred.

Silence.

"I mean fuck, Pam, it's not like I'm fucking nobody. Last time I checked—"

"It's the time, Matthew." Her voice was quiet and faraway. I looked at my phone. It was four in the morning.

"You're two fucking hours behind me! God Pam, also, fuck, work on my schedule. I'm the next fucking Balzac. What about Proust? He used to—"

"Matthew, what do you want."

There was no question at the end of Pam's sentence. That bitch. She knew she had me by the balls because she had Hannah.

I spit a mouthful of Riesling over the rail. I needed a bottle of beer. Better yet, I needed a bottle of Woodford Reserve.

"You
know
what I want. What does she think? I'm writing like you always ask but you're never fucking h—"

"She loves it." Pam stifled a yawn.

Okay, Pam had probably been asleep—like I fucking cared. She deserved this. She ratted me out to the reporters. Her and Bethany, maybe even Nate. I'd had time to think and I finally figured they were all in on it. They knew about me and Hannah. They tore us down on purpose.

Why, I didn't know, and it didn't matter. You can't trust anyone.

"I swear," I growled. "Tell me more."

"She... she really empathizes with the narrator, the surrogate."

"Why?"

"I don't know, Matthew. We work together, we don't do psychoanalysis."

"Oh, fuck you Pam."

I ended the call. Fuck her. I drained my bottle and dropped it, watching it roll across the porch. What a gorgeous fucking night. Cool and dark, windy and quiet. All I needed was a cigarette. Or that bottle of beer. My Ambien was kicking in, though. God, I loved that feeling... like a balloon rising and expanding in my head.

_____

I woke up drunk.

Jesus, why did I sleep on the porch? I was fucking freezing, wearing only a pair of boxers, and sore as fuck, slumped over in a wicker chair.

I flicked through my phone. Huh, I'd talked to Pam. God, she probably called me in the middle of the fucking night. She was always calling, always harassing me.

I shuffled into the cabin and took two shots of bourbon. I gulped down three glasses of water. Damn, that did me exactly right. Headache gone, stomach settled, hands steady.

I refreshed Laurence's water and topped off his food dish.

"Perfect morning," I told him. I hummed as I dressed. Mm, it felt good to drink. I'm an all-day all-night drinker when I drink. I do nothing by halves.

My mind whirred along as I brushed my teeth, popped a Xanax and a Lexapro, and collected my latest pages from the kitchen table. I was writing everything by hand. Only fucking way to write. Why did I ever use a computer? Pen in hand, hand to the page, it's godly.

The morning was chilly. I lit a smoke and headed out, leaving a few windows open and the front door unlocked. Uncle's cabin was in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

I strolled up the gravel road to my nearest neighbor, a little farm called The Patch where people came to pick fresh vegetables and buy eggs. My typist was the farmer's wife. Fuck, I couldn't be bothered typing out my own stuff, and this lady looked like she could use the change. I paid her ten dollars per typed page.

We had a rough start—she kept fucking up the formatting and couldn't make out my handwriting—but after about a month we got going smoothly. I wrote, I took the pages to Wendy, I bought some vegetables, I picked up the pages, I paid Wendy, I mailed the pages to Pam, rinse and repeat.

I never went online. I didn't even bring my laptop to the cabin. The internet was a mess of gossip about me, and it was part of how Bethany took me down. And it was how I met Hannah. Now, its unreal, anonymous spaces, the programs and sites where we connected, the laptop screen glowing like a window to another world... could only bring me pain.

"You got pages for me?" Wendy smiled, the corners of her eyes wrinkling sweetly.

She was crouched in a ring of wire mesh with a horde of fuzzy chicks teeming around her. When she saw me, she wiped her hands on her jeans and climbed out.

"Yeah, fifteen or so," I said.

I hovered near the pen. I didn't like to look Wendy in the eye. Hell, I didn't like to look anybody in the eye. Eye contact is too intimate.

Wendy understood that. She got me. She also didn't care about the perpetual booze on my breath—not that I could tell, at least.

She took the pages and rubbed my shoulder. She had dry knobby hands.

"Alright hun," she said. "Would you look at these little guys? Just look at 'em."

"Yeah, they're sweet. God, they're cute." I ran a hand through my hair. I needed a shower. I should have taken another two shots. "I'll look at the animals for a while. That okay?"

Wendy laughed.

"Matt, I told you to stop asking. You come see 'em any time. I'll be in the house."

"Mm, thanks. Thanks Wendy."

I watched as she moved toward the old farmhouse. Morning sunlight fell across the white clapboard. Here and there the paint was peeling. The grounds were unkempt, patches of garden braced by scruffy grass and dirt.

Perfect. This place was perfect. I stepped into the chick pen.

"Hey guys." I crouched and reached for the chicks. They swarmed away from me, making me laugh. "You little jerks. You're all fat. You're all going to be ugly in about a month, all scrawny and gray. Come here."

The tiny endless peeping of the chicks was breaking my fucking heart. I would probably cry when I got into the barn. That's what I usually did.

Finally, I captured one of the chicks. I cupped its body to my chest.

Little bird, I thought. Soft warm little bird.

I wandered around visiting the animals and talking to them. I fed the goats and looked into their weird rectangular pupils. I stroked my hand down a pig's leathery back.

In the barn, a tabby darted away from me.

I glanced around. There was no one in sight, just me and the old black Percheron in his stall. I drifted over and he came to the edge of the stall. He knew this routine. He lowered his lumbering head toward me and I hugged him around the neck.

"Hey pal," I said, my voice thick. I wasn't sad or anything. Mike said that crying is a cathartic release and sometimes it has nothing to do with sorrow.

The horse's huge body made the stall door creak. His neck was pure muscle. I ran my hand down his snout.

"You're big and strong," I whispered.

Even in the cool morning, the barn was warm. The smells of hay and feed permeated the air. I pressed my face into the horse's neck and tears began to slip from my eyes.

"Matt?"

I whirled.

Ah, fuck. Wendy's daughter stood in the doorway smiling at me. I could never remember her name. Hope? Grace? Something wholesome and forgettable.

"Mm. Fucking hay allergies," I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

"Oh, yeah, those'll get you." She lifted an empty bottle. "We've got a new baby cow. You ought to see him."

I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked away as the girl came closer. She looked twentyish and was very striking—black silky hair, freckles, blue eyes. She wore her hair in a long braid down her spine. I saw her pretty much every time I came to The Patch, but it never dawned on me that she might be seeking me out.

"Yeah, I will," I said. "I'm making my rounds."

"Mom's already working on your typing. You know, she really loves doing that. She won't let me read it, though."

The girl came to stand before me. She seemed too close, but then again, I was drunk—lost to that space-time shit.

"Well, yeah," I mumbled. "It's kind of private."

"No big deal." The girl chuckled. She rose onto her toes and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. Her breasts brushed my chest. "Matt?" she whispered.

I didn't move. I felt like a lump of clay. Her arms were cool and slender and I was aware of her pressing closer. Her breath tickled my neck. How strange. I felt nothing. I stood there listlessly and stared at the barn wall.

"Why are you so sad?" the girl said. "You're so sad. Let me try to make you happy."

A cold, familiar smirk distorted my lips.

"You think you can?" I said.

"I know I can. I'll take care of you." The girl's hands moved down my back. No fire sprang up in their wake. I only became aware of my pronounced ribs and the ridge of my spine. Huh. I'd have to pick up some eggs while I was here. More fat, more protein.

The girl began to undo my jeans. I let her, gazing down impassively as she worked. She gripped my soft cock and I saw her brows knit. My smirk twitched.

After massaging me ineffectually for a minute, the girl dropped to her knees. I had to hand it to her—she was determined. She licked along the soft organ and sucked at the tip. When she glanced up at me, confusion flashed through her eyes.