The Comfort of Black (15 page)

Black continued. “Your next question is how I would have reacted if my wife, the one person I knew the most, suddenly tried to have me killed. Is that it?”

“I just don't know how to relate to anyone what it feels like.”

“And no one could ever understand unless they were going through it themselves. But I can tell you this: I've worked with dozens of people in your situation. Mostly women, though not always. And I can tell you if you looked back, really looked back on the last few years, there will be clues. Signs, subtle ones, usually, that will point to the true nature of who your husband is. There are very few reasons for this type of behavior to come out of nowhere.”

“Such as?”

Black seemed not to be expecting the question.

“Actually, off the top of my head I can't think of any reason.”

“So you're saying I should have seen this coming?”

“I'm saying what your husband is doing is extreme, but I would guess there were behavioral clues in your past that suggested he was capable of violence.”

That feel good, cunt? I want you to tell me what it's like to bleed out. Tell me everything…

Hannah felt her stomach tighten as Dallin's words came back to her. But that was just last week. What were the clues from the
past year? The past five years? She hated the thought of obvious signs to which she had been oblivious. Moreover, she hated the idea she should have been looking for signs of distrust in someone she loved so deeply. She had been on edge her entire childhood. In Dallin, she thought she had found someone she could lose herself in. Instead, she realized he was no better than Billy.

Black opened the center console. Hannah immediately saw the butt of a handgun and her body tensed as Black reached in. His fingers moved past the gun and he pulled out a cell phone and handed it to Hannah. The phone was tiny and had only the requisite parts to make a phone call, and nothing else.

“Prepaid cell, untrackable,” he said, handing it to her. “I always have one nearby, usually for a client. That one is now yours. Use it to call your sister, but keep your conversation short. Don't tell her about me. Do tell her to remain vigilant.”

“
She
should go to the police,” Hannah said. “She could tell them what I told her. About Dallin.”

Black shrugged, which was the most indecisive thing Hannah had seen him do. “It probably won't help.”

“You really don't like cops.”

“I'm sure there are some good ones,” he said. “You just have no idea which ones those are.”

“That sounds a little dramatic.”

“Look, I've been doing what I do for a long time, and in that time I've learned many things, usually the hard way. I've learned never to trust someone who has nothing to lose. I've learned the value of prepaid cell phones. I've recently learned never to take someone else's car unless you know it's free of any tracking devices. And I've learned that the chances the police will help someone in a complex situation like yours are lower than the chances they will either hurt you or just fuck things up worse than they already are. These rules are not absolute and don't always apply. But they are
my
rules, and if I were you, I wouldn't go to the police, nor would I recommend it to your sister. Now, there
are several things I would advise, so call your sister and then we can go over your options.”

“I think that's the most you've ever said to me.”

“I'm not the chatty type.” He nodded at the phone in her hands. “Keep it under a minute.”

She dialed and Justine picked up on the third ring. Hearing her voice made everything suddenly seem so real. It was both comforting and terrifying.

“Justine, it's me.”

“Oh my God, Hannah. I got your message. Where the hell are you?”

She felt an impulse to blurt out everything, despite being told less than a few seconds ago not to.

“I'm fine, that's all I can really say right now. I can't tell you more. It's…not safe.”

“Hannah, Dallin came here. To my house.
With the police
.”

“What?”

Black shot her a look.

“What did he want?” Hannah asked.

“He didn't talk much. The cops were looking for you.”

“Was he under arrest or something? Did they know what he did to me?”

“I don't think so. I think they were looking for you for some other reason. Dallin said his company was missing a lot of money and you disappeared right after it happened.”

Embezzlement
. “Did you tell them what he did?”

There were a few moments of silence before Justine answered. “I…they were in and out so fast. I didn't know what to say. And some reporters came by as well. Hannah, what the hell is happening?”

Black nodded at her.
Get off the phone
.

“Justine, listen to me. I need to hang up soon, but you need to know Dallin is…he's trying to kill me. I can't believe I actually just said those words. I'm safe now, but that's why I'm not coming home. Not yet.”

“Hannah, what are you talking—”

“Please, Justine. Just be careful. I don't even know what that means. But protect yourself and your boys. Take Zoo to Cynthia, across the hall from my place. You know her, right?” Justine said she did. “Good, she'll take care of him. Maybe you and the boys should get out of town for a few days. I'll pay for everything when this is all over, okay? Take a nice vacation somewhere.”

“Hannah, what happened?
Where are you?
”

“I have to go.”

She disconnected the call before she could second-guess herself, and then filled Black in on what her sister had said.

He had no questions. He nodded twice but otherwise didn't react to Justine's side of the conversation.

After five minutes of silence, he pulled the car over in the parking lot of Walmart, parking in the back of the lot.

“What size are you?” he asked.

“Size? Size for what?”

“Clothes. Pants. Shirts. Bra. You need to go underground for a while. That requires a few supplies.”

Hannah fidgeted as she waited in the car. She watched the shoppers enter and exit the store, none smiling. An overweight woman in hot pink sweats—the word
LOVE
stretched to the limit of the fabric along the width of her ass—barked at her daughter, then reinforced her message with a palm to the back of the little girl's head. The girl just looked down and frowned, accepting the punishment as she probably so often did.

Twenty minutes later Black exited the store and loaded at least ten plastic bags of purchases into the back. Hannah figured most of what he bought were clothes and toiletries, but the one item not bagged was a black suitcase, its American Tourister tag flapping as Black loaded it into the back of the car.

As they drove, the radio dribbled out soulless songs from the 90s, and the increasingly fading reception heralded their proximity to no-man's land. Black didn't say more than a few words until at least ten songs in, at which point he reached in front of Hannah and opened the glove compartment. He pulled out a long piece of red silk. At first she thought it was a handkerchief, but then she realized it was a blindfold.

“We need to go to my place,” he said. “It's the safest place to hide out for a while. I know this sounds extreme, but I don't want you seeing how to get there, so I need you to put this on. That's more for your protection than mine.”

“You keep a red blindfold in your car?”

“I'm a magician with many pockets,” he said, offering nothing else.

The Hannah of yesterday, or even just a couple of hours
ago, might have had further questions about this. A protest, perhaps. But the moment she chose to get back into Black's car, she decided to listen to him. She wasn't so stubborn or proud she couldn't admit she needed help, and though it was a risk to trust this man, she felt she had little other choice. So Hannah took the soft piece of silk, wrapped it around her eyes, then tied it once behind her head. Despite its red shade, the blindfold bled no color through to her eyes. There was just a deep, satisfying darkness.

The comfort of black.

A few minutes later the songs on the radio finally succumbed to static and Black turned it off. In her darkness, Hannah surrendered to the sounds of the road, the rhythm of her breathing, and the rush of the wind on the car. Together, the sounds lulled her into a sleep she didn't expect nor would have thought possible given all she couldn't stop thinking about.

For the minutes she actually slept, Hannah dreamed of Billy. It wasn't the Thanksgiving dream, and she could barely consider it a dream at all, for it was little more than a jagged collection of images, a slideshow that had no timeline or purpose. Some of the images were based on reality, some just flashes of an alternative history. Billy in his swimsuit at the dingy neighborhood pool, his muscles lean and taut, tensed as if he might have to throw a punch at any moment. Billy smoking in his bed, remote in his hand, the once-white bed sheet covering him a dirty gray from being washed with hard water year after year. Billy grabbing his wife's ass as she walked past him in the living room, his leer carnivorous, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and resignation. And, Billy on fire, the flames licking his face like a faithful dog. In this last image Billy grinned and welcomed the heat as the fire peeled back his skin, rendering him nothing more than a skeleton, the butt of a Pall Mall still squeezed between the exposed phalanges of his left hand.

You can't burn me, Hannie. Don't you get that? Some things just don't catch fire
.

“We're here.”

Hannah jolted awake and removed the blindfold.

Black was looking over from the driver's seat, and as he came into view, she felt an odd relief at the sight of him. He brushed a thumb against her forehead, drawing off a thin film of sweat, a small gesture that felt powerfully intimate.

“You were dreaming,” he said.

Hannah looked through the windshield and saw a driveway of what looked to be a very normal house. She turned her head around and scanned the street, which was lined with similar houses, a collection of tan and brown, of gray shingles and stucco siding, simple lawns well cared for, and identical mailboxes standing like sentries every fifty feet, black and rigid.

“
This
is your house?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it would be some remote castle somewhere. Thought we'd be entering through a cave or something.”

“That's my other place.” Black clicked the button of a remote and the garage door opened. As he pulled the car forward, Hannah saw the garage was entirely empty save a stepladder and a blue tarp folded in the back corner.

“I assume you live here alone?”

“I do everything alone.”

He closed the garage door, and the darkness again fell over them. “Come on,” he said.

Hannah followed him into the house, which was only slightly more decorated than the cabin in the woods. There was art, but it was generic art, the stylish prints found in an upscale office of a law firm. The furniture was modern and appeared barely used, no creases or wrinkles in the leather sofa, no scratches on the surface of the glossy dining room table.

“This doesn't seem like a place where you would live.”

“Why? You don't even know me.”

“I know enough. And of everything you might be, you're not boring. This place is boring.”

He looked around the room, and Hannah thought she saw a ripple of sadness flutter over his face. It was gone in a second.

“Yes, boring. Plain. It's one home in a sea of identical ones, and as far as anyone knows, I'm just like everyone else. Pay my bills, keep my lawn trimmed. Pay my taxes.”

“Why the need for secrecy? You help other people disappear, you told me. Why do
you
need to hide?”

His mouth tightened. At first she didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, “Because I was my first client.”

She didn't know why, but the idea that Black was on the run felt exciting to her. “Now that's interesting,” she said.

“Nine years ago I had to make a choice,” Black said. “I chose freedom. So when I'm giving you advice about disappearing, it's not just because it's what I do for a living. It's my life.”

“You're a criminal?”

“In the eyes of the law, yes. In my opinion, I've already paid the price for my past mistakes.”

“So your name isn't Black?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I'm Black to you. That's what matters.”

“Why did you have to disappear?”

This time he smiled, a gentle smile that bordered on patronizing. “Did you want something to drink?”

“So no answer?”

“I have water, beer, wine, coffee…”

“Okay, I get it. You get to know everything about me, but you get to remain a mystery. The man in the mask.”

“Hannah, I barely know you at all.”

“But you at least know my real name.”

Another smile. “I also have bourbon, which I'm going to pour for myself.”

It was barely past morning. The idea of not drinking alone was nearly as powerful as the lure of the alcohol itself.

“Bourbon sounds perfect.”

Alcohol and Hannah were sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, and usually both within a span of several hours. She didn't like to admit that, for the past two years, she had grown more dependent on her nightly wine, or bourbon, or tequila, or whatever was available. She enjoyed the steady nighttime buzz as much as she disliked the molasses brain in the morning, and the two sensations battled with such equilibrium that the routine became a consistent, seemingly unalterable cycle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.