The Comfort of Black (21 page)

“And I made sure the gun was close enough to him so the blast didn't hit you. Sometimes I do know what I'm doing.” He rubbed his head, wincing when his fingers reached the welt. “Though I underestimated him.”

Hannah stood, and when she was upright a new wave of pain rolled over the left side of her face. Black walked up to her and reached out to her face. She pulled away.

“Let me see,” he said.

She turned her head a few degrees toward him but kept her gaze to the ground.

“Can you see out of that eye?” he asked. “It's pretty swollen.”

“A little,” she said.

Black turned from her, stumbled a few steps, and picked his gun up from the ground. He tucked it in the waist of his jeans.

“Now do you believe I'm not going to kill you?” he asked.

Hannah looked back at the corpse. For everything Black had told her was fake, the dead man was real. The missing face, the bloodied shreds of skin, the scattering of yellowed teeth among pebbles and dirt. All real.

“I don't know what to believe,” she said. “Every time I believe something, I'm wrong.”

“Okay, I'll make it easy for you,” he said. “I'm holding both guns now, so I get to make the rules.” He glanced up and down the road. “That guy might have friends or family up around here somewhere.”

“He mentioned going back to his place.”

“And it's probably not too far away. We have to get the hell out of here.”

“Can you drive?”

“I'm pretty wobbly,” he said. “Concussion, probably. How do you feel?”

“Horrible,” she said. She nodded back at the body. “But I'm clear. I can drive.”

“Okay, good.”

“What about him?” she asked. “Are we just going to leave him like that?”

“No time for a funeral,” Black said.

“That's not what I meant. I mean, he was clearly murdered. Aren't you worried about an evidence trail?”

“Of course I am,” he said. “But our prints aren't on anything we're leaving behind. If we had more time we could—”

“Burn him,” she said.

“What?”

“We can burn him. Him and his truck.”

“Jesus, that just popped right into your mind, didn't it?”

“He was on top of me,” she said. “Maybe one of my hairs
came off on him. And…” She replayed the horrible seconds back through her mind. “I spit on him.”

“Fuck.” He looked around the ground. “Dirt is pretty soft,” he said. “You can see footprints, car tracks, but they're pretty undefinable. No use in torching his truck. It's going to be obvious he was killed over here.”

“You have a lighter?” she asked.

“Yeah. The problem is accelerant. I don't have a tube to siphon gas with.” He stumbled over to Grizzly's truck, then pulled the sleeves of his shirt over his hands to use as gloves as he opened the trunk.

“Here we go,” he said. Black removed a gallon-sized metal gas can and held it up to her.

“Lighter?”

“Glove compartment.”

Hannah went back to the car and fished in the glove compartment. Seeing nothing, she unzipped a small black case, something she'd expect to house an iPod. She found a pack of Marlboro Lights and a translucent green lighter.

“You smoke?”

Black had removed his jacket and shirt, and was using his shirt to hold the metal can as he doused gasoline over the body.

“Keep them there for clients.”

Hannah felt herself freeze, found her mind searching for realism in a decidedly surreal moment. Black was naked from the waist up, the muscles rippling from the side of his ribcage as he shook the last drops of gas on Grizzly's remains. Black's breath swirled in the cold air around his face, his hair falling forward over brows of furrowed purpose and a swollen forehead. When he finished, he set the gas can on top of Grizzly's bloodied belly and slid back into his shirt and jacket.

“Give me the lighter,” he said.

Hannah shook her head. She was part of this surreal world, and she had to own it. She could not run anymore. She couldn't try to hide. Couldn't do what she had done as a child, scurry away,
hands over her face, telling herself that everything was okay, and that her mother was going to be
just fine
. Because all of this was just an extension, perhaps a natural conclusion, to what Hannah had experienced her whole life. She had tried to do something about it once and failed. Not anymore.

“No,” she said. “I'm going to do it.”

He looked like he wanted to protest, but ended up saying, “Well, get over here and do it. We have to go.”

Hannah walked over to the body and looked down. Grizzly was no longer a man. He was a prop in a theme-park haunted house, a collection of gore you sidestepped around, wondering if the actor disguised as a prop would lunge at any second.

Black pointed to a small river of wet dirt extending a few feet from Grizzly's arm. “I left a trail of gas. Light that and then get the hell out of the way. Keep the lighter—don't leave it behind. I'm going to pull the car around.” He tugged her arm lightly until she looked at him. “Okay?” he asked.

Hannah continued to stare at the body, and the thought of setting the flesh on fire brought her back to a time almost twenty years earlier. Black left her side and Hannah squatted next to the body. She no longer saw Grizzly. She saw Billy, passed out in his favorite chair, the shitty green one that smelled of mold and cigarettes. Thanksgiving night, 1995.

Hannah flicked the lighter. Once. Twice. On the third try the flame shot up from her thumb. And with no other thought, she touched the flame to the dirt, stood, and backed away. The fire rose as it snaked along the dirt, hungry, looking to feast. Seconds later it found its meal in Grizzly's body, engulfing it completely. Hannah watched long enough to feel the heat on her face and witness the flannel on Grizzly's torso fuse onto the skin beneath it. She turned when Black pulled the car alongside her.

He slid to the passenger side and Hannah climbed into the driver's seat. She shut the door and pulled the car into gear.

“You okay?” he asked.

She could smell the acrid smoke and the remains carried within it. She tried to hold her breath against it.

Then she pulled the car forward without answering Black, back the way they came, away from the valley of the trees, away from Grizzly's abandoned truck, and away from the plume of black-and-gray smoke that carried with it memories of something she should have done decades ago.

They stopped south of the Canadian border, pulling off the interstate and winding along a two-lane strip that hugged the curves of a small river. Hannah drove where Black instructed. The blow to the head left him off balance and disoriented, and he made Hannah pull over once so he could vomit onto the dirt shoulder.

The only words exchanged between them were commands.
Take this exit here. Keep on this road. Left at the gas station
. Hannah was thankful for the silence so they didn't have to talk about the body they had set on fire. In her mind she saw Grizzly die over and over again. She saw the inside of his skull, his brain. Fragments of bone. The initial spray of blood, and then just the oozing pool, black red on cool dirt.

She didn't feel guilt. Perhaps that would come later. But she felt an unbearable weight, the oppressiveness of an event that could never be taken back, the knowledge of something that would forever be part of her, an unwashable stain.

And there were still so many questions unanswered. Black had certainly only told her a fraction of what was going on.

As she drove, Hannah stole glances of herself in the rearview mirror. Her face looked as bad as it felt. The fire in her cheek had abated only slightly as the bloody bruise spread slowly over her face like a virus.

She brought her speed down to the posted thirty-five as they passed a green metal sign welcoming them to Silverson, population just over three thousand. The sign was old, rusted
on the edges, the lettering faded from time.
The population count hasn't been updated in decades
, Hannah thought. She looked around at the stillness of the town around her.
If anything, it's probably decreased
.

“Couple of miles ahead there's a motel,” Black said.

“We're staying in this town?”

“For a little while.”

“Don't you think we'll stick out?” she asked. “Two strangers who look like they just crawled out of a bar fight?”

“I'm not a stranger here,” he said. He looked out the window. Hannah couldn't tell if he viewed the streets of tiny Silverson with comfort or gloom. “We're just south of the border. I usually bring clients here for the last few days before we cross. It's a small town and some people know me, but I'm still anonymous. Everyone here is. It's the kind of place where people looking to hide stay for just a little while and then they move on, usually up into Canada. No one here has a past. It's only the future here.”

A stray-looking dog with tight, wiry fur stopped and watched Black's sedan roll by. The animal's eyes were cloudy and wide, its tongue lolled to one side, as if it was simply too much effort to contain it otherwise.

“If this is the future, then we're fucked,” she said.

“It's safe here, and that's all that matters right now. Up on the right.” He pointed to a small building sitting by itself a hundred yards down. “That's the motel.”

Hannah saw yet another rusted and faded sign, this one announcing the entrance to the creatively named Silverson Inn. The massive sign swooshed like the Nike logo and was covered in cracked, white plastic, with light bulbs dotting its perimeter in a flashy Vegas fashion. Half the bulbs were broken, and Hannah guessed the other half hadn't lit the sign for years, the owners giving in to apathy after realizing Silverson was no Vegas, and they'd wasted way too much money on the damn sign.

The motel was single story, a stretch of identical doors and
brick walls, the hue some shade of brown mixed with despair. There were maybe ten rooms showing on the front side.

“Who the hell stays here?” Hannah asked.

“We do,” he said. “It's not so bad. Free breakfast, which means bagels and coffee. And if we're lucky, the sheets will be clean.”

Hannah felt herself shudder, thinking back to the sleek angles and glimmering style of the Four Seasons. Still, better here with Black than at a luxury hotel with Dallin.

She pulled into the parking lot, an unnecessarily large expanse populated with weeds, cracks, and faded white stripes. She parked near a
Reception
sign and Black got out of the car.

“Wait here,” he told her. A few minutes later he returned carrying two keys—actual metal keys attached to small pieces of what looked like driftwood—and told her she could keep the car parked where it was. The rooms were right next to the reception.

“You got two rooms?” she asked.

“You wanted only one?”

“I didn't say that.”

He tossed her a key. “Well, we have two rooms. That doesn't mean we have to use both.”

Black took his bags from the car and led them to their rooms, which were adjacent and identical in their ancient, monochromatic décor.

“What now?” she asked.

Black unzipped a large black duffel on his bed and started rooting through the contents. After a minute he pulled out a prescription bottle. “Vicodin,” he said. “One each, and that should at least help with the pain.” He shook the bottle, and the little pills rattling inside sounded comforting to Hannah.

“You carry Vicodin with you?”

“When we left the house this morning, I didn't plan on ever going back. I took the important stuff with me.”

“Everything that's important to you is in that duffel bag?”

He nodded. “That and the backpack. Yes.”

Hannah wondered what size bag she would need to contain
everything important to her. A week earlier, she wouldn't think any bag would work. Now, she wondered if she even needed a bag at all. She'd take Zoo, of course.
Did Justine ever give Zoo to her neighbor?
And she would grab some photos, old ones. And—

“We need money,” she said. “My money. I…I just can't leave and let Dallin have everything. I'll need money to live on.”

“I know. I'm planning on that. I have some cash with me for now, and we can tap into my accounts as necessary. Any chance you know your account numbers?”

She nodded. “I know my checking and savings account. Not the investment accounts.”

“How much in your checking and savings?”

“Maybe a hundred thousand.”

He started rooting through the bag again. “That's a start, though I'm guessing you no longer have access to those accounts. The key will be accessing your investment accounts.”

He gave up on the bag with a sigh, as if acknowledging he hadn't succeeded in cramming all his treasures into one small place, and there were things he was already regretting leaving behind.

She took the bottle of Vicodin and unwrapped a plastic cup next to the sink. The cup would be clean, but God only knew what shape the tap water would be in. She filled the cup halfway—the water seemed clear—and washed the pill down. She had never had Vicodin before, but Hannah figured the worst reaction possible would still be an upgrade to her present condition.

“You haven't asked more about Dallin,” he said.

She handed him the pill bottle and the remaining water in the cup. He poured two pills into his palm, stared at them a moment, and dumped one back in. He swallowed the other.

“I'm not ready,” she said.

“No, you're not. You need some rest first, and then we need to assess your injury.” He reached up and drew his finger along the hair hanging in front of her swollen eye, which had returned
enough to normal for her to at least see out of it. “Don't think your cheekbone is broken.”