The Longest Night (13 page)

“I wonder when Rose will get here,” said Richards. “Do you think Rose could be prettier than Ree? She can't be taller. That's a tall woman, Ree.”

The men considered this. There seemed to be nothing more to say about it. Idly Kinney said, “I wonder how the night shift's going.”

“Don't talk about
work,
” Richards said.

“It's probably going shitty,” said Webb, with the sort of brazen, plastered honesty Paul could not help but admire.

Richards bristled. “What do you mean?”

“We can hardly go an hour without some false fire alarm being triggered, and then the whole goddamn fire department has to traipse out and inspect things.” Webb looked to Paul, who didn't feel like getting into it, but didn't want to leave his friend hanging, either.

“The fire chief's about ready to kill us,” he admitted.

“What
is
it with your shift?” Richards gestured to Webb and Paul with his beer. “Why are you the only ones complaining?” They looked to Kinney.

“It's happening on every shift,” Paul said. Kinney remained silent.

“We've got to raise and lower those goddamn rods every night,” Webb blazed on, undaunted. “I can't believe Combustion Engineering hasn't shut the thing down.” He slurped a wash of beer past his thin cheeks, swallowed loudly, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What are we hanging on for, anyway? We were a prototype. They know how to make a reactor like ours now. We don't even
power
anything except our own damn Admin building.”

“You're depressing us,” said Kinney, and Webb punctuated his thoughts with a dismal, “Fuck.”

Richards opened his mouth to speak, but luckily for them all there was a crunch of tires outside. A car door opened and closed, and then the car drove away. “That must be Rose!” Kinney said, and after a moment of desperate suspense, there was a knock on the door and it opened. As predicted, Rose was shorter than Ree; her face was softer and wider, her black hair curled shoulder length.

“I see I have the right place,” she said. Her voice was sweet with a country twang. Richards forgot instantly about the reactor, and within a few minutes Rose was curled under his arm on the couch, patting his leg over and over as if someone had just said something mean about it.

“I'm going outside,” Paul said. He stood quickly and plunged onto the apartment's small deck, grateful for the bracing air. But the spring scent soon got to his head, its rutting earthy smell, and he felt restless. He allowed himself to think about Nat, and his thoughts soon got away from him: Nat on top of him with her dress around her waist; Nat with her head back, shoulders against the wall, a favorite fantasy though it had never actually happened.

And then the sliding glass door opened and Ree appeared beside him in blue pants and a shiny bra. Paul's head swiveled twice, he was so surprised. She leaned against the railing and smoked with riveting exhalations, her ribs sliding up and down beneath chamois skin, hands dangling from the rail by their wrists. She had smooth, pale fingernails the color of opal. There was nothing on earth that Paul could think of to say. Watching Ree was, in itself, a distinct and guilty pleasure.

Then there was a commotion below them. A door slammed; there was laughter and a small shriek, a scuffle. Paul craned to look. In the dusty light of the apartment complex he saw Richards holding Rose by the arm and Webb beside them, pointing back toward the open door.

“You'll pay for being so naughty,” Richards said. “You'll pay for that little trick.”

Ree snapped to attention, watching them.

“I couldn't help it,” Rose cried. Her laugh came in a tinkle, but it sounded forced. “I can't help the milk, that just happens.”

“Now, let's cool it,” Webb said. “Let's go back inside and work this out.”

“I should have known better,” Richards muttered. He lurched to his car and swung open the trunk, rifling around. A moment later he emerged with a coil of bungee cord. “This will be fun,” he said. He patted the top of the car and gestured to Rose. “Climb up.”

“What's the idea?” she asked.

“Go on!”

Paul heard the stutter of Rose's laugh as she climbed up onto the car, Richards boosting her from behind. She was wearing something that looked like a bathing suit and she was barefoot. Richards guided her onto her back and she lay stiffly, her occasional high-pitched twitter reaching them on the second-floor deck, while he looped the cord over her and through the car's doors. Kinney and Slocum had stepped outside and were staring at the scene.

“You thought Christmas was over?” Richards asked. “Here's our Christmas tree! You want to get up there, too, Webb?”

Webb swayed uncertainly in the circle of lamplight.

“Climb on up, Webbsy! Give us a show. Make up for being an asshole back in the apartment.” He patted Rose's stomach. “Ready to fly, honey? We can call you Squawnik.”

Paul heard the turn of shoes beside him and saw Ree duck back inside, an entire cigarette left unstubbed where she'd been.

“You're not really going to drive, are you?” Rose asked, her voice tightening. No one, Paul realized, had thought Richards would actually do it.

“I think this has gone too far,” said Webb.

Paul spied a movement from the corner of his eye and heard the light, retreating slap of shoes on asphalt. He could just make out Ree's shadow bolting away from them down the highway. She ran in terror, her long legs flying. The other men down below did not seem to see her. Paul thought he should go after her but paused. She was better off away from them. On the edge of his vision a blurred light shone from one of the bars or bordellos. She must have been headed there, and he let her go.

He turned back to the scene below with a thickening dread. It had taken him a moment to deduce what was happening, and he certainly hadn't, until now, thought the sergeant would go through with it.

He put his hands on the railing and hopped down, but just as he landed the Coupe lurched into motion, spitting muddy gravel.

“Oh, shit,” said Webb. “Jesus Christ.”

Over the car's engine they heard Rose's long, thin scream trailing away.

Webb turned to Paul, frantic. “What do we do? Call the cops?”

“We're here with these whores,” Kinney said. “We go out for a drink with the guys and get arrested for being with
Indian whores
?” He sounded nearly hysterical.

In the dark, the car turned and headed back toward them. “Get in the road,” Paul said, grasping Kinney and Sloke, who were nearest him, but they jerked free. “Come on, wave your arms! Block the road.” He could hear Rose's ragged, repetitive shrieks over the car's engine. “Stop, you asshole!” he shouted. “Stop the car!” To Webb he said, “Don't move unless you have to.”

“Oh, shit,” said Webb, “he's going to run us down. He'll run us over—”

At the last minute, Richards hit the brakes. The car wove twice and gravel shot out like shrapnel. Rose had gone frighteningly silent. Paul scrambled out of the way, Webb beside him. As it stopped, the car throbbed forward and back, and Rose slid out from the ropes like a pile of laundry and dropped to the ground on the other side.

Webb dashed around the front of the car. Paul came around the car after him, trying to tell himself the car had slowed, she must be all right.

Rose was crouched on the asphalt as if trying to touch her forehead to her feet. “Are you hurt?” Webb asked. He hovered over her shoulder but did not touch it.

She was motionless for a few horrible seconds and then lurched up, cradling one arm in the opposite hand, her face streaked with tears. “Screw you,” she sobbed. “You're crazy. Get me out of here.”

Richards came around the front of the car. “Now, now, Squawnik. I didn't mean for you to fall off like that. There's no need to be sore. Here,” and he reached into his wallet and thrust a wad of bills at her. “For the extra fun.” She glared at him so he reached out and stuffed them into the mud-spattered dip of her cleavage. One breast rode higher than the other in its stiffly boned lingerie. She turned and limped down the road.

Webb glanced at Paul. “Where do you live?” he asked Rose, following her. “Let us drive you home.”

“I would never tell any of you,” she said.

His head bent in her direction, Webb strode alongside her, but Paul could not hear what he was saying. He could see Webb's hands gesturing gently as he talked, the movements growing fainter as they got farther away. For a moment he thought of following them but realized it might seem like ganging up, and decided to leave it to Webb.

“Well,” Kinney said, “I'm going to need a ride home.”

“Where's Ree?” Slocum asked. His eyes fell on Paul, who gave a bitter shrug. The other men looked around. “She left?” Slocum cried. “She just left?” as if they'd had something special.

“Sloke, you should get to bed,” said Richards, slapping him on the shoulder. “First day as shift supervisor tomorrow.”

Paul's hatred for Richards was suddenly unbearable. “You're a bastard,” he said. Richards and Kinney turned to him, surprised. Paul clenched his fists at his sides and felt his arms shake. “We're lucky that woman wasn't killed on the spot. I'd like to punch you in the face and leave you here.”

Richards looked at him with small, drunkenly wet eyes, his mouth half-slack and cheeks flushed with liquor and excitement. “Oh, shut up,” he said. Then he tossed his keys to Paul; they bounced off his shoulder and fell in the mud. “Collier's driving,” he said.

Paul wished he could lay the man flat. It took all his self-control to scoop the keys from the ground and climb into the car. He was relieved when Webb escorted Rose back a few minutes later. She picked her way in with Webb's coat over her shoulders, not looking at anyone. “We're giving her a ride home,” Webb said. “She lives up the highway about five miles.”

“All right,” said Paul, starting the car.

They were silent on the drive north. Rose leaned her head on the window, a small breath circle marking her lips.

“Goddamn, it's chilly for June,” said Richards. No one answered; he fumbled for a cigarette. He looked anxious but not sorry, and Paul was filled with fresh revulsion.

Rose's apartment huddled with a few other buildings near a lumberyard just off the highway. It was a three-level building that looked more like a motel, or maybe once had been, with a railed concrete deck on each level. Spooky forms of wood and machinery made odd shadows across the flat yard; a dog on a chain barked with pathetic loneliness. A short distance away stood a tiny unmanned train depot. Its lone lightbulb and a few apartment windows gave the only light around for what seemed like miles. Paul wondered who watched Rose's baby while she worked.

Wordlessly Rose slid from the car. She'd taken the spray of bills from her brassiere and tucked them somewhere. Turning, she handed Webb a piece of paper, and then she stalked up the concrete steps to her apartment.

“What, did you get her number?” Kinney asked.

“It's some kind of pamphlet.” Webb squinted at the paper, lit his Zippo. “ ‘Which church is the right one?' ” he read. “Oh, it's a Mormon thing.”

“Jesus,” Richards said, and chuckled. They all glanced up as her apartment door opened and closed on the deck above them, and the cold platform went dark.

Webb flipped the paper back and forth a few times as Paul pulled back onto the highway. Suddenly he glanced up. “Oh, no,” he said. “Vanna's teddy bear. It was in my jacket.”

Richards guffawed. “Vanna's what?”

“I carry an old teddy bear of Vanna's,” Webb said miserably, sinking back in the seat. Richards gave him a pitying grimace.

“Your flashlight, too,” said Kinney. “It was in there, remember? I borrowed it when I had to take a piss on the way to Sloke's.”

“I'm sure he cherishes the memory,” Richards said.

“Do you want to go back?” Paul asked.

Webb hesitated. “No,” he said. “Forget it.” He took a last look at the paper and slid it out through the cracked window, where it whipped away behind the car in one small white flap.

W
HEN
P
AUL GOT HOME,
the house was dark except for a single light Nat had left on over the table. The kitchen held the faint carbon smell of burnt sugar. He dropped his jacket over the back of a chair and sat down to read her note: “Made some cookies. Hope you had fun. N.”

He was still wired from what felt like a narrow escape. They might have spent the night beside the cooling body of a woman on the highway. A sick feeling stirred inside of him, the gut-cold confirmation of his lifelong worldview: that this darkness was really what life was. Anything else you made for yourself was a temporary and tentative fiction.

It was almost a relief to think this way; if nothing else, it felt familiar. It was as old as time itself. It was Old Testament and myth and legend and childhood. It was his father staggering drunk around the cabin while Paul hid under the bed; it was his mother brought home from a bar with her face bashed in. It was the reactor's steadfast tendency toward malfunction, it was the part of Paul that wanted to fuck a woman tied to a car at the same time he wanted to rescue her.

His own mind was too awful tonight, so he got up and shuffled to the refrigerator. He took a bottle of whiskey from the small cabinet above it—warmed by the humming fridge, dust bunnies blowing every which way when he moved the cabinet door—and poured himself a few fingers' worth. He settled back into the chair, sipping. His thoughts did not calm down, they just came a little slower.

When he looked around his placid kitchen—the pot holders hanging by the stove, Nat's yellow dishwashing gloves draped across the sink—he knew he didn't deserve what went on here. He wasn't any better than Richards himself. He'd brought his family to Idaho Falls where they lived next to a reactor that might blow up. He hadn't stopped Richards from tying a woman to the roof of his car and driving forty miles an hour down the road.