We Are Here (8 page)

David would have given her the secret if he knew. He was not a selfish man. The problem was he didn’t have a clue what it was, and on mornings like this he almost wished he were back where he had been six months ago.

“So!” Talia bellowed, hands already in motion toward his customary drink. Her tone was partly due to the coffee machine doing something hectic, but mainly because she habitually addressed people as if across a field and against a heavy wind. “How many of those bastards you caught in your net today?”

David shrugged mysteriously. He knew Talia would interpret this as coyness over how many words he’d nonchalantly hammered out that morning, instead of realizing it meant
None. No words at all
.

She laughed raucously. “You dog.”

They chatted, Talia filling him on some “consultant” she’d met on an Internet forum and passing on the advice he’d granted her, which—as far as David could tell—was total nonsense. When she told him, in hushed tones and all seriousness, that the guy had revealed it was best not to sign submission letters on the grounds publishers employed teams of graphologists to divine the worth of your manuscript from tells in your signature, he had to cough to cover a laugh—a desire that quickly faded when it became clear this asshole had gotten Talia to PayPal him a hundred bucks before he handed up this and other pearls of wisdom.

“You know what, Tal?” he said. “I’m not sure about that. Can’t see them doing that when it’d be simpler to get an intern to flip through the manuscript.”

Talia looked at him. “Could be.”

David wasn’t sure she meant it. It seemed to him she might actually be saying,
Yeah, and what do you care, big shot? You’ve already got it made
.

But the moment passed, and David realized that envy was something he might have to get used to. In time, that seemed possible. The problem was going to be convincing himself he deserved it.

He’d been intending to take the drink home to consume virtuously at his desk, but as he turned from the counter he realized he couldn’t face it and headed to a table instead. He’d carried a notebook all the time since he was thirteen years old. He could sit and think and jot
bon mots
. Be that kind of writer. Live the lifestyle.

Right. Except it turned out the lifestyle … kind of sucked. He didn’t mind spending every day by himself. He’d always been a solitary person (or, as his father had once put it—to his face and in public—“a total loner geek”). Since giving up his job, however, he’d written fifteen pages all told. When he’d been writing at the end of eight hours of wage slavery that had seemed okay. As the product of fifty full days’ labor, it was not.

There was another problem, too.

What he’d written
wasn’t any good
.

His first novel had been about someone rather like David. An everyman forging a life in a small town, blessed with big dreams and a bigger heart. The raw material had come easy, but it had taken two years and seven drafts to make it feel like he’d written it. The characters were well drawn and mildly interesting things happened to them and there was a crisis that got semiresolved and some people lived happily ever after while others did not. Nobody was expecting it to storm the bestseller lists when it came out in six months’ time, but it was the kind of book that genteel reading groups might take to and David’s editor was confident it would get good word of mouth. It had a chance, in other words.

It had also, unfortunately, said just about all David had to say about what it was like to be David.

The publishers wanted another. David wasn’t sure he had one, and the last month had done nothing to convince him otherwise. He’d started and scrapped three story lines already. It seemed possible that he could keep coming up with ideas and pushing them around the screen before abandoning them …
for the rest of his life
.

Which was why he was here, in the coffeehouse, trying to do something else. It wasn’t working. Like their increasingly quiet and desperate attempts to get pregnant, there seemed to be some kind of block. Something invisible but real. Something they couldn’t get past. Something
in the way
.

He turned from his notebook—to which he hadn’t added a word—and looked out the window, summoning up the energy to go home.

Outside, people wandered up and down. Some seemed like they had pressing goals, others like leaves being blown nowhere in particular. It seemed for a moment like there was someone on the opposite side of the street, looking at the coffeehouse, but then he or she was gone.

“How’s it going? Really?”

Talia had appeared on the other side of his table. She seemed diminished when not behind the counter.

“Not great.”

She sat, plunking her big elbows down and supporting her chubby face in her hands. “Must be tough, huh?”

David couldn’t tell how much irony this carried. “What do you mean?”

“Dreaming dreams is easy. Living them, not so much. That’s why they’re called ‘dreams’ instead of ‘lives.’ ”

“Nice. I may write that down.”

“Check the copyright position. Think I heard it in a country-and-western song, which is how the eternal truths are most often revealed.” She smiled. “You’ll get there, David. You done it once, you can do it again.”

“Got proof?”

“I feel it in my bones. And I got heavy bones.”

There was a loud clattering, and they turned to see the door to the coffee shop had swung open by itself. They stared at it together, and laughed.

“Huh,” David said, getting up to close the door. “Doesn’t even look that windy out there.”

Talia looked enthused. “That reminds me! You know George Lofland, right?”

“Works at Bedloe’s? Not really. By sight.”

“Well, he was in here at the crack of dawn, like always—that guy actually drinks
too much
coffee—but he looked a little whacked, so I asked if he was okay.”

“And?”

“
And
so early yesterday evening he’s driving back from his mother’s on the other side of Libertyville—she’s rocking Alzheimer’s big-time—and he’s coming home through the woods and he sees this guy by the road. It’s cold and windy with a pissy little drizzle on top and George decides to take pity on the asshole. He pulls over, asks where he’s going. The guy says Rockbridge and George tells him to hop in, but the passenger seat is full of work files so he should get in the back if he doesn’t mind. George drives on and they talk about this and that, though not much—George ain’t no great talker when he’s not selling something, never has been—but then he pulls over on the street here to let the guy out … and guess what?”

“I have no idea.”

Talia leaned forward. “He wasn’t there.”

David laughed. “
What
?”

“For real, and like, O-M-fucking-G. George says, ‘Okay, here we are’—there’s no reply. He looks around and … dum dum DUM: the backseat’s
empty
, dude. He jumps out of the car and goes around to check. But there’s
no one there
.” She sat back and folded her arms. “Freaky, no?”

“But … you realize that’s a classic FOAF story, right?”

“FOAF? WTF?”

“Stands for ‘friend of a friend.’ As in ‘This weird thing happened to me, well, not to
me
, actually, but to a friend … In fact, it wasn’t even a friend. It happened to the
friend
of a friend of mine. But it’s totally true and …’ and so on. It’s a way of making a story seem real without taking responsibility for it.”

“Gotcha,” Talia said. “Though, like I said, this actually happened to George, or so he says.”

“But I don’t know George,” David said, “so … he’s a friend of a friend, to me.”

Talia worked this through in her head, and smiled—a dazzler that took off thirty years. “I see what you done there, smart boy. Guess that’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

David spread his hands in mock self-appreciation. “When genius strikes.”

“Uh-huh. So why don’t you take those smarts and go home and do some actual work?”

David laughed. “Good advice, as always.”

“Right. It’s on account of me being so fucking wise. Now push off. It’s easier for me to steal cake if there’s only Dylan around.”

Just before he opened the door, David turned back. “Talia,” he said. He hesitated. “Your novel?”

“You want to help me set fire to it? I got matches.”

“It’s not like I know much, but if you wanted me to take a look … I’d be glad to. For what it’s worth.”

Talia blinked. Never mind losing thirty years; suddenly she looked about fifteen. “Oh, David, that would be
so
cool. I’ll e-mail it to you tonight, soon as I get home. I know there’s a lot of work to do on it, but … It would mean a lot to me, really.”

“Can’t guarantee how quickly I can get back to you, is the only thing.”

“Oh, I understand, totally. And I won’t bug you about it. I promise. David, that’s so kind. Thank you.”

He nodded, feeling shy. “What are friends for?”

He walked home knowing he was going to regret the gesture but telling himself you had to pay it forward or sideways or whatever the hell it was. He owed Talia for picking up his mood, not least because the old chestnut of the phantom hitchhiker was working at him, becoming an itch in the hard-to-define area in the back of his brain from which the ideas came (when and if they did).

He went straight up to the bedroom that had been designated his study. As he settled at his desk, the phone rang. He grabbed the handset while reaching for the keyboard. Once something started working at him he had to start typing it
right now
, or it would fly away.

“Yes?”

Nobody said anything. “Miller house,” David said irritably. There was silence; then he heard a noise down the line. It was quiet, as if coming from a long way away. “Can you hear me?”

Silence, then a distant, muttered sound that might have been words, but was impossible to make out. There was something about the tone that did not sound friendly.

David put the phone down. If it was important they’d call back or try his cell, and either way he didn’t care.

He started typing, slowly at first, and then faster, and the next few hours disappeared to wherever they go when the page opens up like a six-lane highway, for once.

I have never been good at walking away from things. This is not a boast, a declaration that I’m the kind of guy who will by God get things done and rah-rah for me in particular and testosterone in general. Quite the opposite. There have been times when I’ve manifestly failed to do the right thing, when I’ve hidden from problems and let my life degrade and rust. I suspect the truth is when I do try to leave a situation I’ll run, not walk—but in a circle. I believe I’m escaping from the problem but spin around it instead, maintaining orbit until a gravitational change plunges me back into the center. This is what happened after the death of my son. There was a period in the wilderness of alcohol and then a spell of affectless calm working at a restaurant in Oregon. But after that came a return to a small town in Washington State, where it turned out I had unfinished business. People died during the resolution of this business. I might have thought I was walking away from something, but it wasn’t so. I’d merely been killing time before pulling the pin out of the grenade.

Put more simply, Catherine’s stalker was beginning to annoy the hell out of me.

Rather than take the subway, I’d elected to walk back from Clark’s gallery, which was doubtless good for my heart but took a very long time. I didn’t like the fact that I’d spent the whole way back thinking about Catherine’s stalker. I didn’t like that I was mad at myself for losing the guy when I’d tracked Catherine—and for undertaking that without telling Kristina. Something that was supposed to have been a quick favor had gotten under my skin, and I wanted the situation gone.

By the time I arrived weary-footed back at our apartment, Kristina had left for work. I turned straight around and went to join her. As we walked home hours later, I filled her in on the discussion with Clark. I could see her wishing she’d been there to take her own reading.

“You really don’t think he’s the guy?”

“No.”

“So … ?”

“So I don’t know. I guess I should call Catherine, tell her that he’s probably not the man. Probably she should talk to the cops. Log her suspicions, so if the situation ramps up it’s a matter of record.”

“But you said Bill felt they probably wouldn’t do much.”

I shrugged. I had said that, and he had said that, and I didn’t know what more there was to add.

As we turned onto a side street that we customarily used on our journey home, there was a noise from up ahead that sent a chill down my back. It was a sound that said someone was in pain, or needed help, and badly. Half the lights in the street were out and it was impossible to see what might be happening.

We trotted up until we could tell the noise was coming from someone standing in the middle of the street. It was a woman, not young. She was shrieking, apparently at a brick wall on the other side of the street.

It was Lydia. Her body was rigid, arms held down hard and straight, as if in face-to-face confrontation with someone. I’d never seen her like this.

I covered the last yards cautiously, walking in an arc so I came around the front and she got a good chance to realize someone was approaching, and who it was.

“Lydia?”

She stopped screaming as if someone had punched a mute button, but maintained the same position, every stringy tendon and underfed muscle taut.

“Lyds? It’s John.”

She turned her head and slowly seemed to recognize me. “Is that you?”

“Yes. It’s John. From the restaurant.”

“For real?”

“Yes.” I held my hands up in a way that was supposed to be reassuring. “Was somebody giving you trouble?”

“It was Frankie,” she said. Her voice was even more of a rasp than usual. “And he was
close
.”

She grabbed me with hands that were bony and surprisingly strong. “I tried to catch up to him. But … he ran away from me. He saw it was me, and
he ran
. He didn’t want to see me.”