In truth, she was gratified to have trapped a dazed Neulan at the cliff edge and to prod his faith, question his rectitude and accuse him of murders he refused to neither admit nor deny. Neulan pitching off Cold Shivers Point meant there would be no similar, self-justifying public forum. His anonymous end seemed just retribution for having reduced young women like Helen to a few lines in a memorial scholarship.
Brian, though, spiraled down into an anguish he could not quell. While she slumbered, he jolted up out of sleep, gasping, clawing back time. He was so keen to repair the world’s wounds and assume its burdens. That had always been the difference between them—and the attraction. She observed wrongs and he went forth to right them. It was as if she wielded his healing power.
One manic night, tossed by visions of flash floods and floating corpses, Brian riveted her with a question: What if it’s found?
It—the body, Neulan kept nameless. Their encounter had become the incident; Neulan’s fall, the mishap; their cover-up was resolution. Abstraction was best to deal with such worries. But bones were most stubborn things.
A click and a rustling told her Brian had returned. He was undressing in the dark by their apartment’s front door. So as not to wake her? He should have known her blood would be thundering, her senses alert to the faintest sound. Floorboards muttered his approach. His weight pressed a sigh from the mattress. She rolled to face him and was shocked to meet a foul marinade of sweat, gasoline and smoke.
Both of them stared at the four-o’clock ceiling.
“Is everything okay?” she whispered.
After a deep breath and long exhale to stop his voice from quaking, he said, “No, of course it’s not.” A moment later, he corrected himself. “I’ve never done this before, so how would I know?”
He was shivering. She sought his hand and found it over his sternum, cradling a fist. “I’m sorry you had to do this,” she said.
“Let’s not keep going over it,” he said. “It’s done.”
It was. But they could not resolve what it meant. Brian wanted to confess without implicating her. She refused to allow his sacrifice for what she believed was a proper outcome. They finally agreed they would come forth together or not at all. Their trust, which had always offset their differences, now cemented their conspiracy, and they continued to live in this suspended state of disagreement until the impasse devolved into a numbness that made them inaccessible to each other.
To atone, Brian chose to live according to his convictions; he jumped back into teaching. Meg fled the classroom, no longer willing to present herself as a moral figure; her solution was to reinvent herself. The effects of their split passed for its cause. Brian’s new job on a Hopi Indian reservation was incompatible with Meg’s new career in real estate. Her friends, who had weathered their own family decisions, thought they understood.
You’ve been a busy girl.
I wondered when you’d show up tonight.
I wouldn’t miss it. The scholarship’s in my honor, after all. But despite that, it’s been hard to get a thought in edgewise.
Is that what our conversations are—thoughts?
I think it’s best if we don’t get too analytical here. I thought I detected a whiff of him tonight. You know he’s not welcome.
Sorry. It was involuntary.
No kidding. Let’s talk about the girl.
What did you think of her?
If only Mom and Dad had named me something cool like Pandora!
You didn’t need the help.
I will take that as a compliment.
Do. I miss you, Hel.
You have made that plain, Madge, and I appreciate the effort.
So you approve.
Yes. She’s the best one so far.
But not the best ever.
No. That would take a miracle.
An unknown number from AZ, USA, sat in Meg’s missed calls the next morning. No message. A robocall or an out-of-state prospect? She sensed it was neither. She only knew one person in the 928 area code. Reaching out and retreating was about the only way she ever heard from Brian. His last actual words had come postmarked from Tuba City two years ago. No salutation, signature or return address. Nothing precisely personal in the eighteen lines of semierotic free verse that fell out of the envelope. She granted him the occasional bout of longing. On the chance his call on the day of Helen’s remembrance was something more than a coincidence, she called the number.
A woman answered—Food Mart—in what sounded like a Native American lilt. What sort of tale had Brian told so he could use the phone? He wasn’t a charmer, exactly, but he was trustworthy, definitely the type a woman would let behind the counter.
“I’d like to leave a message for Brian Mogrin if he comes in. Do you know him?”
“Maybe.”
“Then please write this down. Ready?”
“Go ahead.”
“No message is still a message.”
“That’s it?”
It was not. She wanted to say: Do you think you’re the only one with yearnings? If Brian had tired of his exile, she understood. Penance should have an end. But he must do better than no-return-address poetry and convenience store cryptograms.
“He’ll know the rest.”
Do you have any problems concentrating and/or remembering things?
—Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults
A shrill buzzing rose and fell, approached and departed, chattered as it slowed and then screamed away again. Two circuits. Three. Then quiet. Not a weed whacker; they burned weeds out here. He checked the sky. The sheriff’s drone flew as high as four hundred feet so it might be hard to spot. Shouldn’t surveillance be silent? If the point was sowing intimidation, though, it was working. His noise-infected thoughts circled the idea of retreat.
Same reason he’d left the river. To choose a camp you had to understand who was there as well as who had been there the longest or who was strongest, because they set the rules and vetted the campers. Then you had to know who was allowed to ignore the rules, because there were always exceptions and hidden power struggles, and watch the watchers, looking for something to steal. The worst was all those voices worse for wear: pointless quarrels, selfish complaints, the ignorant things people said. The call and response of sleepers yelping at the drunks to shut up! and the drunks bellowing at the sleepers to go to hell!
At the first sign of Lord of the Flies, it was time to get out.
The zeeeeEEEEEEEEE started up again like line spooling from a hot reel. He saw three of them now, too big to be playing in the road with a radio-controlled car, drinking from what looked like tennis ball cans. They didn’t seem that dangerous but danger didn’t always look like itself. He checked the sheath in his sock, just in case. He hated carrying a knife but he didn’t want to be someone who died for disregarding the wisdom of the pack. Isaac was that fool who got robbed clubbed stabbed choked kicked to death in his camp because he didn’t listen, because he made himself