“You’re gonna be careful,” I said. I didn’t want to get out of the Jeep.
“I’m always careful,” she said.
“Will you call me tonight and let me know how it went?”
“I will.”
“No matter how late.”
“I promise.”
I looked at her. In the dim green light from the dashboard her face was so beautiful yet so full of trouble, it turned me inside out.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time,” she said. She kissed me, then gave me a little push, gentle but firm. I opened the door and got out. I watched her drive away. I watched the snow swallow her until I was standing there alone.
I went inside. I took my coat off and looked in the bathroom mirror, freshly shocked by how much damage a man could take and still be standing. The left side of my mouth was still swollen, the bruises making a raccoon’s mask around my eyes, the tape still covering the stitches. How a woman like Natalie could even look at this face and say those words. The best thing that’s happened to her in a long, long time.
I took my pills. I was more worn out than I cared to admit. I had nothing left. When I went to lie down, it felt like the bed had become a conveyor belt, the Vicodin taking me smoothly away into a land of brightly colored narcotic dreams.
I saw the picture in my mind. It was coming to life. Three men, the dust hanging in the air on a hot afternoon. The older man smiling. The other man, the best friend, watching from the opposite side of the frame. The man in the middle, Natalie’s father, in his prime, on a perfect summer day, moving right out of the frame, vamping for the camera, the hat held up with both hands now. Showing off the hat, like he was performing some vaudevillian song and dance.
The whole picture fell apart, then came back together with snow on the ground now. It is New Year’s Eve. The men are standing in the snow with no coats. But the hat is perfect, the perfect thing to wear on New Year’s Eve. The older man standing behind him is saying something. Somehow I know it is important, but I can’t hear what the man is saying.
The other man is gone. It’s just the old man and the young man now, father and son, grandfather and father. I need to hear what is being said. But it is drowned out by the sound of a car starting. The car from the picture, a detail I had forgotten about. It is started now. Someone is gunning the engine.
I woke up. I sat up in my bed. Outside, an engine had come to life. It was my truck. Someone was stealing my truck.
No, it was Vinnie. I rubbed my eyes, looked out the window at the snow. Vinnie had come back to plow again. He didn’t even know I was home. How could he?
I looked at the clock. That crazy bastard, plowing at three in the morning. Had I slept that long? It felt like I had just lain down. I heard Vinnie pulling out of my driveway, heard the scrape of the plow against the road.
Then it hit me. Natalie hadn’t called.
I got out of bed and picked up the phone. Then I put it down again. She’s asleep, I told myself. She didn’t call because she got in late and she didn’t want to wake you.
The hell with it. I picked it up again and dialed. Outside, the snow kept piling up. It brushed against my windows. The phone rang and rang. Her machine finally answered.
I left a message, told her to call me when she could.
I tried to go back to sleep, but now it was useless. I kept waiting. I listened to the night and the soft snow falling and Vinnie running my truck up and down the road.
I called her again in the morning. I left another message, told her I was wondering how things went with her mother. “Give me a call when you get back in,” I said. “I’m worried about you.”
I figured I could take my painkillers and lie around and drive myself crazy, or I could get up and get dressed and actually accomplish something. Anyway, there was nothing to worry about. She had stayed over at her mother’s house in Batchawana Bay. The snow was getting bad up there. She had done the smart thing and stayed over.
Never mind what she had said about her mother, how unlikely it seemed that she’d spend more time with the woman than she had to. I didn’t know how things really were between them. Hell, maybe they had stayed up all night, talking things over. Maybe they had made up.
Maybe.
I took a hot shower, got dressed, drank some coffee. Standing up, moving around, I noticed that I wasn’t quite as dizzy now. I felt like I was getting some of my strength back. One look in the mirror, though-okay, so I still looked like hell.
I poked my head outside. The sun was out, but it was a cold and bitter day, below zero, with an Arctic wind whipping down across the lake for good measure. It was the kind of day that showed no mercy, that physically hurt you every single second.
It looked like it had snowed another eight or nine inches during the night before. Vinnie had everything cleaned up beautifully. I should let him plow more often, I thought. He had left the keys on the front seat of the truck, so I got in and fired it up. I drove down to the Glasgow Inn, pulled into the lot, and went inside. A blast of cold air followed me through the door, making everyone look up at me like I was the devil himself.
“Shut the damned door,” Jackie said. “You’re gonna kill somebody.”
“Good morning yourself,” I said. “You got any eggs going?”
“Do I have eggs going? Don’t you mean, will I stop everything and fix you an omelet right now?”
“Take it easy, Jackie. Are you all right?”
He threw his towel on the bar. “It’s minus five degrees,” he said. “With a windchill of minus fifty. How could I not be all right?”
“Jackie-”
“You know what I’m gonna do later? I’m gonna get my beach chair and go sit by the water. It’s too nice a day to be inside.”
I stood there and watched him for a while. He fussed around the bar and slammed some glasses into a sink full of water. Finally, he asked me what I wanted in my omelet.
“The usual,” I said.
“Come back in the kitchen,” he said. “I want to ask you something.”
I went around the bar and followed him into the kitchen. It was a small galley kitchen, barely enough for two people to stand in, so I stayed in the doorway.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he said. He started chopping up an onion.
“What do you mean?”
“Every once in a while, I gotta make a point of dragging it out of you. I mean, look at your face. You look like the east end of a westbound horse.”
“I thought I told you what happened. There was a disagreement at a funeral.”
“Alex, come on. We both know what’s going on here. Now, I know I’ve never met this woman. What’s her name? Natalie?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We just haven’t had the chance to come by yet.” I thought about the night before, driving past the Glasgow, and me wishing we were stopping there to spend the evening by the fire. “She’s only been here in town twice, and-”
He put his hand up to stop me. “Never mind that, Alex. I don’t care. I’m just saying, you’ve got this habit of taking on other people’s problems. For a friend especially, you’d do anything. I’ve seen it.”
He stopped and put his knife down.
“Hell, Alex, you did it for me.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not even going to argue about it. I know the way you are. You know it, too.”
“So what am I supposed to say, Jackie?”
“Just tell me what’s really going on with this woman,” he said. “This Natalie, what’s her story?”
“You really want to know?”
“Start talking.”
I leaned back against the door frame, thinking about it for a second. Then I began. I described my first trip to her house, the awkward beginning of it all, and then the ups and downs over the next few visits. Then the night in the hotel room, the old man, the hat on the floor. All the while he kept working on my omelet, chopping up the mushrooms and the ham, grating the cheddar cheese. He put everything in a shallow skillet and cooked it, somehow making it turn into an omelet instead of a half-burned mess of eggs and whatever else, which was what always happened when I tried to do it myself at home.