Like this whole hepatitis thing. They were going to test to see whether he was positive for it. To Brian’s way of thinking, positive was good, so if he tested positive, that would mean he didn’t have it. But the doctor had explained to him that a good result would be a negative result, which would mean he did not have hepatitis.
Fuck, who knew. Why they couldn’t make things simpler, he didn’t know.
His dad had told him that if he ever had a question about anything, all he had to do was phone him. But he’d be okay out in the world, Albert assured him. He’d do fine.
And Brian was doing fine. Until he wasn’t.
The really good thing about being on his own, though, was privacy. Having your own place, you could come and go as you pleased. You could eat whatever you wanted. You didn’t have to explain yourself.
Maybe best of all was you could have a girl over.
A girl like Jessica Frommer.
Not that she’d ever actually stayed over at his place. But he’d believed that day was imminent. All the more reason to find her now and apologize. He was supposed to have met up with her during the time he was abducted. Since he no longer had a phone, he couldn’t call her, and without his wallet, he couldn’t even pay for a taxi.
So he would walk.
Brian figured Jessica would be surprised to see him. Not just because he hadn’t been in touch for a couple of days, but because she was unaware he knew where she lived.
One night they’d met up at the BestBet Inn, just off Route 98 on the road to Albany. Jessica never wanted to go anywhere with him in Promise Falls, and Brian wondered if that was because she thought maybe he wasn’t good enough for her, that she’d run into her friends when she was with him and be embarrassed. But she’d tell him she just thought Promise Falls was boring and it didn’t have any good restaurants. The BestBet, she said, had a pretty decent buffet. You could pick and choose what you wanted, and there was no limit on how much you could take.
Brian had started getting his hopes up that if Jessica wanted to meet him at a hotel, maybe she had plans that didn’t end with dinner.
He turned out to be right.
So after a meal that included pasta and roast beef and chicken wings and French fries and cherry pie with ice cream and about a dozen other things, Jessica confessed to him that she had booked them a room. At some point, around the time he was loading his plate with mashed potatoes, Brian must have lost hope that it was not going to happen. Now that he knew it was on, he was sorry he’d had quite so much to eat. He felt somewhat bloated.
But whatever.
They went upstairs and their first time was fast and clumsy. But within half an hour Brian was ready to go again, and things got so hot and heavy they didn’t notice that the winds outside were growing increasingly strong. Once Brian had finished, rolled off Jessica and collapsed onto his back on the bed next to her, they could hear the howling gale and the rain hitting the hotel room window. He pulled back the drapes to see a driving rain that was almost going sideways. Visibility was bad, and low spots in the road were flooding over.
Brian said they didn’t have to be in any rush. The room, after all, was booked until the morning. But Jessica said she had to get back home, no matter what the roads were like. Even though they’d brought two cars, Brian offered to give her a lift. He could bring her back the following day to pick up her vehicle. But Jessica said she’d driven through some of the worst snowstorms upstate New York had ever seen, so she wasn’t about to let a few puddles scare her.
Once Brian had helped her into her car, and watched her pull out of the BestBet parking lot, he ran to his own set of wheels, soaked to the skin, and took off after her. He stayed far enough back that she wouldn’t see him, and besides, all he was in her rear-view mirror at this time of night was a pair of headlights.
She was right. She was a good driver. She got back to her place on Pilgrim’s Way — a small one-story white house with black shutters — without incident. Brian drove right on by. He went to bed that night confident that Jessica was safely in hers.
Hey, it was just the kind of guy he was.
So, now that he was hoofing it, he knew where to go.
Along the way, he thought of all the other people he needed to get in touch with. He wondered if he still had his job at the car wash. He’d gone two days without showing up or making any calls to explain his absence.
They’d be pissed.
He figured he’d have to go to his parents’ house to use their phone to cancel his credit cards. Then there’d be the hassle of getting a new driver’s license. Man, hepatitis was the least of his worries.
He reached Pilgrim’s Way and strode down the sidewalk. It wasn’t dark yet, so the house was not hard to find. Jessica’s car, a blue compact four-door, was parked behind a Ford pickup.
Brian went up the steps to the door and rang the bell. He was thinking he’d have to show Jessica what had been done to his back, but he’d really have to work up to it. Didn’t want to freak her out.
He could hear someone approaching the door. Quick, soft steps.
When the door opened, Brian had to look down. It was a girl, maybe four years old, in a pair of red pajamas. Curly blonde hair, rosy cheeks, bare feet. She looked up at Brian and grinned.
“Boo,” she said.
“Uh,” he said slowly, “I’m looking for Jessica?”
Could this be Jessica’s little sister? She hadn’t mentioned having one. If this girl was her sister, there sure was one hell of a big difference between their ages. More than twenty years, Brian figured. A visiting niece, maybe?
The little girl shouted, “Mommy!”
Brian felt a sudden queasiness in his stomach.
The child stayed by the door as Jessica shouted, “I’ll be right there, Gilda!”
The girl wiggled her nose as she looked up at Brian. “What’s your name?” she demanded.
Brian said, “Uh.”
Suddenly Jessica was there. Her expression was one of instant panic. “Go watch TV, Gilda.”
“There’s nothing on.”
“Go!” she said sharply.
Jessica did not invite Brian in. Instead, she closed the door partway and spoke to him through the crack. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“I... I wanted to apologize. I was supposed to meet you and—”
“You have to leave. You have to leave right now.”
A man’s voice boomed from deeper inside the house. “Jessica!”
“Who’s that?” Brian asked, starting to feel overwhelmingly confused. “Is that your dad?”
“No, it is not my dad,” she whispered.
“Whose kid was that?” he asked. He was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he was hoping maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. Before she could answer, he said, “Aw, Jeez.”
“You have to go,” Jessica insisted.
“So you’ve got a kid?” Brian said. “And you’re married?”
“Please,” she said. “I was going to — I would have told you—”
“Ah man, I feel like such an idiot,” he said. “My family’s right. I really will fall for anyone’s bullshit. No wonder you didn’t want to be seen around here with me. I was starting to think maybe you were ashamed, but I get it now. You didn’t want to be—”
A hand came around the edge of the door and opened it wider. The hand, Brian quickly saw, was connected to a thin, ropy arm. Jessica’s husband was a good six feet tall, thin and wiry. His eyes were small and set deeply under his brow.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Jessica said. “Just someone... What is it you’re selling again?”