I drank four beers and tried with everything I had to rationalize a way to stay, but in the end my conditioning as an analyst took over and I could not ignore the mountains of risk associated with each solution. I had to leave. It was the only way. I decided this three times, the first two backing out in a hopeful effort to find another route. But the third time I accepted it: I would have to leave. It was the only realistic option, and it is what I fully intended to do.
Around 11 p.m., just after moving to the more specific stages of plan-making, and pulling my duffel bag out from under the bed, my phone buzzed. A text. From Suzanne, I assumed. I sighed and walked to the dresser, where it sat.
Are you home? it read. It was from an unknown phone number. It was not from Suzanne.
Who is this? I responded. I waited a minute and threw a few socks into the duffel bag, when the phone buzzed again.
Adeline, it read.
I stared at the phone in my hand.
How did you get my number? I wrote.
Like it’s hard. Are you home.
Yes.
Three minutes passed between my response and her next text. It felt like thirty. I wondered if she did it on purpose.
Can I come over?
The questions again. Hundreds of them now, swirling somewhere semiconscious but never making their way to the action part of my brain. I thought of possible responses. I must have gone through a hundred. But in the end, there was only one.
Yes.
32
She was drunk when she arrived, that much was certain. She stumbled up the stairs and knocked loudly on the door.
“Hi,” I said when I opened it. Her beauty and charm put me on edge, and the prospect of her visiting my apartment after dark made my stomach contort. But it was more than that. She was one of them; not embedded in the movement of drugs from what I could tell, but close enough to those who were. If Vince knew what I knew, chances were, she knew too.
It was stupid to invite her in. It was stupid to even engage her—she could be setting me up for something. I thought about this between the time I told her to come over and the time she showed up. Paranoia, I told myself, it’s just paranoia. But that wasn’t totally true. I should have just left the text message unanswered.
I didn’t, though. I answered it. I couldn’t not answer it. It was Adeline.
Her eyes were bloodshot. She wore tight jeans, a fitted flannel shirt, and a smile. I smelled cigarettes and booze.
“Hi,” she responded.
“Did you drive here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I eyed her. “How did you know where I live?”
She giggled. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
I stepped to the side and motioned her in. “Do you want a drink?” I asked.
“That would be great,” she said, and walked to the refrigerator. She wasn’t slurring or stumbling.
“How did you know where I live?” I repeated.
She took her time and selected two pale ales from the refrigerator, then walked toward me. She twisted the tops of both and handed me one. Still no response. I tilted my head and squinted my eyes. Waiting.
“You really think it’s a secret where anyone lives?” she said finally.
“No,” I conceded. “But…you didn’t have my phone number or my address, far as I know, and now magically you have both.”
She shrugged. “I have my ways.”
I had more questions, and I was going to ask them. I started to, pressing her on what her “ways” were, exactly, but she stopped me. She stopped me because she knew she could, and so did I.
“Shhhh,” she said, putting a long, slender finger over my lips. Her touch made my skin tingle. “No more talking.” And then she kissed me for the first time.
33
In the morning she slept. The sky was clear as usual, the sunshine rousing me just after seven. I made a pot of coffee and waited for her to wake up, but she didn’t. She lay on her side and slept, her breathing rhythmic, her face and hair still perfect. There was no morning slump for her, and this did not surprise me.
With a mug of coffee, I sat on the edge of the bed, and she rolled over and smiled.
“Good morning,” she said without a yawn.
“Good morning,” I said. She put her arms around me like we were old lovers.
“Why did you come here last night?” I asked after a long silence.
She paused, then looked up and answered. “I wanted to be with you.”
“Is that all?”
“What else would there be?”
I nodded and left it at that.
She stayed for a cup of coffee. She did not scurry off like a drunken mistake. It put me on edge, her being in my apartment in the light of day, but she didn’t seem bothered by it, and I wasn’t going to tell her to leave.
“What do you do?” I asked her.
“Whatever I want,” she said, and flashed her smile.
I would have pressed anyone else. But not her.
And she was in my apartment. And she belonged to my boss. And he smuggled heroin. And all of the things associated with it. It was problematic.
“I probably don’t need to say this,” I said when she was leaving, “but this should just stay between us.”
She smiled and kissed me. “Julian, this doesn’t have to scare you. It’s not like I need to ask permission for anything. I’m my own woman.”
“Certainly. But you’re also Vince’s girlfriend, correct?”
“Yes, but I’m not his property.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t say anything. For me.”
She touched my face. “You don’t need to worry.” And she left.
Soon after, my phone buzzed. It was Damon. We had a run.
These odd coincidences piled up, coming one after another without a break. There wasn’t time to think, to sleep on decisions, to deliberately determine where my path would go. Instead, the path led me.
I still had a partially full duffel bag by my bed. I could hop in my Explorer and drive to Denver in a few hours, and figure out the next step once I got there. But this was hardly a consideration this time. Her scent was still on me, her spell was over me, and I couldn’t imagine not seeing her again.
I would not be leaving. I was a Dartmouth grad and a Wall Street swinging dick. These were mountain people, and I could beat them. The old competitive streak that had propelled me though high school, then college, then the job market, suddenly reared its head. It had been dormant for months, successfully suppressed and ignored since my trip west. But it was back. I was something, he was nothing. The thought came on like a fit of anger. I could beat him.
34
Damon picked me up at my apartment at the usual time, and I told him.
“It was heroin; I’m sure of it,” I said as the car rolled west down I-70. It was a risk, but I had to take it.
He had a look on his face; glazed over eyes and sweat forming on his temples. I watched him closely as I told him, to try and pick up cues. If he knew about it, he would have a tell. A twitch, fake bewilderment, something. So I watched him closely, to see if I could identify these things. I couldn’t. He was the one I trusted the most; we had become friends, even if only out of convenience, and when he told me he didn’t know the exact contents of what we were hauling, I believed him. He seemed credible. It was a stupid thing to do, to tell him like that. For all I knew he would immediately call the boss once I got out of the car and I would be dead before morning. But I took the leap. I needed an ally.