Desire Lines (35 page)

“I saw you eating those cheese cubes,” says Will. “Isn’t that enough protein for you?” He shakes his head in mock exasperation. “I work my butt off for you people, and all I get are complaints.”

“Well, the deejay was great,” Jack says dryly. “Those golden hits of
the eighties really brought it back. I think I relived all four years of high school. Promise me we can try something different next time? Even John Tesh would be an improvement.”

Brian sits up. “Hey, man, I like John Tesh.”

“I saw you hangin’ with Mr. Hunter,” Will says to Kathryn. “It’s too late for grade-grubbing, you know.”

Kathryn’s eyes meet Rachel’s, and then Rachel looks away.

“What did he want?” Jack asks.

“Want?” Sensing a sharpness in his voice, Kathryn gives him a questioning look. “He was just goading me.”

“I never liked that guy,” Brian says. “I never understood how Jennifer could stand to spend so much time with him.”

“It was the club,” Will says. “She was way into that back-to-nature stuff.”

All at once, with a cold certainty, Kathryn knows. She looks at Rachel. “He’s the one. Right?”

“What?” Rachel mumbles.

“The one you wouldn’t name. The guy Jennifer was seeing. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

All of them turn to look at Rachel. She doesn’t reply. Behind them, the deejay is packing up his equipment. “Karma Chameleon” is blaring from the speakers.

“Is it true?” Will asks.

“I don’t know,” Rachel says, averting her eyes.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Will says, bounding out of his chair, knocking it over. “Cut the bullshit, Rachel.”

“Yes,” she says quickly, almost defiantly. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, Jennifer was having some kind of thing with him. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“When?” Will demands.

“Spring of senior year.”

“How long have you known this?” Jack asks.

“Look,” she says, leaning forward in a conciliatory way. “She asked me not to tell anyone, and I promised.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “I found out by accident; I ran into them together one evening when I was going for a run out by Pushaw Lake. So Jennifer kind of had to tell me.” She flashes Kathryn a look. “And then, after she disappeared, I didn’t see much point in bringing it up. I thought it would make her look bad, divert attention from the real story. I didn’t want to complicate the investigation.”

“So you withheld information,” Will says.

“I didn’t think it was anything anyone needed to know about. It was private, between them. I knew that if anyone found out he’d probably lose his job. And people would assume things that weren’t true.”

“Like what?”

“Like—I don’t know. That he might be somehow involved in what happened.”

“And how do you know he wasn’t?” Brian asks. The light overhead is reflecting in his lenses, and his eyes are hard to read.

Rachel blinks. “I just—I don’t believe he was.”

“You didn’t even tell
me,”
Jack says.

She swallows. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

For a moment all of them are silent, taking it in. Will picks up his chair and stands with his arms pressing down on the back of it, as if he’s gripping someone’s shoulders. “I think I’m going to have a talk with the police,” he says finally.

“Oh, come on. That’s ridiculous,” Rachel says. “This is exactly what Rick was afraid of—that it would all be blown out of proportion.”

“‘Rick’?”

“Hunter,” she says.

Will lets out a dry, mirthless laugh. “When did you and ‘Rick’ get so familiar?”

“We’ve been … I’ve taken up orienteering.”

He shakes his head. “So that’s how it starts, huh?”

Kathryn touches Will’s arm. “Before you contact anybody, I’d like to talk to him again.”

Will glances at Jack, who lifts his fingers and shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t know, Kathryn,” Will says. “I’ll be careful.”

“Careful?” Rachel laughs incredulously. “You guys are way off base on this.”

“No,” Will snaps. “You’re the one who’s off base. Protecting that oily piece of shit—”

“I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting Jennifer.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Rachel says.

“Come on,” Will says. “You didn’t even like Jennifer. She stole Brian out from under your nose—”

“Hey, that’s not—” Brian protests.

“Oh, so we’re back to this,” says Rachel.

“Yes, Rachel,” Will says, “it’s all about
this.
High school. That’s what it’s about.”

Rachel stands up and looks around at the group. “Well, I’m sorry, I’m not going to be a part of it. You all need to turn him into a scapegoat because Jennifer’s still missing and there has to be a logical reason for it—there has to be someone to blame. Well, maybe you’re not going to find a reason. Maybe you’re just going to have to accept the fact that she’s gone, and she’s not coming back.” She turns to Will. “Anyway, don’t you think you should be focusing your energy on your own life right now?”

Will looks at her in disbelief. “Rachel, you are so full of shit,” he says.

She grabs her bag off the table, and Jack rises in his chair. “Listen,” he says in a low, reasonable tone. “I hope we can trust you to keep quiet about this for now.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of all this amateur sleuthing. Besides, Rick can take care of himself. He has nothing to hide.”

Jack nods, chin forward, a conciliatory gesture.

“Well,” Rachel says bitterly, “happy tenth, everybody.” She turns to leave, and Jack touches her arm. “Whoa, slow down,” he says, but she flinches away, and he doesn’t try to stop her. They all watch her go, banging through the double doors to the lobby.

ON THE WAY
out to their cars, Jack says, “So, what are we all doing now?”

Kathryn’s head is pounding and she feels slightly sick from the greasy food and vodka tonics and all the recent drama. “Life in the Fast Lane,” the song that was playing as they left, is echoing in her ears. “Haven’t you had enough for one evening?”

“I’m going to bed,” Will says tersely.

“And I have to drive back to Portland,” says Brian. “I’m going sailing tomorrow morning at ten.”

“That was smart planning,” Jack says.

Brian shrugs. “Cindy’s dad. You don’t say no.” He acts put out, but Kathryn can tell he’s pleased about it.

“What about you?” Jack asks Kathryn, nudging her shoulder.

She smiles. “I need my beauty sleep.”

“You look pretty fine to me.”

“Always the charmer,” Brian says, rolling his eyes.

“I feel lousy,” Kathryn says. “Too much vodka, I guess.”

“A coffee would help,” says Jack.

She shakes her head. “Sorry.”

“Damn, you guys are boring,” Jack says.

“Face it, man,” Brian says. “We’re getting old.”

When Will and Brian have gone on ahead, Jack asks, “Are you okay going home by yourself?”

“I’ll be all right,” Kathryn says. “Thanks.”

He nudges her again. “Be careful.”

It isn’t until Kathryn is on the way home that she begins to feel a little afraid. She looks in the backseat, locks the doors, glances in her rearview mirror to see if anyone is behind her. As she drives through the downtown, the streets are deserted. The traffic lights are blinking, some red, some yellow. Three men are milling around outside the bus station; there’s no bus in sight. The storefronts are dark and sad-looking, as if they were abandoned long ago, in a different era. The bank clock says it’s 11:41.

She pulls into her mother’s driveway and sits there for a few minutes with the motor running, looking up at the dark house. Then, almost without thinking about it, she puts the car in reverse and circles back out onto the quiet street, the wheels squealing slightly as she drives away. She cuts through Little City, slowing through stop signs, taking her foot off the brake as she coasts down the long sinuous stretch of Kenduskeag Avenue, gathering speed as she approaches the bottom of the hill. Taking an abrupt right on Harlow Street, she crosses the river, a gurgling shimmer in the darkness, made barely visible by the dim glow of streetlights. She makes her way up another rise, paralleling the river until the road takes a sharp turn left past a cemetery, and crosses Ohio Street at the top.

Driving at night has the feel of an adventure, a reckless journey into uncharted space. On the dark side streets, up steep inclines and around narrow corners, she can only see as far as the headlights; everything she passes is swallowed up behind. The streets are eerily quiet; the houses she passes are dark blank squares, virtually invisible except for the occasional metallic light of a TV screen.

She wants to drive fast on these roads, to push her foot on the pedal all the way to the floor. There’s something about the stillness that makes her want to get wild, scream at the top of her lungs, disappear in a puff of green smoke like the Wicked Witch of the West. She remembers this feeling from high school, when any kind of altered state seemed preferable to the state she was in. The method didn’t matter—a fast car, a
scary movie, alcohol, sex, drugs—the effect she was after was the same. She wanted to be somewhere, anywhere but where she was. She wanted to surprise herself.

A LITTLE WHILE
later Kathryn pulls up in front of Jack’s building and sits in the car for a moment before turning it off. Glancing up at the old Harlow Street School building, her eyes go to the second-floor corner, where Jack has told her his apartment is. The windows are dark except for a small glow from somewhere inside. She takes a deep breath and gets out, locking the car behind her.

At the entrance to the building, Kathryn hesitates. Jack may have urged her to go out tonight, but he didn’t exactly invite her over. He probably would never have imagined that she’d just drop by—not without calling first, and certainly not this late. She hadn’t imagined it, either. She has learned from experience that most people don’t like to be dropped in on unannounced. In high school, after she learned to drive, she had made the mistake of assuming that her father’s house was also her home, and she showed up there a few times without asking in advance. The first time she didn’t even knock; she went straight to the fridge to get a soda. She was sitting at the glass-topped kitchen table drinking Diet Slice out of a can and flipping though a fitness magazine when Margaret rounded the corner with a juice glass, saw Kathryn, and screamed, dropping the heavy glass on the Italian tile floor. It shattered, cracking one of the tiles. The next few times Kathryn had knocked, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Her father and Margaret were always ill at ease, as if she’d caught them doing something illicit. One time it was pretty clear that they’d been having sex; her father came out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt, and Margaret stayed behind the door the entire time Kathryn was there. After that she stopped going out to see them so often, and she usually made appointments in advance when she did. As a result,
her visits became carefully orchestrated affairs: three chicken breasts marinating on the counter, place mats and cutlery neatly laid out on the dining-room table, a family movie from the video store sitting in its plastic case on top of the TV.

Kathryn may not have planned on coming to Jack’s apartment tonight, but now that she’s here she realizes she’s been thinking about it for a while. Calling him first seemed too premeditated, and it also risked the possibility that he might hesitate or even say no. She knows that the risk she’s taking now is worse—after all, he could shut the door in her face. He could have someone up there with him. But she’s willing to chance that he won’t, and he doesn’t, and this realization emboldens her. She rings the bell.

For a long moment there’s no answer. Then she hears a voice from somewhere above. She steps back from the doorway and looks up, and there’s Jack, leaning out of one of his windows.

“Hey there,” he says with evident surprise.

“I was just driving around …” she says. Suddenly she wants to turn around and flee. “I guess it’s too late.”

“No, it’s fine. Just a second, I’ll come down.” He disappears, and she stands there for a moment. Then she notices that the door isn’t completely shut. She pushes it with the flat of her hand and it opens, and she steps inside.

Her footsteps echo in the wide, empty hallway. The overhead lights are dim. She keeps to the right side of the marble steps, sliding her hand along the smooth wooden banister as she makes her way upstairs. At the top she pushes through swinging wooden doors and walks straight into Jack. “Oh, my God,” she breathes, clutching her hand to her chest, “you scared me.”

“You scared me,” he says.