Night Tides (13 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

P
ATTY
P
ATILIA’S SHOW
ended at 12:15 A.M., and by then Rachel was ready to scream. The espresso mixed with her nerves to make her tenser than usual, and the constant uncertainty of not knowing which saccharine-laced tune would be the last set her temper on edge. It would’ve been bearable had the ratio of good to bad songs been higher.

As the crowd thinned, she took a seat at a wobbly table, and by the end of the set there were only five other people left, plus the barista, who looked asleep on his feet. She studied each of them as closely as she could without being blatant; none had the obvious look of a kidnapper. Two were college boys, two more were the girls with them, and the final patron was a gray-haired man with an asthma inhaler in his pocket. She couldn’t rule him out, but he certainly seemed fragile and soft for someone who had overpowered three young, athletic college girls. Of course, a gun and the element of surprise might easily compensate.

At last Patty finished her final song, a long ode to a former downtown bookstore, the lyrics filled with literary references. She nodded to the remaining patrons and said, “And that, my beautiful friends, is the end. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves. Please, support your local artists and don’t file-share.”

The two young couples stood and clapped. Rachel sensed that they were Patty’s friends, along for moral support. The older man with the inhaler stood and toddled—no other word for it—toward the men’s room.

Rachel sat, fingertips drumming on the table, until the friends finally left. Patty then wiped down her guitar, placed it in the case, and folded the little stand she used to hold her songbook. Rachel stood at the edge of the riser and said, “Hi, I really enjoyed your show.”

Patty looked up and smiled.
My God, she’s a baby
, Rachel thought. Behind the eyeliner and lipstick she looked like a little girl masquerading as an adult. “Thank you,” she said with guileless sincerity. “I saw you come in earlier, and I could tell you didn’t expect the show. It means a lot that you stayed for the whole thing.”

“There was no cover charge,” Rachel said. “Wait, I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant.”

“It’s okay. In a town full of music, sometimes the only way to be heard is to give it away for free. I do charge for the CDs, though.”

“I didn’t bring enough cash, I’m afraid.”

“Excuse me,” another voice said.

The old man with the inhaler stood politely, hands clasped behind his back. “I’m sorry for interrupting,” he said, “but I wanted to catch you before you left. I think some of your lyrics are extraordinary.”

“Thank you,” Patty said, and bowed her head.

“Of course, some of them are utter tripe,” the man continued. “In New York many years ago, I was fortunate enough to see an early show by a ragged-voiced young man from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman. He, too, had glimmers of genius among the tripe. Through hard work, he learned to emphasize the genius and get rid of the rest. And I think you can do the same.”

“Did he ever record anything?” Patty asked.

The old man smiled. “Yes. Under the name ‘Bob Dylan.’” He touched his forehead, the gesture somehow chivalrous. “And with that, I’ll say good night.”

They both watched him pick his way through the disarrayed chairs scattered in the empty room. “Wow,” Patty said after the door closed behind him. “Do you believe him?”

“That he saw Dylan? Sure, why not?”

“No, that I could be
as good as
Dylan.” She looked up at Rachel with sincere interest.

“Everyone starts somewhere,” Rachel said with a smile.

Patty reached into her bag and pulled out one of her CDs, along with a silver Sharpie. “Well, anyone as riveted by my music as you were deserves to have it, money or not. If your conscience bothers you, buy one at my next show and give it to someone as a gift.” She took off the cap with her teeth and said around it, “Who should I make it out to?”

“Just Rachel.”

“Rachel. That means
innocent
, doesn’t it?”

“My father always told me it was a female sheep.”

“In Hebrew, they represent the same thing.”

“Then I guess
ewe
got it.”

Patty giggled at the pun and handed her the CD. “Thank you again. I’m here next month, on the tenth. I hope to see you then. Bring some friends too.”

Rachel did not move. Patty frowned and said, “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just… I want to tell you something.”

Patty perched on the stool like an eager little girl and rested her elbows on her knees. “What?”

“I just… well…” Despite all the mental rehearsal, Rachel couldn’t get the words out, knowing how weird they would sound.

Patty smiled sympathetically. “It’s okay, Rachel,” she said in a soft, patient tone. “I think you’re lovely too. But I should tell you, I’m really not gay.”

Rachel blinked, flushed, and said quickly, “No, that’s not what I meant. I—”

Patty gently touched Rachel’s arm. “I have to go. It’s late, and I want to do some writing still tonight. More genius than tripe, I hope. Thank you again.” She stood and deliberately turned away to put things into her bag.

Rachel was speechless. She quickly went outside, completely nonplussed. What should she do next? She started to toss the CD into a garbage can but at the last moment stopped. She turned it so she could read the inscription in the streetlight.
To Rachel, who stayed to the end. Love, Patty
. With a little smiley face.

Shit
, she thought in annoyance.
Shit, shit, shit. Now I
can’t
just throw it away. Or leave. Shit
. She tucked it into the waistband at the small of her back, found a shadowy place beneath a tree, and waited for Patty to emerge. No one would grab the girl in the coffeehouse, and if Rachel could at least ensure she got to her car okay, she’d feel as if she’d done her duty. And if she was caught following the girl, she could spend the rest of the night explaining why she
wasn’t
a lesbian stalker. What could be better?

The traffic along Willie Street was light; in a couple of hours, when the bars all closed, the streets would flood with drunks and be truly dangerous. She wondered idly which of the half dozen vehicles parked nearby might turn out to be Patty’s.

M
ARTY
W
ALKER LOOKED
across the table at his brother. “Why am I here?”

Ethan took a swallow of his beer. “Kinda deep for this place, isn’t it?”

They sat in the Sparkler, a pizza restaurant directly across Willie Street from Father Thyme’s. Run by an extended Hmong family, it was well regarded by the late-night-munchies crowd and equidistant between Ethan’s home and Marty’s. The staff always chattered away when they saw Marty, convinced he would eventually understand, despite his protests that he barely knew any of their language. They seemed disappointed at his thorough Americanization; sometimes, so was he.

Now, though, his disappointment and annoyance were directed entirely at his brother. “It’s after midnight, Ethan. I should be at home, asleep. So should you. So why did you call me?”

Ethan looked down at the tabletop and mumbled, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“So take some NyQuil.”

“That’s not why. I…” He took another swallow. “Okay, here it is. I can’t get the woman from the diner out of my head.”

“Rachel?”

“Yes, Rachel. I want to see her again, but she practically threw me out when I was there before.”

“‘Practically’?” Marty said.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Have you talked to her since?”

“I go in there all the time. It came up.”

“What did she say?”

Marty sighed, shook his head, and deadpanned, “I can’t repeat it, it was too harsh. My virgin ears are still burning.”

Ethan smacked him lightly on the side of the head. “Don’t make me come over there.”

Marty laughed and took a swallow of his own beer. “Man, you
are
tense.”

“
What
did she
say?”

“She said that she was sorry for throwing you out, and that if you came back, the first cup of coffee was on the house.”

Ethan looked like a schoolboy granted a reprieve by the principal. “Really?”

“Cop’s honor.”

Ethan tapped idly on his beer bottle and looked out the front window. “So do you think I should go?”

“Can you keep your balls under control this time?”

“Look, the guy was an asshole, and—”

“And the diner is
hers
, not yours. You have to let people handle their own stuff.”

“Even if they do it wrong?”

“Wrong or just different?”

Ethan sighed. After a moment he said, “Want to know something else? I called Julie earlier.”

Marty’s eyebrows went up. “No.”

“Well, she called me first. I saw her number on my phone. I didn’t talk to her or leave a message or anything. But she’ll know.”

“You don’t need to get caught up in that again. Seriously. It was okay before you went overseas, but after that, something really fundamental changed in both of you. Once you got back it was like watching two sharks fighting over the last minnow.”

Ethan looked away from his brother’s steady gaze. The change, he knew, had been in him; Julie simply reacted to it. “I know. I’ll ignore her next time.”

“Good. I don’t like to give advice—”

Ethan laughed. “You love to give advice.”

“Okay, I love it, so listen to it, why don’t you? Stay away from Julie. Go talk to Rachel. Move forward, not back.”

Suddenly Ethan looked past Marty, out the window. His expression was so odd, Marty turned to follow his gaze. He saw nothing. “What?”

“This may sound crazy,” Ethan said, “but I thought I just saw Rachel across the street, outside Father Thyme’s.”

T
HE COFFEEHOUSE DOOR
opened with a loud squeak, and for a moment Patty stood silhouetted in the light. “Good night,” she called back inside, then stepped out and let the door close. She’d gone halfway up the block before Rachel realized that she wasn’t going toward any of the vehicles. She was
walking
home, alone, in the middle of the night.

Rachel slapped her palm against her forehead. This whole neighborhood was made up of students, for blocks and blocks in every direction. How could she not have thought of that? And each of those darkened houses and tree-shrouded streets represented a potential ambush.

“T
HAT
IS
CRAZY
,”
Marty agreed. “It’s going on one A.M., and she opens her diner at seven.”

Ethan nodded, accepting Marty’s explanation. But his reflexes, honed by the constant readiness necessary in the Middle Eastern desert, told him he’d been right.

Those same reflexes froze him in his chair when the Sparkler’s door opened and Caleb Johnstone entered. The gray-haired man was out of breath and sweaty and did not notice Ethan. He walked to the counter and spoke to one of the Hmong girls, who took his money and handed him a pizza. Without looking Ethan’s way, he went back outside and walked off down the street. He kept looking around, like a guilty man haunted by past misdeeds, until he turned a corner down the block.

“Now what?” Marty asked, waving his hand in front of Ethan’s face. “You’re awfully jittery tonight.”

“That was the guy I ran out of Rachel’s,” Ethan said.

“Caleb?” Marty said. “Well, he’s allowed to eat pizza too.”

Ethan glanced back across the street, toward the coffeehouse. He was certain of what he’d seen, but there seemed no point in making an issue of it. Rachel was entitled to a late-night cup of coffee in someone else’s establishment, and she had been alone. That, at least, was reassuring.

When he went to the counter to get his next drink, he noticed a tiny red smear on the floor that hadn’t been there before. The only patron he’d seen near the spot was Caleb. He started to call Marty over, to see if the red stain was paint or blood, but then decided that would
really
sound paranoid. Besides, it was most likely just pizza sauce.

R
ACHEL MOVED AS
silently as possible behind Patty, using the pools of shadow as she’d done earlier. Patty seemed oblivious to her presence, whistling and practically skipping up the sidewalk. She turned left, went down two blocks, crossed the street again, and headed up a slight hill toward the big houses that overlooked Lake Mendota. These were old structures now sliced into small apartments, the outsides covered with networks of wooden stairs.

A couple of cars passed but no other pedestrians. Rachel’s exhausted calves burned with the effort of following the girl uphill. She slipped on a discarded beer can, and the noise of metal scraping on concrete tore through the relative silence.

Patty stopped and turned. Rachel dove into the shadows beside a car parked on the street, hoping this one didn’t have a proximity alarm. Her breathing sounded like an industrial compressor in her ears, and she felt her pulse thump in her temples.

Patty stayed very still for a long moment, silhouetted beneath a streetlight. Then she resumed her trek.

Rachel crouched against the car. This was
nuts
. She’d done all she could, and that was that. She’d barely have time for a shower and nap by the time she got home, and she was too old to keep staying up all night this way.

Then, just as she was about to abandon Patty, the lights of another vehicle swept the empty street. She dropped back against the car as a Ford pickup rolled slowly past.

Rachel’s throat constricted. She somehow knew, with utter certainty, that this was the truck she’d seen outside her diner and that it meant Patty harm. She tried to see the license plate, but the spot on the bumper was empty. She realized too late that the plate was displayed in the cab’s back window.

The girl had reached the top of the hill and turned along the lakefront road. The truck was almost at the corner as well. Except for Rachel, there seemed to be no one around.