The Three-Day Affair (18 page)

Evan left my house at six thirty with Jeffrey in the rental car. He would drop Jeffrey at Newark Airport and return the car there, then take a cab back to Manhattan. Nolan’s flight wasn’t until noon the next day, so I suggested he spend the night at the house. He’d said very little since we left the studio hours earlier. I didn’t know if he’d want to stay over, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. But Cynthia wasn’t due back until midmorning tomorrow, and the thought of spending the night in the house alone with my thoughts seemed almost unbearable.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

The afternoon breeze had stilled, and it was becoming a
pleasant
evening. Nolan decided to go for a run while I showered. “I can’t remember the last time I skipped two days,” he said.

“What about your head?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’ll be a good test. See if it stays attached.”

I started a pot of coffee and went into the bathroom. A half hour later, I emerged clean and shaved and feeling half alive. And ravenous. I put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and ordered a large pizza for delivery.

I poured myself a cup of coffee, flopped onto the sofa in the living room, and turned on the television. I flipped the channels, looking for special news segments, interrupted programs. This is how I’ll watch TV from now on, I thought. But soon I settled on a baseball game, and for a while I watched it, until Nolan came through the front door covered in sweat.

“Good run?” I asked.

“I’m getting too old to skip days,” he said. “This was exactly what I needed.” He wiped his face with his T-shirt. “Except, now I’m starving.”

“Pizza’s already on the way—sausage and peppers.”

“Pizza?” He shook his head. “We can do better than pizza. Call them back. Cancel the order.”

“You have something better in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” He smiled. “What’s the best
restaurant
in town?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going there. My treat.” He went into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a glass of water. “I think you and I need to have a first-class dinner.”

“You sure about that?”

“Cancel the damn pizza, Will.” He chugged the rest of the water and went to put the glass in the sink. “I’m going to take a shower. Afterward, maybe you can help me change this damn bandage. In the meantime, make reservations. And don’t be cheap about it.”

While Nolan took a shower, I called the pizzeria, and then went online to see if La Cachette was open on Sundays. I’d never eaten there before—way too pricey—but it wasn’t far away, and I’d read somewhere that it was the governor’s favorite restaurant.

Our table was by the window of the converted Victorian
mansion
. When we were seated, and had ordered a bottle of wine and the special fruit and aged-cheese appetizer, Nolan said, “So that sound board, in the studio. You said it’s getting replaced?”

“In a couple of months. That’s the plan, anyway.”

“So what’ll make the new one better than the old one?”

He really seemed interested. Maybe this was a politician’s trick, but I didn’t think so. More likely, the trick was that for some people, being interested in the details of others’ lives wasn’t a trick.

“Well,” I said, “for one thing, the old console is just plain busted. Certain tracks don’t work at all, or they’re noisy, or unpredictable. But the main difference is that the new one will be digital.”

“Everything’s going digital now, it seems.”

“Just about. It used to be that digital recording didn’t sound very good. But now the sampling rates are so high, it’s nearly
impossible
to tell the difference between digital and analog.”

“So why do it?”

“Easier editing, easier backup … basically, a lot more
flexibility
because you’re dealing with files of data rather than tape.”

“But you’ll have to learn the new console. Will that be hard?”

“Not too hard,” I said. “The basic principles are the same.”

“I’ll bet you’re good at your job,” he said.

I thought about it a minute. “I am. It isn’t glamorous work. But I think I make the bands I work with sound better.”

A basket of bread had come, and we each took a piece.

“I really like this restaurant,” he said, looking around. “Good choice. You don’t find many French restaurants in Missouri.”

I’d nearly finished my glass of wine. I felt soothed by it, and by the clink of silverware against fine dishes and the quiet
conversations
going on at the other tables. People around us seemed
to be enjoying their meals, their wine, one another’s company. Checks lay unpaid on tables while cups of coffee got refilled and wide slices of pie were slowly chipped away at. A world of worry and hurt waited outside, beyond the valet-parked lot, and nobody seemed in a rush to get there. Nolan had been right. We needed this. I refilled my glass.

“Do you remember,” he was saying, “when you tried to speak French to that girl in our dorm freshman year?”

Of course I remembered. Just as I remembered Nolan—or Evan or Jeffrey—reminding me about it any number of times over the years. Three evenings ago this would have bothered me, but now I felt glad for this ready-made role I could step into, this simpler version of myself that I could inhabit.

“Sandy,” I said.

“
Sandy
, of course.” He laughed. “The girl whose goat you loved. Tell me again what it was in French?”

I sighed.
“J’aime votre chèvre.”

He laughed some more. “
Sandy, I love your goat
. How can you beat that?”

I’d thought
chèvre
meant hair. I’d only taken a few weeks of French.

He finished his glass of wine and poured another. “Well,
nobody
could blame you for trying. You weren’t the only
nineteen-year
-old in love with Sandy and her long blonde goat.”

“I was only eighteen,” I said.

Youth. The ultimate excuse. Let me be eighteen again! I hadn’t much liked it at the time. But never mind. Let me try again—
eighteen
, or fifteen, or five—so I could learn everything all over and maybe this time get it right.

We ate, and we drank, and we were funny and charming. Except for the extraordinary bill, it felt almost like old times.

The waiter cleared off the table, brushed the crumbs from the tablecloth, and returned with menus for dessert and after-dinner drinks.

I was full from all the courses that seemed to keep coming and waved off the dessert menu. “Just coffee for me.”

“Have you ever tried vintage port?” Nolan asked me. And
before
I could answer, he had ordered a glass for each of us. Then we both ordered dessert to go with it.

We didn’t leave the restaurant until after ten. By then I was fairly drunk. By the time the check came, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. The port had gone down easy, and the
coffee
was warm and soothing.

Nolan offered to drive us home, and I gladly handed over the keys. Several times I felt myself nodding off in the car. Walking into the house, my limbs felt unimaginably heavy. There was a message from Cynthia on the machine.
Just checking in. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Call if it’s not too late.

I helped Nolan open the futon in the living room and got some sheets and pillows from the linen closet.

“I can take it from here, chief,” he said. “You look beat.”

“Yep,” I said, already imagining how good the bed would feel.

“You’d mentioned on Friday a bottle of Scotch. Do you mind if I …”

“In the cabinet over the refrigerator. Help yourself.”

“You’re probably too tired for one more.”

“You could say that.” I was heading toward the bathroom to brush my teeth, but on the way I stopped. “I want to thank you for dinner. I really enjoyed it.”

He smiled. “So did I.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. You know,
tomorrow
or whenever. But I want you to know that this was really … good. It was a good thing to do.”

“I feel the same way,” he said. “It really was a perfect dinner.”

I yawned, and hoped that when I lay in bed, the room wouldn’t spin. “Well, it’s getting late. So I think I’m going to turn in. If you need any extra blankets or anything—”

“I’ll be fine. Go to bed. I might just have one more drink. Watch a little TV. Let me know if the volume’s too loud.”

“I’m sure it won’t be. I’m really tired. Well, good night.”

“Good night,” he said.

I lay in bed, glad to see that the walls and ceiling were holding in place, and from the phone on my bedside table I dialed
Cynthia
’s cell. Trying to sound reasonably sober, I left a message on her voicemail:
It’s me, golf was fun, I’m going to bed, can’t wait to see you tomorrow. Oh, and if you need me, call the house—my cell still isn’t working.

I had her sister’s home number memorized, but they all went to sleep early and I didn’t want to wake anybody.

I shut off the light and lay on my back. It was almost eleven. Cynthia was probably in bed right now, too. Reading a book, maybe. Or more likely, the kids had worn her out and she was asleep.

I was fairly certain that when she came home tomorrow, I’d tell her exactly how I’d spent the last three days. I didn’t see how we could live the rest of our lives with such a profound secret
between
us. So I knew I ought to have felt dread lying there, staring into the darkness. But I didn’t. While I didn’t expect Cynthia ever to understand the things I had done, I had the feeling that she’d find a way to forgive me and to accept what had happened. Our marriage would survive.

I couldn’t account, exactly, for my optimism. Yet I felt it. Maybe it was that hastily drawn-up contract with Marie. I didn’t want my friends to lose all their money—and I didn’t want to lose all mine, either—but I couldn’t help feeling relieved by
Marie’s reckless, greedy demand. It showed tremendous nerve, and it meant that maybe we hadn’t traumatized her quite as badly as I’d thought.

But ultimately all that mattered was that we had let her go, just as we said we would. Two days too late? Of course. But I’d
protected
her. I’d kept my word, and now she was free—to collect the money, to move her grandmother into a better nursing home, or not. Free to turn us in, if that’s what she decided to do. Free to do whatever the hell she wanted.

And I felt optimistic about that, too. Because I was pretty sure that she’d decide to live up to her end of the bargain. It was just like Nolan had said. She was one of us. She’d take the money and leave us alone. She’d keep her word, same as we would.

A train rumbled quietly several miles off in the distance. Ever since childhood, this had been a peaceful sound to me. I’d lie in bed and hear that deep rumble and imagine all the people on the train heading off to follow their dreams.

I took a sip of water from the glass on the bedside table, turned my pillow over to the cool side, and settled back down.

This was what I concluded: I had acted badly, but not so badly that I felt like a stranger to myself. Not so badly, I hoped, that I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

And to prove it, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Movement in the dark bedroom. Something coming quickly
toward
me.

I gasped.

“Relax, it’s only me,” Nolan whispered. My heart whacked against my ribs.

“What’s wrong? What time is it?”

“Put on some clothes and meet me by the front door. Dark clothes. And don’t turn on any lights.” Before I could ask him more, he left the bedroom.

I looked at the digital clock on my nightstand: 2:13
AM
. I put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, used the restroom, and went to the front hallway. Nolan was waiting for me. He had on jeans and a black T-shirt. His shoes were the black loafers he’d been wearing all weekend.

“I need you,” he said, “to run an errand with me. We won’t be gone long. Leave all the lights off. Come on, we’re wasting time.” He opened the front door and waved me ahead of him.

“Wait.” I was still feeling disoriented from being awakened so suddenly. “What’s this about?”

“There isn’t time. Just come on.”

“I need to lock up.”

He held up a set of keys—mine—and handed them over. I locked the front door behind us and stepped down onto the front walkway.

The air had cooled considerably since dinner. My car was in the driveway, where Nolan had parked it earlier. He motioned me toward the driver’s seat.

“You drive,” he whispered.

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re in the car.”

When we were seated, doors closed, he said, “You were telling me the other day about that place you used to hike. Up in the mountains. Back in high school.”

“What?” I realized that I was probably still a little intoxicated. “Yeah, that’s right. So …”

“So that’s where I need you to take me.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Up in the mountains. Can you find it?”

“It’s been years. I don’t even know if those trails still exist.”

“But you’d know where it is.”

“Nolan, it’s two in the morning. What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Will. For your own good, I’m going to have to decline.”

“Well, if you aren’t going to tell me …” I reached for the door handle.

“
Please
.” He put a hand on my arm. Despite the cold, he was sweating. “I know it’s a strange request. But I spent almost two million dollars today. I think I’m entitled to a favor. So please—do me this simple favor. Take me to the hiking trail.”

I started the engine and backed out of the driveway. Nolan apologized for ruining my night’s sleep. When I didn’t respond, he had nothing else to say.

Every so often, a session at the studio would run late into the night, and I always found it peaceful driving the streets that, any other time of day, were jammed with angry motorists. We drove these local roads that I’d come to know so well, then took the highway northwest through rolling hills. The sky darkened, the hills grew larger. After thirty miles or so the car’s engine began to work hard as we rose more steeply into the Kittatinny
Mountains
, well past the turnoff for the golf course we’d played
earlier
that day.

At the town of Colesville, I exited the highway and, not having made this drive in over a decade, hoped that my instincts would push me in the right direction. We wound round the narrow road that cut through dense woods, the headlights revealing sharp curves seconds before we reached them. It seemed likely that where there had once been forest there would now be a shopping mall or a multiplex. But no. These hills were still remote, still
populated
only by trees and rocks and dirt. When I’d first left the city for the suburbs, I’d been amazed by the dark night sky. I had
forgotten
about this. This was real darkness.

The road curved sharply back and forth up one side of a
mountain
, then along a ridge and down again. At this time of night, no other cars were on the road. Nor were there buildings, road signs, or even mile markers. I wasn’t sure how far to go. But then
without
even remembering which landmark to look for, we came upon the small green sign telling us we’d just entered the town of Grafton. I began to look for the next left turn, which, if I
remembered
correctly, would take us close to the trail.

After turning left, the road cut steeply downhill, narrowed, and after about a mile turned to gravel. Then, abruptly, it ended. No cars, no streetlights, no houses. Not even a sign for the trail. The trailhead was still eight or ten miles down the road from where we’d turned off. But my friends and I had liked to enter
here, because the Boy Scouts and day hikers never made it this far along the trail.

“Cut the lights and the engine,” Nolan said.

“Tell me first what’s going on.”

“Cut the engine and I’ll show you.”

We got out of the car. Clouds had moved in since dinner, and there were no stars. Just a dull reminder of the moon behind a canvas of clouds. The elevation of these mountains wasn’t much, fifteen hundred feet maybe, but the wind was strong here, the air cold. It was a raw night best spent indoors, not out here. Not when you’ve run out of the house without even a jacket or
sweatshirt
. I shivered.

“I want you to know,” Nolan said, “that I’d have done this alone if I thought there was any way that I could. Okay, open the trunk.”

The word “trunk” snapped me awake and sobered me up. Something was in the trunk. And I had driven it here.

I shook my head no.

“Open it, Will.” When I didn’t move, he said, “Then give me the keys.” He took them from me.

A moment later, the trunk was open, and I was looking in. I don’t know exactly what I expected to see, but I was surprised at first. And, for a moment, relieved.

“That’s from the studio,” I said.

“I know.”

I was trying to piece together a coherent story as to why Nolan would sneak out of the house while I slept, let himself into the studio with my keys, and steal the canvas sack filled with drum hardware.

As I thought about this, he opened the back door and removed the shovel. It was mine, from the garage. The one I used to dig our garden plot. That was when my surprise turned to
understanding
, and then to revulsion.

While I’d been sleeping, Nolan had been busy.

My legs nearly gave out from under me. “You killed her.”

After everything we’d been through, he’d gone and killed her anyway. It made no sense.

Nolan shook his head. “No—is that what you … no. Will, I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I swear, I didn’t.”

“Then what—”

“How about you don’t ask me that, okay? Let me do you that favor. Just shut up, take an end, help me carry this awhile, and don’t ask me a single thing. We’ll do this, then we’ll drive home, you’ll go back to bed, and when you wake up it’ll be tomorrow. Let’s do it exactly like that, okay?”

“So you didn’t … hurt her?”

“It isn’t a body, Will. I promise. Now take an end.”

I looked into the trunk again. It was just a bag from my
recording
studio. Drum hardware. Cymbal stands and snare-drum stands and the metal legs of floor toms. It didn’t need to make sense.

I began to lift an end of the bag out of the trunk.

It was very heavy, no surprise. But silent. Metal drum
equipment
would rattle.

Although we were alone, I wanted to be safely in the woods
before
saying another word. We hauled the bag out of the car. I gripped the handle at one end of the bag with both my hands. Nolan needed only one hand. With the other, he carried the shovel. We walked sideways, the bag swaying between us. Once I could no longer see the car or the road, I told Nolan to set the bag down.

We’d barely gone a hundred feet, but I was down on my haunches sucking wind.

“You’re lying.” Frigid air stung my throat. “How could you? We had an agreement. You didn’t even give her a chance.”

“Listen to me. Marie is perfectly fine. Now please, I’m begging you—”

“No. Not until you explain.”

“Goddamn it, Will …” He threw down the shovel. “Can’t you see I’m trying to do you a favor?” He stared at me. I stared back. We waited while the tops of trees bent in the wind. And when he saw that I wasn’t going to budge or even blink until hearing the truth, he knelt down beside me and his voice softened. “He saw us. He saw
her
.”

At first I thought he was talking about Joey, but then I understood.

“He was only a panhandler,” I said. “He wouldn’t have put anything together.”

“He
saw
her, Will. There was no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“It was our only loose end. I had to do it. For all of us. Because nobody else would have.”

He’d come to this decision, no doubt, during his late afternoon run. While I’d been showering, working to scrub every bit of the weekend’s filth from my body, Nolan had been planning a
murder
. And then he’d dined with me, and gotten himself drunk, and then he’d gone and done it.

“Good lord,” I said.

“Don’t ‘good lord’ me. I understand your horror. It’s horrible. Don’t you think I know that? But we created the horror. The
moment
we drove away with that girl in your car, somebody was going to die. All we’re doing now is seeing it through. This”—he looked down at the bag—“is the endgame.”

“Don’t call it a game,” I said.

He watched me, maybe waiting to see if I’d bolt back to the car. “Nobody saw me do it. And nobody’s going to miss him. It’s done.” He stood up, brushed dirt off his jeans. Picked up the shovel from the ground. “So I’ll ask you again. Please, Will, take an end, and let’s finish this already so that we can leave here and go home to bed and pretend this was all a nightmare.”

We walked. But it wasn’t easy.

The spot where we’d parked the car was a tenth of a mile from the trail. As seventeen-year-olds lugging a case of beer, we’d had no problem. Now, shrubs and vines and lack of light, as well as the weight of our load, kept us moving slowly, the bag’s handle carving into my tightly gripped palms. We stepped uneasily over the hilly ground. Several times we almost walked right off the trail, which was hidden underneath a layer of wet, decaying leaves.

We took breaks every few hundred feet, and we massaged our palms, and then we walked again.

I wondered what the man’s name was. I’d never asked. And I wondered other things: where Nolan had done it. And how. And what he’d felt at the exact moment it was happening. But I wasn’t going to ask, because I didn’t really want to know. Nor was there any need to satisfy my morbid curiosity, because I was certain that Nolan had covered his tracks. His epitaph someday would read:
Nolan Albright. He covered his tracks.

We followed the trail deeper into the woods. It was very
difficult
going. The trail was too narrow for us to walk side by side. So we had to walk practically sideways, single file, Nolan ahead of me, the bag between us. The only sound was the uneven rhythm of our footfalls on the trail, punctuated by the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a rock kicked accidentally.

After about thirty minutes, Nolan stopped walking and looked around. By then our eyes had adjusted somewhat. We’d been
walking so slowly, we probably hadn’t gone more than a mile. But this section of the forest looked untouched and particularly dense.

“This will do,” he said. “Let’s head off the trail now.”

“Not yet,” I said.

Yes, we were about as far from civilization as one could get in New Jersey. Yes, my hands and arms were burning, and I wanted nothing more than to stop. I was desperate for it. But by now I had a destination in mind, and I was pretty sure we could find it if we kept walking.