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“Pretty big leap, from a party to a riverbank.”
“I’ll bet they think it’s pretty funny, ditching me all the way out here in this scratchy suit.” As gags went, it was a lousy one. “But what I can’t figure out is how anyone could have been straight enough to drive. One minute I’m blissed out—well, okay, maybe a little nauseated—heading for the bathroom. Then things get hazy, and next thing I know, I’m here. I saw your feet sticking out from the trees and I figured maybe all of us decided to commune with nature while I was blacked out. Weirder things have happened. But then I got a better look at you and realized you weren’t at the party.”
“No kidding.”
“I would have noticed.”
“Hard to miss someone twice your size and twice your age.”
“Hello—I’ll be thirty next month. And you hardly qualify for a senior discount.”
Thirty? I slid him a sidelong look. Good genes.
“What about you?” Shane asked. “How’d you end up in the middle of nowhere?”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t blame drugs for my current predicament. All I could point to was my own stupidity.
2
Love is the closest thing to heaven you can experience on earth, at least while you’re in the thick of it. That’s why so many people keep going back for more, even after they’ve been burned. I’d met my last heavenly body at an overpriced cafe over by the second-hand record store and the yoga studio that keeps changing management. Literally bumped into him while I was heading for the john and he was bussing his own table. Dirty dishes went flying, a plate, a cup, a water glass and a fork. Yet miraculously, the two of us lunged, each to our own right side, and caught everything breakable before impact. The only thing that hit the floor was a balled-up paper napkin.
“Talk about being in sync,” he said. And then he took a better look at me and gave me the old once-over.
When it comes to hooking up, I’m not usually the one to start things. I don’t need to. Some people don’t know eye contact from bedroom eyes, but I’ve never mistaken polite interest for flirtation. The guy with the quick reflexes and nimble hands was looking at me like a starving dog eyeing a steak. Just for a split second. Because it’s none too safe to cruise someone who looks like they’ll kick your ass from here to next Wednesday if they aren’t flattered by your attentions.
But I responded the way I normally did when the situation permitted—sustained eye contact, a slow smile—and before I knew it, Gabriel of the fast hands and faster smile was figuring into my weekend plans. I’d pegged him to be about my age, but he was half a dozen years older, pushing fifty. He’d had a more forgiving life, one that involved a desk job, a gym membership and a skin care regimen. That might’ve rubbed me wrong, but in him, it didn’t. He was confident, and he was sincere. And he was perfectly happy to let me be myself…the parts of myself I could actually be without putting him in the line of fire, anyway.
Unfortunately, he was smart, too. He knew something was up the first time I rendezvoused fifteen minutes late. In three seconds flat, warning flags rose from every piece of my story I’d neglected to share. Initially, he’d assumed I was married, sneaking off from my wife, my kids and my house in the suburbs for a little thrill on the side. He didn’t accuse me of it directly, but I read it plain and simple in his eyes. And even as the idea occurred to him and he checked my left hand for the dent of a wedding band, I could see he realized he was wrong, at least about the specifics of what I wasn’t telling him. He only knew something didn’t add up.
Thanks, I told him, it’s been fun.
That was that.
You gotta be careful when you deal with the smart ones, and that’s a shame. Most anyone can figure out what to do in bed. The clever ones are the ones who still hold your interest once the clothes go back on.
In the scheme of my entire life, I hadn’t actually put in all that much time with Gabriel. A few hours spread over the course of a couple of months. But the impact someone has on you can’t always be measured in the hours, minutes and seconds you’ve spent together. It was maybe a month after I dumped Gabriel and I was still thinking about him. The way his ass filled out a pair of jeans. The way his breath caught when he was ready to bust. The way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. But what I should’ve been thinking about in that fateful moment was Carmine Rossi.
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for Carmine to have me tag along to a meeting and talk some sense into one of his debtors. He was well into his seventies, and his “Red Knuckle” days were long past. We’d made a handful of stops around the low-rent district, visiting shop owners for our various weekly tithes. We headed back to the Caddy, which was tucked out of the way, deep in the alley. Carmine popped the trunk and gestured for me to stash the cartons of cigarettes we’d been gifted by the corner bodega. Maybe five years ago, his hearing had started to go, so I thought nothing of it when he pointed past my shoulder at nothing and asked, “You hear that, Gino?”
I turned to squint into the alleyway and reassure him there was no one there, and then I heard it, all right. The crunch. Like the sound my feet were currently making as I trudged over the gravel. Only once. But a million times louder. I mentally replayed the situation, wondering if there was any signal I failed to pick up on, any hint as to why Carmine would take his aggressions out on a member of his crew as faithful as me. Was I taking the fall for something pinned on me by one of those other lowlifes, or had word of my choice in companionship finally made its way around? Maybe I’d never know. And maybe I should just be grateful he’d taken the tire iron to my head rather than the .38 that had been lying there in the trunk right beside it.
Even if he did go to such elaborate lengths to dump me who-the-hell-knows-where. Probably to give me time to cool off as I found my way back.
“So where’s the road?” Shane asked. Not like he was challenging me—but like he sincerely wondered. “We’ve been walking for…dang, I dunno. Seems like forever.”
“We’ve been going uphill this whole time on rocky ground, and it’s rolling under our feet like a bunch of ball bearings. Probably not covering as much distance as we think.” I pinpointed a clump of gray, fog-shrouded trees and veered toward those. Our progress seemed more measurable with a goal in sight. We crunched along the pale gravel in silence, both of us determined to make those damn trees, and finally they were upon us. We pushed through.
Spread out before us was the river.
“All this walking,” Shane said, “and we were going in a circle?”
“No. Couldn’t be. It was uphill the whole time.” Just a slight grade, but even so, I’d noticed it. “Rivers bend. That’s all.”
My experience with Carmine and the tire iron aside, I made it a policy never to turn my back and let someone lurk behind me. Shane had stopped walking, so I did, too. But he wasn’t looking at me. He stuck to the trees, feet planted, arms crossed tight, scanning the river. He said, “This is the spot where I found you.”
“It all looks the same. It’s the fog.” He was right, though. It did look a hell of a lot like the stretch of river where Carmine had dumped me, from the weedy growth to the pilings at the water’s edge. I sidled a few steps closer to the shoreline,crunch, crunch, crunch, and a splash of red against the dusty, pale gravel came into view.
I know blood. There’s plenty of ways for it to wind up in all the damnedest places. But there was something too familiar about the particular shape of this bloodstain. I tried to tell myself it was all in my head, but when I got close enough for a good look, I couldn’t deny it. This was the blood Shane had puked up. How could I be so sure? The empty, pale circle, right in the middle, where I’d pried the silver dollar off the gravel. It stared up at me as if daring me to ignore what I saw, and what I knew.
