18th January, 10:04 PM
Not long now.
I put my feet on the railing and pull back on the hand-rolled. Across the street a flurry of snow passes through the orange haze around the lamp post. I exhale slowly, and reach for the bottle of whiskey, thinking again about the car ride back here, the three of us sitting with our mouths closed and our eyes refusing to meet, and the way it seemed like about ten people were missing. Leaving J there on his own had been a mistake, but I could say that about a lot of things and even if I'd dragged him with us I wouldn't know what to say to him, or how to explain anything. The fact is that I've never met him before today, and any other memories I have belong to a dead man.
The front door opens and Richard steps onto the porch. He looks bad, even in the poor light under the awning, and he stumbles as he sits down next to me. I offer him the bottle but he shakes his head and I shrug and pull back on it myself, paying strict attention to the burn it leaves in my throat.
"Not long now," Richard says, echoing my thoughts.
"Yeah."
"Either that or nothing happens."
"Could be nothing happens."
"If I wake up tomorrow I'm going to regret some of the choices I made today."
"Sounds like every day."
"Hand me the bottle."
I give it to him and he swallows heavily.
"You don't think it's really going to happen do you?" he asks.
"Who knows? Probably."
"Then what the fuck right?"
"That's right."
He rises unsteadily to his feet and arches his arm back, making to hurl the bottle into the street.
"You better not," I tell him.
"No?"
"No. I'm not quite there yet."
"Well hurry up. If it's coming it's coming soon."
I retrieve the bottle from him just as my cell phone rings. I take it from my pocket and answer it.
"Hey."
Kelly's voice, or Hazel's, not that it matters. It's a voice I didn't think I'd get a chance to hear again, but now that I have, it hits with far less force than I thought it would.
"Listen," she continues. "I'm leaving tomorrow."
"Yeah? Where are you headed?"
"Home. Back to the capital. I can't be here anymore."
"Well...," I mutter, and allow the word to fall away. I have nothing to say and even if I did I doubt it'd be anything she'd want to hear.
"I just thought I should say goodbye."
"Very kind of you."
"Well." A weight of silence presses down the line.
"We're saying goodbye we should do it proper," I find myself saying. "Have a drink with me."
She hesitates, but that's not important. It's just the moment she gives herself, believing she has a choice, when the truth is that all the answers to all the questions have already been decided; a tremor that is not a laugh passes through me and I flick what's left of my hand-rolled over the railing.
"Come on," I say in a voice I barely recognize. "What else do you have to do?"
"Alright," she sighs. "Can you meet me around 6th Bridge?"
"Is half an hour ok?"
"Fine," she replies at last, and hangs up. Richard looks at me.
"You're going out?"
"Looks like it."
"That's cutting things a little close isn't it?"
"I'll be fine."
I stand up and hand him the bottle of whiskey.
"Thanks," he tells me. He takes the bottle and puts it on the arm of the chair.
"Later," he says.
"Yeah."
I leave the porch and start down the street. When I near the corner I turn just long enough to see Richard standing by the railing. He waves once, and then he looks away.
She is dressed in the same brown jacket she wore the first night, and maybe the same jeans as well, but her hair is different, swept back from her face and held in place with a number of small pins.
"Hazel," I say. She looks up, smiling faintly.
"Hi."
"You alright?"
She shrugs.
"Hard to say."
I put my arm around her long enough to start us both walking and then I take it away.
"Don't worry," I tell her. "Everything will look better in the morning."
"You're in a good mood," she says.
"I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be? But there's room for improvement. Always is. It's why I suggested the drink."
"Sound logic."
"How about here?" I say, pointing out a small bar on the corner.
"Anything's fine."
I stop and hold the door open for her. The interior is wide, with a dark, wooden floor and a number of tables centered around a square-framed bar. A middle-aged man is sitting at the counter, apparently trying to engage the bartender, a woman in her 30s, in a one-sided conversation. Besides him, the only other customer is an elderly man sitting on his own in the back.
Hazel and I move to the counter and the waitress drifts our way.
"What can I get you?" she asks.
"Beer," I tell her. Hazel nods wearily.
"The same."
The waitress moves off.
"You holding up alright?" I ask.
Hazel nods again, but it's only a reflex action. Her eyes are heavy and shaded, and her posture is tense. I watch her fingers playing nervously with the sleeve of her jacket.
"I don't know," she says. "You're supposed to say you're ok right?"
"Maybe."
"I'm not ok."
"It was bad," I agree.
"Bad, yes."
"No question about that."
"Right."
"I wouldn't know what to make of it myself, finding out I've got a doll for a twin."
I'd meant it as a joke, but her face doesn't soften.
"I don't think you can make anything of something like that," she says. "You just try to forget it."
"Think you're likely to manage that?"
"No."
The waitress returns with a pair of mugs.
"Well let's try anyway."
Hazel manages a weak smile, and we both turn to our beers. We don't speak, and the silence between us is an odd, tight thing: sitting next to each other, we might as well be in different worlds. Down at the far end of the bar the old man is talking into his beer.
"They entered the apartment," I hear him say, and he nods several times before continuing. "In the chair next to him was the girl.. looked exactly like her, exactly... and afterwards on the street they saw it again, lying on the road..."
Beside me, Hazel is saying something. I shake my head, and then turn to her.
"Are you listening?" she asks me.
"No. I'm sorry, but that man."
"What?"
"The old man, there."
I jerk my head in his direction. The old man is still speaking, and there is no sign that he's aware of us. His eyes are on what's left of his pint of beer, and then something he says causes him to laugh, and he takes a small drink.
"What about him?" Hazel asks.
"I think he's talking about us."
"Really?" She glances down the length of the counter. "What is he saying?"
"I think he was talking about the doll."
Her face tightens.
"The doll?"
I motion for her to be quiet, but the old man is too preoccupied to notice.
"... and they left the bar with him," he mutters. "They stepped into the cold. It wasn't long before they saw the woman..."
The door swings open, drowning out the man's words in a sudden rush of cold air. I turn to find Auld standing in the doorframe, brushing snow from his shoulders and the top of his stubbled head. Neither the waitress nor the two other customers look up.
"Auld," I say; I find there is no surprise at seeing him, only that it's taken him this long to arrive.
"Isaac," he replies.
"What are you doing
here?" Hazel asks.
"Thought I could use a drink," he says, sitting down next to her. "You mind ordering for me?"
I call the waitress over and order another round, along with a third beer for Auld. The waitress delivers them with a bored expression, never once looking at Auld. At the end of the counter, the old man is still talking into his beer, and I wonder if there might not be someone sitting next to him, someone that he can see in the same way that I can see Auld, and what kind of drugs I'd have to take before I could see them too.
"You're just in time," Hazel is saying. "I'm leaving tomorrow."
"Yes," Auld answers. "Just in time."
I glance at him. He sits curled over the beer with his hands pressed to the edge of the counter. He bites down on his lower lip, and then he turns to me, his face utterly devoid of expression. I think about what happened in the mines, and how much of it Auld was responsible for. A weight builds in my chest, and it comes as something of a shock that even now I can be angry.
"How do you like my line?" I ask him.
"It's growing faint," he says.
"Is it? Guess I must be getting used to it."
"Maybe."
"What line?" asks Hazel.
"It's nothing."
"I didn't know you two knew each other," she continues.
"We've met," I answer.
"What time is it?" Auld asks, his voice neutral, as if today's date and the time were trivial things, and the three of us are not here sitting on the edge of a cliff. Whatever calm I'd managed to piece together with the whiskey and now with the help of the beer is cut away; with a single question, uttered flat and hollow and almost entirely into his glass, Auld has managed to confirm it all: this is the end, finally, and I guess there's nothing left to worry about.
I take a swallow of beer before checking the time on my cellphone.
"Around 11," I say, when I'm sure that my voice will be steady. "Just after."
"Drink up," he orders.
I close my eyes, but only briefly; it's always better to keep your eyes open, even when the only thing to look at is a scene like this, a lonely bar filled with forgotten people, and I finish off what's left of the beer in my glass, barely tasting it.
"You think I have time for another?" I ask. Auld shrugs.
"If you drink them like that, why not?"
I signal the waitress. The beer arrives and I pay for it along with all the others. Hazel watches me as I drain the glass.
"What's the matter?" she says.
"Ask Auld," I tell her. She looks at him.
"I wondered if the two of you would join me for a walk," he mutters, as if he's afraid that we might say no, and it occurs to me that maybe he isn't sure, maybe he's as blind to what's coming as I am.
"A walk?" Hazel asks.
"It's a nice night."
"It's freezing."
"Come anyway."
She shrugs and gathers her things. I try to stand but the beer rushes up to meet me and I take a moment to steady myself with my hand on the edge of the counter. On our way out, I catch the old man looking at us. He is no longer talking, and the glass in front of him is empty.
Unsteadily, I make my way across the room. Auld is walking through the door but he doesn't hold it and I have to push against its weight before exiting into the night. Up ahead Hazel is a brief, gray smudge and Auld is even less than that. None of us says anything. The snow continues to fall, and I listen to the fall of our boots and the muffled sound of our breathing. Everything is quiet, simple, still.
In a moment I grow aware of a woman standing on the corner; despite an oversized coat, she is obviously very thin, and her hair is pulled back from her forehead in a severe, bleached line. She is looking about wildly and her hands are working together, as if rubbing the cold out of her joints.
"Sarah!" she calls.
"You alright?"
The woman barely registers me, and I realize she's half out of her mind with fear.
"Have you seen a little girl?" she asks, and then she turns to Hazel, pleading: "About this high? With brown hair?"
"I'm sorry," Hazel answers, faltering.
"Is she lost?" I try.
"I don't know," says the woman. "She left the house. It's... We just live up the street. She can't have gone far."
"Can we... I mean, we can help you look for her, if you want," Hazel tells her.
"I, that's..." The woman pauses, collecting herself, or at least making the attempt. "Thank you. She's got brown hair. Her name is Sarah."
"Come on," Hazel says. "We'll go this way."
Hazel starts out, leaving Auld and I to follow after her.
"You knew about this?" I ask him.
"I knew we should go for a walk."
"And how about this girl? You think maybe you could look ahead a little to tell us where she'll be? Or is that too much to ask?" As I go on I start to feel the anger I'd managed to suppress in the bar making its way back up my throat. "Standing on the sidelines must feel pretty safe. Must be comforting to know how to avoid trouble. And to be able to wipe your hands when you put someone else in the way of it. You just say that was the way it was supposed to be and you move on. So what if anyone dies? We all die someday, right?"
Auld doesn't answer me. He moves dully, his eyes on the ground, his thin shoulders hunched against the cold. All at once I grab him by the collar, my throat tight. His body is nearly weightless.
"It was all going to turn out like this anyway, so what choice is there, right Auld?"
I shove him and I watch as he stumbles to the ground. He picks himself up and brushes the snow from his knees. I move toward him again. Hazel rounds on us, angry.
"Stop it!" she barks. "There's no point."
My hands are knotted fists. At last Auld looks at me. His face is drawn and haggard: the face of a condemned man, I think. He stands there, empty, and all the anger bleeds out from some hole in my chest.
"Yes," Auld says. "There was never any other choice."
Hazel looks from one of us to the other, and I turn my back on them both. I don't need it, her or the other one, but certainly I don't need her. I start off, unsure of where I'm going. The pavement wheels beneath me. Rounding a corner, I nearly run into a small girl. She is standing on her own in a hard pool of light. Next to her is an iron door, the service exit to an office building or a bank. Seeing me, the girl breaks into a wide smile.
"I knew you were real," she says quietly.
"Sarah?"
"I saw your line in a dream," she goes on. "That's how I know it's you."
She extends a hand, holding something up.
"You take it now," she tells me, and I look at the egg cupped in her hand. It has the formlessness of something ripped from a dream. A motion at the top of the alley causes me to turn around, and I can just make out Kelly standing there, or Hazel, but it might only be a trick of the light. Looking back, the little girl's eyes are a pair of hard, black pits.
"Take it," she says.
The egg feels very light in my hand. Flakes of snow hang suspended in the still air. I turn my hand over, and watch the egg fall to the pavement.
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