Come With Me

by Ronald Malfi

  “Then how do you explain the motel?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure there are a million plausible explanations. Why is her having an affair the first thing you jumped to? Has she ever cheated on you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Aaron,” she said, leaning toward me over the table. “Listen to yourself. This is Allison you’re talking about. You guys had a great marriage. How did she suddenly become some adulterer in your head?”

  “Look,” I said. “We’d been having some problems. I don’t know what was going on with her, but she’d become distant with me. Something had been bothering her, been on her mind, particularly those past few months. I tried to talk to her about whatever it was, but she kept insisting it was nothing. Only now, finding this motel receipt, I’m wondering if that wasn’t the reason she was pulling away from me.”

  “Because you think there’s some guy out there she was fooling around with? I don’t believe that, Aaron. And I don’t believe you believe it, either. Not really.”

  A flash of shame caused my face to heat up. Maybe Julie was right. Maybe, in my hopeless confusion, I had allowed my mind to run down avenues I normally would have found illogical. Could there be another explanation for that motel receipt? Sure, why not?

  Yet—

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding up one hand. “Just let me ask you this one other thing, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “If she was having an affair, do you think that would be something she would have told you about?”

  “Like, would she have confided in me?”

  “That’s what I’m asking, yes.”

  “Aaron, she wasn’t having an—”

  “That’s not what I’m asking right now. I’m asking if she had been having an affair, would she have told you about it?”

  “Aaron, that’s an impossible question to answer. A hypothetical of a hypothetical? Come on.”

  I glanced out the window. The shop windows across the street blazed with the midday sun. Peninsulas of dirty gray snow extended from storefront doorways and lay in ashy heaps against the curb.

  “Listen,” Julie said, picking up her cell phone and scrolling through it. “I’m going to give you the name and number of my therapist.”

  “A shrink?”

  “She’s good.”

  “You think I’m crazy now?”

  “No, dummy. She does grief counseling. She’s someone to talk to. Here. Type this into your phone.”

  “I don’t have my phone.”

  I could have told her I wasn’t wearing pants for the look she gave me. Then she reached down and pulled a pen and a crinkled white envelope out of her purse. She jotted down a name and number on the back of the envelope, then handed it to me. I glanced down at it but did not register what she’d written there. I could have been looking at Sanskrit.

  “I’m serious, Aaron. Give her a call.”

  “All right,” I said. I folded the envelope in half and tucked it into the inner pocket of my barn coat.

  “And quit worrying about this motel-room thing, will you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Besides,” Julie said, clanging her teaspoon against the rim of her mug. “When a woman has an affair, it’s the man who pays for the hotel room. It’s only the chivalrous thing to do.” And then she winked at me to show that, yes, she was joking, but that there was also some truth to the sentiment as well.

  I smiled and said, “You’re right. You win. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “See? Now you’re back on planet Earth.”

  Our food arrived and I made a good show of eating, even though that tight little knot in my stomach kept clenching and unclenching, much like a fist. And behind the facade of it all, other-Aaron, commandeering the motherboard once again, began the processes of translating Julie’s words, to break them apart and to separate fact from speculation. Just because the motel bill was paid for in cash and your name was on it, Allison, didn’t mean that it was your cash that was used. Maybe chivalry wasn’t dead. Some guy could have easily paid that bill.

  7

  Everything you had with you on the day of your death—your houndstooth topcoat, your purse, your running shoes, your wristwatch, your bloodstained beret, everything—was packed away in a cardboard box in the annex of our townhome, wedged right there between the water heater and the HVAC unit. Trayci had still been here when the items were returned by the police, and she’d packed them away for me without so much as a word. A part of me had known these things were here, but I hadn’t been compelled to go through the stuff until now. Kneeling on the concrete floor and peering into the box, I was overcome by a sudden constriction of my chest at the sight of your neatly folded houndstooth coat; I thought I might suffer a heart attack right then and there. Christ, I welcomed it.

  I pulled out your coat, pressed my face to it. The scent of Tommy Girl rushed up and shook me. I shut my eyes and summoned other-Aaron, who materialized from the fog of my grief like Humphrey Bogart. While I collapsed inside myself, other-Aaron dipped his hands inside the pockets of your coat. A ballpoint pen in your left coat pocket. A half-empty tin of Altoids in your right.

  Other-Aaron refolded your coat and set it aside. He then dug around in the box, coming upon your beret. There was the rusty bloodstain against the crimson wool, incriminating as a confession. The sight of it would have ended me, Allison, but other-Aaron was as emotionless as a combustion engine, and he only set that aside, right there on top of your coat, and did not linger on it. It was your purse that he picked up next, a cheap Louis Vuitton knockoff. Inside the purse: your wallet, cell phone, compact, two tampons, sunglasses, loose change. One other thing, too—a prescription bottle of pills. Other-Aaron removed it from the purse, but it was me who peered out of my eyes and read the label. Xanax. I popped off the cap and stared down into the plastic cylinder at the collection of oblong white tablets inside.

  How long had you been taking anxiety pills, Allison? And for what purpose?

  That night, I tried to gain access to your cell phone, but it was as if it had died right along with you. It wouldn’t power on and it wouldn’t charge. I called Tommy Weir to see if he’d be able to do something with it, but he assured me such a task was beyond his ability. I thanked him, then stood in our kitchen staring at your useless cell phone, wondering if it was possible that some part of you had used ghostly magic to kill the phone. Just as you’d sterilized your laptop, wiping it clean. As if there was something you didn’t want me to find.

  What does it matter now? Let it go.

  But I wasn’t sure I could.

  8

  On the night before I drove to the North Carolina town of Chester to seek out The Valentine Motel, an inexplicable thing happened.

  It was the middle of the night and I was in our bed, trying to force my turbulent, depressive mind to just shut down for a few hours and get some sleep. My eyelids had grown heavy but my mind was apprehensive about what dreams might come; it seemed that whenever my eyes shut for a few minutes, a thick, noxious smoke would fill my brain, manic as laughing gas, and cause a series of bells and whistles to engage. And then my eyes would flip open again, my body shaking, my forehead clammy with sweat.

  The closet light blinked on.

  I didn’t move at first. I didn’t do anything except stare at the partially opened closet door. In the darkness of our bedroom, that narrow shaft of light was as bright and blinding as the sun. I felt myself waiting to glimpse some diaphanous shape shifting about in that panel of light. Listening for some movement in there.

  There was nothing.

  “Allison.” My voice was hollow.

  I climbed out of bed, freezing now in nothing but my boxer shorts. The wind against the townhome sounded like a locomotive shuttling by, creaking the joists and beams and showering the dark windowpanes with bits of debris. When I approached the closet door, I paused. Took a breath. A part of me expected to find you on the other side of
that door, Allison. I won’t lie. A part of me hoped for it.

  The closet was empty. The fixture in the ceiling glowed bright, but there were no ghosts. There was no you. I looked at your clothes, the conga line of your shoes along the carpet, the profusion of hats on the top shelf. Your bathrobe was slung over the beveled mirror like a death shroud; I brushed your robe aside, perhaps hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of your reflection just behind mine in the mirror glass. But you were not there. I was alone.

  I switched off the light and got back into bed, where I wept until my utter exhaustion plummeted me into fitful unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  On our third date, we went to dinner at the Docksider, a decent bar and grill on the river where we ate surf and turf and watched sailboats chug up and down the muddy channel. It was dark by the time we left, and we were buoyed and giddy from a few too many rum drinks. I took your hand and turned toward the parking lot, but you pulled me in the opposite direction, and so we cut down toward the river instead. A xylophone of docks yawned out into the water, and there were about a half-dozen sailboats rocking against the pilings. It was late spring and the river smelled strongly of brine. I grew up here and had come to ignore that smell; you were a Pennsylvania girl, whose nose was more attuned to the stink of refineries. “It smells like life comes right up to the shore here, right here, and waits to be born,” you said. Then we went back up the boat ramp toward the parking lot.

  On our way to my car, we heard a woman crying from somewhere in the dark. Beneath that, the low rumble of a man’s voice. As we crossed the parking lot, we saw a couple maybe a few years older than us standing within the sickly orange spotlight of a lamppost and nestled between two vehicles. The woman was in tears, accusing the man of some injustice; the man was trying to hush her while concurrently pleading his case. At one point, the man’s voice rose; the conciliatory tone he’d been using just a moment earlier was now gone, replaced by a surge of anger. He gripped the woman around the forearm. The woman whined and, very clearly, said, “Ouch, you’re hurting me.”

  I squeezed your hand tighter and tried to pull you in the direction of my car. But you pulled me back, your feet suddenly rooted to the pavement. “Hey,” you called to the couple. They both turned and looked at you—looked at us—and then the man brought his face close to the woman’s. Teeth clenched, he proceeded to berate the woman while she continued to moan that he was hurting her. I saw her try to pry his fingers from her forearm. He, in turn, shoved her back against an SUV. I heard the back of her head strike the SUV’s window.

  There was a decorative little roundabout in the center of the parking lot—a few pilings strung together by rope, a pair of wooden oars crossed in an X, a plastic egret. You dropped my hand and marched over to the roundabout. You stepped over the rope that had been strung up around it, grabbed one of the wooden oars, and wrenched it free of the display.

  “Allison,” I said.

  You ignored me.

  “Hey,” you said, advancing toward the couple. I think the woman saw you coming, but the man was blinded by rage. You said nothing more as you came up beside them and swung the oar like goddamn Babe Ruth.

  It was a flimsy piece of wood, made brittle from being outdoors, and it cracked in half as you brought it down along the back of the man’s neck. Yet you must have managed to strike him just right, because the guy crumpled like a house of cards. His legs folded and he went down—not unconscious, but dazed enough to remain on his hands and knees like someone waiting for a child to climb onto his back and give pony rides.

  “Come with me,” you said, holding a hand out to the woman.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” the woman shouted at you. “What did you just do?” And then she dropped down to attend to the man, rubbing a hand through his hair and kissing the side of his face.

  “Hey,” I called to you. “Hey.” I touched your arm, but you didn’t turn around. You just stared at the couple, perplexed by this turn of events. Suddenly, you were the bad guy. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  You dropped the oar and followed me across the lot. I was moving quickly, but there was a dazed lethargy to your gait, as if you were wading through a dream. The look on your face was not one of confusion, however—it was one of anger.

  “You fucking crazy bitch!” the woman shouted at you from across the parking lot.

  You shoved your hands in your pockets, bladed your shoulders, and marched after me with your head down. As I turned to look after you, I could almost see waves of steam radiating from your body and dispersing into the night. Your sudden fury had left me shaken and unanchored, like something cast adrift in a dark and turbulent sea. I could not reconcile what I’d just witnessed with the woman I believed you to be—the cerebral, pragmatic, compassionate woman with whom I was already beginning to fall in love. It took the remainder of that night for the shock of what you did to evaporate from me. And even then, I never forgot it.

  It was this memory that returned to me as I motored the Civic up into the hills of North Carolina. It seemed implausible that you could be both the woman who, in the name of injustice, had cracked a decorative oar over a stranger’s head while also being the woman who may have engaged in a romantic relationship behind my back. In the clarity of day, the idea of your infidelity seemed less plausible than during the quaking, riotous, never-ending hours of the night. I had tried to do just as Julie Sumter had advised—to let it go and forget about the goddamn motel receipt. But then I’d close my eyes and wonder what the hell you were doing for two nights in some dive called The Valentine Motel over four hundred miles from our home, and doubt about you and our relationship would begin to cloud my brain all over again.

  If I found out about an affair, Allison, what would that do for my grief? Where would that leave me?

  Twice I nearly turned back. The second time was as I advanced down a curling strip of asphalt somewhere in the mountains and saw the hand-carved wooden sign on the shoulder of the road welcoming me to the town of Chester. I slowed to a stop in the middle of the road—there was no traffic out here, and I hadn’t passed another vehicle in the past half hour—and gazed at the sign.

  —Go back now, none the wiser, the pragmatic other-Aaron spoke up from behind the gray curtain in my brain.

  He was right, of course. Just as Julie Sumter had been right. None of this meant anything anymore, did it?

  I didn’t turn back. I continued on, carving my way through a forested road marked by the occasional camper or double-wide. It was late afternoon and the sun was an arterial bleed along the western horizon. Ahead, I saw a break in the trees. The road became a narrow bridge over a wide slipstream of gray, frothing water. Men in checked coats and wool caps fished from the bridge; my passage did not appear to disturb them. On the opposite bank, I drove past a small bait-and-tackle shop, a gas station, and a smoldering red-clay chiminea in a gravel parking lot.

  The Valentine Motel was about a mile or so from the riverbank, tucked away in the forest. I came upon it rather by luck, since the GPS on my phone had been rendered useless once I’d gone far enough into the mountains. There was nothing special about the place—it was a typical roadside motel, with what looked like a dozen rooms at the far end of a white-stone parking lot. In my mind, I had constructed this place to look like something from a Niagara Falls honeymoon, complete with vibrating heart-shaped beds and a complimentary bottle of cheap champagne waiting on the night-stand. Yet despite the name, this place was more likely where hunters and fishermen caught some shuteye, or maybe slept off too much Schlitz beer.

  I pulled into the parking lot. There were a few other vehicles here—mostly pickup trucks—and a large camper was tucked between the motel and a row of dumpsters. Behind the motel, the mountain continued upward, dense with forest. In the waning daylight, I could make out a discreet double-wide trailer back there, animal pelts hanging from the porch eaves.

  There was a man in a red flannel jacket att
ending to the inner workings of a Ford F-150 that was parked just outside the motel entrance. As I crunched across the gravel lot toward the motel door, the man looked up at me. He was maybe in his late forties, with a wave of dark hair curling down to his shirt collar. A cigarette dangled from his mouth.

  He raised a grease-streaked hand and said, “Be with you in a minute.”

  I nodded, then entered the motel lobby. The walls were paneled in wood and there were many framed photographs of men with gruff smiles holding up large fish. A few fishing trophies sat on a shelf behind the front counter, white and furry with dust. On the desk, beside an ancient computer monitor with a plastic hula girl fixed to its top, was a velvet-backed board displaying about two dozen fishing flies, each one as intricate and colorful as an Indian headdress.

  The man in the red flannel jacket came in, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Don’t suppose you know much about engines?” he asked, and offered me a weary smile.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s either the cold or the altitude gets in her every year. Kinda like her owner.” He thumped a fist against his chest, still smiling. A tangle of keys chimed against his hip as he maneuvered around the desk. “So what’s your poison?” he asked.

  “My poison?”

  “Muskie? Smallmouth? Walleye?” His eyes—colorless as two pools of rainwater—narrowed as he took me in. “Hell, you’re a trout man, through and through. I can tell.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Actually, I haven’t come for the fishing.”

  “Is that right? Well, that’s a shame. They’re really running now.”

  As I dug my cell phone from my jacket pocket, I said, “My wife stayed here for two nights back in October. Maybe you remember her?” I showed him a photo of you on my phone.

  He peered at it. “Nice-looking lady,” he commented.

  “Do you remember her staying here?”

  “Well, it’s just that I don’t consider it good business practice to talk about folks who come in and out of here, you know? I mean, you say she’s your wife, but you could be some boyfriend out here stalking her, right?” His eyes sparkled and he presented me with a partial smile, to show there were no hard feelings.