Val didn’t need a Pilot to notice that as Julie said hello, she’d blacked her tablet screen. “Whatcha doing?”
“Puttering. Waiting for you. It’s late.” There was a question in that, which Val recognized but refused to answer. She’d said she was going to be late and wouldn’t have time to make dinner. Normally they didn’t make each other explain more than that. They trusted each other, or they had.
She sat opposite her wife. Direct or indirect? She’d had enough of indirect. “Where’s David?”
“I told you. He said he had to go out of town for BNL.”
“Bullshit.”
Julie flinched. Val continued. “I call bullshit, and I call you’re hiding something, and I call you really, really need to tell me what’s going on.”
Julie closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, then nodded. “I . . . I don’t know where he is.”
“Why would you lie to me about that? What’s the point?”
“I was embarrassed.”
“About what?”
“I think it’s my fault he left.”
Julie looked miserable, which almost made Val feel bad about pressing her. Almost. “Your fault how?”
“My fault for pushing him.”
“You’re making me ask each next question, Jules, and I’m not sure I’m asking the right things. What if you tell me the whole thing and I listen?”
Julie nodded. “There’s a lot, though.”
How did words hurt so much? “There’s a lot” meant she had been hiding things for a while. Lying, obscuring, gathering information or whatever this was and keeping it to herself instead of sharing it the way they’d promised to do. “Though” meant she knew it was a problem.
“He lost his job,” Julie began. “I don’t know when, and I don’t know why, because he wouldn’t tell me even after I figured it out. I figured out he had his Pilot shut off, too, even though the light was still on. I ended up driving behind him one day and he stopped at a stop sign and then he just sat there, for ages, and I waited for him to go, but he didn’t. And a while later I asked him about it, and told him I knew he didn’t have a job, and I knew about his Pilot, and then he left and didn’t come back.”
David had an even temper. He’d never been one to stomp or storm. Not like Sophie, whose blood ran drama. “That was all you said?”
“Well, no. I—I was mad he’d been lying to us. He said it was none of my business, and I said it was my business while he lived under our roof, and that’s when he tossed his keys on the floor and left.”
It still didn’t seem like enough. Val waited, and Julie corrected herself. “No, I guess that’s the version that makes me feel better, like I didn’t do anything wrong, but he was trying to tell me something, and I don’t think I handled it well. I think I told him it was shortsighted to get his Pilot turned off, and he said that thing about noise again, and I said he should see a shrink about it.”
“Oh, Jules. You didn’t.” They were both fighting back tears.
“I know I shouldn’t have. I know whatever that noise he talks about must be real, but he’s coped with it before. I was trying to suggest that he figure out how to cope with it again. It came out badly. But he was talking about reenlisting, too, and saying all these things that didn’t sound like him, and I tried to say he should get some help dealing with whatever he’s going through.”
Val had been forming another question about why he’d kept all that stuff from them, and how Julie had figured it out. She generally bent toward forgiveness. She believed Julie was telling the truth now, and that she’d hidden it out of embarrassment and hope that David would come home and she wouldn’t have to admit to any of it. Julie had said what she thought she should say, and it had come out wrong.
Still, “reenlistment” jarred Val, as she knew it must have jarred her wife, and if Julie kept pushing his buttons after he said that, had pushed hard enough to drive him out the door and possibly back to that option, except this time they didn’t know where he was, when every time before they’d at least known a general spot on the map to focus their worry?
Julie still hadn’t said anything about Sophie’s issue, either. Yet another lie, or lie of omission, which didn’t feel like it even belonged in this conversation and yet was intertwined with it. Since when did they lie to each other like this? All these droplets, these individual forgivable omissions, added up to an unforgiveable ocean. Walking out hadn’t been a very David move, but Val felt the reasonableness of it now.
She was tired, she’d had a beer and chili, the sun had long since set, but she went up to the bedroom, changed into running clothes, dug out her headlamp—the battery of which miraculously still held a charge—and headed out into the darkness; she didn’t have any other idea what to do to escape the feeling they were failing, they had failed, the mistakes outnumbered the successes. There were no mistakes in running, not if you were careful where you placed your feet.
Her parents had been loud people. Not shouters, just loud, taking out frustrations in their footsteps, in thrown objects, so that any spare money went into replacing the things they had broken. She remembered sitting trapped in her room at twelve, at thirteen, while their possessions crashed into walls, and it was like the door wasn’t even closed. Despite their warnings that it wasn’t safe to leave at night, she started slipping through the window to run when they fought. She could outrun whatever was bad out there, and whatever it was couldn’t be worse than being trapped listening to silence shatter.
She knew she was capable of that same loudness, had it in her bones, her genes, though she hated giving over to it; given the choice, she’d rather run. All of which was why she’d tried to instill in their kids the opposite of the trapped feeling, and why she was glad David had chosen to go, given what Julie had said, and furious that Julie had put him in that position. They’d spent so long trying to create a home as haven, only to ruin it in a few words.
When she returned, the kitchen light was still on. She didn’t enter. Instead, she went to the basement and grabbed clean clothes from the load she’d done that morning. She showered in Sophie’s shower and then went into Sophie’s bedroom and closed the door, knowing the kid wasn’t coming home anytime soon. She hadn’t even gotten to Sophie’s issue. She lay in Sophie’s bed and listened until she heard Julie’s trudging footsteps on the stairs, their bedroom door opening, Julie’s sigh, their bedroom door closing. Two doors between them, two angry children, too many lies.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
DAVID
QUIET
Quiet
quiet
quiet
quiet
quiet
Quiet was everything David had been looking for, the only thing he had ever wanted. For the first time in his adult life, he had a blanket of Quiet that he could pull over himself all day long, even if Karina gave him dirty looks. If he let the Quiet run out he heard them whispering about him.
Karina was on day shifts these days, but usually went to the gym after to push tires or swim in barbed wire or drag ropes or something. She returned sweaty and smiling tightly at him. “How’s the job hunt going, David?”
“I had a couple of calls today.” That was a stretch. His phone had rung twice from numbers he didn’t recognize, and he’d answered. Neither was job related. One was his credit card calling to tell him his payment had bounced, the other a robocall suggesting if he gave them his bank info they’d consolidate his student loans. He didn’t have student loans, so the joke was on them.
The only other calls had been from his parents. If it was Julie, he ignored it. If it was Val, he ignored it with a side of guilt. Sometimes he muted the phone entirely, but then he worried he’d miss a call from a nonexistent job offer or interview. So he left the phone on, but took enough Quiet to drown it out; if he didn’t hear it, he didn’t have to feel bad about not an
swering.
“How about apartments?”
He shook his head. “I called about one, but they said I needed to show my income was three times the rent, which it isn’t.”
“Argh. What about a room in someone’s house?”
“They’re a bit thin on the ground. I don’t know if it’s the wrong time of year or I scare them off somehow or they’re all doing short-term rentals for more money . . .”
She nodded and sighed. Only when she’d walked past into the bedroom had he realized it would have been polite to ask how her day had been. Better yet, if he’d gotten himself off the couch to make dinner an hour ago, so they’d all have a chance to eat together before Milo headed out.
Milo was in the bedroom getting ready for work. Through the thin wall, David heard Karina ask Milo how long David would be on their couch. “I know he’s your best friend, but this place is too small for three people. I can’t even tell if he’s looking.”
“Give him time, baby,” Milo said. “He’s trying. I was here all day today. I’d know if he wasn’t putting in the effort.”
Karina’s shower started, drowning out the rest of their conversation, which David shouldn’t be listening to in any case. Milo emerged from the bedroom in his black-polo-and-jeans bouncer-wear. “Do you want to come drink while I work?”
David shook his head. He knew the subtext was Would you get off our couch so Karina can have some time to herself in the apartment she pays for? but he didn’t have spare money for a drink, and really he was opting out of it all: drinking, the noisy bar, making small talk, or else being one of the weird unsocial guys who clearly didn’t have anything better to do. Better to retreat back into the glorious Fortress of Solitude in the semiprivacy of the couch.
“Suit yourself.”
Milo left. The shower stopped, and five minutes later, Karina walked into the living room in sweatpants and a T-shirt. She looked disappointed but not surprised he hadn’t gone with Milo. Not that he was looking at his best friend’s girl, but she’d obviously put a bra back on after a day at work, a workout, and a shower; he was the asshole here for not taking the obvious hint that he was supposed to go with Milo, and for being so predictable that she had already known he wouldn’t go. She wanted to watch TV, or play a game, or take off her bra and eat dinner. There was only so far her tolerance for him would stretch.
“I was just finishing something,” he said. “Then I’m going out.”
Her relief was evident, and he felt like an ass all over again, but at least he felt like an ass who had made the right decision for once.
He hadn’t showered in at least three days. He couldn’t go to Milo’s bar because he had no car and no money for a ride. It didn’t matter. He needed to give Karina some space. He grabbed his backpack and phone and headed out to no place in particular.
He paused outside the door. The air was cooler than he expected, and he tried to remember when he’d left the apartment last. He had to find a new situation; he didn’t want to lose Milo over this. Quiet would help; he shook a pill from the container and swallowed it.
A woman pulled into the parking lot, but didn’t turn off her car. She was talking to herself, maybe talking to someone on speakerphone, but her eyes were on him. He knew what he looked like: a large guy, unshaven, wrinkled clothes. She clearly didn’t want to walk to her apartment with him standing there. He walked toward the next building and then down through the parking lot, making it clear he wouldn’t get near her car or watch where she went.
He should’ve walked toward the street, though, since he had no car here. Now he was trapped in the parking lot until he was sure she was inside, all because he didn’t want to make a stranger nervous. He walked to the far end and sat on the curb, trying to decide what to do next. He felt eyes on his back, and turned to see the black cat from the night of the party. It met his gaze.
“Here, kitty.” He tried to sound warm, but the cat kept its distance. Smart cat. Something caught its attention in the grass, and it slunk away.
The hunting cat reminded him he wasn’t sure when he’d last re-upped his Quiet. It was obviously out of his system: he’d heard the whole discussion in the bedroom, and he’d noticed the woman looking at him from her car, and he’d felt the cat watching him.
He shook a pill from the mint tin in his pocket and swallowed it dry. Fifteen minutes to start feeling it, half an hour to full effect. He remembered he’d taken one outside the apartment a few minutes before, and it just hadn’t kicked in yet. The action had been automatic. He was a big guy; he’d never taken two at once, but two couldn’t hurt.
A police siren wailed in the distance. He glanced toward the apartments and saw the woman from the car standing on a third-floor balcony, a phone to her ear, watching him.
Time to go. He still hadn’t done any research on the pills in his pocket, still didn’t know what they were, or what the penalties were for holding them, if any. He’d thought ignorance would protect him, give him an excuse to keep taking them as long as he didn’t know what they were doing to him, allow him plausible deniability. It occurred to him now that wasn’t how the world worked.
He should ditch them, in case the police siren was for him, in case the pills were illegal, but he couldn’t afford to buy more. He walked into the woods behind the complex, trying to become as background as the black cat.
The shallow woods weren’t much of a hiding place. They backed onto a high chain-link fence keeping people or deer from wandering onto the light-rail tracks. The complex stood halfway between two stations a few miles apart, which made the light rail useless if you didn’t have a car or at least a bike. He didn’t have either. The sirens had stopped, but blue and red flashing lights bounced off the fence and voices carried across the parking lot.
If the pills were legal, or legally his, he wouldn’t be carrying them in a mint tin. He hated the idea of tossing them, but he knew he should. Well, he could keep one if he swallowed it now. With a sigh, he emptied the container into his hand and threw the rest over the fence and onto the track. They were sugarcoated and didn’t leave a trace on his hands, but he tossed the tin over too, and then rubbed dirt on his hands.
A flashlight arced across his face.
“Hey, buddy, can you come out? We want to chat for a second.”
He debated making a run for it, but that was stupid. He had nothing to hide. He raised his hands to show they were empty.
“Step toward me,” the voice said. Her flashlight was too bright, her voice too loud.
When he cleared the trees, he stopped, his hands still raised.
“Do you have ID on you?”
“Yes,” David said. “In my pocket. Do you mind if I reach for it, or do you want to?”
“You can do it. Slowly.”
He pulled his wallet from his pocket and tossed it at the cop’s feet. Her partner picked it up and leafed through. “David Geller-Bradley. That sounds familiar.”
David shrugged. “It’s a common name.”
“Nah . . . wait . . .” He held his flashlight in David’s face. “You look awful, but you’re the guy from the Pilot ads, aren’t you?”
“He can’t be. He doesn’t have a Pilot.”
If ever there was a time to trade on celebrity, this was it. “Yeah, that’s me. I had my Pilot deactivated.”
“No way. Why would you want to do that?” The flashlight lowered, as did the gun.
“I had a problem with it.”
“Is that why you look so rough? We got called out for a sketchy homeless dude lurking in the bushes.”
“I’m . . . on vacation. Visiting some friends who live here. You can check with them.” He gave the apartment number, hoping Karina would vouch for him and not be pissed off.
“But, uh, why were you back there?”
“I think I scared a woman in the parking lot accidentally, and I wan
ted to show I wasn’t following her, so I walked away.”
“Into the woods instead of toward the street?”
David’s answer wasn’t a total lie. “It was silly. I wasn’t thinking. I’d never been back here, so I thought maybe I could cross the tracks and come out by the shopping center. Didn’t realize there was a fence.”
The cops both looked more relaxed. The woman paused. “Do you mind if I take a picture with you? My girlfriend thinks you’re cute.”
He didn’t object to using his celebrity in this context. If they were taking pictures with him they weren’t arresting him. They hadn’t even asked him to empty his pockets, so he hadn’t had to toss his pills. Except that was stupid; they could just as easily have had him on the ground. They might not have recognized his famous face under his depression beard. Instead, they let him go with a warning to try to look a little less sketchy and go somewhere else.
Now he definitely couldn’t go back upstairs. The apartment windows looked out this way, so Karina had probably seen the whole thing. Embarrassing enough without the fact that he’d just thrown away all his pills. He’d taken one, so he’d be good for the next few hours, but he had nothing to stop the noise from creeping in again.
He had never bought Quiet from anyone other than Karina’s sister and his buddy in the park, neither of whom he could ask right now. Where to go, then? There was a liquor store down the road a mile or so that had the right look, with a scattering of Piloted white teenagers hanging around in the alley outside. He watched them from afar until he noticed them watching him back, sizing him up. One whispered to another and they scattered. They weren’t going to sell to him; they probably thought he was a cop.
He walked over. Let them see him up close; let them smell him, for that matter. They could decide for themselves if he was undercover. He browsed the store shelves until two lookout kids repositioned themselves, then he bought a fifth of cheap whiskey from a cashier behind bulletproof glass.
We Are Satellites Page 30
