by Lee Stone
34
Lockhart checked into the Hilton in Times Square. Before they split, Kate Braganza had offered to take him to dinner that evening to say thanks. He had accepted and then spent an hour finding a downtown hotel room. The gloom had descended by the time he reached Times Square, and the advertising boards lit the place up like a Christmas tree. By the time Lockhart had made the short trip from the Port Authority, he was drenched. He took a shower and changed into his dry clothes. He sent the wet stuff to the laundry.
His room had a view of Times Square’s fluorescent riot and Times Tower on Eighth Avenue. He knew people who worked inside that building. People he hadn’t seen for a while. He resisted the urge to go visiting because picking up old friendships meant endangering old friends. So he watched the lights in Times Tower, the same way a stranded sailor watches the lighthouse on the shore. The gloom of the storm began to soak through the window and into his bones until he pulled himself away and headed down to the street to hail a cab.
He met Kate at in Williamsburg at a burger joint inside a 1920s Pullman dining car with an arched roof and leather booths. The place smelled of fat and dripped with Americana. In a city that offered every cuisine imaginable, Kate Braganza wanted to eat like she was home. Lockhart understood that.
‘Did you get any sleep?’ he asked once they were both sat down.
She shook her head.
‘My body clock is all screwed up. I’m wide awake.’
When the waitress arrived, Kate ordered a Witbier and Lockhart had an IPA. They served it a little too cold, but the taste was rounded enough to remind him of summer days in Gloucestershire. It wasn’t a bad pint, and the diner’s warm wooden trim was enough to soothe his soul.
‘How’s your beer?’ Kate asked him as she drank.
‘Fine,’ he said, looking around. ‘This is a good place.’
‘It’s nice to be home.’
Lockhart missed a beat.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I bet.’
The rain hammered on the roof of the dining car, the ribbons of water blowing horizontally along the glass giving a false sense of movement. Lockhart imagined views those windows had framed over the years, and he smiled. Kate watched his reflection, his edges blurred by the double-glazed panes.
‘You going to stick around for a while?’
‘Probably not,’ Lockhart said, bringing his gaze back to her.
‘Because you can’t?’
‘Because I can’t.’
This was the problem with staying in one place for too long. Stay too long, and you get to know people. Get to know people, and they expect you to open up to them. But the fewer people who knew about his past, the safer he stayed. The safer they stayed, too. The food arrived before the silence had time to become uncomfortable. It tasted good.
‘Forget freedom and democracy,’ Kate said, chewing on a chunk of cheeseburger. ‘This is the single greatest thing America gave to the world.’
Lockhart smiled.
‘You think America invented freedom and democracy?’
She took a minute to answer, consumed by the flavor of the burger.
‘As long as we invented this,’ she said, holding it up. ‘I don’t care.’
She had a voracious appetite and finished her burger long before Lockhart finished his.
‘Will you keep in touch?’ she asked him eventually. He pushed back in his chair and looked at her.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d like that. I’ll call you up next time I’m in New York.’
‘No contact number?’
For a moment Lockhart felt like he’d stabbed a puppy, but he knew he had no choice. He watched the wind leave her sails, like she’d been hoping for something more, but her New Yorker resilience took over and she made an effort to brighten up.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly, as though there were formalities to go through before they parted. ‘Thanks for, you know, stepping up when…’
‘Least I could do,’ Lockhart told her, and he thought again about the grim task they had left Fischer to perform in Cambodia. Kate let out a long sigh and took a sip of her beer, hiding her face behind the glass.
‘Listen, I’m sorry for your loss,’ Lockhart said, and he chinked his glass gently against hers. ‘Here’s to Matilda.’
Kate raised her glass to her lips and stared out of the window, looking for all the world like she was a million miles away.
‘You know those soldiers?’ she said. ‘The ones who get their legs blown off in Afghanistan and swear blind they can still feel their feet itching? That’s how it is. I can still feel her. I can feel nothing else. I miss her like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘At least you’re home,’ Lockhart said. ‘At least you’re safe.’
35
The cab got grid locked two blocks away from Kate’s apartment and they bailed. Lockhart made a makeshift umbrella from his jacket, but it acted like a sail in the wind and almost pulled them clean off the sidewalk. Roof slates had fallen from some buildings, and bitumen sheets were being tossed along the road like plastic bags. By the time they arrived, Lockhart’s shirt was clinging to his skin and Kate’s mascara was running lines across her cheeks.
‘This is it,’ Kate said as they barged into the security door, laughing and breathless. Her numb fingers struggled with the keypad as the rain continued to drench them until eventually she banged hard on the door with her palm and a concierge arrived behind the glass. His face lit up, and he pulled the door open. Warm air escaped and enveloped them, and they fell over themselves to get into the shelter.
‘Miss Braganza!’ the concierge said, moving backwards to avoid getting wet. The door slammed shut behind them and the storm muted. When she gathered herself and smeared the make-up from her cheeks, Kate looked up and smiled at the concierge like an old friend.
‘Hey you,’ she said. ‘This is Charlie.’
Then she put her hands on her knees, bent at the waist, and went back to catching her breath. Lockhart said hello, and the concierge picked up on his English accent.
‘Welcome to New York,’ he said. ‘I see you brought the weather.’
Lockhart looked around. The inside of the lobby gave him an impression of the building’s grandeur. He vaguely recalled there had been soaring stone as they had approached, but little more than that. Now he could see that the place was gothic and grand. Lockhart didn’t know what he had expected, but somehow it wasn’t this. The place smelled of old money, with heavy leather furniture and opulent patterned rugs. Soft lighting melted into rich dark woods and beams of dazzling light refracted from a single chandelier like snowflakes blowing across the mahogany counter.
‘Nice place,’ Lockhart said as they moved across the hall. The floor was a giant chessboard in black-and-white marble. When they reached the other side, Kate thumbed the elevator button with one hand and ran the other through her sopping hair.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You coming up?’
Her apartment was modest by comparison to the lobby. It was a studio, and apart from the bedroom and bathroom, her whole life was laid bare as soon as she opened the door.
‘This is me.’
Lockhart drank it in. ‘How long does the full tour take?’
She laughed, low and effortless, as she closed the door behind him. Three sofas gathered around a large television set, and beyond them a breakfast counter made a barrier between the lounge and the kitchen. A picture window looked out across the battery and over the Hudson to Liberty Island. Lockhart walked over, drawn by the view.
‘Lockhart?’
He answered her without taking his eyes from the storm.
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks for bringing me home.’
‘It was only a block,’ Lockhart said. ‘The cabbie did the hard bit.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’
He had done what needed doing, that was all. He watched as his breath begin to fog the cold glass. Across the
water, Liberty stood tall against the approaching wilds.
‘Not waving but drowning,’ Lockhart said, staring at New York’s most famous landmark. Kate joined him, looking out over his shoulder like she was staring at an approaching iceberg.
‘Is that a quote?’
Lockhart nodded.
‘Stevie Smith,’ he said. ‘I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning.’
‘Sounds sad.’
Lockhart nodded.
‘She was sad, poor Stevie. Her dad abandoned her when she was four years old. He ran off to sea, so the story goes.’
For a while they stared out into the black, the moonlight picking out the huge breakers gaining strength over the Hudson. Eventually Kate drew breath, breaking the silence.
‘Drink?’
Lockhart shrugged and came away from the window.
‘Sure.’
She spun away from him and padded across to the kitchen. Lockhart switched on the TV and listened to the promising sound of ice meeting crystal. And yet something about it was discordant. Something jarred. He couldn’t get Stevie Smith out of his head. Was Kate Braganza not waving but drowning? Had Lockhart got her all wrong? He really didn’t know much about her. She was a student. She had told him that on the plane when they first met. And she was working in a bar off Amsterdam to pay the bills. But the apartment was not a student pad. The sofas were new. The decor was modern. It was an expensive-looking place for a hard-up barmaid.
‘You’ve got some style,’ Lockhart said as she padded back and handed him a glass. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘Long enough,’ Kate said.
She was skilfully evasive. Long enough was no kind of answer.
‘You’re a long way from Amsterdam,’ he said, recalling where she said she had worked. She looked up and for a moment her eyes narrowed slightly. What was that look? Surprise that he had remembered? Alarm? Whatever it was, it was gone in a heartbeat, and her face resolved in to a picture of relaxation.
‘Nobody wants to live too close to work,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to trip over the regulars on my way out in the morning. I like a clean break when I’ve done my shift.’
Her smile reminded him of the broken houses in Kep’s French quarter: elegant and beautiful, but there was nothing behind the facade. Kate had drawn an unspoken line beyond which people weren’t to go. As a reporter, Lockhart had been used to that line. And used to crossing it.
‘Look at that rain,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Do you think we’ll be washed into the Hudson by the morning?’
Lockhart watched her for a long time before he answered. He had helped her escape prison and skip Cambodia, but now suddenly, in the soft light of Kate’s New York flat, he wondered if he had done the right thing. There was something she hadn’t told him. Something uncomfortable lurking just beneath the conversation.
‘This is an old building,’ he said. ‘I bet it’s been through worse storms than this.’
The wind drove hailstones against the window, as if rising to the challenge. Kate raised an eyebrow and raised her glass.
‘So have I,’ she said.
She tailed off and sank into her own thoughts for a moment. Then she downed her drink and poured herself another before offering Lockhart the bottle.
‘Where will you go next?’ she asked.
Lockhart shrugged. It was a question he never answered. Ever since he left London trouble had followed, always asking questions. So he stayed nowhere long. And he never left a forwarding address. That way, he kept his friends safe. He didn’t feel like telling Kate Braganza much anyway, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was holding out on him.
‘There’s an entire world to see,’ he said. ‘I’ll decide where to go when I get to JFK.’
‘Seriously?’
He took a taste of the whiskey, looking at her over the rim of his glass and nodding.
‘Why not? I’ll pitch up somewhere interesting I can write about. Send a few words back to my editor, and she’ll BACS me enough money for a few more sunset beers. It’s not a bad way to make a living.’
That was not exactly how it worked, but it was as much as Kate needed to know. Lockhart settled back into the sofa. On the wall behind her was a beach photograph. Kate was looking right down the lens, her skin bronzed and her hand shading her eyes from the sinking sun. There was a hand around her waist and the hint of a shoulder at the edge of the frame.
‘Who’s the guy?’
Kate glanced over her shoulder.
‘His name’s Simon,’ she said, smiling coyly as she turned back to Lockhart. ‘It didn’t work out.’
She swilled the last of her drink and necked it.
‘Why cut him out of the picture?’ Lockhart asked.
She twisted her body towards him on the sofa.
‘Are you jealous, Charlie Lockhart?’
Greta Garbo would have been proud of the way she flashed her eyes at him. Lockhart held her gaze and smiled.
‘Inconsolably,’ he said. They laughed and for a moment the tension between them lifted. For a moment Lockhart’s curiosity abated, and he and Kate were just two friends reminiscing about the journey they had shared. They took a breath, and he drank her in. Why wasn’t he jealous? She was an attractive woman. She looked soft in the lamplight, her full lips still playing at the rim of her bourbon glass. Her skin, bronzed by the Cambodian sun, looked smooth and healthy. She was pretty. And interesting. But she wasn’t Trista.
‘Simon was a long time ago,’ she said, studying the picture. ‘I was younger.’
Lockhart swallowed the last of his drink and then he stared out of the window and watched Liberty disappear into the fog. He ought to get going back to the hotel in Times Square. It would be a good long hike through the city, but the walk would clear his head and do him good. He rolled his neck and felt the vertebrae half way down his spine crack back into place. His back had survived a thousand rugby tackles and several car crashes, but years of hunching over a keyboard had slowly ground his spine into submission. The crack must have been loud enough for Kate to hear, because Lockhart sensed her gaze settling on him as he watched the storm tightening around them like a python.
‘Now it’s just me,’ Kate said when Lockhart’s eyes came back from the horizon. ‘No Simon. No sister. Just me.’
She wasn’t flirting; she wasn’t painting the boyfriend out of the picture and giving him the green light. She was grieving. The reality of it all was finally beginning to sink in. They had been running for two days, and there had been little time for taking stock. But now, with the storm hemming them in and the whiskey loosening her thoughts, Lockhart could sense the sorrow beginning to unravel. He went to speak, but she cut him off.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to sound maudlin. Honestly, I don’t. But that’s the truth of it. Twins stick together, I guess to the exclusion of a lot of other people. I took her for granted. And now she’s gone. I really am on my own.’
‘What about family?’ Lockhart asked. ‘Who do you need to tell?’
She dipped her finger into her drink and ran it around the edge of her glass, hoping to get a noise out of it, but nothing happened.
‘Nobody,’ she said after a minute. ‘Our parents died young. Cancer, both of them. Shitty luck. We’ve got an aunt in Florida, but I haven’t seen her since Dad died. When Mom passed away two years later, she didn’t even come to the funeral, you know? So I don’t need to call her tonight. And there’s nobody else.’
She put her glass down and ran both hands through her hair.
‘It’s just so hard to say goodbye without a body, Charlie. It makes me feel like it didn’t happen. I just feel numb. It’s a cliché, I know. But there it is. Numb.’
She leant back and sighed until there was nothing left to exhale.
Lockhart said, ‘I know how you’re feeling.’
She eyed him wearily.
‘You think?’
‘I do.’
She looked at him for a few seconds, her head slightly cocked to one side, as if she was seeing him for the first time.
‘You got any siblings?’
Lockhart sighed. It was a conversation he could do without tonight.
‘Yeah, I do,’ he said, and his voice was heavy. ‘Haven’t seen them for a year though.’
‘You should go back,’ Kate told him. ‘Before it’s too late.’
‘I can’t.’
He could see the next question forming on her lips, and he headed it off.
‘Don’t ask,’ he said. ‘Because you don’t want to know. Really, you don’t.’
For an age they sat in silence until the refrigerator motor clunked into gear and jolted the conversation back to life.
‘Does it get easier with time?’ she asked him. ‘You know, being without them?’
Lockhart thought about his family. He thought about his sister, and he thought about Trista, hidden so well that not even he could find her. She’s safe, he told himself. At least she’s safe.
‘Lockhart?’ Kate said, her voice pulling him back to the surface. ‘Does it get easier?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not for me anyway.’
A single tear escaped her eye, and she rubbed it away with the outside of her sleeve. Lockhart, lost for a moment in his own grief, could not find the energy or inclination to tell her that everything would be fine. To tell her that time would be a great healer. Because he knew that it wasn’t. Not for him anyway. Not yet.
