Her Every Fear

by Peter Swanson

  He trailed off. Richard had retired a few years after the divorce, and since retiring, he’d aged noticeably. Not just physically, although there was that, but mentally. He seemed frail, and even sometimes weepy.

  “Maybe I should never have left,” Richard said, after they’d looked at every picture.

  “Well, then—”

  “Well, then, yes, I’d never have had you lovely boys, but your mother . . .”

  Corbin didn’t need to hear about her. He’d heard plenty already.

  The only other picture Corbin had seen of Kate was one that was attached to her e-mail account, a small square color photograph in which Kate’s face was three-quarters obscured by a book she was reading. Only her eyes peered at the camera.

  There must be pictures here, Corbin thought, and almost got off the couch. There’s time, he told himself. I’m here for six whole months, he thought, and the thought scared him a little. He yawned several times, his jaw popping. A spatter of rain hit the pane of glass above him. He fell asleep.

  He woke, as he always did, suddenly—his eyes opening on their own, his mind fully conscious, any dreams he might have had already expunged and gone, like blackened matches. He sat up. The headache was gone, but in its place was a ravenous hunger. He checked his phone. It was midafternoon.

  He went to the kitchen, found an apple, and devoured it till it was nothing more than a pencil-thin core. He opened drawers looking for something else to eat, but there was very little. Everything in the kitchen was small, including a refrigerator not much bigger than a dorm fridge, a tiny porcelain-topped table pushed into a nook, and what looked like a dishwasher but turned out to be, in fact, a laundry machine. Corbin looked, but couldn’t find a dryer. It was something he could ask Kate about in an e-mail. He should check his account, anyway, especially since he hadn’t heard yet from the office he was supposed to be reporting to on Monday. He went back to the living room and found the part in Kate’s welcome letter where she gave him instructions on how to get onto wireless. He opened his laptop and checked messages, his mind rapidly seeking out Audrey Marshall’s name even though he knew that a message from her wasn’t a possibility. His brother had written to ask him when he was heading to London, because his mother wanted to know.

  Corbin checked the Red Sox box scores from the night before, then jotted off a message to Kate, thanking her for the lengthy letter and mentioning the dryer. Then he shut the laptop down, got dressed again, and went out to find some food.

  It wasn’t even four thirty yet, but the Beef and Pudding, the closest pub and one that Kate had recommended, was filling up. Corbin grabbed an upholstered bench with a low table in front of it, waited for a few minutes for a waitress to appear, then remembered than in England you ordered at the bar. He left his jacket on his seat and shouldered his way into the crowded bar area. He ordered a Guinness Extra Cold, and when he asked about food, was directed to a large blackboard, menu items written out in green chalk. He ordered a spaghetti Bolognese and went back to his seat.

  He nursed his Guinness and when the food came he ate it as slowly as he could, even though what he wanted to do was to bolt it like a dog. Done eating, he went back to the bar for more beer, deciding to try cask ales he hadn’t tasted before. He sat back down with something called Greene King Abbot Ale, and had finished half of it when a woman in tight jeans and a patterned sweater said hello and asked if he was Kate Priddy’s cousin. “I was next to you at the bar and heard your American accent. I live upstairs from you.”

  They had several drinks together and she introduced him to some of the bartenders, plus a few of her friends. Her name was Martha, and every time she went to the bathroom, she came back with reapplied bright red streaks of lipstick across her mouth. He kept drinking the Abbot Ale and she drank white wine, switching to something with vodka at the end of the night. They walked home together through a light, misty rain, and outside of 684 Sheepscar they wound up pressed up against a temporary Dumpster, kissing and groping at one another. She bit the lobe of his ear and told him she liked his accent. He slid fingers down the back of her jeans and touched the thin floss of her underpants, and that, more than anything else, sobered him up. He could feel that combination of fear and disgust spreading across his body. And even though he knew there was little chance that someone was watching them, it was still in the back of his mind. The way it always was.

  It took all his will not to push the drunk girl away. Instead, he stopped kissing her.

  “I’m exhausted,” he said.

  “You must be, poor thing,” she answered. Her mouth was ringed with smudged lipstick, and her eyes were slightly out of focus. Corbin could hear the sound of distant laughter carrying through the rain; other drunk people returning from a night out. A drip of cool rain slid underneath his collar and down his back, and he shivered. Then, for one awful moment, he could taste the spaghetti at the back of his throat, and he thought he was going to be sick. It passed, and he told Martha that he really needed to get some sleep. They entered the house together, and Martha kissed him again on his landing. He kept his lips tightly closed even though he could feel the tip of her tongue flicking past her teeth.

  Inside, he chugged some of the tepid water in the kitchen and took four more ibuprofens. He actually wasn’t tired. He’d slept too much that afternoon, and now, even though it was midnight in London, it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet in Boston. Kate would be at his place by now, probably trying to stay awake. He tried to picture her in his apartment in Boston, but couldn’t. It felt wrong, somehow.

  After doing a hundred push-ups on the orange area rug in the bedroom, Corbin took a shower, carefully stepping over the high lip of the bathtub, then standing under the stream of almost-hot water. He closed his eyes, letting the low-pressure spray hit the back of his neck, and stood so long that the water eventually lost its warmth. He was shivering by the time he pulled on his cotton pajama bottoms and got under the covers of Kate’s bed. The sheets were soft flannel, tucked tightly under the corners of the bed, and he kicked his feet out from under them. It was the only way he could sleep, even when he was cold. The bed was softer than he liked. He turned off the bedside lamp, but the room, with the curtains open, was relatively light, and his eyes eventually adjusted so much that he could read the print on the framed poster across from the bed. the face in the corner: animal portraits, national portrait gallery, london, 1998. There was a painting of a lady, and in the foreground, a black cat dipping a paw into a goldfish bowl. He thought of Sanders, the cat that was always in his apartment. Thinking of Sanders made him think of everything he’d left behind, but he shut down those thoughts. Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to will himself to sleep. Despite the shower, he could still smell Martha, the girl from the pub, all over him. He thought of her upstairs, now, wondering if she was thinking of him. Of course she was. He could go upstairs right now and fuck her if he wanted to. The thought filled him with sadness, more than anything. He pictured her drunken, excited expression as she opened the door, the way she’d lift her hips to let him take off her tiny underpants, the awful expectant look in her eyes. Then he imagined the look of fear in those eyes.

  He turned the thought off as he shifted over onto his stomach. He pressed his face into the unfamiliar pillow that smelled of floral dryer sheets. He hadn’t had a thought like that for a while. Maybe it was being in London. Maybe coming here had been a big mistake. He’d thought fifteen years had been enough time, but clearly it wasn’t. She’d been on his mind all day. So he allowed himself to think of her, to think of Claire Brennan, the girl who changed everything.

  Chapter 13

  The Hutchinson School of Business and Economics, where Corbin Dell studied during the second semester of his junior year, was situated in an ugly block of Georgian flats just south of the Mornington Crescent tube station. The school also owned and operated the Three Lambs pub, a wood-paneled drinking hole in the student union. It was there that Corbin met Claire Brennan, who was ser
ving that night at the bar.

  “What’s good here?” he’d shouted above the overloud Coldplay song coming from the speakers.

  She pushed a strand of her raven-black hair behind an ear and leaned across the bar. “Sorry. What’ll you have?”

  Corbin almost asked her again what was good but her cold blue eyes stopped him. He glanced across the beer pumps, selecting one at random.

  “Pint or half?” she asked. Her accent was thick and lilting.

  “Half,” Corbin said, not knowing what it even meant.

  After being served, Corbin sipped at his small glass of malty-tasting liquid. It was his second night in London. He’d gone to an orientation earlier that day with other visiting American students. Most of the orientation had been centered on how to find a flat in the city, and afterward, the other American students, gripping their list of real estate agents, had anxiously formed small groups to hunt for lodging. Corbin already had a place to stay, however, so he walked out of the orientation not having met anyone. His father had set him up in the spare room of a friend’s apartment. It was a tiny flat on the third floor of a narrow brick building on a residential street south of the river. The spare bedroom was closer in size to a closet, and judging by the sparse furnishings in the rest of the flat—a stereo system, a loaded bar, a bed with satin sheets in the master bedroom—it was clear that the flat was probably nothing more than a sex hideaway for his father’s business colleague. “He’s never there,” his dad had said. “You’ll have your own bachelor pad in London.”

  Corbin hated the place already, and had gone to the Three Lambs in hopes of meeting other students. After getting his drink he leaned against the bar and surveyed the room, half populated with students, most in groups of three or four. He noticed, with a stab of shame, that the only students with small glasses of beer were female students, and that all the men had full pint glasses. He felt sudden, deep hatred for the bartender for even asking him what size glass he wanted. It should have been obvious he’d wanted a full pint glass.

  He turned his back to the room and drank the warm beer down in two gulps. The bartender was now serving three male students, all of whom were getting pint glasses of Foster’s. Corbin decided to get one of those as well. He waited patiently for her to serve the other men. She kept dumping the foam off the top of the beer and refilling them. When she was finally done, she turned her attention to Corbin and he ordered a Foster’s as well, adding that he’d like a big glass. She’d smiled at that, and Corbin felt the urge to punch her in the teeth.

  He took the Foster’s—so much better than the other beer—to a high stool along a paneled wall near the bar, and tried to look bored and uncaring. He scanned the room, not recognizing any of the students as Americans. There was a lull at the bar, and the bartender came out to pick up the empty glasses scattered around on tables. Coming back past Corbin, she stopped and asked if he was American.

  “I’m a visiting student, yeah,” he said.

  “D’you know anyone looking for a room in a flat? I have a friend who’s looking to sublet out a room.”

  “Where?”

  “Camden. Not far from here.”

  Corbin told her that he might be interested, that he had a place already but hated it. He told her it was his dad’s friend’s sex flat, and made up that it was filled with dildos and bowls of condoms. The bartender threw her head back and laughed, exposing her creamy white throat. “You’ll look at this other flat, then?” she asked.

  Corbin agreed, was given an address, and by the second day of classes had moved into an equally scuzzy apartment that was at least a lot closer to his school. He shared the flat with a morose Irish girl, whose main advantage was that she was never there, and when she was, she was in her bedroom, weeping on the phone. The other advantage was that she was an acquaintance of the dark-haired, blue-eyed bartender, whose name was Claire Brennan, and after the brief conversation at the Three Lambs, Corbin’s initial hatred had turned into a deep infatuation.

  Before coming to London, Corbin had told himself that there was no way he was going to get romantically involved with anyone while overseas. The previous semester—his first of junior year—he’d been seeing a freshman girl named Sarah Scharfenberg, who lived down the hall in his dorm. She was a rarity at Mather, a midwestern girl who didn’t spend freshman orientation week trying to fuck every frat brother she met. She told him she was practically a virgin and wanted to take it slow. It was okay with him. He even drove her to see his mother’s home in New Essex on a weekend when he knew none of his family would be there. She’d been impressed. He’d loved seeing the expression on her face as she took in the enormous house, the view of the ocean, his mom’s art collection.

  Back in his dorm that night, she’d produced a condom and whispered into his ear: “I want to make love with you. Right now.” The words sounded rehearsed, and her voice theatrically breathy. They stripped naked, but all Corbin felt was disgust. In the bad dorm lighting she suddenly looked cheap and pudgy, and Corbin noticed a discolored tooth he’d never seen before. He couldn’t get hard and told her that he wasn’t in the mood. She made it worse by repeatedly telling Corbin that it was okay. She even tried to rub his neck.

  He’d stopped seeing her after that, although on the last night of first semester, he’d gotten drunk and pounded on her dorm-room door. He’d decided to give her what she wanted, after all. Her roommate answered, told Corbin that she was probably spending the night at her boyfriend’s dorm. The way the roommate looked at him it was pretty clear that she’d heard the whole story. “Fucking whore,” Corbin said before going to his own room to pass out.

  And now he was in London, where he’d already decided to have nothing to do with girls and sex, and where he’d already fallen for Claire Brennan.

  She was easy to find, because she worked most nights at the Three Lambs. Corbin would casually swing by, usually by himself. It turned out that he and Claire were in the same class—Intro to Macroeconomics—and some nights he’d bring a textbook, and they’d talk about it together, Corbin drinking Foster’s and Claire drinking wine behind the bar. Even though she was Corbin’s age, twenty, she seemed grown-up and sophisticated in a way that American girls didn’t. For one, she was working to put herself through school, and she despised most of the American students, who came over each semester and boozed their way through their three months in London. “Not you, Corbs,” she said. “You’re one step up from those arseholes, but a very small step.” She held two fingers minutely apart, a wide grin on her face.

  They rarely saw each other outside of the Three Lambs and the one class they shared, but with the first exam coming up, they wound up studying together at Claire’s place in Queen’s Park. It was a tiny studio flat, big enough for a bed, a desk, and a chair. They studied on the bed together. “Just sleep here,” she’d said, when they’d finally decided to quit. It was past one in the morning, and the Underground was no longer running.

  “I can get a taxi,” Corbin said.

  “Don’t be an idiot”—she pronounced it like eejit—“just stay here.”

  “I kind of made a pledge to myself that I wasn’t going to get involved with anyone while I was here in London.”

  She laughed. “Jesus, it’s not like that.”

  They fell asleep without touching each other, but just past dawn, they wordlessly began to kiss, and before Corbin had a chance to tell her that he really meant what he said about becoming involved, they were having sex. It happened so fast that Corbin didn’t have time to think about it, didn’t have time to panic. Afterward, they kissed more, and Claire fell back asleep. Corbin didn’t tell her that it was his first time.

  Walking home through the cold, dewy morning, he’d felt not just elated, but somehow vindicated. It hadn’t been him. It had been the string of pathetic, inexperienced girlfriends he’d had that had been the real problem. He’d just needed to find a real woman, and he’d finally found one.

  He aced the exam—no s
urprise there—and continued seeing Claire, their relationship completely different from anything Corbin had experienced before. For one, they rarely talked about what was happening between them, not because Corbin didn’t want to, but because she didn’t. Anytime he’d bring up their situation, she’d make a joke or call him an idiot. Corbin became fixated on what she was thinking, obsessing over the smallest of clues that might indicate her frame of mind. It made him angry with himself, but at the same time, he knew he was in love. He told her once, drunkenly, after returning from a school-sponsored booze cruise on the Thames. It had begun to pour on their walk home, and they’d ducked under the awning of a closed bakery and stood kissing.

  “You reek of beer,” she said.

  “I love you,” he responded.

  She laughed, not entirely unkindly, then had ferociously kissed him. “You’re my favorite American,” she said, laughing some more.

  “Thanks,” Corbin said, telling himself to never again let her know how he felt.

  He didn’t, and the relationship—at least that was what Corbin was calling it in his own head—continued up until the final week of that term. Corbin fretted over the state of their affair, wondering if he should ask her if she wanted to visit him in America during the summer break. But before he’d steeled himself to initiate that conversation, everything changed. It was a Thursday, and Corbin was nursing a pint at a large anonymous pub near where he lived and rereading one of his texts, when Henry Wood, another American student in his program, came up to his table.