by A. S. Green
Man, he’s got ears. You’d think I had Mom on speakerphone. “I’m staying with a friend.”
“A friend?” she asks, sounding skeptical.
“The guy I’ll be working for.”
Silence. Then, “You can’t live with your employer.”
“I live with Dad,” I remind her.
“Not the same thing, and you know it. How well do you know this guy? You said you met him at the wedding? He’s not like that one guy who wanted you to star in his music video, is he?”
“What? No.” God, why does she always have to bring that up?
“Because it’s another scam, hon. They turn beautiful girls like you into drug addicts and porn stars. Not even good porn stars.”
“Oh my God, Mom. Stop.”
Jax chuckles, and I’m both surprised and relieved by the release of tension in him. I playfully swat his arm.
“Have you told your dad yet? Who’s going to help him at the post office long term?”
“I’ll figure something out for him. Maybe Rachel would be interested. The art store will slow down now that summer’s over and the tourists have left. She might have time.”
“Rachel?” Mom says, as if Rachel wouldn’t be able to manage half of the things I do. I’m gratified. “What about the clinic?” she asks. “The station? Have you let everyone know? This is going to be very disruptive.”
Obviously I should have eased into this more slowly. Mom’s voice is rising exponentially. “I’ll call you back when I have more of an idea as to what I’m doing. Don’t worry, Mom. Everything will be fine.”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“I’m sorry, hon. This is just a surprise. Give me a second to act like a normal human being.”
I smile, and my body relaxes. She’s going to be fine. “How much time do you need?”
“Um… Wait. No… Uh, yeah, I think I’ve got it now. Got it! Crazy mom has left the building. Normal sane mom is back in business. We’ll be fine. Be safe, hon. Call me every day. Do great things.”
That’s my mom. All is well. After we hang up, Jax glances over at me with a smirk. “Porn star?”
I wince. “Sorry. She was worried you were scamming me.”
“No scam, but you would make an awesome porn star.”
My head jerks toward him. It’s such a relief to hear him joking after his moody start to the day, but as I feared, all his good humor quickly evaporates.
As the hours tick by, Jax becomes more and more quiet. His answers to my questions get shorter and shorter, until we’re down to single words and sometimes only grunts. Eventually he turns on the radio. I have a sinking suspicion it’s to give us less reason to talk.
He flinches every time my phone rings, and he becomes visibly tense when I have to tell people how to change the date on the postage machine, or when to expect the coast guard’s lake report, or where we keep the extra packing tape.
He takes his own calls, too—all seem to be about work; nothing personal—until one number that pops up on the screen makes him scowl.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Telemarketer?”
“Same thing,” he says. “It’s Debra. Um…my mother.”
I’m surprised. I didn’t realize they were still in touch. “She’s a telemarketer?”
“She’s looking for money.” Then he goes back to driving without picking up her call.
I try not to overthink his coldness toward her. I remember all he told me before, so I know she was never much of a mother. Still, it hurts my heart to witness the effects of the damage she caused. Everybody needs a family. I wish Jax had that.
But he doesn’t, and there’s nothing I can do to change the past. All I can do is make things easier going forward.
We continue in silence. But it somehow feels different now. Heavy. Uncomfortable. As if we’re both desperately trying to come up with something to say. Or maybe that’s only me. All right. So maybe I’m overanalyzing a little.
The tension breaks when an old radio commercial comes on for Cottoneze toilet paper and I tell him that Bennet wrote the jingle.
“The guy from the island ferry?”
“The very same.”
“Incredible!”
For a second I think we’ve made a breakthrough, but he quickly goes back to his brooding silence.
…
Sometime in the midafternoon, Mr. Bernard at the radio station calls me because he can’t find the computer file with the list of advertisers. I tell him it’s in a folder called Pancake.
“Do you do that intentionally?” Mr. Bernard asks.
“Do what?” I ask.
“Make it so we can’t live without you?”
His comment gives me pause, but it seemed like a pretty obvious title for the folder—Johnson’s Pancake Mix was our first advertiser.
I glance over at Jax. He seems to have overheard that conversation, too. His face is stony.
…
Later, I fall asleep, curled into myself, facing Jax. I’d swear I feel him reach over and brush my hair back from my face.
Hours pass, and we stop for an early dinner somewhere north of Roanoke. We both use the bathrooms before we leave, and when I come outside, Jax is on the phone. It must be another work call; he and some guy named Murray have had a few calls over the last hour about a skip and a credit card trail.
However, when I get closer, I overhear him say, “Melinda,” and by the soft tone of his voice, I realize that my assumption was way off base. This isn’t work. This is personal. Of course he would wait to make his one personal call when I wasn’t sitting right beside him.
“…change of plans,” he says. Then, “Don’t be ridiculous. She’ll be more like a houseguest.”
He curls his body around the phone, as if he’s trying to keep the outside world from listening in. I realize I am now the outside world. “That’s a relief,” he says, exhaling. “I owe you. I’ll see you later tonight if I can get away.”
He hangs up and looks over his shoulder at the restaurant. His whole body jerks when he sees me already standing there, right behind him.
“Hey,” I say, keeping it casual. “Who’s Melinda?”
I can practically see his mind working as he puts together what I expect to be a colossal lie. “One of my men’s daughters. She’s backpacking through Europe.” His face is blank like when I first met him off the ferry. Like he doesn’t know who the hell I am.
I stare at him, waiting for him to say more about how later he’s going to escape his “houseguest” so he can meet up with some girl who’s supposed to be in Europe. Of course, he doesn’t.
“Is she having fun?” I can play dumb with the best of them.
Jax shrugs. “Ready to go?” he asks, which answers my unspoken question better than he probably ever intended.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jackson
Natalie falls asleep again when we’ve got only a couple hours left in the drive. It’s a relief not to have to think of something to say. Everything I want to say sounds brutal in my head. It would be worse out loud, and I can’t hurt her like that.
I figure, give it a week. She’ll be homesick. She’ll miss her parents. She’ll realize she’s bitten off more than she can chew and that our time on the road was just a fantasy. She won’t even like the real me, let alone want to stick around. Give it a week, I tell myself, and she’ll leave me again. Par for the course, but probably for the best.
I bypass the tunnel into the city because I don’t do tunnels—particularly those that go underwater—and take the less direct path over the GWB. It’s nearly twelve thirty by the time we’re in Tribeca and pulling into the parking garage below my building. I slip into my reserved spot near the elevator bank and stairwell.
“Wake up, Natalie.” I lay my hand on her shoulder, and a long red spiral falls over my hand. It feels good to touch her again. And not so good, too. “Wake up. We’re…” Home, I want to
say, but I bite back the word. “Are you awake?”
I kiss her temple.
She lifts her head as if it weighs a ton, squints, then blinks her eyes. She straightens in her seat and looks around the dimly lit garage. “Where are we?”
“My building.”
“I missed it?”
“You didn’t miss it.” Clearly she’s still out of it. “This is its garage.”
“No, I mean New York. I didn’t see it.”
Fuck, I should have woken her up to see the lights. “Grab your overnight bag. We’ll deal with the rest of your things in the morning.”
Still groggy, she gets out and slowly staggers around the back of the Escalade, keeping her hand on it for balance. She stumbles, and I catch her before she hits the ground. “Can you find your feet?”
She nods. “Right where I left them.”
Just like the tunnel, I don’t take the elevator but instead lead her to the stairs with my arm wrapped around her waist. It may be my last chance to touch her like this.
When we make it to the top and enter the reception area, she rubs her eyes. “Where are we now?”
“My office. JSI.”
I pull out my key card and direct her from reception into the command center. Benson and Schaeffer, the two men who make up my overnight crew, are at their monitors. They like to keep the lights dim and, since it’s just them, it’s fine by me. They only look up when they hear us coming.
“Welcome back, Mr. Sparke,” says Schaeffer. They look at Natalie, curious. I’m not in the habit of bringing women here.
“Everything okay?” Benson asks.
Natalie raises a hand in greeting. “Hey.”
“Hey,” they both say, clearly dumbfounded.
“Good night,” I tell them, wasting no time escorting Natalie around the corner and down the long corridor to my apartment. I press my palm to the sensor, and the door slides open. The room automatically lights, and the sudden brightness yanks Natalie from the last bit of her sleepy stupor.
“Now where are we?” The sliding door automatically closes behind us with a shhhwiiippp, and she glances at it over her shoulder.
“My apartment.”
“You live at work?” She looks around the big, open room with its minimal furniture. “I thought only pirates and shepherds lived at work.”
The comment strikes me as funny. Cute, even. Her eyes open wider, and I realize it’s because I’m smiling. I guess I haven’t done that in a while.
I tip my head toward a door at the far left corner of the room. “Bathroom is that way. It’s a walk-through. Bedroom’s on the other side of it.”
She takes my direction and crosses the floor, her shoes clipping on the concrete surface between the large area rugs. I follow her until we’re both in my room.
“Get some rest,” I tell her, pushing down the panic. I haven’t had a woman here in years, and my skin prickles with the stress of having someone else in my space.
“Are you coming to bed, too?” She’s already forgotten the strict rule I set.
“Soon.” It’s a lie. “I’ve got some files to look over. I’ve been gone over a week.”
“It’s only been five days,” she says, and there’s a flicker of surprise in her eyes that tells me she’s startled herself with that realization.
Has it really only been five days since I arrived on her island? So much has changed, and it still isn’t enough. “I was tracing a skip before I got to the island. I’ve been gone for over a week. Got to check on some things. You get some sleep. Don’t let me keep you up.”
“Okay,” she says, turning. I don’t think she realizes I haven’t left the room. She tosses her small bag on the bed and strips off her dress until she’s standing there in matching black satin panties and bra. My throat thickens as she sheds the bra, then pulls her nightshirt out of her bag.
I slip away before she turns for the bathroom and finds me watching. She’ll ask me what I’m doing, and I won’t have an answer. I don’t have a fucking clue.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Natalie
Early morning sunlight flickers through the blinds, casting yellow stripes across burgundy sheets. I reach out, sweep my arm, searching, but touch nothing except the pillows I’ve scattered during the night. I roll over. No Jax. I listen for sounds of him moving around in the other room, but it’s eerily quiet. He wouldn’t really sneak off in the night to see this Melinda person, would he?
I get up, put my T-shirt dress back on from yesterday, make a pit stop in the bathroom, then shuffle into the big room. Last night, all I noticed was the immense space of it, along with the black leather sectional. Now I note that the floor is concrete and covered in expensive-looking grayscale area rugs. There’s a very large flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, and a small kitchen that’s so clean, I doubt it’s ever been used.
There are no photographs. No art. No horrible hand-me-down furniture from the parents. Of course I wouldn’t have expected that last one, but there’s absolutely no personality in this place. It doesn’t give me any more clue as to who Jax is these days than he did.
I stop when I see him asleep on the couch.
Same clothes as yesterday. There’s an empty beer bottle on the glass coffee table as well as files spread everywhere, including one that’s still balanced on his chest. Huh. Maybe he’s been here the whole time.
Moving silently so as not to disturb him, I find filters and a coffee can in a cupboard and start some brewing. Then I search the fridge for food. There’s nothing. Only condiments, a black banana, and a few IPAs.
Jax makes a noise in his sleep and shifts his weight. If he turns over, that file is going to spill onto the floor. So, while the coffee continues to brew, I take a second to move the file to the coffee table and tidy all the rest, leaving them in a neat stack. Jax doesn’t stir again. He must be wiped.
My stomach growls, and I glance back at him. The least I can do to thank him for everything is to get him some groceries. One less household chore for him to worry about, and something I already know how to do. That is, assuming I can find a grocery store in New York City. One problem with having slept through our arrival—I have no idea where we are.
“You can do this, Natalie. Time to put on those big-girl panties.”
I chug down some coffee and wash the cup, grab my purse, then head out the door. It slides closed behind me, and I come to a stuttering stop when a long hallway stretches out in front of me. I don’t remember this from last night. Is this the way we came?
I follow it, passing a series of private offices on my left. On the right is an unmarked door, and then one marked Interview, and then Equipment. At the end there’s a break room with a refrigerator and a couple tables, then as I round the corner, another large room with a concrete floor. Oh, yeah. I remember this part.
One wall in the large room is covered in whiteboards with scribbles, diagrams, and several photographs mounted on its surface. The floor hosts four twenty-foot rows of individual desks butted up against each other. Most of the desks are covered in multiple computer monitors. It’s just like the bride told me and Kate back on the island: Jax really does operate a high-tech lair!
There’s a black swivel chair in front of each computer. Two men are at their stations, though it looks like they’re packing up.
“Mornin’,” one of them says to me, and the other guy backhands him in the gut like he means to make him shut up.
“Hey,” I say, a little sheepish and getting a needling of déjà vu. “Is there a grocery store nearby?”
The first guy hesitates for a second before saying, “There’s a good-size bodega two blocks north on Greenwich Street. Called Diego’s.” He points toward an exit door.
“That’ll do,” I say cheerily, not really knowing what a bodega is but liking the sound of it. I exit the large room through the door he indicated and end up in a reception area, again with a concrete floor, but, like Jax’s apartment, it is softened by a thick black-
and-white area rug in a geometric pattern. The name Jackson Sparke Investigations is spelled out in shiny chrome letters on the wall behind the spotless reception desk. Underneath, & Security is written in smaller chrome script.
There’s an elevator—I don’t remember that part—and I take it down from six to the street level.
When I step outside, I am accosted by a humid burst of air and a steady current of people walking nearly shoulder to shoulder, some pushing past, all of them at the same fast pace I’ve come to expect of Jax. Several different languages fill my ears. Nobody looks at me. I can smell river water, so one must be close.
I hold my body close to the building, reveling in the excitement of it all, while I type “Diego’s bodega” into the GPS on my phone. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to use it. Everything on Little Bear I could find in my sleep.
A taxicab lays on its horn, and I jump. Some women in tight black pants and figure-fitting suit jackets pass by. One of them has a cigarette hanging from her mouth while she pulls lipstick from her bag.
I glance back down at my phone, murmuring, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” My search results turn up the address for something that sounds promising. I’m not sure if it’s what the guy meant to send me to, but it’s the right distance, so I take a chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I jump into the stream of people, winding up on a block with several Hispanic-sounding businesses in a row. Turns out a bodega is just a smaller version of Tremblay’s Market from back home, but with all the signs written in Spanish.
A cat rubs up against my legs as I buy some soup, cereal, just-add-water pancake mix, syrup, chips, and plantains from a guy who rings me up, all while yelling at some guy on the phone.
He points at the shelves of cigarettes behind him and a sign that says No Loosies while raising his eyebrows to ask me a question. I shake my head, not entirely sure what I’ve answered, then exit the propped-open doors.
On a whim, I buy a box of doughnuts at another place from a smiley guy in a lavender turban. I also pass a flower vendor and pick up a bouquet. Jax definitely needs something to spruce up the place.
