A Knock at the Door

by Ellis, T. W.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Talk to me, Trevor.’

  He faces me. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but this FBI agent calls you up at the exact time you have a couple of bad guys in your living room?’

  I nod.

  ‘He tells you to run so you run.’

  I nod again.

  ‘Then he’s waiting near the police HQ and tells you to get in his car. You don’t.’

  ‘All correct so far. All innocent so far.’

  ‘Then he shows up at your house when those other two goons are trying to kill you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.’

  ‘This man you don’t know keeps showing up when bad things are happening to you.’

  ‘Yeah, thank goodness he does. Thank goodness he didn’t give up on me.’

  Trevor waves a hand, dismissive. ‘Seems awful convenient to my ears.’

  ‘You don’t like him because he works for the government.’

  ‘That’s exactly right. I don’t like him because he works for the government. They’re all – all – a bunch of crooks. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. That’s not what I’m saying. My personal opinions on the federal government and its determination to infringe upon my freedoms are irrelevant right here, Jem. Take the government out of the equation. Take his so-called job in the government out of the equation. What are you left with? A person that always shows up at the worst possible time. That’s not a friend. That’s a ghoul.’

  I lay a hand on Trevor’s shoulder. ‘I say this with the greatest possible respect, but maybe you’ve been out here by yourself too long. Maybe you don’t trust anyone. Is that close to the truth?’

  ‘Trust is earned.’

  I nod. ‘I agree. And Carlson has earned my trust, Trevor. He’s earned it tenfold. Just like you have.’

  He turns away. If it weren’t so dark and his skin weren’t so tanned I might detect a blush.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  He shrugs as if he’s never really thought about it. ‘Half my life, I guess.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you mean, why? Why not?’

  ‘I think you know what I mean. Why do you live out here by yourself, away from everyone else?’

  ‘That’s simple,’ he explains. ‘The more I know people the less I like them.’

  ‘You say that as though everyone’s bad.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t think they are. I hope they’re not.’

  ‘There you go then,’ he says. ‘You haven’t met enough of them yet to know they’re not worth knowing.’

  ‘I don’t want to believe that. People are good. Most people, at heart, are decent, aren’t they? We do the right thing. We try to, at least. Most of the time we try to be good people.’

  ‘How many good people have you met today?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘How is it different?’

  ‘Because those people aren’t good people. They’re not normal. They’re not like everyone else.’

  ‘What if they are like everyone else? What if everyone else could be just like them given the right push?’

  ‘You really think that all it takes for a good person to do bad is the right push?’

  He nods. ‘Yes, I do. I’ve seen it my whole life.’

  ‘Half your life,’ I can’t help but add.

  ‘Half my life,’ he agrees with some reluctance. ‘But that was plenty of time. It was more than enough time to know people are inherently selfish. Doing good is not a natural state for humans. We do what’s best for us. Doing good is usually an accident.’

  ‘Oh, Trevor, what happened to you?’

  He’s annoyed with my sympathy. ‘Don’t go feeling sorry for me, Jem. I’m glad my eyes were opened.’

  We look at the moon for a little while before something occurs to me.

  ‘You know,’ I begin, ‘I can prove you’re wrong.’

  He huffs. ‘Now, how exactly are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked,’ I say, feeling smug. ‘Because you’ve actually proved it for me.’

  He eyes me, suspicious.

  ‘You’ve proved yourself wrong, Trevor. You proved yourself wrong when you stopped your truck for me this morning, when you saved me. If you were right, then you wouldn’t have done that, would you?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘You’re a good person, Trevor,’ I insist. ‘You’re not selfish. All I’ve done is ruin your day and you’ve asked for nothing in return.’

  He’s thinking, hard. Desperate for a counter point.

  ‘Just admit you’re wrong,’ I say. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  He holds up a finger. He’s thought of something. ‘Maybe I saw a rich lady and figured she would give me a reward for helping her. So, you see, I’m not so good after all.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Trevor, is that really the best you can come up with?’

  He grumbles. ‘Give me my reward and I’ll think of something better.’

  I laugh. It feels good to laugh.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever laugh again.

  10:28 p.m.

  I try to sleep but I can’t. How can I possibly sleep? There are so many unanswered questions in my mind that to ignore one is to shift the focus on to a hundred more. It’s not helped by the fact that Trevor’s sofa is perhaps the most uncomfortable sofa ever designed by man. A medieval torturer would have given anything to own such a device. There’s an irony in that torture, because the sofa is soft and I sink into it. Problem is, I don’t stop sinking. Any position I try I end up like a log dropped in a lake.

  It’s cold too. No surprise that Trevor doesn’t have central heating. He’s upstairs, snoring quite happily. That isn’t helping either, although Carlson isn’t suffering in the same way I am. He’s sat upright, his jacket over him as a makeshift blanket. His head is lolled to the side, mouth hanging open, a content rumbling emanating from him. There’s little I’m envious about with men, but their ability to sleep no matter where, no matter what, is something I’d give anything to possess.

  I wonder where Leo is, whether he’s able to sleep right now. Or is he awake, like me, thinking of me like I am him?

  I hope he’s okay, if only in this moment. He must be worried sick about me and going through his own kind of hell. There’s something eminently capable about him that’s meant I’ve never been worried about him before, never been concerned that he’d ever get himself into a situation he couldn’t handle. Is that based in fact or in my own needs? Does my anxious nature need an opposite so that’s one less thing to worry about? Could it be that I lie to myself, believing my husband to be this strong, resourceful, unflappable man because that’s what I need?

  Like I said: ignore one question and a hundred more take its place.

  My heart is racing again. More palpitations.

  I concentrate on breathing to calm myself down.

  It works after a time but I’m left feeling frustrated and angry at myself for being like this.

  I didn’t walk out of the doctor’s office that day and suddenly suffer from anxiety. Instead, I cried every day for weeks. I couldn’t get out of bed. I suffered under the weight of incredible sadness but I pretended I was fine. I wanted to be fine. I wanted to be strong enough so that this one setback wouldn’t dictate my entire life. I didn’t want infertility to define me as a person.

  I should have got help. I shouldn’t have lied to Leo about how useless I felt, about how much of a failure as a woman I saw myself.

  That sadness never left. The trauma of hearing the doctor tell me about my ineffective ovaries and hostile uterus never went away. I spent too many nights wide awake and staring at the ceiling while Leo snored next to me. I ignored the feeling of my heart leaping around inside my chest. I pretended it was just a headrush when I became so dizzy I almost collapsed.

  I took the avoidance approach
, which is just about the worst thing you can do. I was worried people would ask about children: were we trying, were we planning to, were we expecting? I couldn’t bear the thought of those questions. I didn’t want to have to answer them, to decide whether to lie and pretend everything was fine or tell the awful truth. So, I stopped seeing anyone. I turned down lunch and coffee and drinks and parties and barbecues and everything else that might involve conversation either with friends or even strangers, who can be worse. They don’t know you and so they don’t know the right thing to say from the wrong thing.

  Of course, this avoidance just reinforces the need to avoid. By doing so you tell yourself that you are right to be afraid and that only makes the anxiety worse. Once you’re in that negative feedback loop then there’s no conceivable way out again.

  In the early days I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was dying. When you dwell alone in your anxious mind for too long then every thought becomes an enemy. Pessimism becomes the default state, interrupted only by abject dread.

  I didn’t want to get treatment. I couldn’t bear the idea of even seeing another doctor after the pain of the last time, but I did it for Leo. I tried cognitive behavioural therapy. I took antidepressants. CBT didn’t work because no matter how hard I tried to change the way I think any change in thought wasn’t going to make me fertile. No reworked state of mind was going to overcome my shrunken eggs and hostile womb. I knew it was a waste of time after the first session but I kept at it for Leo, to show him that I was trying. I wanted him to know I wanted to be better. I didn’t tell him that it was impossible.

  I sit up. I’m not going to sleep any time soon so there’s little point lounging on the sofa and doing nothing. If I’m going to be restless I may as well get a little exercise, a little air.

  My sneakers are on the floor next to Trevor’s book-stack coffee table. Carlson’s shoes are nearby. They’re good shoes, robust and comfortable. Brown brogues made from supple leather, with a wooden heel and lace holes ringed with brass. I didn’t notice earlier but they are quite lovely. I pick one up for a closer look. The quality is obvious. The craftsmanship is exquisite. These are expensive items of footwear.

  I put the brogue back in place and work on my sneakers over the dressings. My feet are still sore and it takes a minute to get the sneakers on without antagonising my wounds too much.

  I stand.

  In the quiet, I hear my knees creak and crack. Did they always do that or am I getting old?

  I tread with careful, quiet steps, making my way to the front door. I ease it open, expecting it to make an ungodly noise. It doesn’t. It’s silent. I should have known that Trevor would be fastidious in his maintenance.

  Outside, my breath clouds in the night air. The temperature has dropped through the floor and I shiver. Moonlight paints the cabin silver. There’s no other sound but those I make myself. I stand on the porch, enjoying the peace, the tranquillity. I hug myself, rubbing my arms to generate a little warmth. I’m not dressed for this. I should go back inside.

  I don’t.

  The trees are dark where the moonlight doesn’t reach. My pulse quickens as I remember my desperate run through the woods this morning, pursued by Messer. That thought inspires others.

  Messer, trying to kill me in my bathroom.

  Messer, stabbed in the neck.

  Messer, shot dead by Carlson.

  I’m crossing the driveway before I realise what I’m doing. I feel compelled. Drawn by something.

  There’s nothing out here, though.

  Except Carlson’s car, parked around the bend in the track where I left it to facilitate a swift exit should it be needed. Moonlight gleams from the bodywork. For some reason I approach it. There’s nothing remarkable about the vehicle. A plain sedan. The kind of car a government agent drives.

  Why do I find it so intriguing?

  There’s a memory, a thought. Something half-formed and incomplete. An image. A smell, maybe. When I drove it earlier I saw … I heard … I felt …

  Nothing. I can’t summon the memory and I can’t dismiss it either.

  I let my subconscious guide me. I approach the car, the sneakers protecting my tender feet from the cold, hard ground.

  I run my fingertips along the bodywork, the paint chilly and a little damp against my skin. The car is unlocked, which is a surprise yet not a surprise. Trevor forcibly ejected Carlson from it earlier and Carlson hasn’t gone back to it. He only left the cabin to use the latrine.

  My fingers find their way under the door release. I squeeze.

  It clunks open.

  What are you doing, Jem?

  I don’t know.

  I keep doing it.

  I slide on to the driver’s seat and ease the door shut after me. It’s a little less cold inside the vehicle, but my breath still clouds. The keys aren’t in the ignition so any half-fantasy I had about just driving away is over before it began. Carlson must have taken them with him as Trevor ordered him out of the car. I place my hands on the wheel anyway. I sit for a moment, thinking.

  I look around the interior. It’s dark, of course, but there’s enough moonlight for me to see with my natural night vision. The interior is empty. No personal effects. No change in the cup holder between seats. No gum wrapper in the footwell.

  What about the glove compartment?

  I lean across and work the release. It falls open.

  There’s something inside.

  A piece of paper. White. Folded.

  I open it up.

  I gasp.

  10:36 p.m.

  Blowing a smoke ring is hard enough but blowing a perfect smoke ring is only for the most patient, the most dedicated of smokers. You have to care for the aesthetic of smoke. That care has to be as deep as it is loyal, for it is only with persistence that the most aesthetic smoke ring can be realised.

  Rusty is a dedicated smoker.

  Not to pat herself on the back, but she achieved the perfect smoke ring way back. She hasn’t quite managed to blow a small ring through a larger ring yet she knows she’s getting close. She’s the patient smoker, the persistent smoker. Rusty cares about the aesthetic of smoke.

  Smoke rings in the moonlight. That’s true beauty.

  Rusty rocks on her back porch with nothing but the smoke and the moon to keep her company. The rocking chair is a huge, old piece of furniture she picked up at a yard sale, sold so cheap she felt like she was stealing it. The seller assured her they were happy to part with the chair. They were clearing the house as fast as possible. Rusty didn’t ask why. Didn’t want to know about a stranger’s problems any more than the stranger wanted to share them.

  Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

  The night is conducive to thought. When most of the town is silent and all is still for miles around, what else is there to do but think? These quiet nights are the worst for a restless mind because the only sound comes from within yourself. That sound can’t be ignored. Can’t be escaped.

  She thinks about the two government ogres who dropped a pebble into the town’s pond this morning. She still doesn’t know – really know – what a skinny yoga teacher and her husband have done to warrant the attention of federal agents. Rusty isn’t deemed important enough to understand the goings-on of her citizens.

  In government, we trust.

  Something wasn’t right about Wilks and Messer.

  She’s not sure exactly what it is because it’s a feeling. A hunch. An innate scepticism that makes her question everything. Rusty believes nothing at face value because time and time again she’s learned that faces lie easier than words ever can.

  Because of the unusual appearance of a pair of suited and booted Feds in her town, Rusty can’t relax. She feels not only out of the loop but out of control too. Could one of her citizens really be laundering money for cartels right under her nose? Possible, sure, because Rusty knows she can’t know everything. But she doesn’t want to believe it. She doesn’t want the perfect tranquil
lity of this little slice of paradise to prove disingenuous.

  So, she made a call. A call to a friend who might be able to circumvent the hierarchy that looks down on her and doesn’t like to share.

  ‘Hot Mama,’ her friend said upon answering the call, ‘when you going to come visit me?’

  ‘When you live somewhere I want to visit.’

  ‘You cut me with your words, Hot Mama.’

  ‘Please don’t call me that.’

  Her friend told her, ‘Come see me and you can make me stop.’

  ‘I don’t roll like that no more,’ Rusty said. ‘I’m back to a more biblical way of living.’

  ‘Even if I believed you to be serious,’ her friend replied, ‘you know I can change your mind.’

  ‘I’m afraid this is a strictly professional call.’

  ‘I have money.’

  ‘Could you be serious for nineteen seconds, please?’

  ‘What’s got you so riled?’

  Rusty explained and asked her friend to do some digging for her. Whether that will pay off or not, she doesn’t know. Rusty doesn’t like not knowing.

  ‘Just you and me against the world,’ Rusty tells the moon.

  She blows another smoke ring and listens to the silence.

  The house is only quiet, only calm, during the night. So that’s when Rusty prefers to be awake. She needs that silence. Dead tired every morning is a small price to pay for these moments of serenity.

  Plus, kind of hard to get away with smoking marijuana otherwise.

  Not as the police chief in a small town.

  Folk get funny about that.

  Rusty never busts anyone for smoking weed because that would make her a hypocrite, but she has to maintain the illusion that she would. Teenagers have to believe there’s a price to pay for breaking the law, even if the law is stupid. Plus, she has her officers to think about. She’s pretty sure Zeke spends every waking moment he isn’t on duty getting red-eyed, which is fine by her. But he can’t know it’s fine with her. Authority is an illusion. One that only maintains if all tiers believe in its absolute inflexibility. The second that inflexibility is questioned, the illusion vanishes.