“Anyway,” Nathan said while Burt might or might not have been considering the board, “these dreams feel so real. I can feel the fog on my skin, the cold in my bones. It’s like I’m right there, and Jeremy’s right there, just out of reach.”
“How many have there been?”
“Seven over the past eleven days, but every night for the last three.”
“Why’s he making it so hard for you to catch him?” Burt asked. “Why not just sit on a stump and wait for you. Better yet, why not turn around and meet you halfway?”
“He can’t wait for me because of…because of whatever’s chasing him. Jesus, you’re not moving that pawn, are you? Leaves your queen open to my bishop. You sure you remember the rules to this game?”
“I didn’t take my finger off the piece yet, so it’s not an official move. And of course I’m not gonna move the pawn. Leaves my queen up shit creek, right?”
“Without a paddle.”
“Right, that’s what I thought, so give me another minute.”
Nathan sipped his iced tea. “You think there’s anything to dreams?”
“Like what?”
Nathan hesitated. Burt may not have been bright, but Nathan didn’t want to sound stupid, even to him. “I don’t know. Like maybe they aren’t just silly little movies playing in your head at night. Like maybe they have meaning.”
Burt hopped his knight over a pawn and put Nathan’s bishop in danger. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the worst move on the board.
“That the clock you won at bingo?” Burt asked. “It’s broken.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s been saying ten after ten since I got here. My watch says ten forty.”
“It’s not broken. It just doesn’t have any batteries.”
“Want to borrow some batteries?”
“Nah.” Nathan moved his bishop. “Check.”
“Really? Check? Give me a minute here.”
“So what do you think? About dreams having meaning?”
“You mean like the fact that you’re wearing slippers in the woods means you’re going senile or something?”
“Seriously, Burt, forget the slippers. Forget the whole dream, okay?”
“No, hold on a second. I think, yeah, I think dreams could be telling you something. I knew a guy who was supposed to fly across the country but the night before he dreamed he shouldn’t get on the plane, that it was going to end in disaster.”
Burt stared at the board for another few seconds before Nathan said, “And? Did the guy get on the plane? Did it crash?”
“He got on, it didn’t crash, but they lost one of his bags. For good. He never saw it again. Whose move is it?”
“Your move. You’re in check. And I’m not sure that’s what I’m talking about with the dream.”
“So what do you think your dream is telling you?”
Burt let his finger rest on a pawn, lifted his eyes to Nathan, who nodded. Burt moved the pawn and his king was no longer in check.
Nathan sighed. “I think Jeremy might be in trouble.”
Burt looked down into his iced tea for a moment. He blew out a breath, then said gently, “Nathan, Jeremy’s not in trouble. He’s dead.”
“He’s gone, yup. He’s missing, I know that. But I don’t know that he’s dead.”
Burt looked into his friend’s eyes. “Four years is a long time. If he were alive, don’t you think you would have heard something by now?”
“Maybe I’ve been hearing something. Three dreams in three nights. He’s lost, he’s in trouble. He wants me to find him. To help him. Maybe he’s out there, Burt, waiting for me to come for him.”
Burt reached across the board and put a hand on Nathan’s knee. “Four years, Nathan. He went camping four years ago and he never came home. You think he’s been wandering around lost out there somewhere for four years? The boy was a soldier, knew how to take care of himself out in the wilderness. I hate to tell you, Nathan, but if he were alive, he’d have found a way home from wherever the heck he was, don’t you think?” Burt cleared his throat. “I been meaning to suggest to you that maybe it’s time to throw away that note on the fridge.”
Nathan shook his head. From where he sat he could see it in the kitchen, exactly where Jeremy had stuck it to the fridge with a Niagara Falls magnet four years ago. “Going camping. Back in a few days.” Since he’d come home from Afghanistan, Jeremy had spent a lot of time alone. It wasn’t unusual for him to want to take a few days to himself, someplace he could be alone with his thoughts. Maybe he thought about his time at war, maybe he thought about anything but that time, but it was common enough for him to toss his sleeping bag and backpack into his SUV and find himself a nice, quiet place where he could recharge his batteries. The problem was that he never said where he was going. He’d just pick up and go. Could have been a few miles away or several states away. The police never found a trace of him—no credit card or phone use, no security-camera footage of him at a convenience store or gas station, no one who reported seeing him. Nobody ever found his truck. No hikers stumbled across an abandoned tent. No white-water rafters spotted the inflatable kayak he’d taken with him that weekend lying on a riverbank somewhere. Jeremy was simply gone.
“What about it, Nathan? Ready to get rid of the note?”
Nathan said nothing. He looked out the window at a fat moth smacking itself into the glass, over and over. He heard a faint thump, then another.
“You know, maybe that note is just one change you might want to think about making,” Burt said. Nathan looked at him, waiting. “Listen,” Burt said after a moment, “West Hartford’s a nice town. Connecticut’s a nice state. And I like having you next door. I like having someone to talk to when Cassie starts getting on me about not turning my socks right-side out when I take ’em off. I like bitching about how hot it’s been, or how cold it is, or about how they’re never gonna fix that damn pothole at the end of our street. But what I don’t like is seeing you wasting away here. You like it here? You like this stuffy old apartment?”
“Your apartment’s just like mine and you’re happy in yours.”
“I have to be. It’s all I got. But didn’t you tell me you’ve got a house on a lake somewhere, some place you built yourself?”
Nathan shrugged. The moth was hammering more insistently on the window, like it had something important it wanted to contribute to the conversation.
“Well, why would you want to spend your golden years beating the holy hell out of me at chess when you could be sitting in a boat catching fish in the sun?”
Nathan shook his head.
“I don’t get it, Nathan.”
Nathan was about ready to open the window and let the moth in just so he could use yesterday’s paper to put an end to the thumping.
“Nathan?”
Nathan put his glass of iced tea down on the side table, hard. “Because that’s a family vacation house, Burt. A place where my family would go on vacation. In case you forgot, I don’t have a family anymore. It’s just me and Maggie’s ashes over there on the mantel. But the part of Maggie that really mattered is gone, Burt. She’s gone and so is Jeremy. So why would I go all by myself to my family vacation home? Tell me that, okay? Why would I do that?”
Burt said nothing. The moth made one final mad rush at the glass, bounced off, and fluttered away.
“Sorry,” Nathan said. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the clock on the wall thankfully not ticking.
“Why don’t you sell the lake house then?”
“Same reason I don’t sell my home movies.”
Burt nodded. “I understand.”
“No offense, Burt, but I don’t think you do. I don’t think you could. You’ve got Cassie and you’ve had her for fifty years. You’ve got three kids and six grandkids who all live within an hour’s drive, and at least one set of them visits you every week. I hear you all through the walls
. I hear your family. And I’m happy for you, I really am. Everyone should have what you have. I just don’t have it myself, not anymore. I had something like that but it’s…lost.”
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. The faucet dripped in the bathroom. Burt said nothing.
“And if my son is trying to tell me something, even if it’s in a dream, I’m damned sure gonna listen.”
Burt nodded. “All right, Nathan. Forget everything I just said. Any time you want to talk, I’m here.”
“Okay. Right now, though, I think I need to go to bed.”
He reached down and knocked over his king.
CHAPTER NINE
MIGUEL WAS IN David’s car again, this time in the front passenger seat. He and Larry had been riding around for hours. Miguel’s backpack had been in his lap all night. He’d kept his arms wrapped securely around it, hugging it to his chest. He could not believe he was holding twenty thousand dollars. He was a millionaire. He’d been thinking that he’d get on that bus, take it somewhere far away—maybe Florida—and buy a nice house and a fast car. He’d hire himself a maid and a cook, and maybe even a “maiter dee” to show him to his dinner table every night. He was heading toward a good life.
“But the bus station is a couple blocks north,” he had told Larry a few hours ago.
Larry glanced at him, then focused on the street again.
“Yeah, I know.”
“David said you’d put me on a bus, anywhere I want to go.”
“And I will. Just got some things to do before, okay. Now relax.”
So they drove all over the city and Miguel waited in the car while Larry popped into several bars and what looked like a closed off-track-betting site. Each time when he came out he had a thick envelope in his hands, which he put into a metal box under his seat. The first time he did it, Larry said, “We’ve got a few more stops to make and I’m gonna leave you in the car each time, okay? Listen closely now, okay? I like you, kid, but if you touch this box I’m gonna be really upset, you understand? It would be a really bad idea to touch the box, you get me?”
Miguel nodded and thought a few times about looking in the box while Larry was away from the car, but the look on the man’s face made him reconsider every time. He also thought about simply getting out of the car and disappearing into the dark city, leaving behind the metal box but taking his twenty thousand bucks with him. But Larry had told him he’d take him to the bus station when he was finished working. Miguel really wanted to get on a bus out of town, just take his money somewhere far from this city, and he knew he’d be much safer walking just a few feet from Larry’s car into the station than he would be walking halfway across town, or even taking the subway. Besides, if Larry had wanted to hurt him, he could have done it at any time. He’d given Miguel no reason not to trust him.
Larry slid back behind the wheel, put another envelope into the box under his seat, and said, finally, “That’s the last one.”
Miguel smiled. In a little while, he’d be on a bus to someplace new, someplace with trees maybe. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was somewhere else. And he’d have twenty thousand dollars to spend there.
After a few minutes of driving, Miguel saw that they were heading away from the bus station again.
“You said after we ran your errands, you’d take me to the bus station.”
Larry looked over at him. “You want to make some more money?” he asked.
Miguel thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. How much more?”
“Not twenty thousand, but enough to be worth your while.”
Larry stopped for a red light. A police car sat across the street, the cop standing beside it hassling a couple of teens. Miguel could be out of the car in a heartbeat. But the police had never been Miguel’s friends before—waking him on benches or stoops, shooing him along—and he wasn’t sure why they’d start now. And they might search him and want to know where a kid like him had gotten his hands on twenty thousand dollars. And if they did check his bag, he’d have a hell of a time explaining the wallet he stole from the hotel. And the length of pipe with blood probably still on it. No, he should probably just sit tight. Besides, Larry really had been okay to him.
“What would I have to do for the money?”
“Nothing bad.”
Miguel thought about it some more. The light was still red; the cop was still there. Twenty thousand was a lot of money, but imagine what he could do with even more. The light changed and Miguel watched the cop recede in his side mirror.
“I don’t want you to do what David was trying to do with me.”
Larry laughed. “Jesus, kid, I don’t blame you. You see this ugly face of mine?” Miguel laughed. “Don’t worry. I got a house out of state, needs some work done around the place. Leaves to rake, rocks to move. Stuff like that. You afraid of hard work?”
Miguel shook his head. He was actually intrigued. He’d never been outside the city. To see a house with a real lawn, with trees and rocks, it sounded nice.
“We’re going there now?”
“Nah, it’s too late. We’ll crash at my apartment. You can sleep on the couch and in the morning we’ll hit the road, be at my house in a few hours. Okay?”
Miguel hesitated, then nodded.
“Good,” Larry said. “Then it’s settled.”
Miguel rested his chin on the backpack in his lap and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TEN
ALICE HADN’T WANTED to think any more about the mysterious little boy. The situation was creepy and strange and she was tired of thinking about it. So she curled up in a corner of the sofa, pulled a soft throw blanket up to her neck, and turned on a mindless sitcom. The sitcom gave way to the news, which was followed by a rerun of another mindless sitcom, and Alice had just drifted off into welcome sleep when the phone rang. She squinted at the clock. Twenty minutes to midnight. The phone rang again and she answered without having to look at the caller ID.
“Hi,” she said.
“How’s my girl?” Daniel asked.
“Depends, were you calling your wife or your mistress?”
“Give me a second, let me check which number I dialed.” Pause for effect. “Oh, it’s you, Alice.”
She chuckled out of habit. It was an old joke of theirs, one that was funnier years ago. Not that Alice thought Daniel would ever cheat on her, but this little exchange had more of an effect when he still glowed in her eyes. On the other end of the line, Daniel chuckled, too, and the sound of it told her he’d had a drink or two more than usual in the hotel bar.
“How are you?” Daniel asked. “Hope I’m not calling too late. I just got back to my room.”
“I’m okay.”
“Yeah? Good day?”
No, Daniel, because if you remember from our conversation a few hours ago, I’d had my heart set on getting a spot in Rappaport’s studio but he rejected me. Alice nearly said that, but she bit her tongue. Daniel was tipsy, and at least he’d thought to call to say good night, even if he’d already forgotten that she’d be feeling down tonight. Of course, he had no way of knowing that she was also feeling confused and a little scared.
“Sure,” she said. “It was an okay day. I’m still, you know, a bit sad about Rappaport.”
“Oh, shit, yeah, I’m sorry about that. Can’t believe I forgot that. I’ve had a long day.”
And more than a few seven and sevens.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “How about you? You doing okay?”
“Yeah. Got a little headache.”
She resisted the urge to inform him that his head might hurt worse in the morning. “Sorry to hear that. Take some aspirin before bed.”
“I’m already in bed. Think I’m gonna shut it down, okay? I’m really beat. I just wanted to say good night.”
“Okay. Good night. Sleep well.”
“You, too.”
She hung up and thought about turning the TV back on but wasn’t in the mood for more of the ina
ne shenanigans of a group of friends trying to get laid or find true love or a new job or whatever they were looking for this episode. But she wasn’t ready to turn in for the night, either. Her eye drifted to the sketchpad on the coffee table in front of her.
Any day that passed without her creating something, anything, was a day wasted, a day she felt guilty about. Even if what she ended up with wasn’t any good, she always felt better having tried. Even though she wasn’t yet earning income with her art, a day she painted was a day she was a painter. A day she didn’t was a day she wasn’t. She’d considered having those words, a little inspirational motto she’d thought up herself, printed on a T-shirt, but decided it would do her more good on the wall of her studio. So she’d painted it in cobalt blue on the wall above the windows.
She rolled her head from side to side, working out a kink the sofa had planted in her neck, and said aloud, out of habit, “All right already, I’ll do one sketch before bed.”
She checked to see that the point was sharp enough on her Staedtler Lumograph sketching pencil with medium-soft lead, and opened to a blank page in her sketchpad. She felt unreasonably resentful about having to work right then, but she knew she’d feel better about herself in the morning.
“I’ll work,” she said, “but I sure as hell am not getting up. I’ll just sketch whatever I can see from my cozy little corner of the sofa right here.”
It wasn’t a bad exercise for her, actually. If she wasn’t working outside, she was in her studio working from sketches she’d made outside, drawing the outside world. It might do her good to stretch some different artistic muscles, draw a simple room for a change. She hadn’t done that in a long time.
She began to draw, her hand moving in confident strokes, executing the straight lines of the doorway and the corners where the walls met, the graceful curves of the love seat and the folds in the window treatments. She sketched quickly but surely, first the basic, broad shapes, then the layering in of detail upon detail. It felt good. She didn’t even realize she was smiling.
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