by Tom Perrotta
Good times, she thought, but only as an experiment, just to see if she believed it. Then she turned and started for home, the street so quiet and the air so thin that her footsteps sounded like a drumbeat on the pavement, loud enough to wake the neighbors.
It wasn’t that late, but Mapleton was a ghost town, not a pedestrian or a stray dog in sight. She turned onto Windsor Road, reminding herself to look alert and purposeful. She’d taken a self-defense course a couple of years ago, and the instructor had said that not looking like a victim was Rule Number One. Keep your head up and your eyes open. Look like you know exactly where you’re going, even when you don’t.
At the corner of North Avenue, she paused to consider her options. It was a fifteen-minute walk from here to Lovell Terrace, but only half that if she cut across the railroad tracks. If Aimee had been there she wouldn’t have hesitated—they took the shortcut all the time—but Jill had never done it on her own. To get to the crossing, you had to walk down a desolate stretch of road, past auto repair shops, the Department of Public Works, and mysterious factories with names like Syn-Gen Systems and Standard Nipple Works, and then slip through a hole in the chain-link fence at the rear of the school bus parking lot. Once you crossed the tracks and circled around the back of Walgreens, you were in a much better area, a residential neighborhood with lots of streetlights and trees.
She didn’t hear the car. It just whooshed up from behind, a sudden alarming presence at the edge of her vision. She let out a gasp, then whirled into an awkward karate stance as the passenger window slid down.
“Whoa.” A familiar blissed-out face was peering at her, framed by reassuring blond dreadlocks. “You okay?”
“I was.” Jill tried to sound exasperated as she lowered her hands. “Until you scared the shit outta me.”
“Sorry about that.” Scott Frost, the unpierced twin, was the passenger. “You know karate?”
“Yeah, Jackie Chan’s my uncle.”
He grinned his approval. “Good one.”
“Where’s Aimee?” Adam Frost called from the driver’s seat. “We haven’t seen her for a while.”
“Working,” Jill explained. “She got a job at Applebee’s.”
Scott squinted at her with puffy, soulful eyes. “Need a ride somewhere?”
“I’m good,” she told him. “I live right across the tracks.”
“You sure? It’s fucking freezing out.”
Jill gave a stoic shrug. “I don’t mind walking.”
“Hey.” Adam leaned into view. “If you see Aimee, tell her I said hi.”
“Maybe we could party sometime,” Scott suggested. “All four of us.”
“Sure,” Jill said, and the Prius departed as quietly as it had arrived.
* * *
IN THE men’s room, Kevin splashed cold water on his face and wiped it off with a paper towel. He felt like a fool, breaking down in front of Nora like that. He could see how uncomfortable it made her, the way she froze up, like she’d never seen a grown man cry and didn’t even know it was possible.
He’d caught himself by surprise, too. He’d been so worried about her reaction to what he was saying, he wasn’t even thinking about his own. But something had snapped inside of him, a rubber band of tension that had been wound so tight for so long he’d forgotten it was even there. It was the phrase little boy that had done it, the sudden memory of an easy weight on his shoulders, Tom perched up there like a king on a throne, gazing down upon the world, one delicate hand resting on top of his father’s head, the heels of his Velcro-fastened sneakers knocking softly against Kevin’s chest as they walked.
Despite what had happened, he was glad he’d shared his good news with her, glad he’d resisted the temptation to spare her feelings. For what? So they could continue hiding from each other, eating their meal in uneasy silence, wondering why they had nothing to talk about? This way was harder, but it felt like a breakthrough, a necessary first step on a road that might actually lead somewhere worth going.
I don’t know about you, he thought he would tell her when he got back, but a nice dinner always makes me cry.
That would be the way to handle it—no apology, just a little joke to smooth things over. He crumpled the towel and dropped it into the wastebasket, checking himself one last time in the mirror before heading out the door.
A small seed of alarm sprouted in his chest as he made his way across the dining room and saw that their table was empty. He told himself not to worry, that she must have taken advantage of his absence to make her own trip to the restroom. He poured himself a little more wine and ate a forkful of roasted beet salad, trying not to stare at the balled-up napkin resting beside her plate.
A couple of minutes went by. Kevin thought about knocking on the ladies’ room door, maybe sticking his head inside to see if she was okay, but the handsome waiter stopped by the table before he had a chance. The man looked at Kevin with an expression that seemed to combine equal parts sadness and sympathetic amusement. His voice had a slight Spanish accent.
“Shall I clear the lady’s plate, sir? Or would you just prefer the check?”
Kevin wanted to protest, to insist that the lady would be right back, but he knew it was futile.
“Did she—?”
“She asked me to convey her apologies.”
“But I drove,” Kevin said. “She doesn’t have a car.”
The waiter lowered his gaze, nodding toward the food on Kevin’s plate.
“Shall I box that up for you?”
* * *
JILL CROSSED the street, keeping her chin up and her shoulders back as she hustled past Junior’s Auto Body, a hospital for cars with shattered windshields and dimpled doors, dangling fenders and crumpled front ends. Some of the bad ones had deflated air bags drooping from the steering wheels, and it wasn’t unusual for a bag to be spotted with blood. She knew from experience not to look too hard or think too much about the people who’d been inside.
She felt like an idiot for declining the twins’ offer of a ride home. It was just injured pride that made her do it, anger at them for sneaking up on her like that, even if they hadn’t meant to. There was also a certain amount of good-girl caution at work, the little voice in her head that reminded her not to get into cars with strangers. It was kind of self-defeating in this case, since the alternative seemed even dicier than the danger she was supposedly trying to avoid.
Besides, the twins weren’t really strangers, nor was Jill the least bit scared of them. Aimee said they’d been total gentlemen the day she’d cut school and hung out at their house. All they’d wanted to do was get high and play Ping-Pong, hours and hours of Ping-Pong. Apparently they were really good at it, even when they were wasted. If they ever had a Pothead Olympics, Aimee figured that the Frost twins would probably win gold and silver medals in table tennis, dominating the competition like Venus and Serena.
In the course of that same conversation, Aimee floated her suspicion that Scott Frost had a little crush on Jill, a possibility Jill had refused to take seriously at the time. Why would Scott have a crush on her? He didn’t even know her, and she wasn’t the kind of girl that guys got crushes on from afar.
There’s a first time for everything, Aimee had told her.
Except when there’s not, Jill had replied.
But now she wondered, thinking about the way Scott had been looking at her, the disappointment in his eyes when she told him she felt like walking, and even the way he’d chortled at her stupid Jackie Chan joke, which meant that he was either very stoned or very well disposed toward her, or both.
Maybe we could party together, he’d said. All four of us.
Maybe we could, she thought.
* * *
JILL HEARD the whistle of an approaching train as she entered the Stellar Transport parking lot, home to a vast herd of yellow buses, more than enough to evacuate the entire town. They seemed otherworldly at night, row upon row of hulking beasts, their front ends staring straight ahea
d, a regiment of identical stupid faces. She hurried past them, eyes darting warily left and right, checking the dark alleys that separated one from the next.
The whistle sounded again, followed by the clanging of alarm bells and a sudden whomp of displaced air as a double-decker commuter train blew by on the eastbound track, a speeding wall of dull steel and luminous glass. For a few deafening seconds, there was nothing else in the world, and then it was gone, the earth trembling in its wake.
Continuing on her way, she rounded the bumper of the last bus and turned left. She didn’t see the bearded man until they were right on top of each other, trapped between the bus on her left and the eight-foot-high chain-link fence on her right. She opened her mouth to scream, but by then she’d realized it wasn’t necessary.
“You scared me,” she said.
The bearded man stared at her. He was a Watcher, short and stocky, dressed in a white lab coat and painter’s pants, and he seemed to be having a medical emergency.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
The man didn’t respond. He was hunched over, hands on his thighs, gulping for air like a fish out of water, making a strangled sound every time he opened his mouth.
“Do you want me to call 911?”
The Watcher shook his head and straightened up. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out an inhaler and brought it to his mouth, pressing the button and sucking hard. He waited a few seconds before exhaling, and then repeated the operation.
The medicine worked fast. By the time he put the inhaler back in his pocket, he was already breathing easier, still panting a bit, but no longer making that horrible noise. He dusted off his pants and took a small step forward. Jill backed up to give him room, flattening herself against the fence so he could squeeze past.
“Have a good night,” she called after him, just to be nice, because so many people weren’t.
* * *
KEVIN LEFT the restaurant in a funk, the bag of leftovers bouncing gently against his leg. He hadn’t wanted to take it, but the waiter had insisted, telling him it would be a shame to waste so much good food.
Nora’s house was at least a mile away, so there was no way she could have made it home by now. If he wanted to find her, he could just cruise down Washington Boulevard, keeping his eye out for a lone pedestrian. The hard part would come after that, when he pulled up beside her and lowered the passenger window.
Get in, he’d say. Let me drive you home. It’s the least I can do.
Because why did she deserve that courtesy? She’d left of her own free will, without a word of explanation. If she wanted to walk home in the cold, that was her prerogative. And if she wanted to call him later and apologize—well, that ball was in her court, too.
But what if she didn’t call? What if he waited for hours and the phone never rang? At what point would he lose his nerve and call her, or maybe even drive over to her house, ring the bell until she opened the door? Two A.M.? Four in the morning? Daybreak? The one thing he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep until he’d at least talked to her, gotten some kind of explanation for what had just happened. So maybe the smartest thing was just to go after her right now, have it out as soon as possible, so he didn’t have to spend the rest of the night wondering.
He was so caught up in this quandary that he barely noticed the two Watchers standing by his car, didn’t even realize who they were until he’d already opened the locks with his remote key.
“Hey,” he said, feeling a momentary sense of relief that Nora wasn’t there, that they didn’t have to go through that particular drama just now, the new girlfriend meeting the estranged wife. “You guys okay?”
They didn’t answer, but they didn’t have to, not when it was this cold out. The partner looked hypothermic—she was hugging herself and rocking from side to side, a cigarette stuck in one corner of her mouth like it had been glued in place—but Laurie was gazing at him with a tender, unwavering expression, the kind of look people give you in the funeral home when the deceased is a member of your family and they want to acknowledge your pain.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
There was a manila envelope in Laurie’s hand. She held it out, jabbing it at his chest like it was something he needed to see.
“What is it?”
She gave him a look that said, You know what it is.
“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. “Are you kidding me?”
Her expression didn’t change. She just held out the envelope until he took it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking her vow of silence. The sound of her voice was shocking to him, so strange and familiar at the same time, like the voice of a dead person in a dream. “I wish there was some other way.”
* * *
JILL SQUEEZED through the hole in the fence and trudged up the gravel embankment, pausing at the top to check for oncoming trains. It was an exhilarating place to be, all alone in that wide-open space, like she had the whole world to herself. The tracks flowed into the distance on either side of her like a river, the rails catching the light of the three-quarter moon, two parallel gleams fading into the darkness.
She balanced on one like a tightrope walker, tiptoeing with her arms outstretched, trying to imagine what would have happened if the Watcher she’d met back there had been her mother. Would they have laughed and hugged each other, amazed to find themselves alone in such an unlikely place? Or would her mother have been angry to find her there, disappointed by the alcohol on her breath, her deplorable lack of judgment?
Well, whose fault is that? Jill thought, hopping off the rail. Nobody’s looking out for me.
She headed down the embankment on the other side, descending toward the service road that ran behind Walgreens, her sneakers slipping on the loose gravel. Then she stopped.
A sound got trapped in her throat.
She knew that the Watchers always traveled in pairs, but the encounter with the bearded man had been so brief and awkward that she hadn’t stopped to wonder where his partner was.
Well, now she knew.
She took a few reluctant steps forward, moving closer to the white-clad figure on the ground. He was lying facedown near a big Dumpster that said GALLUCCI BROS., his arms spread wide as if he were trying to embrace the planet. There was a small pool of liquid near his head, a luminous substance she badly wanted to believe was water.
Part Five
MIRACLE CHILD
ANY MINUTE NOW
IT WAS WAY TOO CHILLY to be sitting on the back deck with a cup of morning coffee, but Kevin couldn’t help himself. After being cooped up all winter, he wanted to take advantage of every minute of sunshine and fresh air that the world allowed, even if he had to wear a sweater, a jacket, and a woolen cap to enjoy it.
Spring had come quickly in the past few weeks—snowdrops and hyacinths, flashes of yellow in the suddenly undead bushes, and then a riotous explosion of birdsong and dogwood blossoms, more new green every time you turned your head. The winter hadn’t been harsh by historical standards, but it had felt long and stubborn, almost eternal. March was especially bleak—cold and damp, gray sky pressing down—the gloomy weather reflecting and intensifying the mood of foreboding that had afflicted Mapleton ever since the murder of the second Watcher on Valentine’s Day. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, people had convinced themselves that a serial killer was on the loose, some unhinged loner with a grudge against the G.R. and a plan to eliminate the organization, one member at a time.
It would have been bad enough if Kevin had simply been dealing with the crisis as an elected official, but he was involved as a father and a husband, too, worried about the psychological well-being of his daughter and the physical safety of his soon-to-be-ex-wife. He still hadn’t signed the divorce papers Laurie had given him, but it wasn’t because he thought their marriage could be saved. He was delaying for Jill’s sake, not wanting to dump more bad news on her now, when she was still recovering from the shoc
k of finding the body.
It had been an awful experience, but Kevin was proud of the way she’d responded, calling 911 on her cell phone, waiting alone in the dark with the dead man until the cops arrived. Since then, she’d done everything she could to assist the investigation, submitting to multiple interviews with detectives, helping an artist produce a sketch of the bearded Watcher she’d seen in the Stellar Transport parking lot, even visiting the Ginkgo Street compound to see if she could spot the man in a series of lineups that supposedly included every male resident over the age of thirty.
The lineups were a bust, but the sketch bore fruit: The bearded man was identified as Gus Jenkins, a forty-six-year-old former florist from Gifford Township who’d been living in a G.R. “outpost” on Parker Road—the same group home, Kevin was startled to learn, into which Laurie had recently moved. The victim, Julian Adams, lived in the same house and had been seen with Jenkins on the night of the murder.
After repeated denials, the G.R. leadership finally admitted that Jenkins was a member of the Mapleton Chapter, but insisted—unconvincingly, according to investigators—that the organization had no idea as to his current whereabouts. This stonewalling infuriated the cops, who’d made it clear that they were seeking Jenkins as a witness, not a potential suspect. A couple of detectives even wondered out loud if the G.R. wanted the killer to remain at large, if they might be secretly pleased to have a homicidal maniac turning their members into martyrs.
Two months had passed without any breakthroughs in the case, but also without a third murder. People got a little bored with the story, started to wonder if maybe they’d overreacted. As the weather changed, Kevin sensed a shift in the collective mood, as if the whole town had suddenly decided to lighten up and stop obsessing about dead Watchers and serial killers. He’d seen this process before: It didn’t matter what happened in the world—genocidal wars, natural disasters, unspeakable crimes, mass disappearances, whatever—eventually people got tired of brooding about it. Time moved on, seasons changed, individuals withdrew into their private lives, turned their faces toward the sun. On balance, he thought, it was probably a good thing.
