Night Work Page 3

  “Well, then he violates the terms of his probation. So I probably have to file a report.”

  “What happens then?”

  “That depends. There’ll be another hearing. He might get a stricter schedule, have to come see me twice a week instead of once a week. Or I’ll make a point of going to his house. Really get in his face. He might even have to wear an ankle bracelet so we can keep track of him.”

  “Kids are wearing these?”

  “If that’s what it takes,” I said. “We don’t want to put a kid into the system these days. Because once they get locked up … We just know …”

  “They’re not going to come out?”

  “They might come out, but odds are they’ll be going right back in.”

  “But some people … I mean, no matter what you do …”

  “Yeah, I used to think anybody could be turned around,” I said. “If you got to them the right way. At the right time.”

  “You don’t think that anymore?”

  “No,” I said, picking up my fork again. “I guess I don’t.”

  “Well, I bet you do a good job. You must help out a lot of people.”

  “I try.”

  “Sorry about the boxing thing. I wasn’t trying to give you a hard time.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I smiled, and maybe I even started to relax a little bit. Then she asked the question I had been dreading all day long.

  “So how come you’re still single?”

  Just like that, it’s two years ago. To be exact, two years plus twenty-five days. In one second I can go back and feel it like it’s still happening, like that night lives in its own parallel universe where time stands still. A part of me is there always, living in that single span of darkness, the sun on the other side of the earth. I’m afraid this will be the only thing left when I die. The one part of me that continues will go back there like I’m finally going home.

  A bachelor party—what a hateful name for a night out making yourself sick. The guys dragging me from one bar to another, until finally we’re at that strip club in New Paltz. I’ve never had so much alcohol in my body as that night. Certainly not again since then. As much as I might crave the oblivion it would bring, I couldn’t stand the thought of feeling that way again, the same way I felt when I heard that knocking on my door in those miserable hours before dawn. Stumbling out of bed, feeling the room spin, opening the door to those two men with blanks where their faces should be. Telling me to prepare myself for what I was about to be told.

  Laurel.

  They say I got away from both of them and actually made it to my car. How the hell I could do that, I can’t even imagine. I certainly don’t remember trying. Maybe they couldn’t bring themselves to overpower me, given the circumstances. Whatever the hell, I got in the car and drove about five miles with the two of them in pursuit before I glanced off a guardrail in what must have been a spray of sparks, barely missed a truck in the other lane, knocked over two trees, hit the third one. Then everything stopped.

  The next thing I see is a bright light shining in my eyes. A doctor looking down at me. I say three words to him.

  “Is it true?”

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t seem to hear me at all.

  The night is gone. But the night is not gone, and never will be. It is with me always. The night is burned into my flesh forever.

  I’m sorry,” she said. She could see it in my face, I’m sure. Hell, everyone in the restaurant could see it. “Were you married before?”

  “No. I was, um …” How did I think I could do this? How did I not know that this moment would come? And that I would have no idea how to handle it.

  She waited for me to continue.

  “I was engaged once,” I said. “A little over two years ago. Her name was Laurel.”

  “What happened? Did you break it off?”

  “She died.”

  “I’m sorry, Joe. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, it’s all right. It’s a perfectly natural question.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  If I have a brain in my head I’ll leave it at that. Not another word.

  “She was murdered,” I said. “Three days before the wedding.”

  “Oh my God …”

  “I was up here in Kingston. Having my bachelor party. She was down at her parents’ house in Westchester. Somebody broke into the house …”

  And what? How do I say it?

  “God, Joe … Did they … I mean, the person who did it…”

  “It’s still an open case,” I said.

  “Meaning …”

  “Meaning that they still don’t know.”

  “Not even a suspect?”

  “That’s one of the problems. There might have been too many suspects.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She worked at the battered women’s shelter,” I said. “She helped a lot of women get away from their husbands or boyfriends. Which means she got on the wrong side of a lot of angry, violent men.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I folded my napkin in my lap.

  “For you, too, I mean.”

  “It was two years last month,” I said. “I thought maybe it was about time to start being a real person again, you know? I mean, it still drives me crazy that they haven’t caught him yet, and I still miss her every day, but am I really going to be alone for the rest of my life? I don’t think she would have wanted that for me. I really don’t. So I … Well, you know the rest. I did the same thing you did. I put that listing on the Hudson Valley Singles’ site. When I saw yours, I just thought…”

  My salad was still sitting there in front of me, untouched. I put my fork down.

  “I thought you sounded great,” I said. “And now that I see you in person …”

  She kept looking at me. She didn’t say a word.

  “When I woke up today, I was so nervous, Marlene. I can’t even tell you. This is the first time I’ve had dinner with a woman since it happened. I thought I’d be ready for it, but I guess I’m not. So I’m sorry. I really am.”

  The waitress showed up with our dinners. She set the tray down and took away our salads, after asking me if I was really done with mine. I told her I was. She seemed to sense the heavy mood hanging over our table and didn’t say anything else. She put our dinners down, gave us the usual warning about the plates being hot, and left.

  “Joe,” Marlene finally said. “Let’s just relax and eat dinner, okay? You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “We can talk about something else, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That sounds like a good idea.” If quite impossible.

  She smiled again. Every time she did that, somehow it seemed to make me feel a little better.

  We ate our dinners. We didn’t say much, but the silence wasn’t unbearable. After a while, she looked up and said, “That’s nice.”

  “What is?”

  “The music.”

  I hadn’t even noticed it, which just showed me how tightly wound I had been. Or maybe just because it was so familiar to me—it was the kind of music I had running in the background, and through my head, all the time.

  “This is a great album,” I said. “Alone in San Francisco.”

  “It’s Monk, right?”

  “Yes. Jacques has good taste, I’ll say that much. Of course, the French, you know … They love this stuff.”

  “So you’re a boxer and you’re into jazz.”

  “I’m not half as cool as that makes me sound,” I said. “Believe me.”

  She laughed at that. I sat back and watched her listen to the music. Her hands started moving like she was following along on an invisible piano. “I can’t even imagine playing like that.”

  “Don’t tell me you play piano.”

  “Mostly classical,” she said. “I’m not that good.”

  “I bet you’re being mod
est now.”

  “Really, it’s just something to keep me occupied. Like you and your boxing.”

  “I would trade it for being able to make music, believe me.”

  “Maybe you can tell me,” she said. “I was looking at that little club down on the corner. What’s it called?”

  “The Uptown.”

  “It looks like a nice little place. They ever have anybody good there?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Really? All the way up here? In Kingston?”

  “Miraculous, isn’t it?”

  “Anybody playing there tonight?”

  With that she saved the whole goddamned evening.

  The trio was good. They played it pretty safe, mostly the standards. Things picked up when an unannounced saxophone player joined in. He played the alto, and I swear to God, when they played a stripped-down version of “Mood Indigo” he sounded just like Johnny Hodges, with that perfect smooth tone like the sound of your lover’s voice. It was impossible for someone to play that well, absolutely impossible, but that’s the thing about live jazz. When it comes together it sounds better than you ever could have expected. As good as anything you’ve ever heard.

  We talked a lot about music. I ran down my whole list of favorites for her. Miles Davis, especially his second quintet—Shorter, Hancock, Carter, the young Tony Williams on drums. Coltrane, of course. Cecil Taylor. And Albert Ayler. I was hoping I had finally found someone else who had even heard of Ayler, let alone someone who could appreciate his music, but his was the only name on my list that Marlene didn’t recognize.

  I told her that gave me a new mission in life. I’d burn her a sample CD and deliver it personally.

  “I’d like that,” she said. She looked like she meant it.

  When the music was done, we walked around uptown for a while. She’d only been in town for a month, so it was all new to her. We walked around the Old Dutch Church with all the gravestones in the courtyard, some of them over 350 years old. I told her about the ghost in the clock tower and the twelve on the west-side clock that had somehow turned into a thirteen.

  “Where?” she said. “Show me.”

  We stood close together as I pointed it out. I could smell her perfume, an exotic scent that Laurel never would have worn, not in a hundred years. Marlene was so completely different, this stranger with brown eyes and hair as black as the night sky. A streetlamp was shining behind her. It was a dark and disorienting night, and this was the last thing I would have expected, to be standing here under the haunted tower, looking into another woman’s face.

  I kissed her, the moment feeling like an out-of-body experience. Me looking down at the two of us from the tower, watching the impossible happen. The clock went past midnight without making a sound. We walked some more, past the stores on Wall Street and then past the county courthouse.

  “You must spend a lot of time in there,” she said.

  “Once in a while,” I said. The place was dark and quiet now. Without the sign you’d have no idea what went on inside. “Mostly I’m over at the Family Court. That’s on Lucas Avenue.”

  “All kids …”

  “That’s my specialty,” I said. “I can relate to sixteen-year-olds who think they know everything. Who think they’re tough guys. I was one myself, right here in this same town.”

  “You grew up here?”

  “Lived my whole life in Kingston.”

  “And you were once a knucklehead? That was your word for them, right?”

  “I was most definitely a knucklehead, yes. Nothing major, mind you. No multiple homicides. Let’s just say I was involved in a number of questionable episodes.”

  “Questionable episodes, eh? I like that.”

  “Good,” I said. “And … I hope you had a decent time tonight.”

  “Does that mean it’s ending now?”

  I cleared my throat. If there was something smooth to say to that, it wasn’t coming to me.

  “What if I told you,” she said, “that as soon as I saw you I knew I’d be taking you home with me tonight?”

  “I’d say that everything I told you at dinner probably made you change your mind.”

  “Well, no … but maybe I’d understand now if you didn’t want to come inside.” She stopped walking, and it took me a moment to figure out why.

  “This is your place?” I said. It was one of the old stone houses, maybe six blocks away from the restaurant.

  “Just the upstairs. The owner rents it out.”

  “Sort of like my deal. Only you’ve got an actual house. Do you have a piano up there?”

  “Are you kidding? You should see the stairs.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I do have a keyboard, though. You want me to play you something?”

  I looked at the upstairs window, as if I’d find the right answer written on the glass. “Maybe one song.”

  Instead of opening the front door, she took me by the hand and led me into the darkness. I nearly killed myself only once, tripping on a garden hose. At the back of the house there was an iron spiral staircase leading up to a balcony.

  “Not exactly handicap accessible, is it …” I said.

  “I know, it’s kind of strange. But wait till you see this place.”

  She unlocked the door and led me inside. I had to duck to get through the doorway. She turned on a couple of lamps, but the room seemed to absorb the light. There was dark wood on all of the walls, dark wood on the floor, dark wood on the ceiling. I bumped my head on one of the thick beams.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t think they had people as tall as you back when they built this place.”

  “It probably made it easier to heat.” I went over to the old fireplace. The stones had been blackened from at least two hundred years of smoke.

  “You want something to drink? Some coffee or something?”

  “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

  On the opposite wall there was a workbench set up, with lots of little drawers and a dozen tools I couldn’t have named to save my life.

  “Is this your jewelry stuff?”

  “Yeah, some of it,” she said from the kitchen. “The rest is in storage.”

  “What’s this wedge thing?” I said. It was clamped to the bench and notched with a V.

  “That’s a bench pin.”

  “And this thing that looks like a dentist’s drill?”

  “That’s a flex shaft.”

  All this stuff surrounding me. Her whole life in this dark little room and me standing right in the middle of it. This woman I had just met a few hours ago.

  She came back from the kitchen. She looked a little nervous now, with her arms folded across her chest. “What do you want me to play for you?” Her Yamaha keyboard stood waiting in the corner, by one of the front windows.

  “Anything.”

  “We have to be quiet,” she said as she sat down behind it. “Mrs. Hornbeck, the lady who lives downstairs—she’s a light sleeper.”

  I wasn’t sure where to sit. I could have pulled up a chair next to her and watched her play, but somehow that didn’t seem right to me. Too much like a scene out of a movie. So I sat down on the wide ledge below the other front window. She looked at me over the keyboard and started to play. It didn’t take me more than four or five notes to recognize “There Will Never Be Another You,” one of Harry Warren’s old classics.

  “You told me you didn’t play jazz,” I said.

  “It’s not that hard a song. And I’m playing it pretty straight.”

  “Well, it sounds great.”

  She played with the volume turned low. If I had been tired, if I had closed my eyes … Her music would have been hypnotic. But I was still way too wired for that. I kept asking myself if this was really happening.

  When she was done she got up from the keyboard and came over to me. I stood up and kissed her. We moved together, one step toward the bedroom maybe, or somewhere. Then I hit my head on the ceiling again. I lost my balance a
nd was about to pull us both down on the floor. When I reached out to grab something, I knocked a container of jewelry beads to the floor.

  “Oh God,” I said, bending down to pick them up. I managed to grab three or four of them, leaving just a few hundred more to roll all over the place. “I’m sorry, Marlene.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, really. I’m kind of hopeless tonight. You must think I’m a real headcase.”

  “Joe, come on.”

  I stayed down on one knee. I picked up another few beads, shaking my head.

  “I’ve knocked things over a million times,” she said. “I have a little vacuum that picks everything up. Seriously, it won’t take me more than a few minutes. Just leave it.”

  “I should go,” I said, still bent over on the floor. “Before I burn the house down or something.”

  She took my hand and pulled me up to my feet. I hit my head on the ceiling again.

  “You’ve been a wreck all evening,” she said. “You haven’t relaxed for one second. Am I that scary?”

  “I wouldn’t say scary, no.”

  “You could pick me up and throw me over your shoulder without breaking a sweat.” She put her hands on my chest. I was sure she could feel my heart beating.

  “Maybe …” I said. Maybe what, genius? What are you going to say next? “Maybe you want to do something else sometime. I can show you more of Kingston.”

  “Yeah, that would be nice.” She moved her hands lightly across my shirt.

  “Good. We’ll do that.”

  “This thing really messed you up, didn’t it.”

  I closed my eyes. What was I going to say? How could I begin to explain it?

  “You said it’s been two years, right? That’s a long time to be broken.”

  “Marlene …”

  She put one finger to my lips. “Don’t talk anymore, okay?”

  She took me by the hand again, this time to lead me into her bedroom. If what she said was right, if I was really broken … Well, one night wasn’t going to fix me.

  But she gave it a shot.

  I was putting my clothes back on while she was in the bathroom, a few hundred different things going through my head. I couldn’t spend the night there. That was the only thing I knew for sure. She didn’t seem to expect it, so at least I didn’t have to do some kind of awkward dance out the door, hopping back into my pants on the way.