In The Absence Of Light (45 page)

He caught sight of me, and his smile went crooked. The waitress taking his order nodded and walked away.

“I told her to bring you some tea. You’ll have to sweeten it, though.”

Chrome edged the checkered walls, and all the booths were red vinyl. “Classy joint.”

“They’re going for a 50s motif, I think.”

“Hope the food's worth the migraine.”

“Best hamburger you’ll ever put your mouth on, and the onion rings prove there is a God.”

The waitress came back with a glass of tea. “You boys ready to order?”

“Burger, double order of onion rings.” Jeff handed her the menu.

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“Bring him the same, I don’t want him picking off my plate.” She left, and I frowned at him.

“I said I wasn’t hungry.”

“When you smell mine, you will be.”

I fished out sugar packets from the white box between the salt and pepper shaker. “Do you know whether or not you were followed?” I said it so casually I think it caught Jeff off guard because he stared at me for a moment before he realized I was serious.

“Why would I be followed?”

“Hines knew you met me at the airport.”

“Of course he did, I didn’t make a secret of it. Told the whole office I was going to find out whether or not I won the pot.”

“What did you tell them when you got back?”

“That you gave me some lie about visiting relatives and told me to fuck off.”

I laughed a little. “He doesn’t trust you.”

“Of course not. You and I were having sex. I compromised myself by letting my emotions get the best of me.”

“Compromised…”  One packet after the other, I emptied them into the glass until I had a pile of white topping the floating ice cubes. “Sounds so…”

“Impersonal?”

“Yeah.” Especially coming from a guy who claimed to have loved me.

“The choice of verbiage is very important when chatting with the department shrink. Compromise shows I knowingly made an unwise decision but did it with the intentions of keeping an emotional distance.”

I opened my straw and stirred my drink. “You see a department shrink?”

“Saw.”

“PTSD?”

“No, I had to convince them I played the part I needed to play to get the information I was supposed to get.”

“I could have told them that.”

When I glanced up, his smile was brittle.

“Hines told me if he finds out I’m talking to you about this, he’d kill you.”

The bells on the café door jingled, and a woman came in with a teenage boy. He walked with an exaggerated gait with one hand curled at his chest and the other hovering near his ribs. Occasionally he would reach out as if to pluck something invisible from the air around him no one could see.

The woman led him over to a less crowded area of the café. The boy jerked from her hold and spun away from the table. Without missing a beat, she caught him and turned him around. He sat but not before knocking the silverware onto the floor. The woman picked it up and put it aside.

Two waitresses cast a wary look in the teenager’s direction. Both of them frowned. The blonde shook her head and the dark-haired woman went over to the table. Her forced smile threatened to crumple when the teenage barked out some random sound and slapped the table.

The woman who was with him didn’t even seem to notice.

When the waitress left, the woman took out napkins from the dispenser and laid them on the table. The teenager kept his head turned to the side.

No matter how hard I tried to keep my eyes on my glass of tea, my gaze continued to roll up to the teenager as he rocked in his seat.

“Did you hear me?” Jeff said.

“Uh, no, sorry.”

“I said I wouldn’t be able to live with myself anyhow if anything happened to you and I didn’t do something to try to stop it.”

There was real longing in Jeff’s eyes. I don’t know if he meant to or not, but his foot brushed mine. As I pulled my leg back, our waitress arrived with our food.

“Here you go, two burgers, double rings. You two enjoy.” She put down the plates and left.

Jeff prepped his burger. “How’s Morgan doing?”

The question swallowed me in guilt. I picked at my onion rings. “He was doing okay when I left. Resting.”

“You haven’t checked on him?”

“I don’t want him to worry.”

The young boy in the back of the café yelled and knocked his drink in the floor. The woman with him tried to stop him from throwing hers down too but failed.

Other patrons turned in their seats. Some frowned. Some turned away quick enough to suggest they were disturbed by what they saw.

At first I thought the woman was oblivious to the strange looks, but then she flicked a quick look around the restaurant. More people came in. All of them stared for a moment before picking out a table as far away as possible.

The woman got the boy calmed down by handing him a paper napkin. He began picking it apart and piling the flakes on the table. She waved at their waitress, but the woman was more than hesitant to walk over.

The guy sitting beside us spoke to his female companion, “People like that have no business out in public.”

My response was automatic. “Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth and eat your pie?”

The guy turned in his seat. I held his gaze, and after a moment, he spit out a curse, threw his napkin down, and hauled his wife, girlfriend, whatever, over to the checkout line. I don’t know what he said to the cashier, but her face turned red and she nodded.

“He’s kind of got a point.”  Jeff held up a hand in defense. “Jesus, Grant, chill.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to, you already look like you’re on the verge of roadrage.”

Was I? The waitress left towels with the woman to clean up the mess and fled back to the counter where her companion stood by the display cabinet full of doughnuts.

I didn’t know what was wrong with the boy, but the idea Lori had endured the same kind of treatment when she worked with Morgan turned the guilt inside me into a monster. Jeff was right. I was on the verge of some kind of roadrage. But not at him, or the ignorant pie-eating asshole, but myself.

Why? Because like everyone else in the fucking restaurant, I sat on my ass staring while she tried to maintain control of a situation that was way more than one person should ever have to handle. Had the boy been some cute three-year-old who spilled his milk, half the staff would have been over there, all smiles with a fresh glass and a mop. Instead they’d thrown her a handful of towels, then ran and hid.

And while no one else said anything, at least not within earshot, they wore the same expression my neighbor had. The same expression Jeff had. People who weren’t normal shouldn’t be inconveniencing those who were.

It left me wondering if I stared at the boy and woman the same way. The thought left my stomach rolling.

“I took precautions,” Jeff said.

I pulled my attention back to the conversation at hand. Half of Jeff’s burger was gone along with quite a few onion rings. He always could eat fast. I picked at the bun on my hamburger.

“What do you mean?”

“In case Hines did try to follow and listen in.” He took what looked like an iPod out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

“What is it?”

“A sure fire migraine for any kind of listening devices. Works up to a half mile radius.”

I picked it up. “So what do you do? Fill their headphones full of Barry Manilow?”

“Not funny.”

“I’ve never found your taste in music funny. Disturbing, yes, funny…”

Jeff took the device from my hand, fingers brushing mine, leaving behind warmth under my skin. A smile pulled at his lips like he knew exactly what the light bit of contact had done to me. I ate an onion ring.

“Good?”

I chewed. I swallowed. Then picked up another. “Not bad.”

“They’re incredible. Admit it.”

The batter was light, crunchy, with just enough grease to keep it from being dry and some sort of salty spice that set off the natural flavor of the onions, turning it almost sweet. He was right they were incredible.

“Like I said, they’re okay.”

Jeff shook his head at me. “Has Hines contacted you yet?”

Hines. The reason why we were there. Or I was there. I had no idea why Jeff was still in Chicago, he should have gotten to go home if they officially closed my case.

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

“Gave me a place and time.”

Jeff stared.

I ate a few more onion rings.

“Well?” Jeff said.

“Why aren’t you back in DC?”

A wrinkle formed between his eyes. “Where did that come from?”

“You said you closed my case, so why are you still here?” I waited for the telltale glint of a lie, instead he blushed. “Can I wait until after we eat before I embarrass myself?”

A clatter of breaking glass and shouting cut off my reply. The boy was out of the booth waving his arms and the food they’d ordered lay in a mess on the floor. The woman tried to corral him back into his seat, but he twisted and turned, knocking her aside.

One of the waitress said something about calling the police and the woman yelled out a no. “He’s fine, he’s just…” He swung his arm and caught her in the temple and she tumbled into the booth.

I didn’t even realize I was walking over until Jeff said my name. Didn’t matter I had no intentions of stopping. One of the waitresses had the phone in her ear.  I pointed at her. “She asked you not to call the police.”

“But he’s…”

The kid screamed at the top of his lungs and pulled his hair with both hands. “Brian,” the woman pushed herself to her feet. She grabbed napkins and held them out to him. He didn’t acknowledge her. “Brian, it’s okay. Everything is okay.” While she spoke to him, she watched me with frightened eyes. Did she think I was going to hurt him?

People stared, half of them stood, a few pushed their kids out the door. Yeah, she probably did.

I don’t know what made me do it, maybe it was because of all the times it had helped Morgan. It could have easily been the wrong move, but the waitress hadn’t put down the phone and the last thing we needed was a bunch of cops in there trying to wrestle the kid into submission.

I put both my hands on the side of Brian’s head. “Hey.” My voice trembled, but I cleared my throat. “Hey, Brian. Look at me.”

His beet red face squished into a mask of what could only be described as pain. He pulled against my hold, not to get away, but side to side.

I rocked with him, letting the swing of our bodies threaten to take us over. The yelling stopped, and he let go of his hair and put his hands over mine. After a long moment, he opened his eyes. He hummed and the vibration rode up through my palms. I hummed with him, trying to hit the same pitch, failing, but coming close enough that his crumpled features fell slack.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. It was barely a whisper, and she stared at me with an awed expression. “Do you have an autistic son?”

“No.”

“Brian.” The woman tugged at one of his hands, and he let go. She put some napkins in his palm, and his focus shifted to the white sheets of paper. I disappeared and so did the world as he turned the sheets into tiny paper snowflakes one pluck at a time. She sat him back down at the booth. “He was doing so good. I thought he would be okay going out today. It’s his birthday and…”

She was too young to be a parent. If I had to guess maybe only a few years older than Brian.

“Is he your brother?”

She nodded. “Mom and Dad don’t get to see him as much as they used to.” In my head,
don’t get to
, translated to
don’t want to
.

“He doesn’t live with you?”

She dropped her gaze to the mess on the floor and started to clean it up. I stopped her. To some of the staff hiding behind the counter, I said, “Can you get a busboy out here, a mop, and bring them a fresh plate?”

“No, no, I don’t want to bother anyone. We should go.”

The busboy got as close as two tables down. I took the bin from him and his towels. Together, the woman and I cleaned up the mess while Brian sprinkled tattered napkins all over the table.

“How did you know what to do?” she said as she scraped up the last of the french fries and tossed them in with the broken plates.

“I have a friend who’s autistic. He gets overloaded sometimes, and that’s what worked for him. I didn’t know if it would or not. But I thought I’d try.”

“I’ve never done it that way before. Usually, if I can just get his attention and give him a napkin, he’s happy.” She opened her purse. “What’s your name?”

“Grant.”

“I’m Suzanne, or just Sue.” She took out two twenties and laid them on the table.

“What are you doing?”