Tangled Ashes (19 page)

There had been no drinking for Beck that night. So what if he wasn’t the clinical drunk who couldn’t go an hour without alcohol. Big deal. Whether it was a day or a week, if it eventually sucked him back in, there was a problem. And he didn’t want that problem to be his anymore. After the public humiliation of the afternoon, with Fallon’s words still fresh in his mind, he’d been spurred on to give it one more shot. As fragile as he was, his desire to buck the demon off his back felt strong enough to warrant one more attempt. One last-ditch effort to become human again. He’d done it before. He’d gone four days—five—without a drink, but much as he’d tried to convince himself that those days proved he wasn’t an addict, he knew that each relapse was evidence that he was. He wasn’t sure if his resolve was strong enough this time to resist the lure of the bottles in his closet, but he had no other alternative than to give it another try.

Becker didn’t empty his bottles down the drain. He didn’t remove them from his apartment either. That would have felt too much like capitulation. How would resisting something that wasn’t there prove any degree of sobriety? No, he wanted to do this the hard way. So he moved the bottles to the unused bedroom next door
and shut the door on them—just to muffle their voices. And then he went up to the second-floor hallway and began running sprints, as he had on so many occasions before.

When Beck returned to his bedroom, thinking he was winded enough to sleep, he found that his mind was alert and taunting. He tried to ignore it. Then he tried to discredit it. Then he got up again, threw on some sweats, and headed outside. There was a circular path that led through the woods behind the castle. It started at the kitchen door and, after a large loop, ended at the castle’s main entrance. Beck took it slowly the first time, but by his third lap, he’d reached full speed. His lungs rebelled, his head throbbed as his feet pounded the dirt path and his arms pumped furiously. He stopped counting after the eighth lap, when the exertion that had temporarily rid his mind of its ghosts sent it instead into overdrive.

As his steps thumped dully on the packed earth, images began to run like a slideshow in his mind. He saw Northwestern’s football field, the flash of pom-poms, heard the boom of the game announcer’s voice over the loudspeakers. He saw the segment of bleachers where Amanda always sat, blonde hair impeccably coiffed and makeup perfectly applied. He saw the smile she returned every time he looked in her direction, the knowing wink, the vicarious pride.

The slide show fast-forwarded to a frigid December night atop the John Hancock Center. There was lobster and fine wine and crème brûlée. There was the outline of platinum and diamonds in the bottom of a glass, distorted by the champagne bubbles that danced around it. There were kisses and promises and dreams.

And then, as Beck rounded the castle one more time, his muscles cramping and his vision blurred with sweat, there was a summer day in Maine. The conference center. The flowers in his hand. The fifty to the cleaning lady to have Amanda’s door unlocked.

He’d walked into the room, his smile anticipating the surprise
he’d planned for weeks. But it was a disheveled and somewhat-pale Amanda he’d found in the hotel bed, CNN on the TV and a bottle of Aleve on her nightstand.

“Amanda—?”

At the sound of his voice, her head snapped toward the doorway where he stood. The room was curtained, the fan on high. “Beck, I . . . Beck! What are you doing here?”

He held up the bouquet in an attempt at getting his imagined scenario back on track. “Surprise?” What had been intended as a “mission accomplished” statement came out as a question.

“I—” Amanda straightened against the pillows and reached for the remote, muting Al Gore mid–stump speech. “What are you
doing
here?” she asked again, her expression showing none of the excitement he’d expected. In its place was something that looked a lot like uneasiness.

“I got a few days off to spend with my wife,” he said, attempting another smile. “Figured we could grab some time between your meetings. Maybe drive up the coast . . .” Beck glanced at the pill bottle on her nightstand again and stepped forward. “Are you sick?”

“I . . . Yes.” Her eyes darted to the door behind him.

Beck half turned, but there was no one there. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Beck.” There was an edge of desperation in her voice. “You’ve got to go.”

“What?”

“You can’t be here, Beck.” She looked around the room. “This is—”

“Listen,” he said calmly, “we can stay put until you feel better. I’ve got three days.”

“Beck . . .”

The door opened so fast behind him that it knocked him off balance. He put out a hand to steady himself against the closet door.

“Got your prescription, but the cashier was—” The lanky man drew up short. He looked at Beck, then at Amanda. “Who’s this guy?”

Amanda’s head fell back. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin line.

Getting no response from her, the man in cargo shorts and a T-shirt turned on Beck. “You got a name?”

Beck’s thoughts ricocheted against his emotions. He saw the challenge in the man’s eyes and the drugstore bag hanging from his hand. “I’m the husband,” he said. “The better question is, who are
you
?”

He snatched the bag and held it up to the bathroom light. “Doxycycline?” His razor gaze went from the tall stranger to Amanda. “Convince me this guy is just a deliveryman from the pharmacy.”

Something cold came down over her face. She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eyes. “I think it’s time for you to leave, Beck.”

With a cocky swagger, the stranger stepped to the door and depressed the handle. “Here,” he said, “Let me get the door for you.”

Beck slammed him back into the door with both fists on the man’s chest and held him there for a moment, eye to eye.

“Let him go, Beck.” Amanda sat up and raised her voice. “Beck! Let him go.”

Beck did just that, turning and marching over to stand by the bed, sickness in his gut. “Wanna explain this?”

“He’s . . .” Amanda frowned and seemed to be searching for an answer. “He’s here to help me. I asked him to come.”

“Help you with what?”

“Becker . . .”

“Who—is—he?”
Beck’s jaw was clenched, his nerves raw.

“I’m the guy who was here for your
wife
when you were too busy to be,” came a sarcastic voice from behind him.

Beck swiveled and planted a hard finger in the middle of the man’s sternum. “You. Shut it,” he growled. Then he turned back on Amanda, his voice low and forbidding. “One more time. Who is he?”

“He’s Jeff. He’s . . . a friend.”

Beck wanted to hurl the lamp across the room, but he restrained himself. “Define
friend
.”

She didn’t look away. She met his gaze and shrugged a shoulder in a mockery of apology.

Becker dropped his head and expelled a loud breath. His voice was gravelly when he asked, “How long?”

Amanda didn’t answer.

“Those business trips,” he said, conscious of the man standing just a few feet away with a smirk on his face. “Like this weekend. You were . . . ?” He looked at Amanda as a muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Becker.”

“You were with him?” he asked, trying to make some sense of the scene.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” This from Jeff, still standing by the door.

Becker stared at his wife. She stared right back, unflinching. It was he who looked away first, his eyes glancing off the drugstore bag he’d dropped next to the bouquet on the floor.

“You should go,” Amanda said.

Jeff took a step forward. “Why don’t you pick up your flowers and get out of here,” he said. “A woman needs a real man around when she’s taking care of business.”

Beck’s jaw clenched. “Business?”

Amanda sighed, but there was more exasperation than contrition in the sound. “You don’t want to do this, Beck. Just go home.”

“What kind of business is he talking about?” Beck could feel his incredulity giving way to a burning rage.

“Hey, the lady said go home.”

“Amanda.” There was a command in Beck’s softly spoken word.

Jeff cleared his throat. “Listen—”

Beck swiveled on him. “If you say one more word—”

“I was having an abortion, Becker.” Amanda’s voice was steel edged. “Jeff was here to help me get an abortion.”

The words shattered what was left of Beck’s composure. He hadn’t ever been much for having kids, but to hear that she’d gone off and gotten pregnant with . . . He felt his stomach churn and his muscles go slack.

Jeff shrugged and smiled, something resembling self-satisfaction on his face.

Bile rose in Becker’s throat. He swallowed it down and stared at Amanda’s blanket-covered stomach. “You’re—” He shook his head. “You were—”

The stranger leaned against the hotel room door. “Preggers, knocked up, in a family way . . .”

“You,” Beck rasped, a long, drawn-out sound. “You son of a—” He surged across the space between them, slammed the other man into the door, and crashed a fist into his face, images of Jeff and his wife together incinerating his restraint.

“Becker!” he heard Amanda yell.

He brought his fist down again, then again, as Jeff raised his hands in a futile attempt at self-defense and slid down the door. Beck saw blood and felt cartilage break. It didn’t matter. He kept slamming his fury into Jeff’s cowardice, for the future he’d annihilated and for the baby he’d conceived with Beck’s wife and then killed.

“Becker, stop!
Stop!
”

Beck looked over his shoulder at Amanda, halted by the vehemence in her voice.

Amanda held two fistfuls of blanket in a white-knuckled grip.
“It wasn’t his, Becker!” she yelled, anger and disgust dueling on her face. “The baby was yours!”

Beck increased his pace again. He pushed his strength to its limit and his muscles to their breaking point. He ran as if his strides were hammer blows that shattered each of the images in his head. He ran until his labored lungs constricted one last time in a guttural, primal cry that tore from every loss and shrieked from every wound and howled from every life he had assaulted with his pain. And on his knees on the dark forest floor, he capitulated, body and mind, and let the merciful night invade his soul. His last conscious words, hurled at the sky in a maelstrom of aggression and contempt, were saturated with despair. “I—hate—you!”

In the torpor of his mind, there was a commotion at the track. Jockeys and stable hands and trainers had gathered around again, all intent on stilling the escaped steed. As Beck tried to see more clearly, their faces kept morphing into people he recognized—the prostitutes from Paris, Gary, Fallon, Trish, Philippe, Amanda, and Sylvia. They waved their arms and yelled instructions and barked orders and all began to converge on the trapped animal. In a flash of full vision, Beck realized the animal was he. He was the frantic, frenzied, and trapped one. The more the approaching friends and strangers tried to soothe him, the more he quivered and jolted with fear, until, backed into a corner between a tall hedge and the highway, he knew he might trample them all in his desperation to rush through their closing ranks.

There was only one onlooker who neither gesticulated nor
screamed. She stood by the castle gates, arms at her sides, eyes focused on him, lips moving. He couldn’t hear her over the noise the others were making, and he strained to see the words forming on her mouth, but he couldn’t read them from such a distance.

He tried to say, “Come closer! I can’t hear you!” but his lungs couldn’t hold enough breath to form sounds. He tried to send her signals with his mind—“Come closer! Please!”—but realized his thrashing might not let her near. She finally moved. Imperceptibly at first, as if she glided just off the ground. Then she hovered in his direction, mercifully blocking the others from view. She didn’t smile. Her eyes were tired. Her hair seemed matted and dull. She glanced over her shoulder at the assembled jockeys and trainers clamoring to help him. Then she looked back at him with so much pity that he felt an aching void open up in his chest. She began to glide away.

“No!” he cried. “Come back!” But she was at the castle gates again, back inside the property. Out of touch. His bucking and howling increased until those who had been trying to calm him stepped back too.