The Comfort of Black (9 page)

The phone rang again.

Hannah bolted awake, and this time Zoo stirred with her, raising his head in alert.

She grabbed the phone and, without allowing herself to mull over the decision, answered.

“What?” she said.

“Are you coming home?” His voice was dry and distant.

“What?” She pushed herself upright in bed, jostling Zoo from his position.

“I'm asking you a question. Are you coming home?”

“Dallin, what's happening? I don't understand what's wrong with you.”

“We need to talk.”

“Talk to me
now
, Dallin. Tell me who that was earlier, because that wasn't you. I can't believe you did that to me.”

“Hannah—”

“And you sent a man after me today.”

An audible exhale. “Peter.”

“Yes,
Peter
. I'm surprised you told him what happened. And everything else you told him. Our sex life?”

“This might be hard for you to understand, Hannah, but anything that threatens the reputation of the company, no matter how personal, has to be addressed by our Risk Management department. I had a responsibility to inform them of our…incident.”

“Dallin, I don't think you understand. We're…we're different now. You've been cheating on me. I'm fucking crushed, Dallin. Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

In the silence on the other end of the line, she thought she heard
a small gasp. Then he said something in a voice soft and different, yet similar to the
I'm so sorry
voice he had used before he released the grip on her throat. One sentence, a hush of jumbled words. Hannah's mind seized on the voice in the dark and the still of the bedroom, and if she was asked to repeat what he'd said she would have recited what she thought she heard, which was:

They're making me do this
.

“What?” she asked.

Dallin was silent.

“What did you say?”

A few seconds of nothing, then in a louder and clearer voice than before, Dallin said, “Don't make me go through this.”

Was that what he had truly said? Neither possibility made any sense to her. “What does that even mean? I'm not making you go through anything. You're doing this to
me
. Dallin…just please make me understand. Tell me what's happening.”

Now his voice was louder. Firm. Resolved. “We need to meet. If we meet, I can explain things to you.”

Her mind screamed
no
, but it wasn't what came out.

“Not at the condo,” she said. “In fact, I want to move into the condo, and I want you out. At least until we figure this out. I shouldn't have to run away.”

“Fine. Yes. You can move back whenever you want, and I can go to a hotel. But first we need to talk. There are some things I need to tell you.”

That sounded like a conversation she didn't want to have.

“Fine,” she said. “Where? Someplace public.”

“You act like I'm going to murder you.”

“I don't know
what
you're going to do. I didn't expect you to slam me against a wall. To put your hands around my neck hard enough to give me bruises. I didn't expect you to have some…I don't even know…sick rape fantasies. I expected a caring, loving, faithful husband. Until yesterday, I thought I had that. So, yeah, when I say I want to meet in a public place, I would expect you to understand.”

“Fine,” he said. Then the call disconnected.

Hannah stared at the phone, wondering if the call had dropped. But she knew it hadn't. The bastard had hung up on her. A minute later a text appeared on her screen.

Four Seasons. Lobby. 3pm
.

She didn't reply and instead turned off her phone and waited for a sleep that never came.

At fifteen before three in the afternoon, Hannah set her half-consumed mocha on the table next to her. She'd been in the coffee shop for half an hour already and couldn't drink any more—she was jittery enough. The place hummed with post-school activity. Mothers, trailed by their kids, loaded up on caffeine to steel themselves for a couple more hours until they could switch to alcohol. The barista shouted her filled orders with the energy of a train conductor.

Every time the door opened Hannah looked up, hoping to see Justine walking in. But person after person it was someone else.

That morning she had told Justine her plan to meet Dallin, expecting her sister to tell Hannah she was crazy.
Don't be stupid
, Hannah had expected to be told.
He's just going to try to talk you into coming back to him. That's what happened to Mom
. But that's not how her sister had reacted. Instead, Justine had sat in silence for a few moments, mulling over Hannah's decision, and had finally said she would go with her. Hannah had weakly protested before Justine insisted. Justine had even given Hannah a can of mace.
Just in case
, Justine had said. Hannah didn't think the mace was necessary but took it anyway, and was comforted by the fact she wouldn't be confronting Dallin alone. As much as Hannah wanted to deal with the problems herself, she wasn't so blindly strong she couldn't admit when she needed help.

But Justine hadn't arrived yet, and it was nearly time.

The Four Seasons was just around the corner. It would only take a minute to get there, and she didn't want to show up early. She looked at her watch again, and then scanned the e-mail on
her phone. No one had decided to send her anything in the thirty seconds or so since she last checked.

She glanced over for perhaps the third time at the man sitting in the adjacent oversized chair, reading the
New York Times
. He had lifted his gaze from the pages to her more than once, smiling on the last instance. It was near the moment she was certain he would say something to her, some kind of innocent ice-breaker, something to establish conversation. She should have kept looking away, which is what she usually did in moments like these. But she found herself glancing over, perhaps because of his good looks, but maybe it was because of where she found herself in that exact moment. The confluence of all things that had happened. Maybe she needed a little boost of confidence.

She remembered she wasn't wearing her wedding ring, having left it at Justine's house on purpose. But rare was the man who was deterred by a diamond on her finger.

Her cell phone vibrated and Hannah looked down. Justine sent a text.

Connor threw up at daycare. I have to pick him up early. Can't make it. I'm SO sorry. Can you postpone with him?

“Fuck,” Hannah muttered softly. She let the idea of meeting with Dallin alone swim around her head for a few moments.
Should I postpone?
she wondered.
Should I just talk to him on the phone?

No
, she decided.
I'm here. I'm ready to see him. I need to see him. Face to face. I'm going to get the answers I need now. Hell, I was planning to do it alone anyway until Justine insisted on coming. I'll be fine
.

Hannah glanced at the time on her phone once more before putting it back into her purse, leaving her sister's text unanswered. She felt like throwing up.

“If we were sitting in an airport, I'd say you were nervous about flying.”

It was the man next to her.

Hannah snapped her head to him. “I'm sorry?”

“You seem nervous. Sorry, hope that's not too…obnoxious. I was just wondering what there is to be nervous about in a coffee shop.”

Hannah held her face as tight as a mannequin's. “If you're trying to flirt, I can tell you you've picked the absolute worst time to do it.”

His body shifted back in his seat. “Wow,” he said. “I'm really sorry. I wasn't trying to flirt. You just…I don't know. You just seemed upset. I'll leave you alone.”

His gaze went back to his paper and Hannah stared straight ahead. A minute passed, maybe two. Hannah couldn't handle the crawling of the time anymore. She needed a distraction.

“Look, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm not usually that rude to strangers.”

The man looked up and held out a hand.

“I'm Black,” he said. “Black Morrow. Now we're not strangers.”

She hesitated and then gave his hand a brief pump. “Black like coffee?” she asked.

“Black like Betty.”

“I don't get it.”

“It's a song.”

“Oh.” She hated not knowing references. “I'm Hannah,” she said.

“Pleased to meet you, Hannah.”

“Is Black a nickname?”

“Short for Blackstone.”

“I see. Well. Blackstone Morrow. It's…nice. Different.”

“Thank you, Hannah. And I'm sorry you're having a bad day.”

Hannah looked at the time on her phone.

“I'm about ten minutes away from seeing which direction my life will go next,” she said.

Black sat up in his chair. He wore a black sport coat over a pressed white Oxford shirt, which was tucked into a faded pair of Levis. His slightly disheveled hair was espresso black, and his
pale green eyes shone out from behind a smooth complexion and a couple of days' worth of sculpted stubble.

“Well, that's about the most intriguing thing I've heard in a long time,” he said.

“Do you start chatting up women in coffee shops all the time?”

“I rarely make it into public, so no. And don't worry, I won't ask the obvious follow-up question. Something big is happening in your life, and that makes it officially none of my business.”

The tone of his last sentence made Hannah feel the tears start to well within her, tears she had spent all day damming up just so she would be strong when she faced Dallin. She shook her head and locked her gaze on Black, almost as if rehearsing for confronting the other stranger in her life.

“Yes, something big and bad. And I'm about to find out how bad it really is.”

Black leaned forward. “I'm sorry to hear that. I don't even know you, and you just broke my heart a little.”

One tear escaped and she quickly wiped it away, then smiled and looked down. “Great,” she said. “Way to make it all about you.”

He sat in silence for a moment and then started to laugh, a deep-throated soulful laugh, one that seemed beyond his age, which Hannah guessed wasn't far off from her own. Hannah was immediately taken in by it, as if the delight he was experiencing draped a comforting blanket, however briefly, over all the ugliness.

He let the following silence settle for a moment before speaking again.

“Well, Hannah, I'll let you to your business. May I ask one other question?”

She looked at her phone yet again. She had seven minutes left.
Why the hell am I concerned about being punctual?

“Why not?”

“Whatever you are doing in a few minutes from now—do you feel safe?”

“Safe?”

He nodded. “Safe. Physically safe.”

“What makes you ask me that?”

Her mind flashed to her visit with Dr. Britel.
Do you feel safe at home?

He nodded down to her purse. “You've got mace in there—I can see it. Not that that's unusual. You also have a visible line on your ring finger where I'm guessing a wedding band sat until recently. And you have a certain twitch on your face that suggests a spike in adrenaline, as if your heart is preparing itself for some kind of event. Now, absent the mace, you might be meeting someone for an affair. Maybe at the Four Seasons next door. You know, come to Room 1401 at three o'clock, that kind of thing. In that case, you might be experiencing a nervous excitement. But you told me something bad is happening to you.”

Hannah's impulse was to tell this man, in the polite kind of way she could always manage, to fuck off. Who the hell was he to assume she was having an affair, or otherwise? And was she really so readable? His arrogance in drawing together clues should have annoyed her more than it did. But this man wasn't really being arrogant. She didn't even think he was flirting with her. Black was actually concerned about her.

“I don't need protecting, if that's what you're asking,” she said.

“No, that wasn't what I was asking. I asked you if you felt safe. And I wasn't offering protection. Do you feel the need to be protected?”

She felt herself leaning forward. “Who are you?”

“I told you. My name is Black.”

“And why do you care if I feel safe?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn't care?”

“Yes. Because you don't know me.”

Black smiled, a teacher's restrained smile of frustration with an ignorant but well-meaning student.

“There are a lot of different things I could say to that. Suffice to say, my not knowing you isn't a reason not to care.”

“I have to go,” she said.

He nodded. “Of course.” He stuck out his hand, and Hannah took it for a second time. This time her grip was more firm, and she felt his heat course through her. She looked at his face as he held her hand and she wondered what kind of work this Black did. A lawyer, perhaps? Maybe, but he looked more honest than that.

She dropped her hand first. “And what do you do, Black Morrow?”

He sighed. “The answer to that question would cause you to be late.” He looked down at his watch. “Which, if it's due to begin at three, is in one minute. Hannah, it was a pleasure meeting you.”

“You too, Black.” She let her gaze rest on his for a moment longer than she normally would have. It was just enough time, a second or two at most, for something to be communicated between them. Hannah wasn't sure what exactly it was, but it was more than
it was a pleasure meeting you
.

She liked to think he was still looking at her as she walked out the door of the coffee shop. Once outside, the momentary warmth she'd imagined seconds before was gone. Once outside, there was only reality.