The Confessor (47 page)

He lay back down and closed his eyes.

Drawing the truth from himself was something very different from drawing it out of others. He would have to learn how. He could see Corley sitting in his chair, sad, dark eyes, notebook in his lap, the brief smile flickering each time Geiger came into the office.

Martin . . . I think I know what the feeling is.

The sadness?

Ye s .

Tell me.

Grief, Martin. Grief.

Christine rubbed away a tiny smudge on the bar with a fingertip, then brought her coffee to her lips. As was her new custom, she looked to the door every time its bell chimed.

For a second, the angle of the morning sunlight burned out the visitor’s image as he entered. After two steps, he stopped – and she slowly put her cup down and got up from her stool. She had come to assume that if one of them came back, it meant the other was dead – and an ache was blooming that drew as much from joy as dread.

She walked across the floor to him. Something was broken. A part inside him that no doctor could fix or replace. She put her arms around him and pulled him into her. She felt his body give in, as if he’d somehow been hollowed out.

‘I’m not all right, Chris,’ said Harry.

‘. . . I know.’

She took his hand and led him back to the office, closed the door and took his jacket off.

‘Sit.’

He sat on the couch. His gaze wandered, but he didn’t seem to be looking at anything.

‘I wanted to see you – before I went home . . .’

‘Harry . . . Tell me what happened.’

It was hard to look at him. His face was haggard and had odd, faint splotches. He’d lost weight. He looked like a survivor of some tragic disaster. She pulled a chair over and sat across from him, and took his hands in hers.

‘Do you want something to eat – or drink?’

Harry shook his head.

She wanted to sit, calm and silent, and let him come out with things in his own way and time – but she couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘Harry . . . Geiger was here.’

‘I know.’

‘A week ago. Trying to find you. I know about Dalton.’

‘. . . He’s dead.’

The two words were a pair of hands around her throat. She couldn’t swallow. She let go of him and sat back in her seat. She had that sensation – of slipping away, the glimmering, crystalline sadness for things beyond her reach . . .

‘Dalton . . . Matheson . . . They’re all dead – except for me and Geiger.’

. . . and then the sudden feeling of abeyance – breath, blood, the infinitesimal molecules in the air. Life in a freeze-frame.

‘Harry . . . Geiger is
alive
?’

‘Yes.’ He looked doubtful about his grasp of things. ‘I just said that, didn’t I?’

Her body kicked back into motion with an electric jolt. Her breath was cool in her lungs. She realized she’d been gripping the chair’s arms, and put her hands in her lap.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Sorry for what?’

‘It must’ve been hard – sitting, waiting, not knowing.’

She wasn’t going to ask anything else. What happened to him . . . where he was. This would be enough. They were both alive – and there were different hues of melancholy to surround herself with, some more pleasing than others. She got up and sat down next to him.

Harry’s sigh sounded like someone’s last breath. ‘It’s that feeling, Chris.’

‘Which one?’

‘When something happens – and you know you’re never going to be the same. No matter what you do, or how much time goes by – you already know you’re never going to be the same again. Right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I had to do things . . .
Had
to. Things I’m having a lot of trouble with. Real bad stuff.’

She raised a hand and started smoothing his hair with her fingertips. He’d always loved that.

‘Harry . . . You don’t have to go home right away. You should stay with me a while. We’ll try and make it a little better.’

‘Y’think?’

‘Yes. I think.’

He leaned back into the cushion and closed his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘For a while.’

She kept running her fingers through his hair, and watching him, until some of the demons that had him in their grasp let go, and the lines in his face lost their edge. Then she settled back beside him, close against him.

The image that came to her was of Geiger walking away, transforming his limp into that singular grace. She couldn’t see what it was he was leaving behind, but he wasn’t looking back at it. It wasn’t something he would do.

The cat was lying on the window sill, a faithful audience of one.

Ezra stood on the fire escape, playing his violin – a melody made up, a slow, plaintive strain he’d found inside of him days ago and added to each night outside his window. The neighbors hadn’t complained about it, yet. Someone in a nearby apartment had even applauded once.

Time had reinvented itself – renouncing ancient conventions, casting off the constraints of hours and minutes, liberating itself, expanding, shrinking, exploring its supple nature. Now Ezra measured time by feelings. A flight of reverie. An orphan instant of hope. A short, bumpy ride of sleep. Stretches of despair . . . and resignation. A moment of peace. They all ran together, one after another. His mother was the timekeeper. ‘Ezra . . . Time to get up.’ ‘Ezra . . . Dinner.’ ‘Ezra . . . Time for bed.’

The cat’s one eye opened, a shiny gold coin – and Tony rose in a slow, back-bending stretch and then slunk down onto the metal grating. The boy watched as it walked to the square opening and climbed down the three rungs of the raised ladder. It always came back home, just as Geiger said it would, but each time it left on a nightly journey Ezra had to kick the ass of a panic gremlin that popped up in his brain.

‘See you later, Tony.’

The cat jumped to the ground and strolled off, disappearing into the darkened courtyard.

Ezra hadn’t given up hope, but he’d put it on a shelf where it was growing a coat of dust, like a broken toy he couldn’t bear to throw away. Dr. Corley once said that grief was both the toughest and simplest feeling. He said that love and hate are different for every person, that there can be a million reasons why you love or hate someone, and you might not even understand why – but grief is pretty close to the same for everybody, and we all know the reason why we feel it. Lately, Ezra had wondered if it was something you got better at . . . with practice.

As he finished drawing out a tremulous A flat, he saw a shift in the darkness below – it lasted less than second, black on blacker, shadow on shadow. From a thousand nights of solitary staring he knew the courtyard’s every silhouette. There was something out there now that had never been there before. By the west fence. A tall smudge on the night. His mind did a back-flip – to his mother and him in the subway.

Mom . . . Going to talk to these people – telling them stuff they may not know. Yeah – maybe they can help. Or maybe they come after all of us . . .

Then the cat meowed.

‘Tony?’ Ezra put the violin down on the sill and leaned out against the railing. ‘Tony . . .’

Another meow started up – and was stifled before it ended. The truncated sound made the back of Ezra’s skull tingle.

‘Tony! C’mere!’ His voice ping-ponged off the opposite brownstone and died.

‘Don’t yell, Ezra. He’s with me.’

The sound of the satin voice was so electrifying it rendered the words meaningless. Ezra was down the three rungs of the ladder and dropping the six feet to the ground before he’d taken another breath. The rage of adrenaline made oxygen unnecessary.

‘Where are you?’

‘Over here.’

Ezra pivoted – and across the courtyard a wall of shadow seemed to bulge, a part breaking free from it and coming forward, becoming a separate dark presence, and stopping in a pale gray slash of light. Ezra saw the blink of a golden eye atop the silhouette’s right shoulder.

He’d never run so fast in his life, afraid he might explode before he reached him. The last five feet became a lunge – and he threw his arms around Geiger and held tight. The cat dropped to the ground with a displeased grunt, and Geiger’s arms completed the embrace, one of his gloved hands holding Ezra’s head to his chest.

Their silence was not about finding the right words to say. Geiger had no urge to speak at all, content to stay as they were – and the only words on Ezra’s mind were a question he was terrified to ask.

‘Tell me,’ Ezra finally said.

The answer came without hesitation.

‘Harry is alive. Your father died.’

The prelude to Ezra’s weeping was a single nod, and then the tears gathered and spilled – a segue without turmoil or sobs. To Geiger, it felt like an act long anticipated, and brave – the choice to embrace grief instead of running from it, or disavowing its dominion, or armoring the heart – as a fool might take refuge from a hurricane in a paper house.

Perhaps the boy could teach him.

The city’s humming midnight drone was an engine that never stopped running. It was something you couldn’t get away from. It was always with you.

Geiger tightened his hold around the quivering body.

‘I’m here, Ezra,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’