The Three-Day Affair (21 page)

I thanked him but declined.

“We can at least help you carry your drums downstairs,” Eve said, and yawned.

“Go to bed,” Sara said. “We’ll just stay for a couple more songs, sober up a little, and get going.”

“All right,” Fred said. “But feel free to change your mind.” He stood up. “Will, great job tonight. We’ll talk next week. And Sara, pleasure to meet you.” He slung an arm around his girlfriend. “Okay, it’s bedtime.” He slapped his thigh, and Garfunkel, tail wagging, followed them into their bedroom.

My sobriety was in question; my wish to prolong the evening was not. I went over to the stereo and made the music quieter, which had the effect of releasing the sounds from outside: a police siren wailing, then fading in a Doppler decrescendo. A horn.
Another
. I sat beside Sara again, and we got to talking about her
writing
—the sort of things she wrote about, and why. The authors she loved (Woolf, Márquez, and, of course, Mahoney) and those she didn’t (Hemingway, London, “all those tough-guy macho
assholes
”). She spoke of her multiple drafts, all the rewriting, and I
came to see my own naïveté about how literature got made. It seemed natural to me that mastering a musical instrument would take years of practice, yet I had never really questioned my
assumption
that writers were more or less born with their talents fully formed.

“Sometimes I’ll read the stories I wrote a year or two ago,” she said. “I thought they were good at the time, but … yikes.”

I began to sense that when I’d seen Sara earlier in the
afternoon
, she already understood that her teacher knew best. That was why she’d been so upset—not because she’d been told she had no talent, but because her own suspicions about all the work that still lay ahead had been confirmed.

She wasn’t upset now, though. Hadn’t been since we left
campus
on our small adventure. A number of guys I knew seemed to prefer women who were perpetually gloomy. Those men believed in the stereotype of the brooding romantic, forgetting that it also meant you had to be with that person. I preferred happiness and took it on faith that such preference made neither me nor the
object
of my affection shallow or boring. I liked making Sara happy tonight, and felt a stab of jealousy—not the first time—toward Jeffrey for having that role full-time.

We listened to a couple of songs—an Elvis Costello album was playing—and then she said, “It’s my turn to make an observation.”

“Shoot,” I said.

“It’s actually a secret I feel like telling you.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because you don’t seem to have any of your own.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Most of the time my uncomplicated life suited me well, but sometimes I envied those whose lives made secrecy necessary.

“That’s probably a good thing,” she said. “Secrets are hard to keep. Seems like they’re always getting out, one way or the other.”

“I can keep a secret,” I said.

“I know you can.” She scrunched up her nose. “I’m drunk, though. And a little high. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying stuff right now.”

“It’s up to you.”

“How about you tell me something first. A secret of your own.”

“You just said I don’t have any secrets.”

“Oh, right. Well, think of one anyway,” she said. “Or make it up.”

“I’m actually next in line for the British throne.”

“No, don’t make it up. Tell me something real.”

My heart rate quickened. I, too, was drunk and a little high. I feared my own confession.

“I’m not sure you want that,” I said.

She looked at me severely, studying me, and I was forced to look away.

“Wow,” she said.

“What?”

Her face softened. “I think you just told me everything.”

The bedroom was small and simply furnished: bed, dresser,
mirror
, night table. A few framed photographs of Fred’s sister and her boyfriend on what appeared to be various vacations. Hiking amid pine trees. Standing on a beach.

The bed was soft and comfortable. I could smell the smoke from Sara’s hair and a trace of scented soap or maybe shampoo. And sweat, too. She had danced hard, and I had drummed harder. Underneath the covers and with the lights off, we had stripped to our underwear. I pretended this was no big deal. We were adults, and friends, and therefore supposedly above adolescent titillation. I lay on my side, facing the window, for what seemed like a long time, and had assumed from Sara’s steady breathing that she had already fallen asleep.

“Can I spell a word on your back?” she asked.

A radiator rattled somewhere else in the apartment.

“Um, okay,” I said. Then I felt a fingernail. A straight line, down the center. Then another. Then a horizontal line. An
H
.

Then an
I.

“Hi,” I said.

Then she wrote, “I had fun tonight.”

“So did I,” I said.

She wrote, “You are a good drummer.”

“Thanks,” I said, to the compliment as well as to her method of communication. The delicate tracing of letters felt
wonderful
on my back, soothing and sensual, and yet it was also putting me to sleep. I was already seeing the outlines of dreams, and then the fingernail stopped its work and her hand came to rest on the bed, just barely grazing my back, or perhaps I was only imagining this.

“We should go to sleep,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind that.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

“We’re both drunk,” she said. “I don’t want to go to sleep.” She sighed deeply. “But we’re drunk. We need to be good.”

“I know,” I said.

“We’re good people, aren’t we, Will?”

I agreed that we were.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said.

“I just remembered something,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“You never told me your secret.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I did.”

My heartbeat quickened, and I lay there in silence, fighting the urge to say:
Passion isn’t always bad, you know
. Finally, I said, “Can I make one more observation?”

“I don’t know. Okay.”

“I’m sure you already know this, but there’s no better place in the world for publishing than New York City.”

Her hand, against my back, pulled away.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just meant …”

She shushed me. “Good night, Will,” she whispered.

“Really?”

“Really.” Another sigh. “Good night.”

“Spell it.”

She waited a moment, then spelled it on my back, thirteen
perfect
letters.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Now go to sleep.”

“Okay.”

One of the songs we’d played tonight was in my head. It was called “Renegade” and had a ska rhythm that I’d worked all week trying to master. But I had, in the end, mastered it, and the song had gone over well. It was the song that’d gotten Sara and others up and dancing. I listened to it in my head for a while.

“Will?” she whispered.

Once again, I’d assumed she had fallen asleep. “Hmm?”

“Thanks.”

She shifted in bed, pulling covers, resettling. Four stories below, a motorcycle went by. A few cars. I looked over at Sara, at her beautiful form, and in that instant I felt a deep longing and yet, simultaneously, an overwhelming sense of peace. Like I was
exactly
where I belonged.
This
, I thought,
is how it could be
. But I knew it couldn’t. And so I turned my pillow over to the cool side, closed my eyes, and dreamed this night again.

Sometime after sunrise, only a few hours after we’d gone to sleep, there were church bells and a bright slant of sunlight filling the room from the large east-facing window. Only a sheet covered us. The blanket had been kicked to the foot of the bed. I got up,
shut the shades, pulled up the blanket a little, and went back to bed. I awoke again sometime later to the steady stream of traffic sounds four stories below.

I looked at the clock on the nightstand: 8:15. Sara lay on her stomach. Her shoulders were exposed, and part of her back. I put on my clothes and then touched her lightly on the shoulder,
waking
her, and went into the bathroom so she could get dressed in private. We carried my drums out of the quiet apartment and downstairs to the car. Three endless trips. Then we drove home, saying little to each other, listening to the sound of the New
Jersey
Turnpike rushing underneath my tires. When we arrived at the dorm at ten o’clock, it felt as if we’d been away longer than a single night. We found street parking by the dorm, and she helped me unload the car.

Standing in my doorway, wearing yesterday’s clothes, she said, “That was fun.” She said it sadly.

I nodded. “Listen, Sara—”

“Don’t. I mean it.”

“But you don’t know what—”

“Just don’t say anything. Say good night.”

“It’s morning.”

“Then say good morning.”

“Good morning, Sara,” I said.

“Good morning, Will,” she said, and left me alone with my drums.

I sat on the bed a minute, then changed into shorts and a
T-shirt
. Went down the hall to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I was behind in my senior thesis. There was plenty to do, here at Princeton, in the few weeks until graduation. The gig was done, my night with Sara was now in the past. Shake it off. A couple more hours of sleep in my own bed, so the day wouldn’t be wasted. Then I’d get to work.

When I returned from the bathroom, she was sitting in the hallway, on the carpet outside my door.

“This’ll all be okay, you know,” she said. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Her smile was a question.

I opened the door, my answer.

We went inside and spent the next two days there.

M
ANY THANKS
TO
Catherine Pierce, Felice Kardos, Christopher Coake, Michael Piafsky, Becky Hagenston, Josh Kutchai, and James Mardock for discussing this book with me at its conception, reading parts or all of it while in manuscript form, and helping me to make it better. Thanks to Jody Klein for her generosity and
wisdom
, and to Otto Penzler for making the new guy feel welcome. Finally, one more thanks to Katie, and to Sam, too. You both make me happy.

Michael Kardos is the author of the award-winning story collection, One Last Good Time. He is assistant professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. This is his first novel.

Will, Jeffrey and Nolan have been friends since college. Once a year they meet up to play golf, knock back a beer, and laugh about the old days, when they were young But that is about to change.

Driving home from their annual reunion, they stop to pick up cigarettes. Minutes later, Jeffrey sprints out of the store, dragging a young woman with him. In a moment of madness, he has robbed the till, and kidnapped the only witness. Now he is shouting a single word: “drive!”

Before they know it, Will, Jeffrey and Nolan are holding a young girl hostage in an abandoned building, with no idea what to do next. They have three days to decide her fate. Three days to choose between right and wrong, prison and freedom. Three days to manipulate each other into a life-changing decision.

These ordinary men are already guilty of abduction and robbery. What else are they capable of?

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