We Are Here (12 page)

“I have to take this,” the man said. He looked torn. The phone vibrated again. “You’ll stay?”

His tone made David realize this encounter was more inexplicable than he’d realized. There was no threat in it, rather a kind of entreaty.

The phone rasped once more and the man got up and walked away, gesturing for David to stay where he was.

When he heard the door to the bar open and shut, David let out a shuddering breath. His hands were shaking. What should he do? There was only one way out of the place and if the guy was in the lot he’d be bound to see him. If David walked, would he follow? If so, what then? The man hadn’t done anything overtly threatening. If anything, his mood had been one of off-kilter good cheer—albeit the kind of dark cheer that sometimes escalates into pulling out a concealed weapon.

David wanted to put distance between them. Leaving the bar was the only way. Walking out—and then talking to the cops. He’d seen too many movies where the hero kept quiet about some whacked-out situation for too long. He wasn’t going to be that guy—especially now that he remembered Dawn saying Angela had thought she’d seen David outside the school gates.

She hadn’t seen David, but perhaps she had seen
someone
. A man who’d just dropped Dawn’s name into the conversation as if he knew her.

Or as if he had been watching her.

There was a coughing sound. David quickly turned, convinced the man had somehow slipped back in without him hearing. It was a man in his midfifties, however, heavy in the gut, with a broad, fleshy face. He stood a few yards behind David’s chair, beer in hand.

David realized it was George, the guy who worked at Bedloe’s

Insurance up the street from his old office at It’s Media.

“Hey,” the man said.

David nodded cautiously. “George, right?”

“You’re the writer guy. Friend of Talia’s.”

“Yes.” One out of two, at least. It was the first time someone had referred to him as “the” or even “a” writer. It didn’t feel a close fit. Meanwhile, the other man kept looking oddly at him.

“You okay, George?”

“It’s been a strange week,” the man muttered.

David got the sense that George was a couple beers down already. Also that what he probably meant was the story he’d told Talia, about the hitchhiker who disappeared. David didn’t know whether he was supposed to know about that. He was only a friend of a friend, after all.

“Huh,” he said, in the hope this would cover it.

“You here alone?”

“Yes,” David said, fighting the impulse to glance toward the door. Right now that was the truth. It occurred to him this might even be some kind of come-on, but if so he had no idea of how to respond.

“Really?”

“You see anyone?”

“No. Thought I did, though. Couple minutes ago. Sitting opposite you.”

The back of David’s neck twitched.

“Didn’t see him leave,” George went on thoughtfully, as if to himself. “Did you?”

“I’m not here with anyone,” David repeated.

George looked at the chair opposite a moment longer. “Yeah, well, okay. Sorry to have bothered you.”

He wandered back toward the far corner. David waited until George settled at a table there, and then he got up and left the bar, taking care not to catch anyone’s eye.

Outside it was dark with storm clouds and the wind was picking up. Cars and trucks stood at discreet distances from one another, like people awaiting the results of blood tests that would not reflect well on their lifestyles.

Down at the far end of the building David saw a shadow beneath the dim corner light. After a moment he heard a voice, too. It sounded like someone on the phone.

He marched toward it. The man must have heard him approaching, because he slipped around the corner into deeper shadow, presumably to protect his privacy. This was the final straw for David, who felt that
his
privacy had been plenty invaded.

“I don’t know what you want,” he said loudly as he rounded the corner to confront the man. “But if I see you again, I’m going straight to the—”

There was nobody there. The side of the bar was a graveyard for broken wooden crates. There were a few battered and rusting gas canisters and some old sacking too, tangled in the long grass like brown ghosts.

Nothing—and nobody—else.

The man must have slipped along the side.

David picked his way through the debris and grass toward the back, where the lot shaded into the edges of the creek that ran past the rear wall of the bar. Holding on to the wall to stop himself from sliding into muddy water, he looked along it.

No one there. David stared at absence, his guts now screwed so tight that it felt like he was going to vomit, then made his way back to the parking lot.

He noticed a shape drawn in the dusty gravel, a rectangle that tapered toward the bottom. It didn’t mean anything to him.

He dragged his feet through it nonetheless, until the shape was completely gone.

“Because I’m an idiot,” David said.

“Roger that, but you’re always an idiot. This doesn’t explain the specific omission today.”

They were in the kitchen and the discussion concerned supper. He always looked after what they ate. It was his job. Hunter-gather words, and also food. Today he’d forgotten. That was because of going to Kendricks, of course, which wasn’t something he wanted to discuss. When he got back, he’d gone to his study to work but wound up reading more of Talia’s book instead. It was easier than working on his own. Easier than thinking, too, and easier and better than trying to work out whether to go to the cops. Doing this had been Plan A for the entire walk home, but it ran out of steam when he got indoors. What could he tell them? That a stranger was bugging him in a way that seemed too genial and unobtrusive to count as stalking? That there was an excessive familiarity in his manner that made David feel not attacked but guilty, as if the situation was his responsibility? That David believed this stranger had subsequently vanished out of a parking lot (yes, Officer, I had been drinking, just a little bit)?

No. Talking to the cops wasn’t going to work, at least not yet, and the real reason was that David couldn’t seem to think clearly about what had happened. The encounter felt intangible. Or like a day-dream. Something he’d made up. Nothing real.

But not unreal, either.

Eventually lack of sleep and an unaccustomed afternoon beer caught up with him, and he’d nodded off at his desk, waking at the sound of Dawn getting back to the house after her meeting. He felt bleary and caught out even though she wasn’t giving him a hard time.

She laughed at the look on his face. “No biggie, little boy lost. We can rustle up something from the cupboards, I’m sure. How did the day go otherwise?”

He was momentarily wary. “In what way?”

“The
writing
, darling. Remember that?”

“I’m not a writer, babe. I just sit up there to keep the computer company.”

She smiled, but it looked a little forced. “Actually it’s going a lot better,” he said. Apart from that afternoon, this was broadly true. Although he hadn’t written many actual
words
, the phantom hitchhiker thing still felt like it might pay off. “Got a new idea.”

“That’s great,” she said, much more warmly. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it is?”

He shook his head, as she’d known he would.

“I’m very proud of you, you know,” she said.

Taken aback by her seriousness, he struggled for a response. “Well, let’s see how the first one—”

“No,” she said. “I’m
not
going to wait and see how it sells. You wrote it, and it’s great, and it’s going to be published. Everything else is out of your hands. I’m proud of what
you
do, not for what fate throws your way.”

“You probably won’t be so proud of the fact I fell asleep at my desk this afternoon.”

“Oh, I already knew that.”

“You did?”

“You looked like the lurching dead when you came downstairs. No big deal. You didn’t sleep well.”

“How do you know?”

“You were tossing and turning all night. It’s okay. I’m proud of you anyway. Just don’t make a habit of it.”

“Copy that. Look, I’m going to grab a shower, wake up properly, okay?”

“Please do. You smell
viiiile
,” she drawled, an old joke between them, as she bent to start looking in the cupboards. Then, as he headed out into the hallway, she straightened up again. “Oh, and by the way.”

He turned. “What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

At first he didn’t believe it. He didn’t think she’d be lying or joking, but after the last couple of years it was like being casually informed that black was, in fact, white—look, here’s a picture to prove it. When he sat for five whole minutes, gripping the printed-out results in his hands and staring at them, he finally got it. And it blew everything else away.

“This is it,” he said, folding her in his arms. She was crying, and felt both bulky and fragile, though there was no difference from the woman he’d hugged that morning before she left for work. “This is the one. I can feel it. You’ve done it.”

“
We’ve
done it.”

“No,” he said, burying his head in the smell of her skin and hair. “
You
did.”

They foraged supper out of the cupboards, snacks at the counter as they talked and talked. “There’s still a long way to go,” she said. “Nothing’s ever sure. We’ve got to take it one day at a time.”

He couldn’t. David knew this time it was going to work, and the prospect filled his head. It didn’t matter how much you assumed you’d gotten a handle on human reproduction nor how steely-eyed and unromantic about the process you’d become after hours spent in doctors’ waiting rooms glumly listening to the money meter ticking away, it was still a
total mind-fuck
. Somewhere deep in a hidden crucible in Dawn’s body, magic had occurred. Things invisible to the naked eye had conjoined and as a result something real was growing inside her. An entirely separate being. It had Dawn within it—and David too—but wasn’t merely their product or the sum or averaging of their souls. This wasn’t two plus two making four. It was two plus two making lilac. It was different. It was other. It was—or would be—purely itself.

For the time being it might be attached to her by blood and tissue, but one day it would sit opposite David and call him dad, hopefully with a smile on his or her face rather than a snarl (though both would doubtless happen at one time or another), a being with words and emotions all of its own. And one day it would announce it was getting married. And then—assuming it took matters in the traditional order—announce a grandchild was on the way, yet
another
being, a further step along the road to infinity. Every act of creation only ever apes the
real
one: the creation of a new being that one day will walk away from you out into the world to do its thing, forever linked to you by history but the center and sole inhabitant of its own universe. Who cared about the imaginary, when reality could be so magical?

When they went to bed—earlier than usual, with much joking about how Dawn had to sleep for two now—she drifted off quickly, crashing out on her side. David lay next to her in the dark, for once happy to be awake, savoring the experience, in fact—though the sluggish shadows around his internal eye told him that tonight his sleep siren was going to come across for once, and soon.

He turned cautiously, slipped his hand under Dawn’s arm, and placed it gently on her stomach. The shadows gathered, deep and warm, and soon he was asleep.

It was Kristina’s idea to call Catherine. It came to her after we’d been sitting in a bar in the Village for a couple of hours, which tells its own story. I could tell from what I overheard that Catherine wasn’t wild about the idea of us dropping in, but she agreed if we’d wait a couple hours so she could get to the other side of the dinner/bath/bed routine. Kristina seemed impatient about this, but she’d never had her own kids to debrief and shut down, and didn’t realize how badly the unscheduled arrival of strangers could derail the process. So we waited in the bar some more, during which Kristina called Mario at the restaurant and promised she’d be at work by nine, cross her heart and hope to die. Mario has no defenses against her and said, “Okay, that’s fine, Miss Kristina. See you later.”

Eventually we stepped out into the dark and made our way to Catherine’s house. She opened the door looking well dressed and grown-up. I trooped in behind Kristina feeling like a teenager being let in by someone else’s mom. It was one of those very vertical town houses with black-painted railings and cream detailing around the windows, like the dwellings you’d see in a child’s illustrated tale about life in a big city. There were books everywhere and posters for recent exhibitions and well-framed black-and-white photos of family and relatives and everything looked like it had been tidied recently by a professional. At one point I thought I saw a mote of dust lurking under a chair but then realized it was just a trick of the light. I didn’t have to watch Kristina’s face to judge her take on the house, or see her thinking how jolly nice it must be to live there.

Catherine led us into a kitchen with eating space that took up half of the raised first story. It was bright and airy and the kids’ art on the fridge was better than anything I could have done. A door at the end led onto a sitting room with stripped brick walls, a fireplace on one side and a television of judicious size on the other.

“The girls are in bed,” Catherine said brightly, as if briefing a new au pair. “But Mark’s due back from the airport in about an hour, so …”

Kris glanced at me, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure we should be here and had said so. So as far as I was concerned, this was her gig.

“We followed you this afternoon,” she said.

Catherine blinked, and I was reminded of an incident from childhood. I must have been about twelve, wandering around town with a couple of buddies, and we’d climbed up the big tree at the back of the library, as we sometimes did. Once there, we realized an older girl we kinda knew—she worked Saturdays in the general store, a regular stop on our wanders-around-town—was studying at the desk in the window, about ten feet away. So we hooted and waved and eventually she looked up and saw us.