In Between Days Page 13

  Richard nods, understanding.

  “I mean, I don’t wanna be an asshole or anything. I love your sister and all, but it just seems like they’re in some serious shit right now, you know, and I can’t have that type of shit sticking to me.” He looks at Richard and shrugs.

  “Yeah,” Richard says, sighing. “To be honest, I don’t really know what’s going on myself.” He picks up the pack of cigarettes and lights one. Yesterday his parents had told him that the police had been calling them, telling them that Raja was now being looked at as a fugitive, but when he asked Chloe about this, she denied it. She said that it wasn’t actually that bad, that their parents were exaggerating. Even now, though, he isn’t sure who to believe. “She’s not telling me anything,” he says finally. “I mean, I know some kid up there at Stratham got hurt and all and that they’re saying Raja did it, but that’s about it, you know?”

  Brandon nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, they’re not saying shit to me. That’s for sure.”

  They both look over at the girl in the corner, who has just started singing “No Surprises” in a very low, melancholy voice. A moment later Brandon looks at his watch and says that he has to get back, that his break is over.

  “You going to Beto’s tonight?” he asks.

  Richard shakes his head. “Probably not. I gotta meet Michelson.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “Right here?” Brandon says, looking around suspiciously.

  “Yeah. You know, in like an hour or so.”

  “Little late for a meeting, don’t you think?”

  Richard shrugs. “It’s not like I’m his student, you know.”

  “Man,” Brandon says. “Must be nice. That dude never wants to have meetings with me.”

  “Maybe if you were a little nicer to him,” Richard says.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Or maybe if I sucked his dick.” Then he smiles slyly at Richard. “Speaking of, I’m meeting someone later tonight if you’re interested. I’m sure he’s got a friend.”

  Richard looks at him and rolls his eyes. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Yeah,” Brandon says, turning around. “Of course, I’m fucking joking.”

  By the time Michelson arrives, it’s almost eight o’clock, the café suddenly packed with the late-evening crowd. For the past half hour, Richard has been paging through an enormous volume of collected letters from Wallace Stevens to his wife, a book that Michelson had actually given to him the last time they met. Though very formal in nature, these letters are among the most beautiful Richard has ever read. He wonders what it would feel like to receive a letter like this, or to write one. Then he thinks about the random, disjointed e-mails he’d received from Marcos when he’d first arrived in Korea, filled with non sequiturs and typos. Did anyone in his generation even bother to write letters anymore? he wonders. Did they care? Was letter writing a dying art? It is this that he’s thinking about when Michelson appears at his table, suddenly out of breath, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “So sorry I’m late,” Michelson says, sitting down at the table with his coffee. “You weren’t waiting long, were you?”

  Richard shakes his head. “Just since my shift ended.”

  “Ah, that’s right,” Michelson says, smiling. “I always forget you work here.”

  “Brandon, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “From our class? Brandon.” Richard points over toward the counter where Brandon is busy steaming milk and flirting with a customer.

  “Ah yes,” Michelson says after a moment, staring at Brandon uncertainly. “Brandon. Of course.” Then he returns his gaze to Richard and the book in his hand, his eyes suddenly brightening. “Oh,” he says. “I see you’re reading the Stevens letters.”

  “I am,” Richard says. “They’re wonderful.”

  “Aren’t they?” Michelson smiles. “I know. I knew you’d love them.” Then he winks at Richard in a way that makes him feel uncomfortable, exposed, as if there’s some type of hidden meaning in this statement.

  He still isn’t sure why Michelson has invited him here in the first place, what he wants. Earlier that day he had received a lengthy voice mail from Michelson, in which Michelson had explained to him that he wanted to meet him here later, that he had something very important to discuss with him, but when Richard called him back, Michelson had been very evasive about the nature of the meeting, saying only that he was looking forward to seeing him. Now, however, he wonders what Michelson wants, whether this meeting is just a pretense for something else, whether it’s part of his master plan. He looks over Michelson’s shoulder at Brandon, who is making moony eyes at him, laughing.

  “So, I guess you’re wondering why I invited you here,” Michelson says after a moment, smiling.

  Richard nods.

  “Well, as it turns out, I have some very good news for you, Richard,” he says. “Actually some good news and some bad news, but I’ll start with the good news first, okay?”

  Richard looks at him, says nothing.

  “Remember how I told you I had that friend up there at Michigan?”

  Richard nods.

  “Well, I took the liberty of sending him some of your poems, and I have to tell you, he was very impressed. Very impressed. Even called to tell me so.”

  “You sent him my poems?” Richard says, his voice almost cracking.

  “Well, yes. But listen to this. He said that it wasn’t unprecedented for them to accept a student late, especially if that student showed exceptional merit, which he felt you did. He said it didn’t happen often, but it did happen. In other words, he believed you had a chance.” He smiles at Richard. “The bad news is that he’ll have to get the unanimous support of the other faculty, which might take some persuading. He also said that you’d need to send him your transcripts and some type of statement of purpose by the end of the week.” At this, Michelson pauses. “Richard, you look upset?”

  “You had no right to do that.”

  “Well, no, but I thought you’d be happy.”

  “Why the hell would I be happy? Those poems weren’t even finished. They were drafts.”

  “Well, yes. A few of them were a little rough around the edges, as you say, but I think they certainly display your talent.”

  “Jesus,” Richard says. “I never even said that I wanted to go there.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No,” Richard says. “I didn’t.”

  Michelson pauses. “Richard, I don’t think I need to explain to you what a rare opportunity this is.”

  Richard looks at him. For months, Michelson has been talking about the University of Michigan’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and what this would mean for him, how it would place him in very good company and so forth, but whenever Richard thinks about Michigan, he sees only wheat fields and farmers, a vast, desolate landscape filled with endless distances. He sees bitter winters and frost-covered windows and an empty apartment with a dark bedroom and a lone, solitary desk in the corner. And, of course, he sees the prospect of failure, the prospect of public humiliation and disgrace, all things he’d rather not be thinking about right now.

  “I really can’t believe you did that,” Richard says again, this time more emphatically. “I sent you those poems in confidence.”

  “Richard, I think you’re missing the big picture here.”

  “I don’t think I am,” Richard says. “I sent you some poems, and then you took those poems and you sent them off to a total stranger without asking my permission. I think that’s pretty much the big picture, isn’t it?”

  “You’re right,” Michelson says finally, sighing. “I probably shouldn’t have done that. You’re right about that. I probably should have asked you first. But I did it, you have to understand, with your best interests in mind.”

  “My best interests?” Richard says, laughing. “How the hell do you know what my best interests are? You don’t even know me.”

  “No,�
� Michelson says, “but I know your poetry.”

  Richard stares at him. He can see that Michelson is hurt, deflated, surprised by his reaction. He probably expected Richard to jump up and throw his arms around him, hug him. But right now Richard is too annoyed, too infuriated, to even look at him. He turns away.

  “Look, Richard,” Michelson continues. “Why don’t you just sleep on it, okay? Maybe you’ll see things differently tomorrow.”

  “I don’t need to sleep on it,” Richard says. “Honestly, I don’t.”

  Michelson bristles at this. “You need to understand, Richard, that if you pull out at this point, you’ll not only be hurting yourself, but you’ll also be creating a very embarrassing professional situation for me. Do you understand that?”

  Richard stands up then and, no longer able to control his anger, begins to pack his bag. He feels violated in the worst possible way, betrayed by a man he once respected. He looks over at Brandon, who is staring at him in disbelief, his face full of confusion.

  “Look,” he says to Michelson. “Don’t go calling me anymore, okay? And don’t go doing me any more favors, all right? Not unless I ask.” Then he starts toward the door, passing the customers, ignoring Brandon as he follows him out on the street.

  “Hey, Rich!” Brandon yells after him. “Where the fuck are you going?”

  But it’s too late. Richard is already running, running through the darkness toward his mother’s minivan, running past the banyan trees and the tropical foliage on people’s lawns, running past the garbage cans and the sprinkler systems and the overturned bikes, running as fast as he can, wishing for once he had an answer to Brandon’s question, wishing for once he knew where the fuck he was going.

  2

  AS HE SITS across from his wife at the kitchen table where they’ve eaten now for nearly thirty years, Elson finds himself wondering what had happened to all of that early optimism. Where had it gone? What had happened to all of that excitement they used to feel back in the early days of their relationship, back when oil was thirty-nine dollars a barrel and everyone in the country was flocking to Houston, trying to catch a piece of the action, trying to ride the crest of the wave? Where had it all gone? Had it all been eaten up by the crash? Was there nothing left of it now? Was their marriage, like everything from that time, something ephemeral and vague, something as tenuous as the market itself? He tries to remember the last time he felt the type of lust he used to feel for Cadence back then, the type of lust that had made him want to screw in elevators or the backseats of cars or the bathrooms of restaurants, the type of lust that had made him cancel appointments or drive home early from work or call in sick. How can it be, he wonders now, that this woman sitting across from him is the same woman he used to spend hours making love to, the same woman he used to have to call three or four times a day just to make it through the workweek, the same woman he once flew to Amsterdam on a crazy whim simply because he missed her. What had happened between then and now to bring them to this place where they could barely be in the same room together for more than a minute without fighting?

  Across from him, Cadence is paging through their daughter’s notebooks and journals, which she’s brought down from her room, searching through her address book for some clue of where she might be. So far, at Elson’s insistence, they’ve respected their daughter’s wishes and not contacted the police, though there have been some inquiries on the other end. A couple of police officers from the Stratham Police Department who had called them up the night before, wanting to speak to Chloe. Two men in black suits, who Cadence claimed she’d met before, stopping by the house that morning. So far, they’ve told them nothing, only that Chloe is out of town visiting a friend and that she hasn’t spoken to that boy they’re looking for. What they’ve found out, however, has troubled them. That this boy they’re looking for has fled the jurisdiction of the Stratham Police Department, that he’s broken his bail, that he hasn’t been seen in several days, and that even though he hasn’t been formally indicted, he’s still being looked at as a fugitive.

  For his own part, Elson has tried to remain composed, tried to be the type of steady anchor that Cadence has always wanted him to be. Since the night they found out, since the night that Cadence called him, they haven’t argued once, and Cadence has kept him more or less in the loop through e-mails and phone calls. It occurs to him now that this is probably the longest they’ve gone without fighting in several months and certainly the most time they’ve spent together since the day he moved out. If he weren’t so overwhelmed with concern for his daughter, he might even see this sudden civility between them as a tiny silver lining on a very dark cloud.

  As Cadence picks up another journal, Elson leans forward and pours himself another drink. They’ve both been drinking since the early afternoon, when he arrived, and now, as the sun is going down at the far end of the yard, just beyond the palm trees and the cabana house, he can feel the alcohol settling in.

  “Did you know that she used to smoke pot in high school?” Cadence says after a moment, looking up from one of Chloe’s journals.

  “You shouldn’t be reading that,” Elson says, looking out at the pool, thinking suddenly of Lorna’s computer, her e-mail account.

  “Did you know that, though?” she asks.

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

  Cadence shakes her head. “There’s stuff about us in here, you know,” she says, paging through the journal. “Especially you.”

  “Really?” Elson says, his interest suddenly piqued. “Like what?” He leans over the table, but Cadence covers the journal with her hand.

  “I thought you didn’t think we should be reading it.”

  “We shouldn’t be,” he says. Then he looks at her. “Just tell me.”

  Cadence looks at him, smiles, then slides the journal across the table. “You can read it yourself,” she says.

  But when Elson looks at the journal he feels something like panic rising inside of him, a sudden fear of what he might discover. After a moment, he slides it back.

  “It’s not all bad,” Cadence says. “Honestly. Some of it is actually very sweet.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he says, “but not all of it.”

  “No,” she says. “Not all of it.”

  He looks out at the pool again. “I’d rather not know,” he says, “to be perfectly honest.” Then he thinks again of Lorna and the fight they had the previous night on the phone, how she accused him of being a sneak, of violating her privacy, and how he hasn’t heard from her since. In retrospect, he should have never mentioned anything about her e-mail account or her correspondence with Cadence, should have never even brought it up. What he’d done was only confirm her suspicions about him, proven himself untrustworthy. As she put it herself, I feel like I don’t even know you anymore. And as he sits here now, staring at Cadence’s face, he wonders if he knows himself.

  “She should be calling us any minute now,” Cadence says after a moment, looking down at her watch. “She said she’d call at eight, and it’s almost half past.”

  “Half past eight?”

  “Yes.”

  Earlier that day, Cadence had received a text message from Chloe on her phone, a text message that had informed her that she would be calling them both at eight, and when Elson had learned this, he had come right over, only to find Cadence holed up in Chloe’s room, knee deep in her personal belongings. When he’d told her that they probably shouldn’t be doing that, that they probably shouldn’t be going through her personal stuff, Cadence had looked at him for a very long time, then grabbed the journals anyway and started downstairs.

  “Well, if she doesn’t call by midnight …,” Elson says, but doesn’t finish.

  “Then what?”

  “Then, I don’t know. We might have to call the police.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “What other choice do we have?”

  Cadence looks at him and nods, sips her w
ine. “Don’t worry,” she says finally. “She’ll call.”

  But she doesn’t. Not for almost an hour, at least. Not until Cadence has made it halfway through another bottle of wine and Elson is half asleep on one of the couches in the den. He can’t even remember how he made it from the kitchen to the den or what he and Cadence had been talking about before he left the room. All he knows now is that he had fallen into some type of dream, a semiconscious reverie, the memory of those early days with Cadence coming back to him in fragmented waves: the night they first met at his friend Brian Lowry’s house, those early days that they had spent at his apartment in River Oaks, the long drunken nights and the endless stream of parties, the scandal he had caused by dating a college girl, the scandal they had both caused when she had finally decided to drop out of college and marry him.

  It is this that he’s thinking about as he sits up on the couch and tries to orient himself. The room itself is dark, and in the distance, on the other side of the house, he can hear Cadence shouting, shouting something at their daughter on the phone. Taking a moment to catch his bearings, he stands up slowly, then starts down the hallway toward the kitchen, but by the time he gets there, Cadence is no longer shouting on the phone. She is sitting on the floor, her arms draped loosely around her knees, the phone lying on the floor beside her. The room itself is dark, save for the bright oscillating pool lights from outside casting strange oblong patterns along the walls, and it takes him a moment to make out her face and realize she’s crying.

  “Cadence,” he says.

  But she doesn’t answer.

  Without saying a word, he walks over and gives her his hand, helps her stand up, embraces her for what seems like the first time in many months. She looks at him but doesn’t speak. She lets him hold her.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” he says after a moment, very softly.

  She shakes her head. “I screwed it up,” she says.

  “What did she say?”

  “I shouldn’t have gotten angry,” she says. “I should have just listened.” Elson reaches then for his cigarettes and lights one, and though she hasn’t smoked in twenty years, Cadence motions for him to give her a drag, which he does.