He took a long, hot shower, then dressed in the cleanest clothes he had, and washed his dirty clothes in the sink. As he brushed his teeth, he stared at himself in the mirror. His hair was too long and shaggy, and he’d gone almost completely gray. He hadn’t been able to shave this morning, so his sunken cheeks were shadowed by a thick stubble. The bags beneath his eyes were carry-on size. He was like a piece of fruit, slowly going bad from the inside out.
He finger-combed the hair back from his face and turned away from the mirror. Really, it was better not to look. All it did was remind him of the old days, when he’d been young and vain, when he’d been careful to keep up appearances. Then, he’d thought a lot of unimportant things mattered.
He went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. There was no one nearby, so he slipped into the darkness.
It was completely dark now. A full moon hung over the lake, casting a rippled glow across the waves and illuminating the cabins along the shore. Three of them were brightly lit from within. In one of them, he could see people moving around inside; it looked as if they were dancing. And suddenly, he wanted to be in that cabin, to be part of that circle of people who cared about one another.
“You’re losing it, Joe,” he said, wishing he could laugh about it the way he once would have. But there was a lump in his throat that made smiling impossible.
He slipped into the cover of the trees and kept moving. As he passed behind one of the cabins, he heard music. “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Then he heard the sound of childish laughter. “Dance with me, Daddy,” a little girl said loudly.
He forced himself to keep moving. With each step taken, the sound of laughter diminished until, by the time he reached the edge of the woods, he had to strain to hear it at all. He found a soft bed of pine needles and sat down. Moonlight glowed around him, turning the world into a smear of blue-white and black.
He unzipped his backpack and burrowed through the damp, wadded-up clothes, looking for the two items that mattered.
Three years ago, when he’d first run away, he’d carried an expensive suitcase. He still remembered standing in his bedroom, packing for a trip without destination or duration, wondering what a man in exile would need. He’d packed khaki slacks and merino wool sweaters and even a black Joseph Abboud suit.
By the end of his first winter alone, he’d understood that those clothes were the archaeological remains of a forgotten life. Useless. All he needed in his new life were two pair of jeans, a few Tshirts, a sweatshirt, and a rain slicker. Everything else he’d given to charity.
The only expensive garment he’d kept was a pink cashmere sweater with tiny shell buttons. On a good night, he could still smell her perfume in the soft fabric.
He withdrew a small, leatherbound photo album from the backpack. With shaking fingers, he opened the front cover.
The first picture was one of his favorites.
In it, Diana sat on a patch of grass, wearing a pair of white shorts and a Yale T-shirt. There was a stack of books open beside her, and a mound of pink cherry blossoms covered the pages. She was smiling so brightly he had to blink back tears. “Hey, baby,” he whispered, touching the glossy covering. “I had a hot shower tonight.”
He closed his eyes. In the darkness, she came to him. It was happening more and more often lately, this sensation that she hadn’t left him, that she was still here. He knew it was a crack in his mind, a mental defect. He didn’t care.
“I’m tired,” he said to her, breathing in deeply, savoring the scent of her perfume. Red by Giorgio. He wondered if they made it anymore.
It’s no good, what you’re doing.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Go home.
“I can’t.”
You break my heart, Joey.
And she was gone.
With a sigh, he leaned back against a big tree stump.
Go home, she’d said. It was what she always said to him.
What he said to himself.
Maybe tomorrow, he thought, reaching for the kind of courage that would make it possible. God knew after three years on the road, he was tired of being this alone.
Maybe tomorrow he would finally—finally—allow himself to start walking west.
Diana would like that.
CHAPTER
SIX
Like sunshine, night brought out the best in Seattle. The highway—a bumper-to-bumper nightmare at morning rush hour—became, at night, a glittering red-and-gold Chinese dragon that curled along the blackened banks of Lake Union. The cluster of high-rises in the city’s midtown heart, so ordinary in the gray haze on a June day, was a kaleidoscope of sculpted color when night fell.
Meghann stood at her office window. She never failed to be mesmerized by this view. The water was a black stain that consumed nearby Bainbridge Island. Though she couldn’t see the streets below, she knew they were clogged. Traffic was the curse Seattle had carried into the new millennium. Millions of people had moved into the once-sleepy town, drawn by the quality of life and the variety of outdoor activities. Unfortunately, after they built expensive cul-de-sac homes in the suburbs, they took jobs in the city. Roads designed for an out-of-the-way port town couldn’t possibly keep up.
Progress.