“Well, you’re welcome to it. But—and don’t take this the wrong way, you have no idea how glad I am to see you—why on earth are you here?”
He leaned on the edge of my desk. “I needed to get away from home,” he said. “Rattling around that house by myself during the day, tiptoeing around my parents at night—I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t go back to Dellecher so I flew to Chicago, but the busyness was just as bad. I thought about getting a bus to Broadwater, but there wasn’t one so I came here.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I should’ve called.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Thy friendship makes us fresh.”
“No offense, but you don’t look it,” I told him. “You look battered, actually.”
“It’s been a long night.”
“Let’s get you to bed, then. We can talk more in the morning.”
He nodded, tired eyes warm with gratitude. I stared at him, momentarily brain-dead except for the nonsensical question of whether he’d ever looked at me quite like that before.
“Where do you want me?” he asked.
“What? Oh. Why don’t you sleep here, and I’ll crash on the couch downstairs.”
“I’m not going to kick you out of your own bed.”
“You need the sleep more than I do.”
“No, why don’t we just— We can share, can’t we?”
My synapses fizzled out again. His expression was one part puzzled, one part expectant, and so utterly boyish that in that instant he looked more like himself than he had in weeks. He shifted, eyes flicking away toward the window, and I realized he was waiting for an answer.
“I don’t see why not,” I said.
His mouth inched shyly toward a grin. “We’re not such strange bedfellows.”
“No.”
I watched as he bent down to unlace his shoes, then pulled my own socks off and climbed out of my sweatpants. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was well after two in the morning. I frowned, calculating how long he’d been on the bus. Five hours? Six?
“Which side do you want?” he asked.
“What?”
“The bed.” He pointed.
“Oh. Whichever.”
“Okay.” He folded his jeans over the back of my desk chair and then pulled his sweater off over his head. Ghosts of bruises still stained his wrists and forearms green.
I sat gingerly on the near edge of the bed and found myself thinking, unexpectedly, of the summer we’d spent in California—taking turns behind the wheel of the old BMW that had once belonged to James’s father, driving all the way up the coast to some gray, fog-blurred beach where we got drunk on white wine, swam naked, and fell asleep in the sand.
“Do you remember that night in Del Norte,” I said, “when we passed out on the beach—”
“And when we woke up in the morning all our clothes were gone?”
He said it so readily that he must have been thinking of it, too. I almost laughed and turned to find him pulling back the comforter, eyes brighter than they’d been before.
“I still wonder what happened,” I said. “Do you think it could have been the tide?”
“More likely someone with a sense of humor and a very light step liked the idea of us having to hike back to the car in the nude.”
“It’s a miracle we didn’t get arrested.”
“In California? It would take more than that.”
Suddenly the old story—the water and the gray morning and James’s remark, It would take more than that—was too familiar, too close for comfort to more recent memories. He averted his eyes and I knew we were still thinking the same thing. We climbed into bed, pushed the pillows around, and pretended to get comfortable in disconcerted silence. I lay on my back, dismayed that the five or six inches of space between us suddenly felt like a hundred miles. My petty fears from the memorial service were confirmed—death wasn’t going to stop Richard tormenting us.
“Can I turn out the light?” James asked.
“’Course,” I said, glad that his thoughts and mine were no longer wandering in the same direction.
He reached for the lamp, and darkness fell down from the ceiling. With it came a soft, senseless panic—I couldn’t see James anymore. I fought the impulse to grope across the bed until I found his arm. I spoke out loud, just to hear him reply.
“You know what I keep thinking of? You know, when I think about Richard.”
He was slow to answer, like he didn’t really want to find out. “What?”
“The sparrow, from Hamlet.”
I felt him shift. “Yeah, you said. Let be.”
“I’ve never understood that speech,” I said. “I mean, I understand it, but it doesn’t make sense. After trying for so long to settle the score and restore some kind of order, suddenly Hamlet’s a fatalist.”
The mattress moved under him again. He might have rolled over to face me, but it was too dark to see. “I think you understand it perfectly. Nothing makes sense to him either. His whole world is falling apart, and once he realizes he can’t stop it or fix it or change it, there’s only one thing left to do.”
My eyes adjusted slowly, maddeningly. “What’s that?”
His shadow shrugged in the gloom. “Absolve yourself. Blame it on fate.”
SCENE 10
The following morning I returned gradually to consciousness, floating on the surface of sleep, eyes still closed. Something fluttered against my shoulder and I remembered: James. Unlike the few nights I’d spent lying next to Meredith at Hallsworth House, I was instantly, acutely aware of him.