CLAIRE STEPPED OUT OF THE Z-iosk back into the flow of airport pedestrians rushing to and from their planes. She straightened her clothes as best she could and scooped her hair back over one shoulder.
For a moment she considered just walking away. It would certainly be the easier thing to do. Easier by far. And yet, she told herself that whatever else she might be, she was no coward.
She walked back to the restaurant, past the harassed hostess to the table where the fat guy sat, no longer mumbling over his book but sitting, watching her come near with an expression of mixed triumph and sorrow.
Claire stopped at his table. She looked down at him. He was not in any way attractive. Probably a hundred pounds overweight. His complexion had a greasy, pallid look. His eyes, while bright and alert, were nearly swallowed by his cheeks and his heavy brow.
“Hello, Sean,” Claire said.
“Hello, Claire,” he said. “Would you like to have a seat?”
Claire pulled out a chair and sat down.
“How did you figure it out?” Sean asked.
Claire pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I guess it was the words. I know the way you express yourself. I know the way you use words.”
Sean nodded, looking gratified, though that expression barely touched the more profound underlying unhappiness. “You understand how I did it, I suppose?”
“Yes. The hearing aid. It’s a receiver.”
“And a transmitter,” Sean said. “I could hear everything you said and tell Dennis—that’s his name, by the way—how to respond.”
“I noticed the hesitation when he talked. And I saw you looking like you were moving your lips reading your book. I think I understand how. I don’t understand why.”
“You don’t?” Sean smiled faintly and met her gaze. “You really don’t?”
Claire looked away, embarrassed.
“I assumed all the time when we talked on the computer that you were . . . I suppose, plain. I had pictured you as a girl who might be as much a victim of her looks as I am of mine. It didn’t matter to me what you looked like. I loved your intelligence, your sense of humor, your introspection. When you told me things that made me see you as ruthless, self-serving, Claire, I thought well, she’s just an unattractive girl fighting back against a world that isn’t prepared to look beneath the surface.”
“I never lied to you about that,” Claire said. “I never said I was . . . unattractive.”
“No, you just said how little looks mattered to you.” Sean laughed bitterly. “People who say that usually say it because they’ve been on the wrong end of the looks war. People like me say it.”
“So, why Dennis?”
“It occurred to me, quite late really, that there was one other group of people who went around pretending looks didn’t matter. People like you. This terrible fear grew . . . a fear that maybe you weren’t at all what I thought you were. And so, it being Halloween—”
“You arranged to wear a mask,” Claire said.
“A mask. Yes. A Halloween mask that would make me as handsome as any girl could want. I hoped, I even convinced myself that it was silly, that I had brought Dennis with me for no reason. I told myself I was being stupid. I told myself that no matter what you looked like, you would be able to see beneath . . . this.” He held out his hands in a gesture that presented his vast bulk.
“Maybe I would have,” Claire said. “You didn’t give me the chance.”
“No, I didn’t,” Sean admitted softly. “I saw you as you arrived. A girl of the right age, alone, not carrying luggage. I knew it was you. You stopped my heart, Claire. You were this vision of perfect beauty, of elegance, of confidence. Everything I could never be, and everything I could never have. All my courage evaporated. I couldn’t talk to a girl like you. Not me. So I told Dennis he was on.” Sean managed a ruined smile. “He wants to be an actor, I’m sorry he got a little carried away. That was never part of my plan.”
“I might have surprised you, Sean,” Claire said. “I’m really not superficial. I’m really not obsessed with looks. I’m really not one of those girls.”
“Remember when Dennis got up to go to the men’s room?” Sean asked. “Remember the way you followed him with your eyes? And then when your gaze drifted over to me?”
“Yes,” Claire admitted. Yes, she remembered.
“I’ve seen that look before, Claire. The way the curtain comes down, the face goes blank, the eyes drift away indifferently. The way your lips curled with just the hint of a sneer. The look that says ‘don’t even bother to dream about it, fat boy.’”
Claire felt her face flush. Yes, this was the real Sean. The perceptive, intelligent Sean she had come to know. And yet had not known.
“Someday,” he said gently, “a girl will come along, and I really don’t care what she looks like, who will care more about what is in my mind, and my heart . . .” His voice tripped at the word heart. In a ragged whisper he went on. “A girl who will care more about what’s in my heart than how I look.”
“Sean . . . Sean . . .” Claire couldn’t think of anything more to say.
His eyes were wet, but his gaze met hers, unflinching. “Are you that girl, Claire? Are you the girl who can love me for what I am inside? Not like a brother, or a pal. You know what I mean.”
Am I? Claire wondered. Am I, really? Or am I as cruel to people like Sean as everyone else in the world?
“I, uh, have to go to the men’s room,” Sean said. He levered himself heavily up out of his chair. He tucked the tail of his shirt back in his pants. “Do me a favor, Claire. Be honest, okay? And if you are not the girl I’m talking about, then please, don’t be here when I get back, all right?”
Jake ran from Lara’s apartment like he was being chased. He ran along rain-glistening cobblestones painted with reflected neon. He dodged slow-crawling cars squeezing their way through the narrow Portside Weymouth streets. He ran until he was gasping for breath among the gloomy, darkened warehouses of the waterfront. Ran away from the lights, and into the darkness.
The beer had taken a toll on his stamina that even the adrenaline of terror couldn’t overcome. He sagged against a loading platform that smelled of the urine of earlier drunks, watched by the glittering eyes of a cat on the hunt.
Lara had done it deliberately, of that he was certain. Lara was insane or perhaps just evil. She had known about Wade and had made his name come up on the Ouija board. Lots of people still remembered Wade. Lots of people knew Jake’s big brother had died. Why Lara had wanted to frighten him Jake couldn’t guess, but he knew one thing: it had been a fake. Spirits didn’t speak through Ouija boards. It was ridiculous. And anyway, Wade was in heaven. He wasn’t some disconnected spirit wandering around waiting for Benjamin and Zoey’s drunken, probably crazy half-sister to call him up.
Jake felt as if his skin was crawling. He scratched viciously at his arms and shoulders. Like ants on his skin. The damp, that’s what it was. The clamminess of the rain that made his clothing stick to him.
He looked up and saw a bright light. Neon and fluorescence, a block away. A lone beacon of brightness in this grubby neighborhood of abandoned buildings, parking lots, and warehouses.
He pushed away from the loading platform, trying as he walked to steady his breathing. He was an athlete, after all. He was in better shape than this. A few beers couldn’t throw him this far off.
He walked fast, suddenly uncomfortable among the shadows, wishing he had stayed among the brighter lights of Portside. Nothing bad could happen over there, amid the expensive restaurants and overpriced tourist shops. But he was drawn not back to Portside but toward the rapidly growing light, now just a few hundred yards away. He could read the individual beer signs in the windows. Budweiser. Bass Ale. Miller.
Where had this liquor store come from? It had to be new. He’d never noticed it in this area before, certainly. And wouldn’t he have noticed?
He knew he probably shouldn’t drink any more. But his nerves were a wreck. The fault of that crazy bitch and her crazier ideas. Her father a devil! Good Lord. Had the girl thought about Prozac? She needed professional help.
Jake giggled, then laughed, loud and defiant. “Crazy damned bitch!” he yelled up at the night sky.
Yes, a drink would calm his nerves right down. Then he’d head on back to the island. Just get calmed down, and then straight home.
He opened the glass door of the store. The brilliance of the light, reflected back by a thousand glass bottles, made him squint and cover his eyes. He was the only person in the store except for a redheaded, middle-aged woman chain-smoking behind the counter. She leered at him as he came in.
“Tough night, honey?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s raining,” Jake said. He went to the tequila section, grabbing a fifth of Cuervo Gold. He carried it defiantly back to the woman.
“I’ll need to see some ID,” she said around her cigarette.
Jake felt a chill. Wade’s driver’s license.
He stared at the bottle. He looked at the woman. She grinned back. Cigarette smoke rose from her, for a moment giving Jake the eerie sense that she herself was smoldering.
Wade’s license. He reached reluctantly back and pulled it from his pocket.
He slid it across the counter. The woman glanced down at it and gave him a grin. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s it.”
Jake threw damp, crumpled bills on the counter and grabbed the bottle. Outside it was dark and welcoming. He started away, plunging into the nearest shadow. There he twisted the cap off the bottle and raised it high, draining a quarter of the liquid fire down his throat.
“Oh, man, that’s better. That is so much better.”
He set off aimlessly, staying to dark streets, sidling away from the rare passing cars. Moving to avoid the chance of being intercepted by a cop who might take his bottle away.
He took a new drink every few minutes, and soon he was staggering in a way that struck him as amazingly funny. The more he drank the more he staggered and the more he laughed, roaring at lampposts and fire hydrants.
It surprised him when he looked down and saw that the pavement had become grass. He glared around him, laboring to focus his eyes. They focused on a cold, white angel.
“Ahh!” he cried. Then, focusing more carefully, he saw that the angel was just a marble figure. A statuette atop an elaborate tombstone.
He was in the graveyard.
He spun around. Everywhere, the moonlit markers. Everywhere, chiseled in marble, the names of the dead.
Jake wanted to run, tried to run, but his feet tangled and he fell, hands and knees in the wet grass. The bottle! It had rolled away and he felt around for it, nearly crying with relief when his hands touched it.
Jake snuggled the bottle close and sat back against a tombstone.
And then, without turning to look, he knew. With a dread that soaked through to his bones, he knew the name on the tombstone.