Robbie Addison had been awake for hours, had not gone to sleep the whole time, not at all, that buzzing or crinkling in his fingers, that spot at the base of his spine where it felt like something clutched or clawed, some creature trapped in the mattress…looking up through the gap in the ancient curtains he could see the twirling flakes of snow, dazzling and hypnotic, yet even they could not induce sleep.
There were no clocks in the hotel room, but his internal clock, which was pretty finely tuned to closing time, suggested that it was about 1 a.m. He lay on his back and stared at the snow and concentrated on what he could hear. High in the air there seemed to be a ringing, but it was true that that might have been in his head. There was another sound, like a vacuum, like something taking away sound, sucking sound out of the room, converting it to negative space—that had to be, what, the wind? The heating vents? Did this old barn of a hotel even have central heat? He could hear also, now that he concentrated, the sound of Tonio’s snoring, and he tried hard to tell, straining his senses outward, whether the door to Tonio and Julia’s room was closed. Could you tell, if you tried to picture it hard enough, whether Julia’s eyes were open, whether she too was awake and hearing Tonio snore? No, you couldn’t.
After a minute he set aside the covers, the heavy quilt, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His arms, propped on the mattress, began to shake. He ran one hand through his unruly hair and he squinted and bared his teeth and very cautiously stood up with no noise but the cracking of one knee, the one with the cartilage damage from his old basketball days. He took two steps across the hardwood floor—gingerly, but he could see right away that it was no use. The floor groaning, creaking—they would hear him or they wouldn’t. He didn’t know much about the sleeping habits of his brother’s family. Was Dewey likely to wake up?
He slipped into his jeans and he felt around on the cold floor until he located his wool socks and he eased back down onto the bed and got the socks pulled on and he grabbed his boots to carry.
He had no idea where to find his coat. Standing in the doorway to his room in the suite, he could make out the entryway that led to the hall and the stairs, but there was a myriad of closet doors and he couldn’t go around opening them all to find his coat. He’d have to make do with the T-shirt and long johns undershirt he’d worn to bed.
He stepped out into the area between his room and Tonio’s, the goddamn floor groaning at every step. If someone—Julia, not Tonio, he could still hear Tonio snoring—called out to him now, said Robbie? He could say he was using the bathroom, but no, he had the boots in his hand. Going outside for a smoke. But his cigarettes were in his coat. He could say he’d thought they were in his pants pocket. So he walked toward the door quickly, no sense in being secretive, and he took in the fact that Dewey was asleep there on the large sofa in the main room, and he was within maybe three steps of the door when he made out in the faint light, on top of a small end table, what appeared to be Tonio’s wallet and keys. He hadn’t thought—really, he would never have suspected—that Tonio could be that dumb.
Certainly, of course, there was a second where he asked himself, where he talked to himself like this—Now Robbie, Tonio is your brother and he came all the way out here to “help” you, and you like Julia, don’t you, and what about Dewey, great kid, and what about their disappointment, think about Julia and how she’ll have to try to make excuses for you again—but he’d already spent half his life disappointing people so now it didn’t stop him long. He stepped over as lightly as possible and carefully, very carefully separated the wallet from the keys—the keys were of no use to him—and unfolded the wallet and took out a few—no, all—of the bills. Tonio had credit cards. Tonio would be fine.
He walked out of the room and down the creaky stairs and still no one interrupted him. At the bottom of the stairs he paused with his hand on the banister and surveyed the old, ghostly hotel lobby. Ladders, sawhorses, band saws, planks, bags of nails, God knew what all, you couldn’t see it very well in the dark—had to be a violation of every safety code imaginable. But the lobby itself—you could see how this must have been a pretty impressive place back in the day. Not that it interested him much. He exhaled slowly, and he told himself to consider the things they’d talked about in rehab, and he did consider them, but not in the way they would have wanted him to. What he’d heard them say over and over was that an addict could never get better until he wanted to get better, and that to want to get better you had to hit bottom, you had to see yourself as the lowest of the low. That was a comforting thought for Robbie, because he wasn’t anywhere near the bottom yet. There were a whole lot of depths left to sink to.
The heavy front door to the hotel was unlocked, and that was a good thing, he could get back in if he wanted to. But he knew he wouldn’t. He struggled into his boots and went outside and shut the door behind him. The air was sharp, intense, the wind a bit more bracing than he had allowed for. But there across the street was the oasis he’d spotted right from the first, when they were walking up the hill with the suitcases. It was a bar called the Miner’s Hat, lit in the circle of a yellow streetlight, neon signs buzzing in the window, the snow flying round it in waves that accompanied the thump of a bass guitar coming from inside the door.
The street was deserted except for a couple of cars parked near the entrance. Robbie crossed slowly, still aware that Tonio or Julia or Dewey could be watching from the window—wouldn’t do to be in a hurry. The snow in the street was already more than a foot deep. They’d have to call out the plows. Everything was utterly quiet. Pine trees stabbed the white sky on the tightly bunched hills. As he made his way across the street, he heard the click of the town’s one traffic light, and it switched from red to green. Go. There was the oasis, the bar, the bad music, the awful cover band. He tipped his head back, opened his mouth, closed his eyes, tasted the snow on his tongue and felt it on his eyelids. Then he opened his eyes and went across the street and blew on his stinging hands and reached for the door. Inside were the drunks and the losers and the beautiful loud noise—he could find every comfort he wanted here.