On Mystic Lake

“Ah, so you do remember her. ”

“Goddamn it, Annie—”

“We—your daughter and I—were worried about you last night. But you don’t care about that, do you?”

Suddenly he was tired, so tired he didn’t think he could stand up much longer. He pushed past her and stumbled out of the building. Her Mustang was parked in the loading zone in front of the electronic glass doors. Half falling, he grabbed onto the cold metal door handle and stood there, his eyes closed, concentrating on each breath.

He heard her walk past him. Her tennis shoes made a soft scuffing sound on the cement. She wrenched her car door open, got inside, and slammed the door shut. He wondered dully if she had any idea how loud it sounded to a man whose head was ticking like a bomb ready to go off.

She honked the horn, and the sound sliced painfully through his eardrums. He opened the door and collapsed onto the red vinyl seat with a haggard sigh.

The car lurched onto the rutted road. She sped up at every bump and pothole in the road, Nick was sure of it. He clung to the door handle for dear life, his knuckles white and sweaty.

“I spoke with your police captain, Mr. Nation, while you were getting dressed. He told me you were taking some time off from the force. And he mentioned your blackout. ”

“Great. ”

She made a low, whistling sound. “And what’s that on your shirt front? Vomit? Yes, yes, what a high time you must have had yourself. God knows, it’s better than being at home with your daughter. ”

He winced and closed his eyes, feeling shame sink deep into his gut. Joe’s words came back to him. You want to end up like your mother? Or maybe you want to be like me? He thought about Izzy, and how she would remember him, and where she would go when she had the chance . . . he thought about what it would be like if she left him.

He slanted a look at Annie. She was sitting perfectly erect, her hands precisely placed at the ten o’clock and two o’clock positions on the steering wheel, her gaze focused on the empty road in front of them. “Would you do me a favor, Annie?”

“Of course. ”

“Take me to the Hideaway Motel on Route Seven,” he said quietly. “And watch Izzy for a few days. ”

She frowned. “The Hideaway? It’s a dump, and why—”

He felt as if he were treading water in the deep end of a swimming pool full of dark, murky water. He couldn’t handle an argument; not now. “Please don’t argue with me. I need some . . . time. ”

She cast a quick, worried look at him, then turned back to the road. “But Izzy—”

“Please?” The word came out soft and swollen, unmanly, but he couldn’t help it. “Could you please stay with her while I get my act together? I know it’s a lot to ask . . . ”

She didn’t answer, and for once the silence was uncomfortable. After a mile she flicked on her signal and turned off the highway. Within minutes, she had pulled into the parking lot at the Hideaway Motel. A neon sign flickered in the window. It read: SORRY. VACANCY. That pretty much summed it up.

“Here we are, Nick. I don’t know . . . ”

“Home sweet home,” he said, smiling weakly.

She turned to him then, and there was a softness in her expression that he hadn’t expected. She leaned toward him, gently brushed the hair from his eyes. “I’ll help you. But you’d better not screw up this time, Nicky. That beautiful child of yours doesn’t need to lose her daddy, too. ”

“Christ, Annie,” he whispered in agony.

“I know you love her, Nick. ” She leaned closer. “Just meet me halfway. Trust me. Or better yet, trust yourself. ”

Even as he told himself he’d fail again, he didn’t care. He wanted the second chance she was offering. He was tired, so tired, of being lonely and afraid. The words I want to try weighed heavily on his tongue, but he hadn’t the strength to give them a voice. He could remember too many other times he’d wanted a chance . . . and the times his mother had said, Trust me, Nicky, I mean it this time. He had long ago gotten out of the habit of trusting people.

He climbed out of the car and stood there, watching her drive away. When she was gone, he jammed his hands into his pockets and turned toward the motel. Fishing his credit card out of his front pocket, he signed the register and got himself a room for the night.

The room was small and dark and smelled of urine. Dirty brown walls ran in a perfect square around a sagging double bed. A gray woven bedspread covered a lumpy mattress. A curtainless window looked out onto the neighboring building’s cement brick wall. Gold shag carpet, peeled away in places to reveal the bubbling blue foam pad, lay untacked atop a cement floor.

He could see the closet-size bathroom behind a wood-grain plastic door that hung awkwardly from broken hinges. He didn’t have to go inside to know that there was a white plastic shower and beige toilet, and that rust ran in rings around the sink’s metal drain.

He sat on the bed with a tired sigh. He had been living less than half a life for so long, and now even the half he’d clung to was slipping through his shaking, numb fingers like crumbled winter leaves. He knew that he’d been wrong to drink, that he’d gone down the wrong road when he first reached for a bottle. The booze was sucking him dry, and when it was finished with him there would be nothing left except a skinny, freezing old man on a park bench. . . .

On the far wall, a cockroach scurried up alongside the brown plastic molding and disappeared beneath a framed picture of Mount Olympus.