Soultaker

CHAPTER TEN

Jake stopped at a convenience store on the way back to Washington Heights. He picked up a copy of the Rockville Times and got in line behind a woman who reminded him a little too much of his mother. Bottle-blonde hair. A skimpy white tank top. Tattoo depicting a coiled snake visible on her left shoulder blade. Denim cutoffs that clung like a second skin to her shapely ass. She caught him looking at her and winked.

Jake’s stomach clenched.

It was as if his mom had caught him leering at her. He was mortified. The woman’s face had that haggard quality common to middle-aged women from the Zone. Too many years of hard drinking and hard living. She could’ve been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty.

She smiled at him. “I know you, sweetie?”

His face flushed. “Ah…no. You look like somebody I know.”

Her red-rimmed eyes almost twinkled. “Well, want to get to know me better?”

Jake forced a laugh. “Yeah, I’m flattered, but I’m…married.”

He tried to conceal his lack of a ring by shifting his grip on the newspaper, but the lady had an eagle eye and didn’t miss the lame attempt at subterfuge.

Her smile vanished. “Oh, fuck off.”

She turned away from him and set her twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee on the counter. Embarrassed, Jake wandered to the rear of the store, where he grabbed a six-pack of Heineken from the beer cooler. The flirtatious woman hurled a final curse his way as she banged the door open on her way out. Jake paid the clerk and left the store. Back in the car, he pried the top off a Heineken, wedged the bottle between his legs, and wheeled out of the parking lot.

The Heineken was empty by the time he pulled into Stu’s driveway. His hand moved to toss the empty into the Camry’s backseat, but he stopped and frowned at the bottle.

He sighed. “You’re on a slippery slope here, man.”

But fuck it, it was done.

He chucked the empty into the back and got out of the car. He went around the side of the house and let himself in through the back door, then stepped into the kitchen and hit the light switch. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered for a bit before coming all the way on. He put the rest of the Heineken in the fridge and poured Coca-Cola into an ice-filled glass from a two-liter bottle. Then he grabbed his paper and headed to the living room.

He was in an old leather recliner and looking at the newspaper before he noticed the girl. She was curled up asleep on the blue sofa on the other side of the coffee table. She was small, with a pale face and straight, lustrous black hair tucked behind her ears. She wore a dark gray hoodie, ratty blue jeans, and striped orange-and-black socks with holes in the toes.

Jake had no idea who she was.

Stu hadn’t mentioned anything about a girlfriend or a roommate. It bothered him. She didn’t look like a criminal. But that didn’t mean much. She could be an intruder, what did he know? He thought about calling Stu. Maybe even the cops. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. What kind of criminal breaks into a place just to sack out on the sofa?

But hell, he knew the answer to that.

The mentally unbalanced kind.

Then Jake saw the small handbag and the key ring on the coffee table. An idea occurred to him. It was an invasion of privacy, but the idea’s allure was strong. Oh, the hell with it. He folded the paper and set it aside, then got up and moved cautiously to the other side of the coffee table. The hardwood floor creaked beneath his hiking boots. He searched the girl’s face for any indication of imminent wakefulness. She kept on snoring. Jake reached into the handbag, rooted through a jumble of lipsticks, pill bottles, and other ephemera, and finally extracted a lime green wallet. He undid the snap and looked at the girl’s plastic-encased driver’s license.

His eyes widened. “I’ll be damned.”

Kristen Walker woke with a yawn, startling Jake. The wallet jumped out of his hand and landed with a thump on the coffee table. She smiled and said, “Hello, Jake.” She glanced at her wallet and smirked. “You know, if you’re hard up for cash, you’re robbing the wrong girl.”

Jake covered his embarrassment with a laugh. “Sorry, I’m not robbing you. I just had no idea who you were, and my curiosity overwhelmed my good sense.”

She regarded him with a cool gaze, an expression conveying both reproach and amusement. “I assume you’ve figured out who I am, then?”

“I have the vaguest memory of Stu having an older sister, a fact that I forgot until now. Do you live here with Stu? I thought he was alone here.”

Kristen sat up and perched herself on the edge of the sofa. “He is. But he lets me stay here when I need to. Like now.”

Something in her tone put Jake on edge. Her words revealed little about her real situation, but there was an undertone of distress. Maybe she was in an abusive relationship and stayed at Stu’s place after especially bad domestic episodes. A surreptitious glance at her left hand failed to reveal a wedding band. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t involved with some creep who liked to settle domestic disputes with his fists.

He kept his tone neutral as he said, “So what brings you here this time?”

Her expression turned sour. “My boyfriend kicked me out.”

Jake frowned. “Oh. Well. Um…”

He had no idea what to say.

Kristen seemed to sense this and the corners of her eyes crinkled. “He was justified in kicking me out, Jake. I made some promises I couldn’t keep. He found out I was a lying bitch, so he gave me my walking papers.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

She laughed. “You’re not. I volunteered my sad tale. But I’m done talking about it for now.”

Jake shrugged. He felt awkward standing there, so he sat down at the far side of the sofa. He felt a little tremor of excitement as Kristen turned to face him. “Hey, wait. How did you know who I am? Stu’s been gone all day.”

Kristen stared at him a moment. “There’s this new gizmo that’s been catching on lately. Cell phones. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Anyway, I called my brother’s cell this morning to tell him I’d need to stay here a while. He told me you might be here. But I would’ve recognized you anyway.”

Jake cocked an eyebrow at her. “Um…how?”

“There was a story in the Rockville Times when Blood Circus came out. Then another when House of the Damned was released.”

Jake frowned. “Huh.”

“Something wrong?”

“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I guess not. It’s just the last time I knew of my name being in that rag was in the weekly crime report years ago.”

“You mean nobody sent you clippings?”

Jake shook his head. “Who the fuck would do that? Me and Rockville, we’ve kept our distance.”

“So why are you back?”

He told her about Trey’s situation. She listened to him attentively through the whole tale, never breaking eye contact. She was so earnest it was unsettling. Her rapt gaze gave the impression that nothing else existed for her while he was talking.

When he was done telling her about Trey, she bit her lower lip and cast her gaze downward. He figured she was thinking the situation over and would soon volunteer some insights.

But what she actually said was, “Whenever I meet someone new, I have a test. It’s not an especially complicated test, as far as tests go. It’s more subjective than most, and there’s just one question. I ask you to tell me one true thing about life and existence, one thing close to your heart, one thing you believe says everything there is to say about you as a person.”

Jake blinked. “Um…”

Her speech unsettled him. It came from out of nowhere, for one thing. And it was already evident that Kristen was a little strange. But he tried to squelch his unease. He liked her. He couldn’t pinpoint precisely why, but he did. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. It was a combination of the way she talked, the way she looked at him, and her relaxed physicality, the way she was so at ease being this intimate with a virtual stranger. It was all that and probably a host of more obscure things, too.

He liked being close to her.

What that might mean beyond this moment, he didn’t know, but there you go.

He coughed. “Okay. Sure. But you go first…”

She drew in a lungful of air, then let it out slowly. “People like to say they’re not afraid to die.” She peered at him with an intensity that made Jake squirm a little-it was as if she were trying to see through his eyes and into his brain, probing for his secrets. “Of old age, I mean. Hell, everybody’s afraid of sudden death. A killer sneaking into your room in the middle of the night. A crack addict with a gun mugging you on a city street. A heart attack that strikes you down in the prime of life. But most people, if you ask them, will say they won’t fear death as the natural end to a long, well-lived life. If you get to be ninety years old, or a hundred, or whatever, the supposition is that you’ll be so tired of dealing with your infirmities that you’ll gladly surrender to the darkness.”

Jake laughed. “Surrender to the darkness?”

Her smile was a shy one. “I’m trying to be a horror writer, too.”

“No way. Are you shitting me?”

“Seriously.”

Jake sat up straighter. “Huh. Well, that’s cool.”

A subtle hint of redness touched her cheeks. “Yes. But back to the subject at hand. Here’s the thing, Jake. I’m afraid to die. Whether it happens today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now, it doesn’t matter-I’m afraid. I think about it every day. I can be just sitting at my desk at work and suddenly I’ll think about it. I’ll fast-forward to my last moments so clearly it makes me want to scream. I see myself in a hospital bed. Impossibly old and feeble. Hooked up to machines. Laboring for breath. Clinging to life. Most people, if they imagine something so morbid for themselves, they’d say death would be a welcome relief. But not me, Jake.” She leaned forward and touched his hand, making him shudder. “Even then, I’d be consumed with terror. Dreading what comes next, because I know what comes next. Nothing. A void. Nonexistence.” Her voice drifted to a lower register, became almost a whisper. “I don’t believe there’s anything after this life. And I don’t want to ever die, Jake. I don’t want to stop being. Which just isn’t possible.” The shy smile returned. “It’s quite the conundrum.”

Jake drew her hand into both of his. “I think I’m going to drink myself to death.” He swallowed hard. It astounded him that he was saying this. It frightened him, too. “I’m an alcoholic. I ended a year of sobriety yesterday. The stress of being back in Rockville had a little to do with it, but mostly it’s because, deep down, I never really wanted to stop drinking. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop again. I mean that. That’s not a poor-pitiful-me statement. That’s the way it’s going to be because that’s the way I want it to be. I don’t like the way the world really is. I don’t like the way I feel sober. I need the edge off. I need reality blunted. It’s going to kill me. But I consider it an equal exchange. Am I crazy?”

“You’re not crazy.” She laid her other hand on top of his. “And congratulations. You passed the test.”

Jake felt a sudden tightness in his chest. He replayed his words in his head, marveling at them. The sentiments expressed ran counter to every sensible thing he’d learned over the past year, but he realized that he truly did not care. His speech to Kristen marked the first time he’d ever laid bare this unvarnished truth.

Her gaze turned solemn. “Jake…are you feeling this like I am? Please tell me you are.”

Jake hesitated. Then he sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit, I think so.”

She smiled. “Cool.”

Jake shook his head. “But it’s crazy. Isn’t it? I’ve known you, what…twenty minutes?”

She laughed. “I know. And it is crazy. It really is. But I don’t think I care.”

They inched closer to each other.

And Kristen said, “Kiss me.”

So he kissed her.