The Zero Night

16

“Are you laughing, Samantha?” Serena said aloud. She found herself waiting for an answer, but her mother didn’t give one.

“I bet you think this is pretty funny. All these years later, and you can still totally mess up my life. I never took that power away. I never figured out how to protect myself. I’m sure you like that. Everything was all about you when I was a girl, and somehow it still is.”

Serena sat on a bench in Enger Park, with the nighttime lights of Duluth spread out below her. The evening breeze had turned cool. No one else was around, but the wind rustled loudly through the brush. She felt numb, not conscious of time passing. She’d lost track of the hours she’d been here.

A bench. That was appropriate.

They’d found Samantha stretched out on a bench, her heart stopped. The police had sent her a picture because they needed someone to identify the body. It had taken Serena hours to gin up the courage to open the image and look at it. The years hadn’t been kind to Samantha, but it was definitely her. The lush blond hair had turned gray. Her pretty skin had grown blotchy and wrinkled and sunken against the bones of her face. Her eyes were closed, hiding the electric emerald green. Her mouth held no smile, and that was strange because Serena couldn’t remember a time when Samantha hadn’t been smiling. No matter the situation, Samantha smiled, no teeth showing, just a little bend of the lips. She smiled at the good. She smiled at the bad. She smiled when Blue Dog was stripping her teenage daughter naked and taking her to bed. She smiled when Serena told her she was pregnant and needed an abortion.

Seeing her dead body, Serena had still expected a smile, but apparently, even Samantha couldn’t bluff her way out of that one.

“I walked out on Jonny tonight,” Serena went on. “Somehow I chose you over him. Amazing. What the hell is wrong with me? That’s why I cut you out of my life, you know. I have no willpower when it comes to you. If you snapped your fingers, I’d go running back to your side. I hate the control you have over me. I hate it. I’ve spent decades trying to break the chain, and I still can’t do it. Is this your last joke, Samantha? You want to bring me with you wherever you are? I can see you looking back and crooking your finger. Come on, sweetheart. It’ll be fun, just us girls, just like the old days. No boys allowed.”

Serena swore out loud and tried to sort through the chaos in her head.

Her first instinct was to run away. That was what she’d done years ago. Her friend Deidre had been with her during that horrible, horrible abortion and in the days she’d spent bleeding at the hospital afterward. As soon as they released her, she and Deidre had run away to Las Vegas. No call to Samantha, no way for her or Blue Dog to follow them. Cut the cord, leave everything behind.

Run.

That was how she’d survived the first time. If she hadn’t run, she would have died in Phoenix. She’d already started drinking, already started doing cocaine. She was becoming a miniature version of Samantha, the black-haired yang to her mother’s blond-haired yin. If Serena had stayed, she’d be the one who was dead. Stretched out on a bench. Samantha, standing over her. Smiling.

Yes, she could run again. Leave Jonny. Leave Duluth. Leave everything behind. She could steal Elton from the Sackses and put the dog in the Mustang, and then she could drive away and never come back. But it didn’t matter how far she ran, or where she tried to hide. Samantha would always find her.

Her chest swelled as she inhaled slowly. She held it, then exhaled, counting to ten at each stage. Her therapist, Alice, had told her to soothe herself with breathing exercises when the stress came.

She did it several more times, and then she said out loud, “I will not run.”

Okay.

But she felt as if her soul had broken in two. She stood on one bank of a river, nothing but a cold, empty shell. An orphan. On the other side of the river was her whole life, her marriage, her friends, the people she loved, her happiness, her sanity. While she’d had Elton with her, she’d felt as if there were a tiny little bridge across the river, just wide enough for her to walk with the dog. But now the bridge was gone. Now she had no way to get back to the person she wanted to be. No way to get back home.

Her phone rang, disturbing the quiet and shattering her edgy nerves. The phone was sitting on the bench beside her, and the screen lit up. The caller wasn’t Jonny, or Cat, or Maggie, or Guppo. They’d all tried, and she’d ignored their calls. Of all people, Curt Dickes was calling her. She thought about ignoring it, but she closed her eyes and then grabbed the phone.

“What do you want, Curt?”

“Ouch,” Curt replied. “In full bitch mode tonight, I see.”

“Believe me, you do not want to see me in full bitch mode.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. I’m actually calling to cheer you up.”

“How?”

“Information!” Curt replied happily. “I have dirt. A break in the case.”

“What is it?”

“No, no, no, first you have to say please. Pretty please, with sugar on top.”

“Curt, I am not in the mood for this shit.”

“Wow, you are definitely crabby. Little tiff with the Stridemeister?”

“Curt.”

“Okay, fine, but you owe me big. Seriously big. Remember you asked me to keep an ear to the ground for people passing hundred-dollar bills?”

Serena was immediately alert. “What did you find?”

“See, now you’re interested. ‘Please, Curt.’ That’s all I want to hear. Come on now, let me hear you say it. ‘Puh-leez, Curt.’”

“Please,” Serena hissed in annoyed surrender.

Curt chuckled. “There now, that wasn’t so hard. Anyway, yes, I did exactly what you asked and put the word out about C-notes. Made sure everyone in the Big Dickes network was clued in. I got a text a few minutes ago from a buddy of mine who works behind the bar at a joint on Grand. He said he pulled a breakfast shift at one of his other jobs, and a guy there paid him with a crisp hundred-dollar bill. My buddy didn’t want to make change and asked if he had anything smaller. So the guy opened up his wallet, and that was all he had inside. Hundreds. Lots of them.”

It was almost midnight when Serena got to the bar, which was located in a downscale stretch of the Denfeld neighborhood in West Duluth, not far from the high school. The place was small and nothing to look at, with cutouts of sports players hung on the aluminum siding like decals and neon beer signs glowing in the handful of tiny windows. The door was open, letting out noise from inside, and a few smokers lingered on the sidewalk. The bar was still crowded. It was Saturday night, and motorcycles and cars were parked on the street and in the asphalt lot in the back. The neighborhood around the bar was an odd mix of worn-down houses and commercial businesses. A funeral home. A shoe store. An insurance agency. An old garage. Down the street was a thick dark line of trees.

Serena parked on Grand and got out of the Mustang, but she didn’t cross the street immediately. She tried to remember why this place felt familiar to her. She’d never been inside, but she knew the name. Then she realized that the location had come up on a previous case. She had a memory of seeing the bar listed on a victim’s credit card receipts and of noting in her police file that this was a hangout she should investigate. But she never had. Now she couldn’t even recall what the case was.

She crossed to the bar and entered through the open street door. It was a small place, with walls paneled in light oak and a stubby counter that accommodated half a dozen stools. All of the stools were taken, and almost forty people filled the rest of the space and occupied the high-top tables. They held fruity cocktails, mugs of beer, and glasses of wine. The bar featured the usual accoutrements: pool table, pull tabs, dartboards, televisions hung in the corners, big-ass swordfish on the wall. She’d been in bars like this many times when she was younger, and the atmosphere rushed back to her as if she were a teenager in Las Vegas again. The voices, the laughter, the music, the low light and shadows, the clinking of drinks, the anonymity mixed with the intimacy of strangers — it was like going back in time. When she and Deidre had run away, places like this had felt like home to them. They’d gone there to fake their age for drinks, pick up men, and find beds for the night.

Her mind flashed a warning, like one of the neon signs on the bar walls. This was a bad place for her to be right now. But she ignored it, because she didn’t care. She felt the hunger for a drink on her lips, and she was tired of saying no, tired of shutting off who she was, tired of the battle.

Samantha was right there next to her. Smiling. You know you want it.

One of the men at the counter gave up his stool. Serena slid onto the warm seat and took his place. She was alone and attractive, and the men all noticed her. So did the women. Even the younger ones shot her unpleasant stares, as if new female competition wasn’t welcome. It made her feel good. It made her feel not forty-three years old for a while.

The bartender noticed her, too. He was younger than she was, no more than his midthirties, and he had a tall, lean physique and a very handsome face. He wore his thick, wavy brown hair combed back on his head and short on the sides. His eyes were dark brown, his nose pointed and slim, and he had a long face with a smooth, dimpled chin. He wore a crew-neck T-shirt that fit him like a second skin, revealing muscled arms and a taut stomach. It was warm inside the bar, and his skin had a faint glow of sweat.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

He propped his elbows on the varnished counter and leaned closer, ostensibly to hear her over the noise, but she knew his real goal was to get his face nearer to hers. She didn’t mind. She found herself liking the attention. His smile was wide and confident, and the arch of his thick eyebrows gave him a devilish sexiness. One diamond stud glittered in the lobe of his left ear.

“Are you Jagger?” Serena asked.

The bartender rocked back and studied her with surprise. “I am. Who are you?”

Serena flipped the lapel of her leather jacket to reveal her badge pinned to the pocket. She saw a faint shadow of worry cross his face. Every innocent person saw the badge and wondered what they’d done, but the bartender recovered quickly. His cocky smile returned.

“You’re a cop, huh? I like the look. You’ve got that Mariska Hargitay vibe going on.”

Serena refrained from pointing out that Mariska Hargitay was fifteen years older than she was. “Serena Stride,” she told him. “Curt Dickes gave me your name. He says you may have some information that can help us.”

Jagger chuckled. “You know Curt, huh? Lucky you.”

“I don’t think I’d go that far.”

“Yeah, he’s one of a kind, that’s for sure.”

“Do you have a few minutes to talk?” Serena asked.

He looked around the bar with a frown. “Somebody called in sick, so I’m the only one back here, and it’s still pretty crazy. Tell you what, we close in about an hour. Can you wait until then? At that point, I’m all yours.”

“Sure, I can wait,” Serena said, because she had nowhere else to go.

“Let me get you a drink of something. On the house. Even cops can drink on Saturday night, right? You look like a cosmo girl, and believe me, I make a hell of a good one.”

Serena closed her eyes for a moment, absorbing the atmosphere of the bar. The memories of Las Vegas, of hot nights off the Strip, blew through her like sand on the breeze. Her breath caught in her chest. And just like that, she was gone. Done. No hesitation, no regret, no self-doubt. She’d already known when the day began how it would end. What scared her was how easy it was to throw away years of sobriety, to accede to years of want and temptation. It felt natural, normal, right, as if the last time she’d been drunk was yesterday, and it was no big deal. She could feel how the glass would fit in her hand. She could hear the clink of the ice and smell the scent of lemon like a breath from a California grove. And then the vodka would be cold and smooth sliding into her chest, and all her pain would be banished.

Jagger watched her, as if he could hear some unspoken dialogue going on in her head. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Give me an Absolut Citron. Two ice cubes.”

“Lady knows what she wants.”

“Yes, she does.”

She watched him walk away like some kind of man-god in his tight shirt and jeans. He grabbed a lowball glass, dropped in exactly two ice cubes. He was a man who knew drinking, knew what customers wanted. His hand reached for the thick Absolut bottle, gave it a little Tom Cruise twirl, and drew it back high over the glass as alcohol spurted from the stainless steel pourer. Serena almost moaned at the sight of it. And then he brought it to her, and his fingers grazed hers as he put it in her hand. The whole experience had a sexual power that felt like electricity exploding in a shower of sparks.

The glass, the liquid, the ice, caught the light. She swirled it. She let it waft into her senses.

6,608.

That was the number. She glanced at the clock on the bar wall and saw that it would be midnight in ten more minutes. One more day. One more number. One more night without a drink. But this time she wasn’t going to make it. There would be no upward click to 6,609. This was the night she’d known was coming sooner or later, the night when nothingness won, but it felt so good to have the drink in her hand that she wondered why she’d denied herself this pleasure for so long.

She brought the glass to her lips and took her first cold, strong, blissful sip. Time melted away, and just like that the new number of the night was in her head.

Zero.