Page 42 of I Need You to Read This
“I can. I will. It’s the least I can do.” Raymond jerks his shoulder away from her. He’s not angry with Alex, she knows that. He’s mad at himself, frustrated with the utter impossibility of taking back a wrong. It’s hard to live with regret. Alex understands the way you can relive something that happened to you, turning it over and over, polishing it like rock until its edges lose their definition and you can no longer even remember it clearly. “Doesn’t matter if I meant to or not,” Raymond continues, his voice quiet. “All that matters is that he died and that I wasn’t brave enough or smart enough to help him.”
He gets up from his stool abruptly. “Ray!” Alex calls as he heads for the door.
Janice’s hand lands on her shoulder. “He’ll be okay, Alex. You gotta just let him go walk it off. Trust me. Guys like that, they weren’t trained to talk about their feelings.”
They watch the shape of him grow faint against the glass as he takes the stairs. Through the glow of the neon sign his brown shoes drag sadly past the window and disappear into the night.
“I had no idea that happened, did you?” Alex asks, rattled.
Janice shakes her head. “There are a lot of lonely people who come to the diner, but there was something about Ray that always felt different. No friends, no family he ever talked about. I always thought he was hiding something.”
“But he never mentioned Armond before?”
“No, never. But that isn’t a surprise. Ray and I didn’t used to talk much,” Janice says.
“Oh really? For some reason I thought you two were old friends.”
“Not at all. He sat there at the counter for years before we said more than a few words to one another.”
“What changed?”
Janice sips from her glass. “Well, you showed up.”
The admission startles Alex. She tries to think back on her earliest days in the city, but all she can remember is the way things are now. The two of them, the pillars, and herself as the interloper. She has never thought of herself as someone who brings people together.
“It must be so hard for him—being so proud of being a detective was his whole life, and then something so tragic happens and ends it all just like that.”
“Think of his partner’s poor family.” Janice whistles. “How could you forgive something like that? He just let him die.”
They sit silently, Raymond’s admission heavy on them. Part of Alex feels guilty about how the night progressed. She shouldn’t have gone down this path at all, shouldn’t have brought them into her work drama. She looks down into her whiskey, her stomach turning.
Janice claps her hands loudly, jolting Alex from her spiral. “Oh, I almost forgot! I got some good intel in the bar. From the guy playing piano.”
Alex leans in. “You did? Wait, what? What did he say?”
“He remembered Howard because he dropped a fifty-dollar bill into his tip jar and when he looked up, he recognized him as a famous newspaper editor.”
“He’s hard to miss,” Alex agrees. “Was he with anyone?”
“Yes, he said there was a woman with him, sixtysomething. Graying hair. And, get this, she was wearing a white men’s shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. He said they were arguing about something.”
“Francis,” Alex says, her stomach sinking. “Did he hear what they were talking about? Did he say anything else?”
“Only that she left first, looking upset,” Janice says.
“Men.” They look down into their drinks, commiserating over this statement.
“You two have a good night,” the bartender calls out as they stand to leave. It reminds Alex that danger is not always to be found in the places that seem most predisposed to it, that it often can be found in the places you least expect it.
When she gets home, Alex’s apartment is dark and still. She locks all three locks and taps them with her finger just to be sure. She slides off her sandals and leaves them next to the door. The heat from the day still radiates off the hardwood floor as she steps across the tiny apartment and falls into her bed.
She is exhausted but knows she won’t be able to sleep, not yet. Her mind is whirring with activity. She is thinking about Raymond and the heartbroken woman working at the hotel who lost her husband. Her mind travels through the byzantine maze of the hotel to the Nest. Why would Francis have met Howard there when they could just as easily have met at the office? Unless she wanted to be somewhere else? To confront him on neutral ground? Or perhaps he had been the one to ask her there. It was on his calendar after all. Maybe he wanted to tell her to leave him alone. Alex knows she must be missing somethingelse, that one piece that would make the entire picture of what happened come clear.
She looks around at the little collection of rooms she’s called home for so many years. She’s always meant to make it cozier. To get a bedframe, for Christ’s sake. But she doesn’t have so much as a picture on the wall. She came close a few times, walking into furniture stores and trying things out. Imagining filling her space with objects and plants and comfort; but at the last minute something always stopped her, and she’d return to her flimsy desk and box spring on the floor. It’s sad, she thinks. She never meant for things to be like this. She rolls over and looks at her phone.
Tom has texted. She opens her phone quickly, holding her breath as she reads it.
Hi Alex, how’s your column going this week? I was hoping we could get dinner again soon.
