ENVY
THE
NIGHT
__________
ALSO BY MICHAEL KORYTA
Tonight I Said Goodbye
Sorrow’s Anthem
A Welcome Grave
ENVY
THE
NIGHT
______________
Michael Koryta
Copyright © 2008 by Michael Koryta. All rights reserved.
For Dennis Lehane, who remembered the elevator
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
__________
Deepest gratitude to Dennis Lehane, Roland Merullo, Christine Caya, Sterling Watson, Meg Kearney, Laura Lippman, and all others involved with the Writers in Paradise program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and the low-residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Boston, where this book was born.
The Willow Flowage is a real place, albeit one with which I took plenty of fictional liberties, and I’m grateful to my father for introducing me to it, and to Dwight and Fran Simonton for being gracious hosts over the years and providing some wonderful background information. Also to Jim Kiepke for always finding the fish.
Ryan Easton guided me through details related to cars and the body shop business, and my sister, Jennifer, advised on dealing with stroke patients. If I got anything right, the credit is theirs, and if I got it wrong, the blame is mine.
Thanks, as always, to my agent, David Hale Smith, and to the St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne team for their wonderful work, particularly Pete Wolverton, Andy Martin, Katie Gilligan, and Liz Byrne.
Further thanks to:
Michael Connelly, Bob Hammel, Laura Lane, Gena Asher, Don Johnson, Robert Pepin, Louise Thurtell, and Lawrence Rose. And to all of the booksellers, reviewers, and magazine publishers who do so much to help, particularly Jim Huang, Jamie and Robin Agnew, Richard Katz, Jon and Ruth Jordan, John and Toni Cross, Otto Penzler, Barbara Peters, Lynn Kaczmarek, Chris Aldrich, and Janet Rudolph.
I envy the night
for its absence of light.
Dax Riggs, “Ancient Man”
1
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Frank Temple III walked out of the county jail at ten in the morning with a headache, a citation for public intox, and a notion that it was time to leave town.
It wasn’t the arrest that convinced him. That had been merely a nightcap to an evening of farewells—Frank hanging from the streetlamp outside of Nick’s on Kirkwood Avenue, looking down into the face of a bored cop who’d seen too many drunks and saying, “Officer, I’d like to report a missing pair of pants.”
It hadn’t been the hours in the detox cell, either. Frank was one of six in the cell, and one of just two who managed not to vomit. Sitting with his back against the cold concrete block wall listening to some poor son of a bitch retch in the corner, Frank considered the jail, the people who checked in and didn’t check out the next morning, the way he would. He considered the harsh fluorescent lights reflecting off gray and beige paint, the dead quality of the air, the hard looks the men inside developed to hide the hopelessness. It would be the same when the sun rose as when it set, except you wouldn’t be sure when that happened, couldn’t even use the sun to gauge the lack of change. He considered all of that, and knew that if he could understand only one thing about his father, it was the decision he’d made to avoid this place.
This was the second time Frank had been in a jail. The first was for a drunk driving charge in a small North Carolina town two years earlier. He had failed the Breathalyzer but requested field sobriety testing anyhow, his booze-addled brain sure that he could pass. After watching Frank stumble and stagger through the first exercise, the cop put an end to it, said, “Doesn’t look like your balance is too good, kid.” Frank, leaning against the car for support, had waved him closer, as if about to impart a secret of the highest magnitude. The cop leaned down, and when he was close enough, Frank whispered, “Inner ear infection.”
He had the cuffs on and was in the back of the car before he was finished explaining the connection between one’s sinuses and one’s balance. His was not a receptive audience.
So this was the second trip to a jail, and even if his father hadn’t found a coward’s way to avoid a life sentence, the number would be the same. Frank wouldn’t have visited. But he also couldn’t hide the thought, listening to those drunks mumble and belch and vomit beside him, that maybe the reason he put himself in situations like this was because he wanted a taste. Just a taste, that was all, something he could walk back into the free world with and think—that’s what it would’ve been like for him.
He’d been chased into the night of drinking by one disturbing phone message and one pretentious professor. The message had come first, left by a voice he hadn’t heard in many years.
Frank, it’s Ezra. Ezra Ballard. Been a long time, hasn’t it? You sound older on your message. Anyhow, I’m calling because, well . . . he’s coming back, Frank. I just got a call from Florida telling me to open up the cabin. Now, I’m not telling you to do anything, don’t even care if you call me back. I’m just keeping my word, right? Just keeping my word, son. He’s coming back, and now I’ve told you.
Frank hadn’t returned the call. He intended to let it go. Knew that he should, at least. By the end of the day, though, he was done in Bloomington. A single semester of school—his fifth college in seven years, no degree achieved or even threatened—and Frank was done again. He’d come here to work with a writer named Walter Thorp (Walt to my friends, and I hate all of them for it), whose work Frank had admired for years. Bloomington was closer to home than Frank had allowed himself to come in years, but Thorp was a visiting professor, there for only one semester, and he couldn’t pass up that chance. It had gone well, too. Thorp was good, better even than Frank had expected, and Frank had worked his ass off for a few months. Read like crazy, wrote like crazy, saw good things happening on the page. The last week of the semester brought an e-mail from Thorp, requesting a meeting, and Frank used that as encouragement to push Ezra Ballard’s call out of his mind. Focus on the future, don’t drown in the past.
That was his mantra when he went to the cramped office on the third floor of Sycamore Hall, sat there and listened as Thorp, glancing occasionally at that gold watch he always wore on the inside of his wrist, complimented Frank’s writing, told him that he’d seen “great strides” during the semester, that Frank clearly had “powerful stories to tell.” Frank nodded and thanked his way through it, feeling good, validated in his decision to come here, to ignore that phone call.
“I’ve never done this for a student before,” Thorp said, arching an eyebrow, “but I’d like to introduce you to my agent.”
Frank couldn’t even feel the elation yet; this was that much of a surprise. Just looked back at Thorp and didn’t speak, waited to see what else would be said.
“In fact,” Thorp added, tracing the edge of his desk with a fingertip, eyes away from Frank’s, “I’ve already mentioned you to him a few times. He’s interested. Very interested. But he was wondering—we both were, really—have you ever given thought to writing nonfiction? Maybe a memoir?”