“Like I said, I didn’t think it was good to wait until morning. The conversations we had today were getting progressively worse. Scarier.”
“What did you do, climb out the window and rappel down from Paul’s penthouse? There’s no way he would’ve wanted you to be a part of this.”
“Actually,” she said, “he encouraged it. He thought it was a dangerous idea for you to be alone. Medically, and legally.”
He grunted.
“Can I see it?” she said.
“See what?”
“The bottle.”
“I don’t have it, remember? Kellen took it up to Bloomington to have it tested.”
“I didn’t realize you sent the whole thing. I thought maybe he just took a sample. I wanted to see it.”
“Well, it’s gone.”
She’d given him an odd look when he told her the bottle was gone, and he wondered if she was searching for proof, looking for some sort of sanity test.
“You’ve stayed here tonight?” she said. “Haven’t left the hotel?”
“That’s right.”
“I looked for your car in the parking lot. If you were gone, I was going to hunt you down and kick your ass.”
He couldn’t find anything to say. It felt so out of place to be in the room with her, to be looking her in the eye again. She sensed the response.
“You may not want me here. I understand that. But I’m worried. If you come back to Chicago, if you go to see doctors and lawyers and people who can help, I will step aside. But I want to make sure you do that.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Just protecting my reputation. Reflects poorly on me if my husband gets arrested for murder or locked up in a hospital for the insane.”
He smiled. “People would gossip about you.”
“Point their fingers and whisper. I couldn’t bear that shame. Just taking social precautions, that’s all.”
Say, “I miss you,” he thought. Say it, you dumb shit, it’s all you want to tell her, so just put the words in your mouth and let them go.
“How long was the drive?” he said.
She gave him a look that was both amused and sad. “That’s what we should be talking about?”
“Sorry.”
“No, I understand. It’s strange to see me, and you don’t even really want me here, but there are things—”
“Stop,” he said. “It’s good to see you. The fact that you came down… I appreciate it more than you know.”
“You can mail me a formal thank-you next week. Use nice stationery. But until then, we’ve got to figure out what to do. I still think you need to go home. It’s why I came. To bring you home.”
“Right,” he said. “Go home.” Home. Away from here, away from the story that had wrapped him in its eerie embrace. Away from the water.
“So you’re agreed? We can leave in the morning?”
He got to his feet and walked over to the balcony door, pushed back the heavy draperies, and waved his hand out at the dome and the expansive rotunda.
“It’s a hell of a place, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous,” she said. “So we’re leaving in the morning?”
He looked out at the hotel for a long time in silence, then turned back to face her.
“Claire, the things I’m seeing… the story that’s there, it’s powerful.”
“What does that have to do with staying or going?”
“I’m getting the story because I’m here, Claire. Because I’m here, with the water. I’m seeing it almost like a narrative now, I’m seeing the story moving forward, and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m beginning to realize that there’s a purpose to it, that I need to tell this story. This is the movie, Claire, this is the one I’ve been waiting for, the one I couldn’t find. If I stay down here for a while—long enough for me to get the whole thing down—I can turn this into something special, I can use this to get back in the game. Wouldn’t that be amazing? To use something like this as a way to get back what I’ve lost? But I’m starting to feel like that’s what it was all about, like I’ve been given a shot here, a chance at redemption and I just had to see that it was there.”
She was watching him in disbelief, lips parted. Now she said, “Are you kidding me? You want to keep having these visions? To keep drinking that water? The water that almost killed—”
“That was when I didn’t take it. The water has been nothing but good for me.”
“Nothing but good for you! Eric, are you hearing yourself?”
“This story needs to be told, and I’ve been looking desperately for something that would give me a chance to get back. There’s a purpose to this, Claire.”
She shook her head in exasperation and turned away from him.
“You can stay with me,” he said. “Give me some time.”
“No. I will not stay. I came to get you, Eric, damn it, I came to bring you home because I was afraid for you. But I will not stay here with you!”
She shouted so rarely—that had always been his job, a self-appointed task, of course—that this outburst stunned him silent. After a moment, he nodded and held his hands up, palms out.
“Trust me, Claire, there’s nobody more concerned than me. I’m the one who’s going through it. But I’m also trying very hard not to panic. So can you back me on that? Can we throttle down on the planning and wait to see what tomorrow brings?”
“How long, though, Eric? How much time do we give it?”
It was a frighteningly familiar question to hear issued in her voice. One that had been offered in response to so many of his explanations and rationalizations over the past two years. He’d work again, he just needed time. He’d write a screenplay, he just needed a while to think of the idea. He’d be in a good mood again, he just needed a few days to get through this bad spell…. How long, Eric? How much time?
“Let’s talk it out in the morning,” he said. “Let’s see where we are then, okay? We’ll get some sleep, and then see where we are.”
She nodded. It was a grudging, fatigued gesture. Like she was going along with somebody else’s practical joke even though she understood she was the target, even though she’d seen the joke before and knew it wasn’t a damn bit funny.
He walked toward the bed. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to push her down onto that soft mattress and cover her body with his own, but instead he picked up one of the pillows and stepped away.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I’ll crash on the floor. You should have the bed.”
She gave a sad laugh and shook her head. “I’m sure we can sleep in the same bed without touching each other. In fact, I thought it was an art we’d perfected by now.”
He didn’t respond to that, just turned off the light. He heard two soft thumps as she kicked her shoes off, and then she slid back on the bed and stretched out and put her head on a pillow. He crawled stiffly in on the other side and lay on his back beside her, no part of them touching.
It was quiet for a while, and then he said, “Thank you for coming.”
When she answered, her voice sounded choked, and all she said was, “Oh, Eric.”
The rain let up sometime after midnight and the clouds thinned, showed the moon again. Josiah left his position by the old barn and paced the woods, waiting. Every now and then he checked the cell phone to see if there was a signal. It claimed there was, but he was surprised Danny hadn’t called yet. Surprised there’d been no word.
He went through a bottle of water, rinsing and spitting with it more than drinking, still unable to rid himself of the odd tobacco taste that had taken to his mouth. It wasn’t an unpleasant taste, though. Matter of fact, he was growing to like it.