The Sudden Dark

Eleven

'Max?'

'Jess?'

She paused; I heard her familiar uncertainty breathe through the phone line. 'Today...this afternoon. Luke's going to a friend's after school, and Daniel just called to say he'll probably be staying overnight in Brisbane after his conference today.'

'This afternoon,' I repeated. 'Come here, to my place. I'm going nuts alone here.'

She didn't agree, just made a noise that didn't mean anything, and hung up.

The entire morning I'd spent doing nothing but thinking about my interaction with the man with the gun the previous day, who he was, what he was doing, what any of it mattered to anything else. I still didn't have any answers. I made a drink and instead spent the rest of the day thinking about Jess. Kit Markwell could wait.

She came at four o'clock, as the sun was melting an afternoon haze of heat. She came inside as she always did, didn't say much, and didn't have to. We knew the arrangement. We'd been doing it long enough, and afterward did nothing but lay together in the stillness of the darkening dusklight, close but separate. The streetlamp outside my bedroom window came to life and went over her skin in a dry gloom of light.

'Do you have any cigarettes?' she said, hardly moving her lips, hair splayed across my unwashed pillows.

I was sitting up in bed. My joints were stiff, feeling as if they'd been sucked of marrow; I guessed that was a sign of growing older. 'I'm cutting down,' I told her.

'Hell of a thing to choose to cut down on.'

'It's something, at least. You want me to start with the drinking, the obsession with work, or just the general assholish behaviour? I figured smoking would be the easiest.'

'And is it?'

'Is anything easy?' I said.

'Okay, Max,' she groaned, 'no need to get depressing already.' She rolled around with a groan and came to sit upright with me.

'When do you need to leave by, then?' I asked.

She took a long breath. 'I don't know. I've got nothing to go home to tonight—but there's nothing keeping me here either, if that's what you're asking.' She rubbed her eyes deep. 'God's sakes—I can hardly even believe it anymore. We've been doing this longer than we've been married, did you know that?'

'I haven't thought about it,' I said.

Slowly Jess turned and looked at me, a hard look that froze in her stone eyes. 'What do you think about?'

I didn't say anything to that.

'Do you even know how old Luke is now?' Jess asked, her voice steady but burning charcoal in its undertone.

'We divorced fifteen years ago, Jess,' I said. 'I can do basic math.'

She stole another look at me, then turned away, releasing the pent of her anger with a breath. 'Fifteen goddamn years already,' she said, almost to herself. 'I don't know where the hell they all went. The friend he's staying over with is a girl, can you believe that? God knows what he'll be doing to her—or what they've done already.'

She sighed through gritted teeth. I leant across to the end table at the side of the bed, and gave her the pack of cigarettes I'd burrowed there for when my resolve failed. To my credit, it hadn't yet, but she didn't care. She lit one.

'What does it matter?' I shrugged to her. I almost chuckled, but held it off. 'It's nothing worse than what we've done tonight. You've got to face that sometime.'

'You're not his father,' she said, with a cloud of smoke. 'And this isn't some kind of domestic scene. I can be upset about my own son and confused about my own life without you.'

'Okay, Jess.'

I reached over and moved my hand onto her thigh; up her skin, smooth, down again.

'If I was bitter,' she said, as if she didn't feel it, 'I'd say that Daniel is the one who's cheating. Over there in Brisbane, with his fucking law partners and all those sluts they push onto him.'

'But, I mean, even if he is, he hasn't been doing it as long as we have,' I reminded her.

She looked at me again, incredulity coming slowly across her face. 'You're always so damn obsessed with being such a...'

'Rationalist?'

'Dickhead.'

I smiled. 'I'm just telling you it can't be some kind of eye-for-an-eye type of thing, no matter how you might want to deal with it like that. I want you because I care about you. I've told you before: I'm not interested in being a blow-off for all your frustrations—some kind of getaway from your shit.'

Her face burned low again. 'And I've told you I'm never leaving Daniel.'

'Then we're still on the same page, Jess. Just as we've been for more than a decade now.'

She blew more smoke, and left the cigarette burning at her fingertips.

'Do you ever think if it would have been like this if we were still married?' I asked.

She didn't pause. 'God, I hope not.'

We laid together a while longer, dusk turning into night, sweated heat turning into cool chill, when I got a call from an unknown private number on my phone. I pulled on a pair of pants and got out of bed to take it in the other room.

'Is this...Max Hendricks?'

It was a young voice, light, cautious, female. I had an even wager on who it was, and for some reason almost didn't want to be proven right.

'It is, yes,' I said carefully to try and draw the voice further out.

It said, 'You're a cop, aren't you?'

'Not at the moment,' I answered. 'Didn't you know that?'

There was a pause, long enough to guess that she didn't want to answer.

I sat on the sofa in my living room, and heard the faint sound of Jess stirring across the hall. She was probably getting dressed. 'What do you know, then?' I said into the phone. 'How did you get my name?'

'It doesn't matter, alright? I'm only calling because I was wondering if you could help me. About Kit.'

'About Kit? I was under the impression he was with you.'

'That's why you've been looking for me?'

'For both of you. But you're telling me he isn't with you?'

Another pause; I leant back in the sofa to peer through the bedroom doorway. Jess was out of bed, refixing her hair, buttoning her blouse back on.

'Look,' the voice said, 'all I want is to know if there's been anyone else searching that you know of. Other than you.'

'Who are the names you want to hear—Frank Sumner or Clive Reed? Well, there is a third name, but I don't know what it is yet. Maybe you can help me with that.'

There was a quick sound on the phone, along with one that approached from the hallway—Jess, dressed, stopped in the doorway, as the voice returned and said, 'This was a mistake. I...Just stop looking. Leave it alone. All of it.'

And she was gone. I dropped the phone on the sofa and stood to face Jess.

'The case you shouldn't be working on?' she said.

I didn't nod. 'Tell me to stop working it, Jess. Tell me I might be out of a job. Tell me some more people might die.'

She smiled, ghostly, vague, and touched her hand along my cheek. 'I can't tell you anything, Max,' she said. 'I never could. Only, "It's over". But I've got the feeling it wouldn't mean the same thing in this context.'

She went out the door and into the chilled evening, back into the remnants of her homely life, and leaving me with another urge to mess everything up for myself.

I put my clothes back on and searched the return number of the girl's call.