Page 63 of Just Trouble

It’s the last thing I care about in this moment. “Of course, we are. We signed a deal.”

Her satisfaction is complete. “Good.” She nods. “I think I’m going to like it here.”

“But Sylvia…”

“Has to do whatever she has to do. Doesn’t her grandmother live here?”

“Una,” I provide. “She, um, has cancer.”

Merrie is walking toward the diner door, but she spins to face me. “Does Sylvia know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Una didn’t want to be a burden.”

Merrie props a hand on her hip. “How many people’s lives were you intending to mess up here?”

I fling out my hands. “I was trying to fix things!”

“You need more practice, then,” she says, then actually whistles as she ducks into the diner.

I don’t know whether to follow her or not but she makes the decision for me. Merrie turns the deadbolt in the door, just as the rain begins a cold steady onslaught.

And Bruno’s umbrella is inside the diner. I can see it but when I knock on the door, no one hears me. The women vanish into the back together, and I look up and down the abandoned street.

In this moment, it’s easy to remember why I wanted to leave this place so badly.

What’sincredible is that I don’t remember.

I have a great memory. I remember the smell of the little salon where my mom worked as a hairdresser. I remember the dandelions in the yard of the house my mom rented when we first moved to Empire, the squeak of the rusted swing set abandoned there, the smell of the bathroom that had something wrong with its plumbing. I remember the taste of blood whenJake decked me for saying we were brothers in school. I remember how cold the winter wind is when you have only a thin coat, or one that’s not quite big enough this year for you to zip shut.

I remember the sensation of freedom when I rode my bicycle out of Empire and down to Port Cavendish—without permission, of course—and how I learned to cobble together that bike of spare parts. I remember the sound of mocking laughter from other kids, whose bikes had been purchased new, with all the parts matching. I remember my mom trying to hide her tears in the kitchen when Patrick called her a whore, his wife standing by his side. I remember things about Empire that I’d rather forget.

But I don’t remember being with Sylvia that night.

At all.

My memory offers glimpses of many women, but not Sylvia. She’s completely absent, and I can’t figure out why.

I should go to sleep but I can’t. The enormity of my mistake is going to keep me awake forever. Is Taylor laughing at me now? Did he guess that there was something this epic for me to fix in my past?

It’s past three in the morning when I give it up. I wander down Queen Street. I don’t have the stones to go to Daph, not now, and it aches to have lost whatever that might have become before it really got started. The street is empty, the rain making it seem black and white, like I’ve stepped into a Fellini movie. I see in the distance that there are a few guys hanging around the taco truck and they sound as if they’ve been drinking. I’m not in the mood for a fight so I duck around the back of the Golden Lotus and walk down the alley. Someone is putting out the trash there, it must be Phil, but I wait in the shadows, avoiding any contact, until he goes back inside.

I met Sylvia in front of the Grand Hotel that night. I remember that. It was senior prom and there was a party there,in the bar, a celebration before the dance for those old enough to drink. She’d come out of there in some floaty long dress, tears on her cheeks, and I caught her when she stumbled.

She asked me to take her away. “Anywhere,” she said. “Just not here.”

I lean against the wall of the Grand Hotel, trying to remember. I could hear the party breaking up. They’d be moving on, going back to the school for the dance itself. It was maybe eight-thirty. I had no intention of going to prom and was just restless.

Like tonight.

Maybe looking for trouble.

Maybe I found it.

I stand in the alley in the rain and look back toward Queen Street, staring down the passageway between the Grand Hotel and the Legion. It’s narrow and empty, puddles gleaming. There’s a Dumpster behind the Legion, which is just as fragrant as I remember it being then. The one behind the Grand Hotel is empty, the lid thrown open. Is it really an empty shell now? I look up and there’s only one light in the entire hotel, in the window of the apartment at the back.

Cole Henderson inherited the Grand Hotel, while he was in the military. I remember my mom telling me that. She still kept up with some of the news from Empire, and she’d imagined him renovating the place. That hadn’t happened.

I can see barbed wire along the top of the two-storey addition that contains that apartment and the silent kitchen, and it’s new. Maybe you can leave Afghanistan, but Afghanistan might not ever leave you. Living alone in that huge space can’t be good for him, but I don’t remember Cole ever being interested in advice.

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