Page 48 of Jealous of the Clouds
Before I finished dressing, he was back, keys in hand. He waited silently while I finished, pulling on the socks and my own shoes. “Okay.” I stood.
*
In the car, I finally had to speak, no matter what horror was headed my way, speeding through the darkness. I could no longer handle the suspense and, as with many bad things in life, I came to the conclusion that knowing a terrible thing was better than not knowing. At least once you knew, you could begin to somehow handle it. All we really had in this life was an option for how to respond to a thing, be it positive or negative. “Okay. You need to tell me. What happened?”
“Give me a few minutes.” Karl’s gaze never left the road, but he picked up my hand on the console and squeezed it before letting go.
I could barely stand it, but I managed to wait. Karl had headed north on the drive until it became Sheridan Road, until he rounded the curve by a cemetery and we were finally in the North Shore suburb of Evanston. Karl pulled on to a small one-block street called Sheridan Square. Since it was late and at night, there were a few pull-in spots facing the lake. Ahead of us, the dark water shimmered under a three-quarter waxing moon, waves crashing against the boulders at the shoreline. Behind us, condo buildings stood sentinel. Lights were on in the windows and I imagined normal lives behind the glass—people watching TV, asleep, raiding the fridge for a late-night snack. They had the usual worries about jobs and relationships, what presents to buy for the upcoming holidays.
The world was quiet. Unreal. I cracked my window open a bit to let in the sounds of rushing water and, a block to the west, the roar of traffic on Sheridan Road.
Karl turned. “Do you want to go outside? We could walk up to the breakwater.” He pointed south.
I shook my head. “Too cold.” I rolled the window back up. He shut off the car. “Would you just tell me? Is it Camille?”
He stared out at the blackness for a long time before responding. “Yes,” he said at last. “She’s dead.”
I sucked in a breath. My heart rate surged and then quickly quieted. In my limbs, a tingling rose up, like my body had been asleep. I opened my mouth and closed it, unsure if I still had the power to form words. All of the sudden, everything around me became suffused with the sensation that it was surreal—a dream. “Was it Josh?” I whispered at last, unsure if I meant the person who called or the one who killed.
“Yes.”
Of course, Josh was both killer and caller. “How do you know for sure?”
Karl eyed me. “I guess I don’t knowfor sure, but who else would it be?”
Even though the truth was now out, I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that my dear friend Camille’s life had come to a close. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel right. This had to be a trick, a very cruel one. My friend was still alive, of course she was. I could sense her out there.
But that couldn’t be, could it? If Karl was telling me that she was gone, then she was. People, even the most psychotic ones, don’t joke about such things.
Do they?
I stared out at the water for a long time. When would grief creep in to immobilize me? When would body-shaking sobs and stinging tears take over my emotions?
What had happened? Did she suffer?
And the worst question of all—was this all my fault?
I drew in a big breath, quivery. There was a tsunami of despair awaiting me, but right now all I felt was nothing, empty, maybe a little guilt. I placed my forehead against the glass. “Can we just go home? Is this why you wanted to bring me out, to tell me in a quiet place?”
“Yes.” Karl reached for my hand once more; I drew it away. It wasn’t personal. I just didn’t feel like being touched. All I wanted to do was curl into a ball and shut the world, and everyone in it, out.
He waited a few minutes, then started the car and backed out.
As we started south on Sheridan Road, he reached down to turn the radio on. Because of his podcast, he listened to a lot of local news stations. The station now on was WBBM, which was all news. I was about to ask him to change it to something quieter, maybe a good NPR station, which would most certainly be playing classical at this hour. I even imagined how calming a Brahms sonata might be, or a little opera. Verdi? Camille had been such a fan, dragging me with her to the Lyric Opera House downtown for yet another performance, one in which I always fell asleep during the performance. Camille never minded, although she teased me endlessly about paying for my “very expensive” nap.
But the announcer’s voice sent us both into shock.
“A local man, Joshua Kade, has been found dead. The body was discovered late this afternoon near Fullerton Avenue beach on the north side of the city. Cause of death and other details are being withheld by Chicago Police. It’s an ongoing investigation—”
I cut off the news story with a scream. Synapses inside lit up. Nausea took center stage. “Pull over! Pull over!”
Karl did as he was told and, with a shaking hand, I opened the door and vomited into the street. For a few minutes, I sat,hunched over, heaving and panting. Once I had my breath again and the taste of bile subsided a tiny bit, I urged him to go on, to keep moving.
He did. We drove for several minutes in silence.
Karl was about to slam into the back of a pickup truck that had stopped south of Calvary Cemetery in the middle of the road. Who knew why?
“Watch out! Watch out!” I cried as Karl threw his weight back against the seat behind him for leverage, grinding the brake pedal almost through the floor. The car’s tires squealed. I pictured an imminent crash. Luckily, we avoided that. Both of us watched, breathing hard, as a large dog, some kind of pit bull mix, bounded across the road and up onto the boulders at Lake Michigan’s edge.
