Forever. Part 19

"Am I?" I asked. I felt p.r.i.c.kling, defensive, although his tone was light. Being found was not something I cared for. Being looked for wasn't something I liked, either.

"I told them this was the place to find you," Koenig said.

I nodded. "That's a pretty fair guess." I felt like I should ask him What can I do for you? but I didn't really want to know. Mostly I wanted to be left alone to process everything that had happened to me in the past seventy-two hours.

"We actually need to ask you a few questions," Koenig said. Behind him, the door dinged as a woman came in. She had a giant purple bag that I couldn't stop staring at.

"Where are your self-help books?" she asked me. She seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that there was a police officer in front of me. Maybe people spoke with police officers on a casual basis all the time. It was hard to imagine.

If Koenig hadn't been there, I would have told her that every book ever written was a self-help book and could she be more specific? And she would've left with four books instead of one, because that was what I did. But with Koenig there, I just said, "Over there. Behind you."

"Back at the department," Koenig said. "For your privacy."

For my privacy.

This was bad.

"Sam?" Koenig said.

I realized I was still watching that purple leather bag move slowly through the store. The woman's cell phone had rung and now she was yammering on it. "Okay," I said. "I mean, I have to, don't I?"

Koenig said, "You don't have to do anything. But things are a lot less ugly without a warrant."

I nodded my head. Words. I needed to say something. What did I need to say? I thought of Karyn, sitting there in the back, thinking all was fine up front because I was here. "I need to tell my boss that I'm leaving. Is that all right?"

"Of course."

I felt him drifting after me as I headed to the back of the store. "Karyn," I said, leaning on the doorframe. I could not make my voice casual, but I tried. It occurred to me that I didn't normally address her by her name, and it felt wrong in my mouth. "I'm sorry. I have to go for a little bit. Um, Officer Koenig - they would like me to go in for questions."

For one second, her expression stayed the same, and then everything about it hardened. "They what? Are they here now?"

She pushed out of her chair and I backed up so that she could stand in the doorway and confirm that Koenig was standing in the aisle, staring up at one of the paper cranes that I'd hung from the balcony above.

"What's going on now?" she asked. It was her brisk, efficient voice that she used when she was speaking to a difficult customer; it stood for no c.r.a.p and kept emotion out of it. Business Karyn, we both called it. It turned her into a completely different person.

"Ma'am," Koenig said apologetically - this was a natural response to Business Karyn - "one of our investigators has questions for Sam. He asked if I would bring him back for a chat in some privacy."

"A chat," Karyn echoed. "The sort of chat that would be better with a lawyer present?"

"That's entirely up to Sam. But he's not being charged with anything right now."

Right. Now.

Karyn and I both heard it. Right now was another way of saying yet. She looked at me. "Sam, do you want me to call Geoffrey?"

I knew my face gave me away, because she answered her own question. "He's not available, is he?"

"I'll be okay," I said.

"This strikes me as hara.s.sment," Karyn said to Koenig. "He's an easy target because he's not the same as everyone else. If Geoffrey Beck were in town, would we be having this conversation?"

"With all due respect, ma'am," Koenig said, "if Geoffrey Beck were in town, he would probably be the one we were questioning."

Karyn sealed her lips shut, looking unhappy. Koenig stepped back out of the center aisle to gesture toward the front door. Now I could see a police car double-parked in front of the store, waiting for us.

I was intensely grateful to Karyn for standing up for me. For acting like I was her business. She said, "Sam, call me. If you need anything. If you feel uncomfortable. Do you want me to come with?"

"I'll be okay," I said again.

"He'll be all right," Koenig said. "We are not trying to back anyone into a corner here."

"I'm sorry I have to leave," I told Karyn. Usually she only came in for a few hours on Sat.u.r.day morning and then left the shop in the hands of whoever was working. Now I'd ruined her entire day.

"Oh, Sam. You didn't do anything wrong," Karyn said. She came over and hugged my shoulders, hard. She smelled like hyacinths. To Koenig, she said - Business Karyn vanishing as accusation slipped into her tone - "I hope this is worth it for you guys."

Koenig led me down the aisle toward the front door. I was infinitely aware that the woman with the big purple bag was watching me go, cell phone still up to her ear. Her phone speaker was turned up loud enough that we could both hear the woman on the other side of the line say, "Are they arresting him?"

"Sam," Koenig said. "Just tell the truth."

He didn't even know what he was asking for.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

* COLE *

After I left the Culpeper house, I just drove. I had Ulrik's old BMW wagon, some of the money I'd brought, no one to tell me not to go.

On the radio, I was listening to a song by a band that had opened for us once. They had been such a train wreck live that I'd felt positively virtuous, a difficult feat to accomplish at that point. I should've thanked them for making us look good. The lead singer's name had been Mark or Mike or Mack or Abel or something like that. Afterward, he'd come up to me, ferociously drunk, and told me I was his biggest influence. I could see the resemblance.

Now, a million years later, I listened to the DJ describe the single as the band's one hit. I kept driving. I still had Sam's phone in my pocket, and it wasn't ringing, but for once, I didn't care. I felt like I'd left a message for Isabel that didn't require a callback. It was enough to have said it.

My windows were rolled down and my arm was out, the wind buffeting it, my palm moist from grabbing mist. The Minnesota landscape stretched out on either side of the two-lane road. It was all scrubby pines and flat houses and rocks stacked randomly and lakes suddenly glinting behind trees. I thought the residents of Mercy Falls must have decided to build ugly houses to make up for all the natural beauty. Keep the place from exploding, or something, from an excess of picturesque.

I kept thinking about what I'd told Isabel, about thinking of calling my family. I'd been mostly truthful. The idea of calling my parents felt impossible and unpalatable. In the Venn diagram that was me and them, the shape where our circles overlapped was empty.

But I still thought about calling Jeremy. Jeremy the resident ba.s.sist-yogi. I wondered what he was doing without me and Victor. I liked to think that he'd used his money to go backpacking across India or something. The thing about Jeremy, the thing that made me almost willing to call him and no one else, was that he and Victor had always known me better than anyone. That was what all NARKOTIKA really was: a way of knowing Cole St. Clair. Victor and Jeremy had spent years of their lives helping describe the particular pain of being me to hundreds of thousands of listeners.

They did it so often that they could do it without me. I remembered one interview where they did it so well that I never bothered to answer another interview question again. We were being interviewed in our hotel room. It was first thing in the morning because we had a flight to catch later. Victor was hungover and p.i.s.sy. Jeremy was eating breakfast bars at the tiny, gla.s.s-topped desk in the room. The room had a narrow balcony with a view to nothing, and I had opened the door and was lying out there on the concrete. I had been doing sit-ups with my feet hooked on the bottom rung of the railing, but now I was just staring at jet trails in the sky. The interviewer sat cross-legged on one of the unmade beds. He was young and spiked and pressed and named Jan.

"So who does most of the songwriting?" Jan had asked. "Or is it a group thing?"

"Oh, it's a group thing," Jeremy said, in his slow, easy way. He'd picked up a Southern accent at the same time he'd acquired Buddhism. "Cole writes the lyrics, and then I bring him coffee, and then Cole writes the music, and Victor brings him pretzels."

"So you do most of the writing, then, Cole?" Jan raised his voice so that I could hear him better out on the balcony. "Where do you get your inspiration?"

From my vantage point on the balcony, staring straight up, I had two viewing options: the brick sides of the buildings across the street, or one square of colorless sky above me. All cities looked the same when you were on your back.

Jeremy snapped a piece of his breakfast bar off; we could all hear the crumbs rustle across the table. From the other bed, still sounding like he was PMSing, Victor said, "He won't answer that."

Jan sounded genuinely puzzled, as if I was the first to refuse him. "Why?"

"He just won't. He hates that question," Victor said. His feet were bare; he clicked the bones in his toes. "It is kind of a stupid question, man. Life, right? That's where we get our inspiration."

Jan scribbled something down. He was left-handed and writing looked awkward for him, as if he were a Ken doll with parts a.s.sembled slightly wrong. I hoped he was writing down Never ask that question again. "Okay. Um. Your EP One/Or the Other just debuted in Billboard's top ten. What are your thoughts on that incredible success?"

"I'm buying my mother a BMW," Victor said. "No, I'm just buying Bavaria. That is where BMWs are from, right?"

"Success is an arbitrary concept," Jeremy said.

"The next one will be better," I said. I hadn't said it out loud before, but now I had, so it was true.

More writing. Jan read the next question from his paper. "Uh, that means that you guys knocked out the Human Parts Ministry alb.u.m from the top ten, where it had been for over forty weeks. Sorry, forty-one. I swear there won't be typos in the final interview. So, Joey of Human Parts Ministry said he thought 'Looking Up or Down' was such a long-lived hit because so many people identified with the lyrics. Do you think listeners out there identify with the lyrics of One/Or the Other?"

One/Or the Other was about the Cole that I heard in the monitors on stage versus the Cole that paced the hotel halls at night. This was what One/Or the Other was: It was the knowledge that I was surrounded by adults with lives that I could never imagine living. It was the humming noise inside me that told me to do something and found nothing to do that meant anything, the bit of me that was like a fly smashing itself again and again on a windowpane. It was the futility of aging. It was a piano piece gotten right the first time. It was the time I picked Angie up for a date and she was wearing a cardigan that made her look like her mother. It was roads that ended in cul-de-sacs and careers that ended with desks and songs screamed in a gymnasium at night. It was the realization that this was life, and I didn't belong here.

"No," I said. "I think it's about the music."

Jeremy finished his breakfast bar. Victor cracked his knuckles. I watched people the size of germs fly overhead in a plane the size of an ant.

"I read you were a choir boy, Cole," Jan said, consulting his notes. "Are you still a practicing Catholic? Are you, Victor? Jeremy, I know you're not."

"I believe in G.o.d," Victor offered. He didn't sound convincing.

"You, Cole?" Jan prompted.

I watched empty sky, waiting for another plane. It was that or look at the blank sides of the buildings. One/Or the Other.

"Here's what I know about Cole," Jeremy said. Punctuated by the silence, it sounded like he was in a pulpit. "Cole's religion is debunking the impossible. He doesn't believe in impossible. He doesn't believe in no. Cole's religion is waiting for someone to tell him it can't be done so he can do it. Anything. Doesn't matter what that something is, so long as it can't be done. Here's an origin story for you. In the beginning of time there was an ocean and a void, and G.o.d made the ocean into the world and he made the void into Cole."

Victor laughed.

"I thought you said you were a Buddhist," Jan said.

"Part-time," Jeremy replied.

Debunking the impossible.

Now, the pines stretched up so high on either side of the road that it felt like I was tunneling to the middle of the world. Mercy Falls was an unnumbered stretch of miles behind me.

I was sixteen again, and the road unwound in front of me, endless possibilities. I felt wiped clean, empty, forgiven. I could drive forever, anywhere. I could be anyone. But I felt the pull of Boundary Wood around me and, for once, the business of being Cole St. Clair no longer felt like such a curse. I had a purpose, a goal, and it was the impossible: finding a cure.

I was so close.

The road flew by beneath the car; my hand was cold from being in the wind. For the first time in a long time, I felt powerful. The woods had taken that void that was me, the thing I thought that could never be full, never be satisfied, and they'd made me lose everything - things I never knew I wanted to keep.

And in the end, I was Cole St. Clair, cut from a new skin. The world lay at my feet and the day stretched out for miles.

I slid Sam's cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Jeremy's number.

"Jeremy," I said.

"Cole St. Clair," he replied, slow and easy, like he wasn't surprised. There was a pause on the other side of the line. And because he knew me, he didn't have to wait for me to say it. "You're not coming home, are you?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

* SAM *

They questioned me in a kitchen.

The Mercy Falls Police Department was small and apparently ill-prepared for questioning. Koenig led me past a room full of dispatchers - they stopped mid-conversation to watch me - and two offices full of desks and uniforms bowed around computers, and finally into a tiny room with a sink, refrigerator, and two vending machines. It was lunchtime and the room smelled overwhelmingly like microwaved Mexican dinners and vomit. It was excruciatingly hot.

Koenig directed me into a light wooden chair at a folding table and cleared off a few napkins, a plate with a half-eaten lemon bar, and a can of soda. Dumping them in the trash, he stood just outside the door, his back to me. All I could see of him was the back of his head, the straight edge of his stubble-short hair on the back of his neck eerily perfect. He had a dark burn scar at the edge of his hair; the scar trickled to a point that disappeared into the collar of his shirt. It occurred to me that there was a story behind the scar - maybe not as dramatic as the story of my wrists, but a story nonetheless - and the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their inside or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.

Koenig was speaking in a low voice to someone in the hall. I only caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of his words. "Samuel Roth ... no ... warrant ... body? ... what he finds."

My stomach felt instantly sick, crushed by the heat. It was churning and turning over and I suddenly had the horrible feeling that, despite the heat, because of the heat, I was going to shift here in this little room and there would be no way out.

I lay my head on my arms; the table smelled like old food but was cool against my skin. My stomach pinched and squeezed and, for the first time in months, I felt unsafe in my own skin.

Please don't shift. Please don't shift.

I repeated this in my head with every breath.

"Samuel Roth?"