Chapter 16 #2
Martin looked up when I came through the lobby. He took one look at my face, said nothing, and held the door open for me.
"Thanks," I said.
"Take care of yourself tonight, Sully."
The L platform was elevated, and the wind was sharp.
I zipped my coat up to my chin and watched the track. I rocked from heel to toe, and my jaw started to grind.
Three other people stood on the platform. A woman with a tote bag talked into her phone. Two guys in their twenties joked with each other in loud voices.
The train came in, and I found a seat by the window. The car was maybe a third full. I sat for two minutes and then stood, grabbing the overhead bar instead. I couldn't commit to stillness.
He talked about you all the time.
Bryan sat at tables and on couches, saying my name to people I'd never meet. He assumed the same permanence about me as I did about him.
Wicker Park was alive. The bars were doing a steady business, with some customers standing outside in the cold, shivering and talking, while plumes of cigarette smoke drifted upward.
Three blocks north. Left on Schiller.
Nora's building had a green door, just as she had said. I pressed the buzzer for 2B.
She buzzed me up, and her door was open when I arrived. She looked me up and down, then bit her lip.
"Come in," she said.
I followed her inside.
Her furniture didn't match, but it appeared chosen rather than accidental, each piece selected for comfort over coordination. A tapestry covered most of one wall, and a gallery of framed prints covered another. Books filled the shelves and colonized the floor space beside them.
Two lamps that didn't match kept the light low. A half-finished cup of tea sat on the coffee table.
I stood inside the door for a moment, unsure where to position myself. That was genuinely new. I could always figure out where to put myself.
"Sit," she said.
I sat on the couch. She took the chair across from me and didn't immediately offer anything. She looked at me with the full attention she usually reserved for a bar teetering toward chaos.
I started talking, and it didn't come out in any order.
"His mom sent me—Cath, Bryan's mom, she packed his records herself and sent them." I stopped. "The paper was folded a certain way. I could just tell."
Nora waited.
"There was a note at the bottom."
"What did it say?"
I had to look at the ceiling. "That he talked about me all the time." I paused.
She didn't fill the silence.
"Fuck, Pratt knows none of this—he'll think I'm—we had this album. Rumours. You know, 'Dreams' and all that. Fleetwood Mac."
"Keep going."
"Goddamnit, this is why I keep moving. I can't—God, we went to this Fleetwood Mac concert, Stevie Nicks. Fucking Stevie Nicks. In person." I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. It's on my counter. Don't know why I'm telling you about the album."
"It's okay."
"Anyway, last time—the last time I saw him. This diner, eggs, toast, and two hours of nothing." My hands wouldn't stay still. "After, he said 'call me,' and I said, 'yeah definitely.' Didn't."
Nora was very still.
"I didn't call." I heard how that landed. "I kept thinking—later. There's time. There's always time. We'd been friends since kids. He wasn't going anywhere."
My voice unraveled at the edges, and I couldn't stop it. "That's the thing—always there. He'd be—"
"Sullivan."
"I was angry at him. After. For a long time I was just—I was furious at him, which I know, insane. It sounds fucking insane."
"Stay with that."
"I don't—" I stopped. Started again. "I should have called him back, Nora. That's it. That's the whole thing. I didn't call, and he—"
I couldn't finish it.
I didn't have to.
The stabbing was over. It wasn't entirely gone. I still felt it like pressure in my chest and thickness in my throat.
My phone buzzed on the cushion beside me.
I ignored it.
Nora glanced at it. "Sullivan."
I picked it up.
Pratt: Are you at work
No question mark. I stared at it. My thumb moved and stopped.
I put the phone face down on the coffee table and stood. I crossed to the window and back. Nora watched without intervening.
I picked the phone up again.
Typed: Yes.
Deleted it.
Typed: No, I took the night off.
Deleted that too.
They were lies, and I couldn't.
Sully: At Nora's.
I sent it and exhaled.
"Pratt?" Nora asked.
"Yeah."
"You have to tell him."
"I know."
That was too fast. I should have said, "Please don't require this of me." That's where my gut was.
"Sooner rather than later," she said.
I turned around. She hadn't changed her position at all. I realized she was doing what she did for me at the bar every shift. She held the center while everything moved around her, including me.
"He's going to want to fix it," I said. "That's how he's built. He'll want to solve it—" I paused. "And fuck, what if he—damn, I know he's not Bryan. What if he—"
"He's not Bryan."
I went back to the couch and set the phone on the coffee table.
"I don't know how to do this part," I said. "The quiet part. Staying still and letting—letting him in."
"You told me a story about the two of you."
I looked at Nora. "Story?"
"You said you sat on the floor together and built a lamp. It sounded quiet to me."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
"He sees you, Sully. That's why he's there." She said it directly, with no soft edges. "He's been paying attention since day one."
My hands were in my lap. I looked at them.
The records were at my place, still in the box on the counter. Cath's note. Pratt's two-word text, sitting there having received two words back that told him nothing useful.
"He moves you forward," Nora said. "I don't say that lightly."
I didn't answer. I sat in her comfortably cluttered apartment at whatever hour it was and let the sentence hang there.
For three years I'd stayed in motion because stillness would let Boston catch up. Then someone moved in next door who slowed me down without trying. He did it by being exactly who he was everywhere: next door and on TV.
He was there.
All he asked was that I look back at him.