Chapter 13 Marc
Kimble and Marc lie staring at the dark like children who can’t sleep.
Crickets and frogs sing in the forest. They just finished the last of the tequila they brought.
It has been another day of searching. The woods seem endless.
Marc is starting to wonder if everyone has imagined this tunnel.
But they got some good B-roll and Linus told a story about how he saw the fire that day so it was kind of ok.
‘Marky Mark?’ Kimble asks, drowsy.
‘Mm.’
‘We’re here because we want to understand them, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Not because we are them. Not because it wants us here. The house.’
‘What do you mean?’ But cold thrills are already crawling on Marc’s skin.
‘You know what they say. Nowhere draws lost kids to it. Are we lost kids too?’
‘Wish I’d had a camera on you for that,’ he says. ‘Poetic.’
She laughs. ‘I am that.’
Marc drifts, everything blurring through his eyelashes. ‘You’re my best friend, Kimble,’ he says, half into his pillow. ‘You’re like my sister. I wish you were my sister.’
‘Thank you, Marky Mark.’ Her voice trembles with amusement but it’s not mean.
‘We love each other, me and you,’ he says, sliding towards the dark.
‘Maybe we do.’
‘I wish you’d forgive me,’ he whispers.
‘Don’t,’ Kimble says, sharp. ‘Do not ask me to comfort you, not about that and not when you’re drunk.’ All the warmth is gone from the air. Marc stares at the spinning dark. A dull ache begins to throb at the back of his head. He waits, mouth dry and heart pounding, for this to pass.
Kimble and Marc had the idea for the documentary on the Nowhere children at exactly the same moment. They were in Vegas covering something terrible, like always. People had died.
‘It can mean something, right?’ Kimble says, stirring her drink with her straw. ‘This job. It doesn’t have to be bullshit. Or not all of it.’
‘I used to think that.’ Marc tosses back his third tequila shot. He takes out a cigarette, feeling a rush of joy at the knowledge that he can smoke it right here, indoors. He misses the tip of the cigarette with the lighter on the first pass but gets it on the second, squinting.
‘It must be hard,’ Kimble says, ‘being away from Silvie.’
He nods, because it is. ‘I love her so much. I didn’t believe in love before her.’
‘People think romantic love is the only kind,’ Kimble says. ‘Or at least the main kind.’ She snorts. ‘It’s so reductive. Romance is totally overrepresented in books and film and the way we talk …’
‘Ah,’ Marc says.
‘What?’ Kimble sucks on her frozen margarita. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Because I see.’
‘What’s that now?’ Kimble asks, an edge to her voice.
‘You’re in love,’ Marc says.
‘What? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Ok.’ Marc shrugs and swirls the tequila in his glass.
‘Jesus, Marc,’ Kimble’s voice rises. ‘You can’t just say stuff like that.’
‘It’s not an insult.’ Marc pats Kimble’s arm. ‘We can talk about it if you like. But we don’t have to.’
‘The times,’ Kimble says, ‘that you pick to be insightful are demented.’
‘I am annoying,’ he says, wagging his finger in her face. ‘But I am correct.’
‘Fine.’ Kimble rests her head in her hands.
‘Ok, why not? No reason you can’t know. She and I have been friends for years.
We went to NYU together. She just got divorced from her husband.
I had never thought of her like that. But one night we drank too much and I cried about – doesn’t matter – and she comforted me.
And I saw her. I really looked at her for the first time.
The weirdest thing is that I could see her getting freaked out, because she was seeing me too.
’ She shrugs. ‘It’s not so comfortable, being seen.
It’s excruciating actually. But I can never go back to who I was, now.
See, that’s demented. I was just living, going about my business, then everything turned on a dime.
Now I’m always scared because so much of me depends on that person. On Margot.’
‘We have to put it all somewhere,’ Marc drops his cigarette into his empty glass. ‘It’s an achievement – to love.’
‘Love is a rock face.’ Kimble chews a toothpick. ‘If you put a foot wrong there’s a long way to fall.’
‘You won’t fall,’ he says.
‘We never talk like this,’ Kimble says.
‘I know. Do you like it?’
‘I think so. Do you?’
‘I think so too,’ he says but it’s hard to tell. Marc has a fear of abandonment that’s nearly as old as he is. He feels him stirring in the deeps, the lonely child he once was. ‘I’m happy for you, Kimble,’ he says. ‘You deserve to be happy.’
‘We’re going on our first vacation together,’ Kimble says.
‘Margot and me. Mauritius. It’s paid for, non-refundable.
Next month.’ The toothpick in her hands snaps into two neat pieces.
‘It’s good to have something that can’t be changed.
It’s freeing, weirdly. She wants us to spend real time together. ’
‘Real time?’ Marc asks. ‘As opposed to fake time?’
‘I guess she just means – being with her, instead of always on the road with you.’
‘I see,’ says Marc.
Kimble takes the salt shaker and pours it into her palm. The salt makes a little white mountain in her hand. She stares at it.
‘What do you want most?’ Marc asks. ‘If you could cover anything, make any doc on any subject, what would you make?’
Kimble throws the salt over her shoulder (to keep the devil away, Marc remembers that). She crunches an ice cube in her teeth. ‘Don’t you already know what I’d do? What would you make?’
‘That’s cheating,’ Marc says. ‘You can’t throw the question back.’
‘I can do anything I like.’
‘We’ll both say what we want to make. On three.’ Marc taps his empty glass with a spoon. ‘One, two, three.’
‘The Nowhere children,’ Marc says as Kimble says, ‘Leaf Winham.’
They stare at one another. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in that,’ Kimble says. ‘I mean – I’ve always wanted to go out there. When did you …’ She shakes her head. ‘Let’s drink more.’
‘Yes.’ Marc’s body hums with feeling and tequila.
‘We could,’ Kimble says dreamily, head resting on her folded arms. She’s very drunk and nearly asleep. They’re in a different bar now. It’s full of mirrors. Marc doesn’t remember getting here but it seems ok.
‘Could what?’ Marc lights the wrong end of his cigarette and coughs, taking a mouthful of whiskey to get rid of the taste.
They’re going to get moved off the table soon, he can see the waitress giving them that resigned look.
But she’ll wait a couple more minutes, he knows, hoping that they’ll leave of their own accord.
‘We could make something about Nowhere.’ Kimble runs a wet finger around the rim of her glass, making it whine.
‘Mmm,’ Marc says. ‘The lizard tail comes off, is the problem. It’s all rumour, no facts. No reliable witnesses. And mountain people don’t like flatlanders.’
‘They haven’t met us yet,’ Kimble says. ‘We’re good at sliding through the cracks.’
‘That’s true,’ Marc says, delighted. His head is full of bees.
He gets up, swaying only a little. ‘Ok,’ he says. ‘I need to be unawake. Seven a.m.?’
Kimble nods.
‘You ok on your own?’
‘I thought I was,’ Kimble says, thoughtful. ‘But I was wrong.’ She gets her cell phone out with slippery fingers. As Marc walks away he hears Kimble say, ‘Margot?’
Marc has never heard that voice from Kimble before – the warmth, the hope. It makes him feel very drunk and afraid.
Marc collapses on the bed but his mind keeps turning like a windmill. He thinks and makes a phone call and thinks some more, as the bed weaves under him, swimming in liquor.
Marc and Kimble leave for Salt Lake City at 7 a.m. There’s been a murder in a conservative Mormon family.
Marc feels sick of everything. He doesn’t want to ask another grieving parent about their dead child.
But he does it anyway and Kimble pushes in close on their tears, and the job feels even more terrible than usual.
Afterwards they sit, shaking, in a diner. Marc orders too much food then stares at it, revolted. Kimble glances at him then slides his onion rings and grits over to her side. Marc closes his eyes and feels the white travel up his face.
‘Are you going to puke?’ Kimble asks, interested.
Marc shakes his head but he doesn’t know. He takes a trembling sip of iced water and breathes deeply.
‘So,’ he says. ‘Do you want to do it?’
‘What?’ Kimble eats an onion ring in one mouthful and Marc winces.
‘Make the show about Nowhere,’ Marc says. ‘We’ve got a shoestring budget. We’ve got a short window of time.’
Kimble chews slowly. ‘How did you do that so fast?’
‘I caught them in a receptive mood,’ Marc says. ‘And I used my last favour.’
Kimble nods. Everyone has a final favour that they save up – to shoot you to the top or save you from the bottom.
‘And I was drunk,’ he adds. ‘Tequila confidence. Anyway I booked an interview.’ He takes out the hotel envelope covered in long scrawls of ballpoint.
‘I wrote it all down. Annie Lyons, who says she was taken by the children for some kind of bloodletting ritual.’
‘Give me that.’ Kimble takes the envelope, annoyed. ‘What a mess. I’ll start a schedule. When do we go?’
‘End of this month,’ Marc says. ‘We need to be there until September.’
‘But—’ Kimble stops herself. ‘Are you sure? We couldn’t wait?’
‘We need to catch Annie before she goes to Cancun for the summer,’ Marc says. ‘And you know how it goes. The longer they think about it the more often they cancel.’
‘Yes,’ says Kimble. ‘I do know how it goes.’
‘It’s our chance.’ Marc shrugs. There is no budget, of course, he’s funding this all by himself and deciding the schedule. He won’t need his retirement fund anyway.
‘You’re sure,’ Kimble says, ‘about the timing? It has to be next month?’
‘I know.’ Marc shakes his head. ‘It conflicts with your vacation.’
‘It’s not just a vacation.’ Kimble stares ahead at something Marc cannot see. ‘That is bad luck,’ she says quietly. ‘What are the odds?’
‘Take a day, think about it,’ he says lightly.
‘Ok, Marc.’ Kimble’s voice is controlled and low. ‘Why now? Tell me that.’
Marc shrugs. ‘That’s the wrong question.’ If he wasn’t so hungover Marc would be afraid of Kimble now; her eyes are like broken flint. He keeps his body loose to hide his fear. Marc forks grits into in his mouth, meeting Kimble’s gaze. ‘Do you want to do it?’
Kimble slides out of the booth. ‘I’m beat. See you tomorrow.’
Marc watches her leave the diner and then through the big window which gives onto the street. Kimble stands perfectly still for a moment. Then she takes out her cell phone. She presses her lips together in a tight line and makes a call.
Kimble suspects what Marc has done and he knows that, and she knows that he knows. Neither of them will mention it. They will go to Nowhere. They will put all the rest aside and work.
Marc spits the grits into a paper napkin. Guilt surges through him but the wave of relief is stronger. Only Kimble can get him through what comes next.