Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The Valor City News station was a single-story building on the edge of town that had, at some point in its history, also been a dental office.
"The waiting room is now our green room," Norah Winslow said, gesturing at a space that still smelled of fluoride. "We kept the chairs. They're very comfortable."
"Wonderful," Eliot deadpanned as they made their way through.
The chairs were upholstered in a teal vinyl that had cracked at the seams, likely from decades of nervous patients.
They were mismatched in the way of furniture acquired secondhand and in a hurry; two armchairs, a loveseat, and a single rolling stool that had clearly once lived beside a dentist's tray.
Nora was the station manager, lead anchor, and — based on available evidence — primary source of energy for the entire operation.
She was somewhere in her mid-fifties, with reading glasses pushed up into silver-streaked hair.
She had shaken Eliot's hand with both of hers when he arrived.
She had offered him coffee, tea, water, and what she described as "Shelly from accounting's famous lemon squares," in that order, before he had fully cleared the doorway.
"We are just so thrilled to have you," she said, for the third time. "The viewers are going to—"
"How long is the segment?" Eliot asked.
Nora blinked. "The weather segment? Oh, about three minutes. Sometimes three and a half if something interesting is happening with the barometric pressure. Usually we do a fun tie-in with whatever's happening locally. Let me show you the weather wall."
The weather wall was a green screen approximately the size of a modest dining table. Eliot stood in front of it. He looked at Miles, who was behind the camera looking back at him with the expression of a man who was deeply committed to not laughing.
"The graphics package is very charming," Miles offered.
"The graphics package," Eliot said, "has a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses."
"His name is Sunny," Nora said. "The viewers love Sunny."
Eliot closed his eyes briefly. He thought about his career.
He thought about his Primetime slot, which had had a viewership of four hundred thousand people and a graphics package designed by an actual professional.
He thought about the call he'd received from Veronica three weeks ago — it's temporary, Eliot, just get through it, we'll have you back by spring — and he held onto that the way a man holds onto a rope over a very long drop.
Miles positioned the camera in front of the green screen. "Whenever you're ready."
Eliot straightened his jacket. He found the mark on the floor — a strip of gaffer tape, slightly peeling at one corner — and stood on it. He looked into the lens. The red light came on.
"Good morning, Valor." His voice slid into the register he'd spent twelve years calibrating: warm, easy, friendly. "I'm Eliot Brooks, and here's your weekend forecast."
He smiled the smile. The one that had nothing to do with his face and everything to do with the camera believing it.
"We're looking at partly cloudy skies through the day, with a sixty percent chance of afternoon showers.
" He gestured at the green screen, where Sunny the cartoon sun would later be superimposed wearing his sunglasses and his permanent, unearned optimism.
"Those showers should clear out by evening, which makes for a fairly acceptable Saturday for outdoor activities.
" A beat, careful and neutral, the tone of a hostage reading a statement someone else had written.
"Including the Heart-Shaped Clouds Festival setup currently underway in the town square. "
He held the smile for one more second.
"Back to you, Nora."
"Aaand we're clear," Miles said.
The smile dropped. Fast, complete, no transition. Eliot's shoulders dropped half an inch. His jaw unclenched. He looked, for just a moment, like a man who had been holding his breath for three solid minutes and had finally been allowed to let it go.
"That was great." Nora brought her hands together as a kindergarten teacher would've done for her students.
It was fine. Not a challenge. Not a single brain cell was used in the making of that segment. Boredom loomed over Eliot's head like an oncoming storm.
"Thank you," Eliot said.
Miles patted him on the shoulder. Eliot looked at the hand. Miles removed it.
"Coffee?" Nora asked.
Blessedly, Eliot's phone chose to buzz in his pants pocket. Pulling it free, he saw salvation. "It's my agent. I have to take this."
"How was the first segment?" Veronica's tone was that of a woman who already knew the answer and was asking as a formality.
"The sun is wearing shades."
Her sigh said it all. "Keep your head down, Eliot. Be likable. Do the festival thing. Don't say anything else about clouds."
"I love clouds," Eliot said, which was true and also beside the point.
"The viewing public experienced your alleged love of clouds as a man having an episode on live television. There's a distinction."
He didn't argue because she wasn't wrong.
"Spring," she said. "I'll have you back by spring. Your slot is warm."
"My slot is currently occupied by Derek Haines, who once mispronounced stratocumulus on air."
"Derek is keeping it warm," Veronica said firmly. "You'll be back. This is temporary."
Eliot sat in the parking lot for a moment after she hung up. He should have felt better. He felt nothing. He started the car. He headed home.
Though home was a matter of perspective.
The apartment above Betty Ann's bakery was, objectively, a reasonable space.
Dormer windows. Good light. A small back garden enclosed by a low stone wall.
There were three units; each taking a corner, and the garden filling the fourth to make a happy square.
The lights had been out all night in the unit directly across from him.
The lights hadn't gone out in the unit where he shared a wall.
He came up the back stairs at quarter past six, keys in hand, thinking about nothing in particular, and stopped on the landing. There was a woman on the stairs above him.
Moving with the stealth of someone who had clearly never robbed anything in her life but had watched enough television and films to understand the general posture required.
She was hugging the wall, as though the wall offered some kind of cover.
She had a canvas tote bag over one shoulder that was doing absolutely nothing to support the criminal aesthetic she appeared to be going for, given that it had a cartoon bear on it and the words Valor Middle School Science Fair.
In the back of her hair, tucked into an unruly bun of spirals, was an anemometer stylus.
She reached the door beside his — the unit that shared his wall — and went for the handle without looking back once more, which struck him as a significant tactical error.
"Are you as bad a criminal as you are a baker?"
She yelped. Almost a cry for help. Which would be a bad idea if you were up to no good and didn't want to be found out.
She spun around. "It's you. You scared the absolute life out of me."
"You were the one sneaking."
"I was not sneaking. I live here."
"Could've fooled me."
Dalene dug around in her bag, rummaging as though it were a bottomless magician's pouch. She thrust her hand into the air triumphantly. Wrapped around her fingers was a set of keys.
"See," she proclaimed triumphantly.
Eliot did see. He saw that her freckles resembled the loose, scattered W of Cassiopeia — five points across her nose and cheekbones, slightly imprecise, the way the real constellations never quite matched their diagrams. He had spent enough nights with a telescope as a boy to recognize it without trying.
He blinked. Thankfully, the last rays of the sun were in his eyes and made him see reason.
"For the record," he said, "if you ever do decide to commit an actual crime, I'd recommend not wearing a bag with identifying information on it."
She looked down at the bag. The ribbon was, in fact, stapled to it. Dalene Austen — Third Place — Volcano Reactivity.
"That was in sixth grade," she said with as much dignity as she could manage.
"It's a compelling visual."
"Goodnight, Mr. Brooks." She walked into the unlocked door and slammed it shut behind her.
Eliot went into his own space and dropped his keys in a dish by the door.
He set up his weather station on the bedroom windowsill, which faced west and had an unobstructed view of the sky above the treeline.
The station was compact — a personal-grade unit, not what he'd had in Philly, but sufficient.
He calibrated the barometer. He checked the anemometer.
He confirmed the temperature sensor against his phone app, noted a 0.
3-degree discrepancy that was within acceptable range, and felt, for the first time all day, like himself.
The sky outside the dormer window was full of cirrus clouds. He was lying in bed at eleven-forty-three when it started. Music, faint through the eastern wall. Something with a piano and a guitar, and a woman's voice.
He identified it easily. Fleetwood Mac.
His mother had played Fleetwood Mac on the days that were bad.
Not the worst days. The days before the worst days, when she was still in the living room and the house was still quiet in the way that meant everyone in it was being very careful.
She would put the record on and sit by the window, and Eliot would find reasons to stay close without appearing to.
Close enough to hear. Far enough to pretend he hadn't noticed.
The Chain. Then Gold Dust Woman. And underneath the music, barely audible, a voice singing along. Then sobbing.
He heard singing now coming from the other side of the wall. It went quiet for stretches, then came back. It rose on the choruses and dropped on the verses. It was warm, and slightly husky, and entirely unconcerned with him.
He lay very still and listened to it. Then he picked up his pillow and put it over his face. He was not going to lie in a strange apartment in a town he hadn't chosen, listening to Fleetwood Mac through a wall and being eleven years old again. He was not going to do that.
He was going to keep his head down.
He was going to be out of here by spring.
Through the wall, Dalene Austen hit a high note — completely wrong pitch, entirely confident about it — and held it a beat longer than the original.
Eliot pressed the pillow down harder.
It didn't help.