In the hallway, I brush past Caleb, who has not been speaking to me anyway. There are no more words between us, each one has a charge on it, an ion that might attach to either him or to me and push us farther apart. In my bedroom, I kick off my shoes and crawl fully dressed under the covers. I pull them up over my head; breathe in the same cocoon. If you pass out, and there's still no air, what will happen?
I can't get warm. This is where I will stay, because now any of my decisions may be suspect. Better to do nothing at all, than to take another risk that might change the world.
It's an instinct, Patrick realizes-to want to hurt someone as badly as they've hurt you. There were moments in his career in the military police that his arrests became violent, blood running over his hands that felt like a balm at the time. Now, he understands that the theory can go one step further: It's an instinct to want to hurt someone as badly as they've hurt someone you care about. This is the only explanation he can offer for sitting on a 757 en route from Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans.
The question isn't what he would do for Nina. "Anything," Patrick would answer, without hesitation.
She had expressly warned him away from hunting down Arthur Gwynne, and all of Patrick's actions up to this point could be classified as information-seeking, but even he could not couch the truth, now: He had no reason to fly to Louisiana, if not to meet this man face-to-face.
Even now, he cannot tell himself what is going to happen. He has spent his life guided by principle and rules-in the Navy, as a cop, as an unrequited lover. But rules only work when everyone plays by them.
What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?
It has been shattering for Patrick to realize that the criminal mind is not all that far away from that of a rational man. It comes down, really, to the power of a craving. Addicts will sell their own bodies for another gram of coke. Arsonists will put their own lives in danger to feel something go up in flames around them. Patrick has always believed, as an officer of the law, he is above this driving need. But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?
This was Nina's error; she wrongly equated stopping time with turning it backward. And he couldn't even blame her, because he'd made the same mistake, every time he was in her company.
The question Patrick knew he should be asking was not what he would do for Nina . . . but what he wouldn't.
The flight attendant pushes the beverage cart like a baby carriage, braking beside Patrick's row. "What can I get for you?" she asks. Her smile reminds him of Nathaniel's Halloween mask from last year.
"Tomato juice. No ice."
The man sitting beside Patrick folds his newspaper. "Tomato juice and vodka," he says, grinning through his thick Texan drawl. "Yes, ice."
They both take a sip of their drinks as the flight attendant moves on. The man glances down at his newspaper and shakes his head. "Ought to fry the sumbitch," he mutters.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, it's this murder case. Y'all must have heard about it ... there's some fool who wants an eleventh hour pardon from death row because she's found Jesus. Truth is, the governor's afraid to give her the cocktail because she's a woman."
Patrick has always been in favor of capital punishment. But he hears himself say, "Seems reasonable."
"Guess you're one of those Yankee left-wingers," the man scoffs. "Me, I think it don't matter if you've got a pecker or not. You shoot someone in the back of the head at a convenience store, you pay the price. You know?" He shrugs, then finishes his drink. "You flying out on business or pleasure?"
"Business."
"Me, too. I'm in sales. Hav-A-Heart traps," he confides, as if this is privileged information.
"I'm a lawyer with the ACLU," Patrick lies. "I'm flying down to plead that woman's case to the governor."
The salesman goes red in the face. "Well. I didn't mean no disrespect-"
"Like hell you didn't."
He folds his newspaper again, and stuffs it into the seat pocket in front of him. "Even you bleeding hearts can't save them all."
"One," Patrick answers. "That's all I'm hoping for."
There is a woman wearing my clothes and my skin and my smell but it isn't me. Sin is like ink, it bleeds into a person, coloring, making you someone other than you used to be. And it's indelible. Try as much as you want, you cannot get yourself back.
Words can't pull me back from the edge. Neither can daylight. This isn't something to get over, it is an atmosphere I need to learn to breathe. Grow gills for transgression, take it into my lungs with every gasp.
It is a startling thing. I wonder who this person is, going through the motions of my life. I want to take her hand.
And then I want to push her, hard, off a cliff.
Patrick finds himself peeling off layers of clothing as he walks through the streets of Belle Chasse, Louisiana, past wrought-iron gates and ivy-trellised courtyards. Christmas looks wrong in this climate; the decorations seem to be sweating in the humid heat. He wonders how a Louisiana boy like Glen Szyszynski ever survived so far north.
