Chapter Seven

Joe opened his eyes and sat up. He ran his fingers through his hair, taking in the cab of the truck, the rain pattering against the windshield, and Brent slumped against the passenger door, asleep. He stared at him a long time, memorizing every feature: rumpled blond hair, long nose, wide mouth, determined chin. His hands had the soft flesh of someone who did no harder work than tapping a keyboard and handing business cards to clients. Joe examined his own thick, muscular hands for comparison, noting their calluses, stains and dry seared patches from daily contact with wood and tools. He looked back at Brent, and his brows knitted in bewilderment. Then he faced forward in the seat and turned the key in the ignition.

Brent stirred at the sensation of movement as the truck moved onto the highway and picked up speed. "I was dreaming we were already there."

"Not by a long shot."

Brent looked outside at the rain falling in small soft drops. "Maybe it'll stay like this the rest of the way to St. Argent."

"Maybe."

The two men sat in silence for a couple of miles. Finally Brent turned in his seat. "Look. I know this isn't the best time for it, but I owe you an apology."

"Let's not bring that up. I don't want to hear it."

"But--"

"But what?" Joe refused to turn his gaze from the road. "I don't want to deal with that right now. There's no amount of 'sorry' that can fix what you did. All it would do is make you feel better. Wouldn't do a damn thing for me."

"I was just thinking--"

Joe shook his head. "For someone with as many fancy degrees as you have, you aren't very bright, are you? I said I didn't want to hear it, and here you are, still trying to tell me."

"Fine." Brent folded his arms across his chest and pretended to watch the dark vegetation speeding past his window.

After a few minutes Joe spoke again. "If you really feel like you've got to unburden yourself about something, why don't you tell me what it is Elise saw in you, because to be quite honest, I can't figure it out."

Brent sat up straight. "I don't know. What kind of question is that?"

"You're so full of shit. You say you've been her friend all these years and know her mind so well, but you can't tell me what she saw in you?"

"Maybe we understand each other. Or maybe it was just nostalgia. Shared history, you know."

"Nostalgia isn't enough to make a woman cheat on her husband. She was obviously attracted to you. Why?"

Brent sighed. "Why is any woman attracted to any man?"

"Don't try to weasel out of this. Just answer the question."

Brent's voice took on an edge. "I'm telling you the truth. Lord knows we had opportunities in college, but nothing ever happened. It wasn't like I wasn’t interested, but it seemed like she always had something going on with someone else. I thought if anything was going to happen between us, it would've happened then. It didn't, though. That's why it was easy for me to go away for grad school. I might've stayed if I thought she cared, but we were just good friends and that's as far as it ever went."

"Until you gave her the job at Troy."

"Yes."

"What was different then?"

"I don’t know. We were older, I guess."

"And you had never come on to her before then."

"Well, yes, of course. But that doesn't mean anything."

"So what made it different this time?" Joe demanded. "Was it because she was off limits? Did that make it more attractive?"

Brent slammed his fist against the door. "I'm telling you nothing was different! Nothing and everything. Hell, I don't know. It's not a forbidden fruit kind of thing, though. I'm no saint, but I'm a little better than that. I don't think that was her motivation, either."

"Then if you were so damn attracted to her before, why did you wait until you're each married to someone else to go looking her up?"

"Look her up?" Brent asked. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean tracking her down and offering her a job once you found out she was living in the same town."

"Is that what she told you?" Brent didn't wait for Joe's curt nod. "We kept in touch after school, sure, just like we kept in touch with a lot of our friends. We stayed in contact even after you two got married, but we were hardly close. We each made sure the other had an up-to-date email address, but that was really all there was." He looked out the window. "Then one day I got a call from her. She said you two had moved to Troy, she was bored, could we all maybe get together so she'd feel like she had at least one friend in town. I said sure. Then Elise mentioned she had been getting into computers, and since I was short on graphics designers I invited her for an interview. She was good, I was short-staffed, so I made her an offer."

"I'll say you did. How convenient for you."

"Yes, it was." Brent said, ignoring Joe's sarcasm. "I had a couple of really hot clients I needed to close with, but I'd lost my best designer. Elise may have been a novice, but she was damn good and helped me out of a bind. She helped my job, and in a funny way helped my marriage, too."

"By being your play-toy? You sound like husband of the year material to me."

"That's not what I meant, and that's not all she was."

"You were sleeping with her, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Not planning to leave your wife?"

"Things weren't great between us," Brent said reluctantly, "But no." He shrugged. "Elise kind of took some of the pressure off that situation. Without her, I'd probably be divorced by now."

"So it was some kind of twisted marriage therapy. That's really nice."

Brent's cheeks and ears burned faintly pink. "I knew you wouldn't get it, but this was something else, something older...something from before you came along. It's a feeling that has nothing to do with marriage. Don't you understand? Some loyalties go deeper than what any preacher or piece of paper can say."

"Like you'd know anything about loyalty," Joe muttered.

"Maybe it's not a kind of loyalty that would make any sense to you, but that's what it is."

"Loyalty to your dick, more like."

"Oh, for Christ's sake." Brent stared with unseeing eyes at the passing strip malls and gas stations of the city's outskirts.

The men drove on in silence for several minutes with only the drone of the engine and the sizzle of the tires on the wet pavement for accompaniment. A downtown of sparkling towers appeared through the mist like a dream of a city, the spires and edges of the soaring glass structures picked out in blue and green neon with blinking red lights. "Got that map?" Joe asked.

Brent fumbled in his coat pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. He smoothed it and held it up to the light of the passing streetlights. "Looks like you'll want to exit Ilion," he said. "Go west until you get to Del Mar Parkway. From Del Mar you'll turn left onto Isla, and Lotus should be a few blocks down."

Joe pondered this information. "Ilion can be a bitch but I guess this time of night, with no traffic, whatever is simplest is best." He watched the exit signs speed by. "So you feel pretty sure we can just show up at this Sylvia girl's place?"

Brent shrugged. "We haven't got much choice."

"I just don't want to piss her off. She's the only lead we've got."

"We won't piss her off. No more than anything else does, at least. Elise probably told her that you or I would be looking for her, though. She might have told her to try and throw us off track."

Joe chewed on his lower lip. "Have you thought about a Plan B?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know. If Elise isn't there, or if Sylvia doesn't know what we're talking about. What if we get to this address and there isn't anyone there at all?"

Brent shrugged. "We'll go to a motel, I guess. Get some sleep. Figure it out in the morning."

"Not much of a plan."

"Have you got any better ideas?"

"I guess not. I don't like it, though."

Brent sighed. "Neither do I. Hopefully Elise will be there, though, and that'll be the end of it."

"It better be." Joe set his blinker and checked his mirrors before moving into the exit lane for Ilion Boulevard. "I don't know if I can stand another day with you."