Chapter Forty-Three

Brent looked around the cabin. "See a phone anywhere?"

Joe took a few tentative steps toward the living room. "No."

"There must be one," Brent said, heading toward the back of the house. "What kind of house doesn't have a phone?"

"This one, it looks like.”

Brent reappeared from the bedroom, shaking his head in frustration. "Of all the places we could've ended up, of course we'd find ourselves in a house without a land line." He stomped back into the main room. "What kind of people live without a phone?"

"You yourself said you didn't think anyone lived here. They probably just use their cell."

Brent conceded the point. "Maybe they get better reception out here when it's not raining." He gave a resigned shrug and began taking off his clothes.

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm going to wring these out in the kitchen sink and see if I can't get them dry. I guess I'll have to use the oven," he added, "since I don't see any evidence that these barbarians have a dryer."

"I thought we weren't going to touch anything except maybe a phone, and now here you are helping yourself to the appliances."

"Am I supposed to just stand here dripping on the floor?" He stepped out of his shoes and bent over to peel off his socks. "Better hope there's a mop around. But I intend to be dry when I leave this house." Wearing only his underwear, he picked up his sopping clothes and headed for the kitchen. Joe stared after him a moment, then stripped down to his boxer shorts and followed.

Brent turned on the oven and placed three wooden chairs in a semicircle in front of it. He wrung out his clothing piece by piece and draped them over the chair backs.

"Leave one for me," Joe said, bringing his clothes over to the sink.

"They ought to dry pretty fast," Brent said, smoothing his shirt over the back of a chair. "They'll probably look like crap once they're dry, but they looked like crap wet, so at least we won't be any worse off."

"Speak for yourself." Joe unceremoniously draped his jeans over a chair and returned to the sink to wring out his flannel shirt. "My stuff is strictly wash and wear."

Brent made no comment and stood looking at his clothes drying in the heat blasting from the oven door. "Kind of cold in here.” He wandered into the living room and looked around. "At least they appear to have central heat." He leaned over the box on the wall and fiddled with the dial.

Joe shook his head. "Next thing I know, you'll be moving in."

"I told you," Brent said, flopping down on the sofa, "No one lives here day to day. Don't you think if someone lived here, he'd have the heater turned on?"

"I guess, but this is trespassing and I don’t like it." Joe sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair.

"Breaking and entering, too."

"You would mention that. It was an accident, though. As soon as the rain clears up, I'm calling a tow truck, and the first place I'm going once we're out of the ditch is a hardware store. Maybe I can fix this guy's door before he even knows it's been broken. I think I'd rather do that than just leave the money and hope nobody steals it."

"You mean the first place we're going after it clears is Ursula Docet's. You can drop me off there and come fix this door while I talk to her about Elise."

"Hopefully Elise will still be there and I can pick her up and take her with me."

"Maybe she'd prefer to stay with her friend. If you want, I can stick around and keep an eye on her so she doesn't run off again."

"You think I'm going to trust the fox in the hen house a second time? When we find her, she's not leaving my sight again."

"What if she wants to?"

"Wants to go off with you, you mean?"

"No, go off on her own."

Joe shook his head. "She doesn't really want that. I know Elise."

"Sometimes I wonder if you really do. I've been hanging around you for four days now listening to you talk about her, and not hearing much that I recognize as Elise at all. She sounds more like your fantasy of a woman than a real person." Brent stood and looked around the room. "I'm freezing. There must be some blankets or something around here. You want one?"

"I might as well, since we're helping ourselves to everything else. Why don't we check the fridge and see if there's a few beers while we're at it?"

"Hey, that's a good idea."

"I was not being serious."

"Too bad. I could use a drink about now." Brent disappeared into the back room.

Joe sat for a minute, listening to the sound of rustling from the next room. "Oh, what the fuck," he muttered. He got to his feet and wandered into the kitchen, but found the refrigerator distressingly empty. He searched the cabinets next, finding dusty skillets, a jar of questionable peanuts and a few old plastic containers. Finally, though, he came upon something that caught his interest. He reached into the dark of the cabinet and pulled out an unopened bottle of Southern Comfort and a pair of dusty glasses.

He was setting everything on the coffee table when Brent reappeared with a couple of wool army blankets. "You found something. Great!" He tossed Joe a blanket and wrapped the other around himself, then made a face. "It's going to take a lot of that stuff to make me not notice how scratchy and smelly this thing is."

"Well, I'm sure you'll warm up soon enough and won't need it any more." Joe wrapped himself in his blanket and sat down before reaching for the bottle and pouring them each a glass.

They sat in silence for several minutes, hunched over their glasses like old men. Finally Joe spoke. "I've been thinking about what you said. I wouldn't say I idealize Elise."

"Maybe you don't think so," Brent said, "But it must be pretty tough trying to live up to all those statues."

"I don't appreciate you suggesting I treat her like an object." Joe glared. "It seems like every time I get to thinking you might be all right, you go and make some kind of asshole remark."

"I'm not trying to be an asshole," Brent said, picking up his drink again. "You've been better to Elise than I could've been. But if you knew her so well, she could've never gotten away with what she did."

Joe returned to his drink. "I'd hardly say you're some kind of expert on her character. She fooled you, too."

"I know." He tossed back the remainder of his whiskey and reached for the bottle. "We screwed up. Who knows how many other ways she might've been deceiving us? I had a friend the other night hinting there might've been another guy in the picture."

Joe shook his head. "Impossible, and that's not me saying she wouldn't have. Hell, I have no idea any more what she may or may not be capable of." He took a long sip of his whiskey, wincing at the taste as he gulped it down. "I do know, though, that she wouldn't have had the time."

"Fair enough." Brent settled back on the couch cradling his drink. "I didn't really believe it, anyway. She's a good girl. She just got herself in a bad spot and needed to get away and figure out what to do about it."

"Why didn't she just take a vacation, or something?"

"Without you? You would've known something wasn't right if she went planning a vacation alone. And there's no way in hell you or I would ever have believed her if she said she was going to see family."

Joe snorted. "That's for damn sure. I'd know she'd lost her mind if she wanted to go seeing any of those people."

Brent sighed. "I think this is just her way of starting over. She made a mess of things with you and me both, and wants to start fresh."

"It's just going to backfire on her." Joe was sipping steadily at his drink now. "I don't even care any more whose kid that is. If she doesn't want it, fine. If she wants it, that's fine, too." He reached for the bottle and filled his glass almost to the brim. "I just want to come into the house after working on a sculpture and find the reality of her sleeping in my bed. I want to wake up in the morning and touch the pillow her head was on the night before. I want to have her at my side at gallery openings and at my kitchen table at night, laughing about what idiots are out there in the world and how lucky we are not to have each other, and..." Joe's voice trailed off. He noticed his full glass and sucked down two big gulps. "I just can't believe she doesn't want the same things I do."

Brent stared at the dingy brown carpet. "I think I want those things for you, Joe. You're a good man. Not that I ever doubted it, but I always felt like Elise kind of rushed into things with you. She was young, had dated a few guys who treated her badly, and suddenly you were there, adoring everything about her, so of course she felt like she shouldn't let you get away."

He tossed back the rest of his drink and went into the kitchen to check on the clothes drying in front of the oven. He felt them for dampness, then turned them over to dry the other side. Then he returned to the sofa and refilled his glass. "I guess I've been jealous of you. I've often thought that maybe if I hadn't gone out of state for grad school, it would've been me Elise would've fallen in love with." He sucked down half his whiskey so quickly tiny beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted to see the indentation of her head on a pillow every morning, too? See strands of her hair on a brush, her lipstick on a coffee cup?"

Brent threw off his blanket. "I married a fine woman, but things haven't worked out, maybe because all the time it was Elise's voice I wanted to hear in the morning. It was her hand I wanted on my forehead when I was sick, and it was her life I wanted to be a part of." He sucked hungrily at his whiskey, not even stopping to wipe the rivulets that flowed over the edge of the glass and down his chin. "Damn you, Joe. It was supposed to have been me, not you!"

Joe had been staring at his glass all this time, but now he turned solemn eyes on Brent. "You aren't kidding, are you? You really do love her."

"Yes, dammit!" Brent threw his empty glass on the floor and tried to get to his feet, but the alcohol had gotten the better of his legs and he sat back down. "What did you think this was all about?"

"I don't know," Joe said quietly, sipping the last of his whiskey. He took a few deep breaths. "I think we've got one hell of a problem on our hands, though."

"No we don't. Elise solved the problem for us. Damn her, too."

"You think she really loves us both?" Joe asked quietly.

"Who the hell knows any more? Maybe she doesn't love either one of us."

"No," said Joe, shaking his head. "I don't know if I'd want to go on, knowing these four years had been a lie." He set his empty glass on the coffee table. "Funny how I could've been so happy and not even known it wouldn't last."

"We'll find her as soon as the rain lets up," Brent said. His words were slurring now and he attempted to pick his glass up off the floor. He dropped it twice and when he finally had it in his hand, it was covered in lint and unidentifiable particles which he tried to wipe off with the army blanket, replacing olive green fibers for carpet dust. "I'm not even going to wait for the goddamn tow truck," Brent mumbled, reaching for the Southern Comfort bottle. "I'll walk every step of the way." He poured himself another drink, spilling as much liquor on the table and carpet as he managed to get into his glass.

"That's good stuff," Joe admonished. "What are you wasting it for?" He grabbed the bottle and refilled his own glass. His aim was unsteady, but the liquor managed to go inside the glass without mishap.

Brent drank down a little more whiskey, his eyes glassy now. "We need to do something about those clothes. They're going to burn if we leave them like that."

"Go do something, then." Joe was deeply absorbed in getting his drink down.

Brent tried to stand, but fell back to the sofa. "You do it."

Joe set down his glass and managed to weave his way to the kitchen without running into anything. He reached across the clothes and chairs to turn off the oven, nearly tipping the chair with Brent's shirt into the open oven door. "This is some system you rigged up." Sloppily, he gathered up the clothes and stumbled back to the sofa, throwing everything in a heap between them. "Get dressed."

Brent didn't answer at first. He was leaning against the back of the couch, his head tipped back and his mouth open, snoring. When Joe shook his shoulder, he opened his eyes. "What do you want?"

"Put your clothes on," Joe said. He tried to pull on his jeans as an example, but forgot to put his socks on first, became confused and decided to start with his shirt instead.

Brent attempted to get into his own clothes, but the rain and oven heat had damaged the wool slacks and cashmere sweater, making them tight and puckered. "This isn't going to work," he said, trying to pull the damp sweater over his wrinkled shirt.

Joe managed a lopsided grin. "You look funny."

Brent reached for his drink without embarrassment, having to make every movement with his whole body now because the tight sweater was constricting him. He sucked down his whiskey, threw himself against the couch and sighed. "I don't give a damn anymore."

"You're drunk," Joe said, having figured out how his socks went on. "I can't think what else would make you not care what you look like."

"Maybe some things just don't matter any more."

"Maybe some things never did." Joe had buttoned his jeans and flopped down on the couch beside him. Noticing that there was a tiny bit of liquor left in the bottle, he grabbed it and finished it off.

"Nice of you to share," Brent observed through eyes drooping with alcohol and fatigue.

"You spilled your share on the floor. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah." He waved a hand. "Doesn't matter."

"That's what you were just saying."

"It's true," Brent mumbled. "Nothing matters."

"You sure about that?" Joe asked, grabbing a sofa cushion and fumbling with it. He tried to get comfortable and closed his eyes. "I thought it all mattered to you."

"No," Brent said, barely able to get the words out. "Nothing matters to me at all any more."