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6/17.
When he plays back the messages he can hear the relief in both their voices at getting his voicemail. Maisie sounds too bright, too eager, only a little brittle; nothing in the content of her message could be found outside the most generic greeting card. (He taught her how to cast a line, how to reel in a catch; he used to put barrettes in her hair, badly, on mornings when Maggie worked graveyard. Helped her arrange her crayons in order of color just the way she liked them. He wonders if she remembers any of that.)
Audrey’s voice is different than her sister’s--raw like it always was, stripped-down, reticent and guarded but bullshit-free. “Mom says you’re back home now and that the doctors say you’re doing well.” A telling silence follows, as if to say: I won’t say whether I think that’s a good thing or not; a general acknowledgement of your existence is all you get. Talking to her--even when she was a child--was always a little like talking to Rust.
He feels a twinge of regret at seeing the missed calls, but it’s probably for the best--he’s not sure any of them are quite ready for a real conversation yet. He’d had his phone off all day, sitting at Rust’s bedside, teasing him about his inability to play cards in hopes of annoying that horrible, haunted expression out of his eyes. Marty leaves at one point to find more coffee and comes face-to-face with a huge display of brightly colored “Happy Father’s Day” balloons in the hallway, tethered to some candy-striper’s cart and waiting to be wheeled into one of the nearby rooms. He nudges it out of the way with his foot before Rust can see the balloons.
7/04.
“Maybe we should have a cookout.”
Rust turns a stoned, glassy-eyed stare in Marty’s direction and settles somewhere in the general vicinity of his face. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
He’s got a mild fever. At least it was mild an hour ago, when Marty called Maggie to ask for advice. What he got was a ten-minute-long lecture on all the horrible potential consequences of taking Rust out of his doctor’s care, graphically recounted tales of infections and pus and ripped stitches (“I was a homicide detective for twenty years,” he finally said, “don’t know what you think you’ll accomplish trying to gross me out”), and then a warning that if his fever got any higher he would need to be taken back to the hospital. He’s not dumb enough to tell Rust that, but then again Rust isn’t dumb either, so when he hung up the phone and aimed the thermometer for Rust’s face again, he wrenched it from his grasp and threw it against the wall hard enough to crack the plastic.
So now he just watches him closely (“quit fuckin’ eyeballin’ me, Marty”), taking in the sheen of sweat on his brow, the almost imperceptible shivering, the thousand-yard stare that could be fever or could be the painkillers or could just be, well, Rust being weird.
“No, I’m serious,” he says, trying to keep a straight face. “Celebrate in style. Burgers. Steaks. Corn on the cob with lots of butter.” There’s no response, so he moves in for the kill. “That shit Maggie’s mom brought to the Labor Day picnic that one year, you remember? The thing made out of whipped cream and Jello. The pink thing. You liked it, right?” He still remembers Rust standing at the edge of the yard, smoking and eying the maraschino-cherry-covered confection in alarm, muttering something about eldritch abomination and commodified processed Americana.
“I’m gonna puke,” Rust replies, “and when I do, I’m aiming for your ugly-ass house slippers.”
“Right. Chicken noodle soup it is, then.”
“Not hungry.”
“I didn’t fuckin’ ask if you were.”
He heats the soup in the microwave--he’d bought a whole case, as well as the thermometer and a first-aid kit and all of Rust’s prescriptions, the previous evening--and is carrying the steaming bowl over to the couch when he hears bang, pop-pop, bang and jumps and nearly spills the whole goddamn thing.
“Just fireworks,” Rust says, reaching for the bowl. “No one’s shootin’ at us.”
“No. I mean, it just--caught me off guard--damn kids, ain’t even dark out yet--”
“It’s okay, Marty,” he says, only a little slurred. “Anything was gonna kill us, woulda done it by now.”
8/21.
Marty’s cellphone phone stays silent all day as they read case files, examine maps, scour databases. He tries not to glance over it too often, look to see if he accidentally turned the ringer off, check for missed calls. Rust doesn’t complain when Marty suggests Arby’s for lunch (“if there is a God,” he usually says, “he never meant for potatoes to be that shape”), but other than that he gives no indication that today is any different than any other day.
They get home about six and Rust steps out on the porch for a smoke while Marty boils the spaghetti noodles. Through the steam he can see Rust bent over his phone, and--is he?--motherfucker’s texting. It’s a near-impossibility to get Rust to even turn his phone on (“who would I call? I don’t know anybody but you and you’re always fucking here”), never mind text. He’ll ask him as soon as he comes back in, Marty thinks, but his own phone is ringing now--Audrey, calling to wish him a happy birthday. Maisie calls about five minutes later.
It’s ten o’clock and Rust is in the shower when Marty picks up his phone and starts scrolling through the sent messages, feeling only a little guilty. He’s a professional snoop, after all. There’s only some dozen texts, most of them to Marty, terse and to the point: Hwy 92. Milk and eggs. Manila folder, top drawer. 10 minutes. Two or three that simply read stop texting me, motherfucker.
But there’s two identical ones at the very bottom, area codes 504 and 318. Call your dad.
11/22.
Maggie calls at the eleventh hour with an invitation to dinner at the Sawyer household. “You know Rust is staying with me now, right?” he says. “It cool if he tags along?”
He knows it’s risky; his partner has always been a bit of a loose cannon in any social situation, and these days it’s like he’s struggling to rejoin the human race. And Marty doesn’t know whether he’d get along with Maggie’s husband--some kind of corporate bigwig, the kind of guy Rust seems to get off on tormenting.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says evenly, because she remembers, of course she does. She’s the one who set up all of those disastrous double dates.
“Mags, I can’t just leave the guy here alone on Thanksgiving--”
“Look,” she says, and the old impatience is back in her voice. “I had a hell of a time convincing Ted as it is. Don’t push it, Marty.”
It doesn’t exactly make him feel optimistic about the event, but he doesn’t want to pass up the chance to see the girls. “This don’t feel right,” he calls down the hallway as he pulls his dress shoes and best sportcoat out of the back of the closet. “You being here all by yourself.”
He hears a quiet rustle from the living room as Rust knocks ash over the sill of the open window and turns the page of his copy of L’etranger. “Don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he calls back.
He’s feeling a little dizzy and headachy when he goes to bed but chalks it up to nerves. When he wakes the next morning, however, he’s sweating and nauseated. Rust feigns unconcern, but he puts his cigarette out before settling by Marty’s bedside. He presses the backs of two fingers against Marty’s forehead. “You got a low fever.”
“Maybe you should take my temperature,” he growls. “Oh, wait, some sonofabitch busted the thermometer.”
“It’s the flu.” Rust walks to the kitchen, returns with a glass of orange juice, and sets it by the bed.
“Thanks, Dr. Cohle. What the fuck you know about it?”
“You think my pop hauled my ass to a doctor every time I got the sniffles? I know what the goddamn flu looks like. Anyway, it’s going around. That’s why that paralegal cancelled yesterday.”
“Well, I ain’t got the flu. What I’ve got’s a 4 p.m. dinner date in Shreveport.” He starts to climb out of bed, but the world tilts and swims and he falls back against the pillows.
“You're not going anywhere.”
“The girls--”
“--will understand. You go back to sleep. I’ll bring you some of that chicken noodle soup in a while, I think there’s still a few cans left.” He heads toward the door, pulling a cigarette out of the pack.
“Rust?”
“Hmmm?”
“You reckon this is one of those psycho things? Psychokinetic?”
“Psychosomatic, Marty.”
“Yeah. Like I was so nervous I made myself sick.”
“I doubt it,” Rust says. “You lack the necessary concentrated power of will. Now drink your goddamn orange juice.”
1/03.
Marty wakes at three on the dot, unblinking, alert. He stares at the ceiling for half an hour before giving up and getting out of bed, skin tingling with the winter-morning chill that’s somehow crept indoors. Insulation in this place isn’t worth a shit. Maybe he should drink some warm milk, he thinks--he’s never actually tried it, it always sounded kinda gross, but it must be a cliche for a reason, right?
Only he never makes it to the kitchen, because when he reaches the living room he realizes Rust is gone.
He feels his stomach drop to his feet, and it feels like lights and sirens and hearing the paramedics say we’re losing him, feels like waking up in the hospital and no one looking him in the eye when he said is he okay, tell me if he’s okay, but there’s no blood and bruises this time. Just an empty couch, intermittently illuminated by the headlights of passing cars streaming through the window; a pillow still dented with the weight of its owner’s head; the blanket, a worn-out patchwork thing pieced together by Marty’s grandmother, kicked carelessly to the floor.
That eases him somewhat. He knows he may wake one morning to find Rust gone, truly gone, but without even being consciously aware of it he is certain that when it happens Rust will leave the bedclothes neatly folded behind him, cigarette ash swept away, as if any remaining trace of himself would be a burden.
He hears the familiar click and ssssss of a lighter nearby and feels his heartbeat slow and the breath return to his lungs. He finds Rust on the porch, bare feet braced up against the railing, cigarette butts mounting in a small pile beside him like a burial mound.
“You’ll catch your death out here.”
Smoke billows out of his mouth, long and slow, before he answers. “It’s forty degrees, Marty. I grew up in Alaska.”
“But you hate the cold.”
“Yeah, I hate it. Just asking you to have some fucking perspective, is all.”
He settles down next to him, wincing at the shock of cold wood against the thin fabric of his sweatpants. In the dim light of a nearby streetlamp Rust is all pale angles and tendrils of hair half-hiding his face, his joints held just a little too stiffly like he’s got to concentrate to keep himself in one piece. Marty reckons he’s been waiting for this; hell, maybe it’s why he couldn’t sleep, either. He supposes he’d hoped that whatever awful internal clock had been ticking inside Rust had somehow wound itself down in the last ten years, but even so he knew better. It’s January the third, and the more shit changes, the more it doesn’t fucking change at all.
He used to think it was some residual Christmas shit--his partner isn’t exactly a goodwill to men type. Or maybe just New Year’s; all that resolution crap is enough to depress anybody, and it makes Rust particular insufferable: “gyms and diet coaches and professional organizers selling the illusion of regeneration, as if the passing of another year is a sign of newness and not of inevitable decay.” But looking for patterns is what Marty does, and over the years the pattern revealed itself. Things would start to get a little tense that last week of December, reach a boiling point on the third: ‘95, that fucked-up speech in the car about how the human race should let itself go extinct; ‘97, the year he punched Geraci in the face during a morning briefing, apropos of nothing; ‘99, the year he said nothing, nothing, all fucking day, responding to everything Marty said with inarticulate grunts. In 2002--only a couple months before the end--Laurie called, frantic, Rust nowhere to be found. Do you think he’s drinking again, she said, and Marty said no, honey, it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just January third. What the hell does that mean, she asked, and he didn’t have a good answer. But then on the fourth everything would be fine again--better than fine, in fact. Rust always a little quieter, looking a little wrung-out, but with a sort of calm settling around him like he’d let out a breath he’d been holding too long. Every year Marty would think next year, next year I’m gonna ask him what the hell this is all about, but he never did.
“Wasn’t expecting this quite yet,” he says. “Only been the third for a few hours now.”
Rust’s eyes, which have been focused on the tip of his cigarette, lift in surprise. “How did you know?”
“I don’t know shit, except that you have some kind of fuckin’ psychotic event the same day every year. Like that goddamn thing in Yellowstone that blows a gasket every so often, like clockwork.”
“Old Faithful.”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Only it’s bullshit instead of steam.”
Rust’s cheeks look hollow, his eyes like two deep pits with monsters dancing at the bottom, but Marty sees a ghost of upward movement at the corners of his mouth--too fleeting and fragile to pass for a smile. But it’s enough.
They sit like that awhile, looking up at what sky is visible between rooftops. Marty wishes there were stars out, but they’re too close to the city to see them. Just clouds of chill, damp humidity blowing slowly across the blue-blackness. The occasional car alarm or barking dog.
“It’s her birthday,” Rust says after a very long time, and Marty doesn’t answer because he knows any platitude he could offer would only be resented and summarily ignored. Just reaches out and lays his hand over Rust’s wrist, near where knife scar meets the edges of a skeletal vulture. He figures both of them are made up of more wounded parts than whole ones, by this point.
“C’mon back inside,” he says. “My fuckin’ legs are falling asleep out here.” He gets to his feet slowly, hearing his knees creak in protest.
“I’m fine out here.”
“Yeah, you’re fine. You’ll be just as fine in there on the couch. Maybe there’s something good on TV.” He grabs Rust’s hand and hauls him to his feet, ignoring his aggrieved sigh.
“You ever tried warm milk?” he asks as he pushes Rust through the door.
“Yeah. My pop used to make me drink that shit when I was little and woke up from nightmares. It’s fuckin’ disgusting.”
Marty figures they’re not going back to sleep anyway. He makes coffee instead.
5/01.
He gets home and there’s a single bottle of his favorite brand sitting on the shelf of the mostly empty refrigerator, adorned with a yellow ribbon. Rust isn’t drinking anymore, and he talked a lot of shit about Marty’s taste in beer back when he was, so he knows it’s not Rust’s.
“What’s this?” he asks, walking into the living room holding the beer. Rust is sitting in the middle of the floor with their latest case files spread out all around him. Marty’s sick of tripping over piles of paperwork every time he walks through, but it’s a compromise. Keeps Rust from stapling shit to the walls.
“Been a year,” Rust says.
“Since what?”
“You know what.”
“Oh, since I spent all day at the station getting grilled about you and your ‘process,’ and then your psycho ass followed me down the road in your piece-of-shit truck, honking the horn like a crazy person, dragging me into your serial killer drama? A year since that?”
“You bought me a beer, figured I owed you one. Don’t start carrying on at me like the last time I returned a favor.” He lowers his voice mockingly. “‘Don’t ever buy another man’s beer. I like buyin’ my own beer.’”
Marty flips him off--the gesture is second nature by now--and then pulls the ribbon off the neck of the bottle and examines the small ink squiggles Rust has added. “Spirals and black stars. You gotta sick sense of humor, man.”
“Part of my charm.”
“And pick this shit up when you’re done.” He makes his way down the hall to the room in the back where he works on his fishing lures.
Rust’s voice trails after him. “Yes sir, Detective Sergeant, sir.”
Marty cracks the beer open and takes a long swallow, lets out a contented sigh.