The Comfort of Black Read online

  Soon after her mother’s death, eighteen-year-old Hannah and fifteen-year-old Justine took the modest insurance payout and left Kansas for Seattle, trading in a small town for a big one. The following four years changed her in ways she never imagined, and she stayed there after graduating, using an English degree to keep her dream of being a writer alive while she made money working the front desk of a four-star hotel in downtown Seattle.

  Hello, Hannah.

  Dallin had said her name when he checked in that day, eight years ago. She had looked up from behind the counter and saw him. Crooked smile, moppy black hair, Black Lab energy barely restrained. She had been thrown off by his use of her name before remembering the small gold name tag pinned to her uniform. He had flown in from Boston, he told her. A meeting with potential investors for an idea he had, something he started working on his senior year at M.I.T. If they funded him he’d be moving out here, to Seattle. Sometimes a guest would tell their life story during check-in, but Dallin’s was the first to which she had truly listened. He compelled her in that indefinable way that couldn’t just be ascribed to purely physical attraction.

  Tonight, Hannah lowered her hand to her husband’s chest, brushing through the thin layer of hair with her fingertips, feeling his skin cooling, the softness associated with drying sweat. She thought about how he had changed in those eight years. He had grown heavier, more muscular, due to a love affair with exercise he’d begun four years ago. At his peak physical shape, his chest and arms had grown larger, his stomach muscles more defined. Six days a week. That was his exercise routine, or at least used to be. His rapid success in the world of Internet security had eaten at this aspect of him as well. The last year he’d had many more early mornings at the office rather than the gym. He’d lost some of that muscle and his frame was thinner and more angular than ever before. Not quite skinny, but close.

  The initial seed funding had been just a stepping-stone to get him started out in Seattle. Hannah remembered when he had come back after his first trip. Stayed at her hotel again. He had walked up to the front desk and said he’d just gotten a check for two million dollars and he was going to take her out to dinner.

  That had been a really good dinner.

  She had used her day off to help him look for an apartment. He kissed her that day for the first time, kissed her in the empty walk-in closet of a loft apartment downtown, a stolen moment while the rental agent took a phone call in the hallway. She didn’t know how to react, so she just dissolved into his lips, breathing him in, feeling him bite softly on her lower lip. She hadn’t seen it coming, which was often the best kind of kiss there was.

  After their first kiss ended, Dallin had simply looked her in the eyes and said, “I’m going to be wildly successful, and I want you to enjoy it all with me.” It seemed an almost obnoxious statement, but to Hannah it wasn’t. He was telling the truth. And she wanted him. She wanted it all. She had replied with one word.

  Yes.

  A week later they made love in that closet.

  The distant memory made her smile tonight as Hannah stroked her husband’s chest and looked down on his face. He looked back with half-open lids.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The words were so soft she wasn’t certain what he’d said.

  “What?” she whispered. Seconds passed.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Sorry for what?”

  Silence. His breathing slowed and his eyes were closed. Dallin was either asleep or didn’t want to answer. Hannah didn’t press it. He had been saying sorry a lot lately.

  Sorry for being gone so much.

  Sorry for long silences and touchless nights.

  Sorry for letting you drink so much.

  Sorry for not being the husband you need me to be.

  Sorry for not giving you a baby yet.

  Whatever he was sorry for tonight, Hannah decided she would accept it without explanation. She wanted to stay in a good mood. A hopeful mood. A Dallin-of-two-years-ago mood. It was strange, she thought, the power of transient happiness. The feeling of clinging to a brief moment of peace and assuming the rest of her life could possibly feel the same way. Such feelings gave people hope, Hannah thought. They also made the inevitable fall more horrifying.

  Minutes later he was asleep, his breathing steady and deep. Hannah got up to use the bathroom. Zoo was there, paws on the toilet seat, leaning in for a drink. The dog pulled away at the sight of her and gave Hannah his famous Blue Steel thousand-yard stare, a look that had earned him the name after the character from the movie Zoolander. Neither a happy nor an aggressive look, Zoo’s gaze was simply vacant, distant, and posed, as if the dog were frozen in place by a fashion photographer’s directive. Hannah reached down and stroked Zoo’s neck, which broke the stare into the closest thing to a smile the dog could give. Hannah had wanted a large dog, but it just wasn’t practical in a condo, even a condo of this size. In short time she discovered a good mid-size dog was perfect, especially when the dog was a mutt—the animal shelter had guessed some kind of Airedale and Jack Russell mix. Zoo could be perfectly cast as a happy-go-lucky stray from the 1920s.

  She returned to bed and Zoo followed. Hannah placed her head on Dallin’s bare shoulder as Zoo leapt to the foot of the bed, circled three times, and collapsed in a tight ball near her feet. As Hannah listened to the steady rhythm of her husband’s breaths, her mind took her to thoughts of a baby, wondering if tonight was the night she’d become pregnant. She counted the months in her head. August. It would be an August baby. She would go through the heat of the summer, though that was never much of a problem in Seattle anyway. She would start showing in, what, March? With her slight frame it might even be sooner, and she couldn’t wait until it was obvious, where others, strangers even, would remark on it, asking her when she was due. Was it a boy or girl? Have you picked out names yet? As tedious as her friends told her all the questions were, Hannah knew she would never tire of them. Ask away.

  Sudden thoughts pierced her brain like a bullet, shattering and dispersing all the good thoughts she clung to about having a baby:

  What if your baby turns out like Billy, Hannah? What are you going to do then? You going to try to set your own baby on fire?

  She tried to force the thoughts aside and focus on happy ones instead, of shopping for baby clothes and preparing a nursery. A baby shower. Holding her baby for the first time against her chest, feeling the tiny mouth take her nipple, needing her. As she lost herself in the convoy of thoughts that would take her until she fell asleep, she almost imagined it was Dallin’s voice she was hearing. But it wasn’t her imagination.

  He had said something.

  “What?” she asked him. She raised her head and looked at his outline in the silky moon- and city-light that filtered into the room through sheer, spilling drapes. She wondered if he had woken to explain his earlier apology.

  He mumbled, twitched. His left arm lifted a few inches off the mattress and then fell. Then his right. He repeated a few words, which sounded like yeah, but she couldn’t be certain.

  He wasn’t talking to her. He was having a dream. His twitching became more animated, and Hannah wondered if she should wake him.

  Dallin had never spoken in his sleep before.

  It certainly doesn’t seem like a nightmare, she thought. He doesn’t seem scared.

  “You like that, don’t you, baby?” The words, mumbled through a state of suppressed consciousness, surprised Hannah. It sounded like a sex dream. Was he reliving the past hour, or was she just being naive? She liked to think it was her face he was seeing. She liked to think he wanted her even in his sleep, and though she shouldn’t grow jealous of his dreams, she worked hard to convince herself he was thinking of her and no one else. Hannah felt herself turned on by it. Maybe he was growing hard in his sleep.

  She reached under the sheets to find out and discovered he wasn’t. Maybe she would crawl under the sheets and go down on him, making him hard. Then she
would mount him, and he would wake up to find his dream coming true. How amazing would that feel, she wondered, to dream about fucking your wife and to wake up and that actually be happening?

  And he would come inside her again. Another chance.

  As she slipped off her thong and pulled back the sheets to put her mouth on him, Dallin’s limbs shook more violently. He was no longer twitching, his whole body seemed in a spasm. Hannah placed her hand on his chest, as if her touch could calm the shaking body. But Dallin came to life in his sleep, his arms suddenly flailing, his fists clenching, his head snapping from side to side.

  Hannah lifted her hand and leaned away from him.

  “Baby?” she said. “Dallin, are you okay? Are you awake?”

  Dallin’s voice was clear but quiet, as if he was whispering into a lover’s ear.

  “Yeah, you like that, bitch? You like my cock and my knife? That feel good, cunt? I want you to tell me what it’s like to bleed out. Tell me everything.”

  Hannah stared into the darkness, wanting to believe she only imagined what she’d just heard. He didn’t just say that. He couldn’t have.

  “Dallin?” she said. “Dallin?” Her voice was fearful, a person asking a ghost to make his presence known. She said his name one last time, but did not touch him again.

  Dallin was silent until, about a minute later, he began to softly snore.

  Hannah pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and stared away from Dallin and out the window, over Puget Sound, as her husband’s words tumbled over and over in her mind without stopping.

  The moon climbed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DAY 2

  “So, tell me what’s going on?”

  Hannah looked at her therapist for a moment before shifting her gaze downward. Looking away was always the easiest option. Hannah sat in the same oversized leather chair she had been sitting in once a week for four years. It felt the same, smelled the same, as it always did and always would. There was usually comfort here in the office of Dr. Madeline Britel, but today Hannah didn’t feel it. She shifted in her seat, trying to find support.

  “I…I’m not sure what to say. Something happened yesterday.”

  Hannah had tossed fitfully in bed last night, finally allowing herself an Ambien and a glass of wine when she hadn’t fallen asleep by one in the morning. She woke up after nine. Dallin had already left for work, and a small blue Post-it note was on top of his pillow. I love you! Hannah normally kept these notes. This one she threw away, but not out of anger. She just had a strong sense of not wanting to keep it.

  Hannah was both eager and afraid to tell Dr. Britel about what Dallin had said in his sleep. Not telling her wasn’t really an option. What was the point of coming here if she held back what had happened? But the fear existed she was making far too much of this. It was a dream, after all. Did she not have her own dreams of violence, rage, and fear, dreams fueled by the memories of her father, who, after all, was really the reason she came to therapy to begin with?

  Dr. Britel would tell her it was nothing to worry about. Then it would all be better again.

  “What happened?”

  Hannah sucked in a breath and then told her. Just as she had rehearsed it in her mind. Word for word, though she softened her voice when she said cunt. It took maybe two minutes to relate the story. When she finished, Hannah laced her fingers together tightly and looked down at her wedding ring.

  “I see,” Dr. Britel said, her expression impressively unchanged. “What do you think that means?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t you? Doesn’t it make you think something?”

  Hannah anticipated the question. Many of the arrows in a therapist’s quiver were such questions.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe…maybe it makes me think there’s something about him I don’t know.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know. Why would he say that?”

  “Do you have dreams that are incongruous with your character?”

  “Of course I do. I mean…you know I do.”

  “Have you ever had a dream you were hurting someone?”

  Hannah felt anger creeping over her. “You know the answer to that as well,” Hannah said.

  “Your dreams about Billy.” The doctor leaned forward just a few extra degrees over her crossed legs. “But those dreams are just you playing out what happened in reality. And in reality, you never actually hurt him.”

  “I tried to kill him.”

  It felt good to say aloud. Dr. Britel was the only living person outside of Dallin, Hannah’s sister, and Billy himself who knew the full details of what had really happened that night. Hannah didn’t tell the police, nor had Billy.

  “But do you ever dream you succeeded in killing him? Or even hurting him?”

  This is getting off point, Hannah thought. She wanted the doctor to tell her something clearly was wrong with Dallin. She wanted to feel justified anger at her husband, because for Hannah getting angry was as satisfying as scratching a deep itch. Her anger was one of the reasons she came to Dr. Britel in the first place, and now Hannah was simmering at her own therapist. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I’m sure I do.”

  “Does that make you a murderer?”

  “That’s different. This isn’t about Billy.”

  Dr. Britel shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, an indication she was going to make a statement rather than ask a question. Statements were rare.

  “Your concern is understandable. You lived under the rage of your father for years, and the action you took…almost took…was a stand against a monster. So it makes sense something like what happened last night triggered your feelings of insecurity, fear. Dread, even. But I think what we need to explore is not what Dallin said. You’re smart, Hannah. You know dreams can be meaningless, at least in context of a person’s true nature. Our subconscious rules our nights, but that doesn’t define us as a person. If he had a dream about, say, sleeping with his own mother, I’m sure you wouldn’t fear that was actually happening.”

  “God, of course not.”

  “So I wonder if there’s something about your relationship—your relationship with Dallin, and not your father—causing you to pay particular attention to what happened last night.”

  Hannah sat up a bit more. “Are you saying that, in a healthy marriage, a person shouldn’t question or be concerned about their spouse having a rape-murder fantasy dream?”

  Dr. Britel left the question unanswered.

  “How’s the drinking?” she asked, instead.

  Hannah bristled, hated having to feel shame at the question. Sometimes she wished she drank more than she did so she could just call herself an alcoholic and get on with her life, rather than seesaw between good and bad nights, toeing the line between buzz-chasing and self-medicating.

  “I stopped like I told you. For the pregnancy. But I had a glass of wine last night. Late. I needed it to sleep.” She paused and scratched her arm. “Maybe two glasses.”

  “How’s the anger?” the therapist asked.

  “Fine,” Hannah said.

  “It’s okay to be angry, Hannah. You and I have discussed this many times. But you have to channel it. Find a healthy target for it. You grew up around rage and anger. It’s understandable.”

  “This isn’t about my anger,” Hannah said. “It’s about my husband fantasizing about raping and killing someone. Why does everything have to be about my fucking anger issues?”

  Dr. Britel stared at her for a moment to let the irony sink in before speaking.

  “You’ve used the word ‘mysterious’ to describe Dallin in several of our sessions, since we first started. That’s not a word commonly used by a spouse to describe the other. Most couples would say their marriages contain very little mystery. Spouses often think they know everything about each other, whether that’s the actual case or not.”

  Hannah was beginning to regret bringing the to
pic up. She felt her weight shifting, her back now pressing harder against the chair, assuming a retreating, defensive position. “I always meant that in a good way,” she said. “Mostly about his work. He’s quiet about it. He’s quiet in general. I’ve always been attracted to that quality in him.”

  “But mystery can create doubt.”

  “Are you asking me if I trust my husband?”

  “Haven’t you had questions about him before?”

  Hannah paused, digested the question, and thought about the best way to respond.

  “I’m getting the witness-stand feeling here.”

  “I’m not prosecuting you, Hannah. We can move on to another subject if you prefer.”

  That’s right, Hannah. Shove all those doubts aside, just like you always do. Because this isn’t the first time you’ve wondered about him, is it?

  “That was different,” Hannah finally said. “I questioned why he had a second phone that he hadn’t told me about. It turned out to be another phone for work.”

  “If I recall,” Dr. Britel said, “you found the phone in his jacket pocket. You asked him why he hadn’t told you about it, and he got defensive about it.”

  Defensive. Is that what it was? She remembered Dallin dismissing her question casusally. It’s a work phone. Emergency stuff. I rarely use it. But when she pressed even a little harder, he had angered. Jesus, Hannah, you can look at the phone if you want to. Do I have to give you an inventory of all my office equipment, too?

  “There are two different issues here,” Dr. Britel said. “One is your concern about Dallin’s fidelity.”

  “I’m not concerned about his fidelity.”

  “Forgive me. Let’s just say there might exist some trust issues.”

  Hannah wanted to argue but didn’t.

  “The other issue is the violence. Have there ever been any other situations where he’s done something that seemed…unusual? Aggressive in a physical way?”