The Night Companion
by Jeffrey Greene
Two months out of college and undecided on a career, Tom Hanauer answers an ad in the classifieds seeking a “night companion.” He discovers to his pleasant surprise that he will be more of a hired conversationalist and chess opponent than a caregiver and that his employer stays up all night and sleeps during the day.
As Tom adjusts to this nocturnal existence, he finds that his employer, the lady of the house, is in a kind of cold war with her estranged husband, a disgraced mycologist who, as a result of his ongoing experiments, has forced his wife and children to devise individual strategies to protect themselves. Tom gradually learns the reasons for the strange behavior of the Morhan family.
Chapter 6: Catherine
I drove aimlessly. Mingled with the anger and humiliation was that false elation I knew so well: the giddy sense of freedom following the loss of a job, soon to be replaced by the anxiety of unemployment.
For there was no question that, in a sense, I was relieved. I’d begun to hate the house, and was getting sick of Carla’s bitter preoccupation with her husband, the constant cigarettes, and her murderous facility at chess. And yet, we’d liked each other, and I believed she was telling the truth as she perceived it. She was trying to protect me, and so was Roland, from the “ruined” Catherine and her father, the “ogre” who, without leaving his room, insidiously dominated them all.
I wasn’t deaf to their warnings, but I needed to find out for myself about Catherine. And for no better reason than I’d heard so much bad press about him, I wanted to meet Patrick Morhan, to look him in the eye and hear him speak.
It was just after one, and there was a whole night to kill. I was almost decided on getting a six-pack of beer and driving to the beach, when I thought of Catherine’s defiant intention to spend the night in a motel. How many motels could there be in town? Ten or fifteen at most. She might be asleep by now, but I felt somehow that she wouldn’t mind a call, that she’d want to hear what had happened, if she didn’t know already.
I drove to my apartment and went through the listings in the phone book. On the sixth try — it was the Gator Court Motel — a sleepy voice asked me to wait while he rang her room. I waited, my heart pounding, and on the third ring she answered, her voice clear and alert: “Hello?”
“Catherine? This is Tom Hanauer. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“No. But how did you know where I was?”
“I didn’t. I... eavesdropped on the last part of your disagreement with your mother, and—”
She laughed. “’Disagreement?’”
“Okay, shouting match. Anyway, I—”
“Are you calling from my house?”
“No, I’m home. She fired me.”
“Fired you!?” She laughed again. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny, is it? Shall I guess the reason?”
“To save me from you.” We laughed together, and I began to relax. “First time I’ve ever been fired for my own good. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but your mother and brother both warned me about you.”
“What did they say?”
“It was more what they didn’t say. But I got the impression that you ‘eat men like air.’”
“Then why are you calling?”
“I like to make up my own mind about a person.”
“That’s good to hear.” Some of the playfulness had dropped out of her voice.
“You seem harmless enough. Is it just camouflage? Are all your boyfriends buried in shallow graves?”
“Nothing so final.” She paused. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Well... how about some coffee?”
“Now, you mean?”
“Yes, but if you’re tired — ”
“I’m not tired, I’m sleepless. It’s just that... well, I broke up with my boyfriend tonight, and—”
“I’m sorry. I forgot about that.”
“Look,” she said with sudden decision, “would you think me coldhearted if I said yes?”
“Just the opposite. Pick you up in ten minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What’s your room number?”
“Sixteen.”
“Great. See you soon.”
I pulled into the nearly deserted Gator Court Motel at a quarter to two. Trying to control my wild heartbeat, I knocked on number sixteen and waited, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. The lights in the room went off. She stepped out silently, dressed in the same tight jeans and black sleeveless blouse. A shyness I hadn’t felt on the phone restrained me in her presence, and we hardly spoke as I drove to the all-night doughnut shop.
Rolling down her window, she rested her elbow on the door and leaned her head back. I stole a glance at her face in profile, her eyes closed, hair blown back from her high forehead, and felt again the delicious shock of her beauty.
I parked the car and walked around to open her door, but she beat me to it and stepped out, squinting up at the neon sign. “I’ve been all over the world,” she said, “but never to Rusty’s Donut Hut.”
“The only thing that isn’t stale at this hour is the coffee.” I opened the door for her, and a blast of cool air hit us. “Best air-conditioning in town.” We picked a booth near the back.
The waitress knew me by name and brought two coffees without being asked. “I like her,” I said when we were alone. “She’s a career waitress, not a business major who gives lousy service and expects a big tip because she’s pretty. I’m so sick of spoiled college kids.”
“Why don’t you leave, then?”
“Inertia. Not to mention lack of money.” I sipped my coffee. “And now, of course, there’s you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t use me as an excuse. I’m not even here half the time. That’s how I tolerate it.”
“Maybe you haven’t found a good enough reason. Gainesville’s not a bad place, if you’ve got somebody to...” — I hesitated, fearing her scorn — “look down on it with.”
She stared at me, not unkindly, over the rim of her cup, leaning her face on her other hand, the index and ring fingers of which were held together as if holding a cigarette.
“Do you smoke?” I asked.
“Because my mother does? No. And I don’t drink either, so don’t suggest a nightcap at your place.”
“I wasn’t going to. Not much of a drinker myself, at least not yet. From what Carla told me, I can understand why you’d avoid alcohol.”
“Can you really?”
Hearing that intimidating edge in her voice, I retreated. “Maybe not. My parents are moderate drinkers. That’s been my curse: moderation. Or a fear of extremes, which amounts to the same thing. Probably why I’m so interested in your family.”
“So you find us extremely immoderate? How flattering.”
“I deserve that. For romanticizing what must have been a... horrendous situation.”
She put down her cup so abruptly it clattered in the saucer. “Those were some searching conversations you had with my mother.”
“And your brother. The door was cracked open on things you might wish had been kept in the closet. I got interested.”
“Interested? What are you, some kind of journalist?”
“No. Just a would-be friend.” Her hand was extended on the table, the long, graceful fingers tapping restlessly. I reached out and covered it, expecting her to draw away. But she didn’t. I traced the veins with my finger. “Let’s go for a drive.”
She pushed her hair back from her forehead and nodded, almost wearily. “All right.”
I paid and followed her out. When we were on the road again, she said, “You’ve made a mistake if you think I’m here to answer your questions.”
“Okay. Last question of the night: Why are you here?”
She smiled, tracing an eyebrow with her finger. “Partly because I’m not very good at being alone. Partly... because you remind me of my brother.”
“You mean Patrick?” She inclined her head in a slight nod. “In what way?”
“It’s hard to describe,” she replied, a line of concentration forming between her brows. “You don’t look like him. It’s more a similarity of expression: the way you move your hands when you talk, and cock your head to one side. You must be exactly the same height. And you laugh a little like him, at some of the same things. Being with you is a series of little shocks, jolts of memory. I’m beginning to realize how much of him I’ve lost in four years. It’s awful, the way holes form in your memory of someone. Someone you thought would always be there.” Her voice trailed off, and she gazed out the window.
“Someone I know told me about his death. What really happened?” She was staring out the window, silent so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer.
“He should have come with me,” she said in a low voice, as if talking to herself. “It would have been far enough.” She turned from the window and looked at me. “I was on a train a thousand miles east of Moscow when the news reached me by telegram. But they didn’t have to tell me why he died, I knew: he’d tried to live in the space between the worlds. It can’t be done.”
“The space between what worlds?”
“Patrick and I were brought up to believe in two worlds: the safe, sane one inside the walls of our house, and the huge, threatening chaos outside. But our parents made it impossible to live in the inside world. Worse, they painted such a vivid picture of the horrors of the outside world and prepared us so poorly for it that we couldn’t live there, either. We couldn’t stay, we couldn’t leave.”
“But you did.”
She shook her head. “I always come back. The world still terrifies me, as it terrified my brother. I begged him to come with me, many times. Maybe together we could’ve... But he always found excuses for staying: his studies, Mother’s condition, something. Finally, he was desperate to get away from them. But I think by then he was like an animal born in a zoo, which finds, after escaping, that it dreads the woods more than its cage. So he tried to become a kind of... I don’t know, Flying Dutchman, maybe.” Her expression was a mixture of bewilderment and anger. “Why am I telling you this?”
“Don’t regret it, please,” I said. “I just want to know you.” We were out of town now, heading east, the moonlit road deserted in both directions.
“Why? You’ve seen enough of my family to know the kind of baggage you’d be buying into.”
I slowed down, pulled onto the shoulder and turned off the engine.
“Don’t tell me how to spend my money,” I said, then slid across the seat and kissed her on her closed lips, my hand feeling through her thick hair to find and stroke her soft nape. I opened my eyes and was startled to find hers open, languidly observing me.
I started to speak and she put her hand behind my head and pulled me to her. This time she kissed me, hard, pushing her tongue into my mouth while her other hand roamed over my back and felt along my ribcage. She sucked in my tongue and captured it between her teeth, holding it gently, then released it with a low chuckle and held me at arm’s length, her eyes glimmering in the silvery light.
Breathing hard, I said: “My first kiss in two years.”
“That long? Then have another one.”
Holding her face between my hands, I leaned forward and kissed her again, this time finding her tongue pliant and tentative. As I moved down to her neck, she whispered in my ear: “I should be getting back now.”
Nodding regretfully, I slid back behind the wheel, started the car and made a U-turn. “Will you be going back home tomorrow?” I asked.
She nodded. “Nowhere else to go.”
“There’s always my place.”
“I’ll come for tea some afternoon,” she said, smiling.
“Can I see you tomorrow night?”
“Are you sure you want to?”
“What do you think?”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. “All right.”
“About nine? I’ll park outside your house, but I won’t knock. Carla has banished me from the premises. I’ll wait for you in the car. Okay?”
“Okay,” she murmured, her eyes still closed, entwining her fingers in mine.
We didn’t speak again that night. When I stopped in front of her room, she practically jumped out of the car and went to her door without looking back. I drove home with the radio tuned to the university jazz station, my skin still tingling with excitement, feeling as if I’d been in a deepfreeze for the last two years, my heated blood now melting its way through the frozen flesh, causing some of the pleasant pain of returning circulation. It was after seven when I finally fell asleep.
Copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey Greene
