Night Film(193)

“Do you really need the Edge?” I asked her. “Nora Halliday is more than enough.”

“The Edge gives it an edge,” said Hopper.

Nora lifted her chin. “You’re outnumbered, Woodward. As usual.”

She leaned over the pool table and, squinting with concentration, shot the cue ball. Three solids ricocheted into opposite pockets. Apparently, there was a billiards room at Terra Hermosa she’d never told me about.

“I figure I’ll give it a good ten years to try and make it big,” she went on, moving around the table to line up her next shot. “Then I’m getting out while I still can. I’m going to buy a farm with hills and donkeys. Have some kids. You’ll both come visit. We could have reunions. Wherever in the world we are, we’ll come together this one amazing day.”

“I like it,” said Hopper.

“I have a boyfriend named Jasper,” she added.

“Jasper?” I said. “He sounds like he highlights his hair.”

“He’s a first-class person. You’d like him.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“But an old twenty-two?”

She nodded and glanced away, suddenly shy, and stepped around the table so I couldn’t see her face.

Hopper, as it turned out, had been about to leave New York altogether when he’d received Nora’s email, so he delayed his departure by a week to have this last chance to see the two of us. He’d given up his apartment. He was heading to South America.

“South America?” asked Nora, as if he’d said he was going to the moon.

“Yeah. I’m going to find my mom.”

In typical Hopper fashion, he chose not to elaborate further on this tantalizing premise, though I remembered something he’d said about his mom, that she was involved in some strange missionary work, the afternoon I’d first talked to him in his apartment.

Nora nibbled her thumbnail, perched on the corner of the pool table.

“And after that what are you going to do?” she asked.

“After that …” He smiled. ”Something really good.”

We ordered shots of Patrón and danced and reloaded the jukebox—my old man vintage music, as Nora called it, The Doors, Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” and Elvis Costello’s “Beyond Belief” interspersed with Hopper’s hip selections like Beach House’s “Real Love” and M83’s “Skin of the Night.”

At every moment, I felt Ashley was with us, the invisible fourth member of our little party. I sensed we were all acutely aware of her, though we didn’t need to mention her by name. It was obvious Nora and Hopper had resolved her life and death in their heads. They believed in her without question, without doubt. She’d made the world all right for them, even better. They still believed the myth, I reasoned, the myth of the devil’s curse. They were still living in an enchanted world—Ashley, not struck with cancer, but a wild avenging angel, and Cordova, not catatonic in a nursing home, but an evil king who’d fled to the unknown. For the rest of their lives, they’d have this magical reality to turn to when their car keys inexplicably moved across the room, when they read stories about children who went missing without a trace, when someone broke their heart for no good reason.

But of course, they’d think. It’s the magic.

It felt as if we’d been to war together. Deep in a jungle, alone, I had relied on them, these strangers. They’d held me up in ways only people could. When it was over, an ending that never felt like an ending, only an exhausted draw, we went our separate ways. But we were bonded forever by the history of it, the simple fact they’d seen the raw side of me and me of them, a side no one, not even closest friends or family had ever seen before, or probably ever would.

And in between the laughter and the jokes, the music, a long stretch of silence fell over us. We were sitting side by side on a wooden bench underneath a dartboard and a Coors Light neon sign. I saw the moment for what it was—the chance to tell them the truth.

I stared at Hopper’s profile, his head tipped way back against the wall, the gold strands of Nora’s hair stuck to her flushed cheek, the words shouting in my head.

You can’t imagine what she hid from us. It was the ultimate triumph of life over death—never to give in to her illness, never to stop living.

It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Ashley had not been so delusional in the last days of her life, a truth Inez Gallo had been so eager that I accept. Maybe she, displaying that searing intuition for people and a heart not even Gallo could take away from her—maybe she’d somehow intended this moment. Perhaps she’d planned with her death, the three of us would find each other. It was why she chose the warehouse. She knew I’d go there looking for clues—and encounter Hopper who’d be wondering about the return address on the envelope. And why else would she leave Nora her coat?

I realized the moment had drifted away. Hopper rolled off the bench, shuffling across the bar to put another song on the jukebox, which had gone silent, and Nora went off in search of the bathroom.

I remained where I was. That had to be it.

I’d tell them both the truth one day. But now, tonight, they could keep their myth.

Hours later, the bar was closing, turning up glaring lights, erasing the mirage of forever. It was time to go. I was bombed. Outside, on the sidewalk, I embraced the two of them, announcing to the empty city—New York City finally a little drowsy and at a loss for words—they were two of the best people I’d ever met.