Free The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead Page A

this?” Mercy said, waving the sheet of paper.
    Henry suggested she put the letter in one of her books and she seemed to brighten at the idea. She asked him to help her and he did, brushing glue onto a blank page, while she trimmed the edges of the letter and then damping its back with glue, together they pressed it down into the book, her hands overtop his. Then he held her and rocked her in his arms.
    “We are set in stone,” she said. “We are bound and forever will be.”
    That night they walked down by the river past the tall black iron fences, the black iron columnades and from off the river was the gentle invitation of evening wind.
    That morning Henry saw a woman jump into the river and disappear. She put her purse down near the levee and walked out on the rocks and jumped in. She then swam toward the middle of the river and disappeared in the fog. Birds were skimming the mystic dazzling surface and Henry watched her as she disappeared into the milky light. There was a man by the river and he observed to him what had just happened.
    “Oh,” the man had said, “she seems to be a real good swimmer.”
    “Where is she swimming to?” he’d asked.
    “One time she made it to the other side, but the current took her several blocks downstream.”
    “But she has disappeared,” Henry said.
    “Maybe you should tell someone, but I’ve seen her do it before. She’s a real good swimmer. I can’t say, but it seemed like her own idea and you’ve got to ’spect that.”
    As they approached the place there was a gathering of people where the woman had entered the water and farther out a trolling boat.
    “She’s drowned,” Mercy said.
    “I am afraid of that,” he said.
    “We can’t do anything about it,” she said. “We should but we can’t.” Her words were her thoughts tumbling from her mind.
    Henry took her in his arms, but she pulled free and stood alone. He took her again and held her tightly and when she softened and breathed into his chest he guided her away from the river.
    Their days remained as such, released into the hush of indeterminate time, the world poised at the strange edge. There was no clock, no calendar that moored them in the stream of nights that begot days and days that drifted into darkness. It was as if they’d broken time itself and there was only waiting. Waiting for light and darkness, waiting for sunrise and sunset.
    Then came the day he convinced her to let him work and send money to Clemmie, because he’d always contributed a share to their existence. Mercy had of late been restless and changeable, plunging into long meditative silences and then for no perceptible reason engaging him again.
    “I understand,” she said. “If you must.”
    So he took work cleaning an office building just completed and being readied for the occupants. His partner was a Haitian named Paul, a black-skinned man, not tall, but ebullient and, as he did not speak English, made for good company.
    When Henry came back after work that first day, Mercy was in bed, crying. She told him that she was having bad thoughts and had decided against any future absence on his part.
    “I’m afraid,” she said.
    “Of what?” he asked, taking her feet in his hands and holding them to his chest.
    “That one day you won’t come back.” She curled her toes to clutch at his fingers and then released her hold.
    “But you know I will,” he said.
    “I am afraid they will steal me while you are gone. Don’t you see? He will steal me and lock me up.”
    “No,” he said, moving to take her in his arms. “Nobody steals anybody. I will protect you.”
    “It’s what he did to my mother.”
    He held her tightly in his arms and she let herself be comforted. He told her how much he loved her back and she told him how very much her back was in love with him.
    “I have never been loved by a woman’s back,” he said.
    “My back has changed since we have been together,” she told him into his chest, and after a