Free The Betrayer by Daniel Judson Page B

he wasn’t at this moment hearing any sounds
coming from the front of their apartment. But it was likely that she was
meditating. They were safe here, under the protection of a man Johnny trusted
more than anyone alive. Still, Johnny got up and pulled on his sweatpants, then
walked quietly down the narrow hallway that ran from the bedroom to the
kitchen.
    Ready for the
worst.
    But as he
neared the end of the hallway, he saw that Haley was seated at the secondhand
folding table at which they ate their meals. Just as she should be, just as she
always was. Dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, she was sipping peppermint
tea and reading from her well-worn copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Being Peace .
    He felt an instant
wave of relief, though anyone looking at him right then wouldn’t have seen it;
he hid his inner life well — or did from strangers, at least.
    The difference
between the kitchen at the front of their apartment and the bedroom at the back
was the difference between the light and dark sides of the moon. Both he and Haley
worked long hours, from early in the afternoon to well into the night, did this
six days a week. They often didn’t come home from the bar Johnny ran — he was
also one of three bartenders, she one of two cooks — till five in the morning,
so keeping their bedroom as dark as possible was crucial to a good night’s rest.
    Haley sensed
him in the kitchen doorway and looked up from her reading and smiled. She
wasn’t startled to see him suddenly there, had grown by now accustomed to his
ways, was even grateful for them, grateful that he thought in a manner she
simply didn’t.
    And wouldn’t
have to, as long as he was around.
    “Hey, there,”
she said softly. Her long red hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her green
eyes alive in the bright morning light that filled the tiny kitchen. She had a
natural beauty, wore little makeup, but it was her inner tranquility, a product
of years of Buddhist practice and study, that elevated her to the level of
stunning.
    Johnny envied
her for her peace. She was dawn to his night, the promise of calm to his storm.
In his quietest moments, Johnny often considered where he would be had he never
met her, had she not given him reason to pull himself back from the darkness
into which he had willingly wandered.
    “Hey, right
back at ya,” he replied. “You good?”
    “Yes. You?”
    He nodded and
ran an open palm over his shortly cropped hair, something he always did when he
first woke up. He had the dark hair and olive skin of his father — among
Johnny’s few possessions were photographs of him — but the steady blue eyes of
his mother. There was, to his regret, only one photo of her. His eyes were what
had first caught Haley’s attention when they met a year ago. They still caught
her now, every day.
    Eyes she could
look into, eyes she could trust, eyes that would never — could never — lie to
her.
    She’d never
known anything like that before.
    “Any bad
dreams?” she asked.
    He shook his
head. “None.”
    She smiled
again, pleased by what to her was clearly progress. “That’s good.”
    He leaned down
and kissed her good morning, tasting the peppermint on her lips.
    “As good as it
gets,” he said.
    Johnny needed
more than tea to get started in the morning. They didn’t own a coffeemaker, so
he filled a small soup pot with tap water, then put it on the burner to boil. As
he waited, he dropped three scoops of a generic instant coffee into a plastic thermos.
    “Ready for
today’s quote?” Haley asked.
    A small Zen
Quote of the Day calendar sat on the folding table. It contained sayings by everyone
from the Buddha to the Dalai Lama to Thoreau and Einstein and Miles Davis. Each
morning Haley removed yesterday’s page and read today’s to Johnny.
    “Yeah, let’s
hear it.”
    She had torn
off yesterday’s page already. Picking up the calendar, she read, “‘Better to
live one day virtuous and meditative than to live a hundred years