Free Dark Debts by Karen Hall Page B

him.”
    â€œWeird how?”
    â€œFirst, he started calling me all the time. Three or four times a day. Only me, from what I can tell. And he was saying all these bizarre things.”
    â€œLike?”
    â€œLike, he was having these nightmares, but he was convinced they weren’t dreams. He said he thought he was ‘going somewhere’ in his sleep.”
    Randa frowned, trying to follow. “What does that mean?”
    â€œI don’t know. He didn’t know. But he just became more and more insistent that these dreams were more than dreams, and he thought they were going to end up hurting him somehow. I guess he got sick of trying to convince me; he finally stopped talking about it. But then he started to get very paranoid. When we would go somewhere, anywhere, even during the day, he’d always look around, like he was afraid someone was following us. I’d ask him why he was doing that, and he’d either deny he was doing it or just say ‘no reason.’
    â€œHe’d call me late at night, and he’d just talk forever about nothing, or he’d try to get me into some long, complicated argument. I always felt he was trying to keep me from hanging up. Or he’d show up at night, unannounced, and stay until very, very late, and then sleep on the couch. He’d claim he was too drunk to drive.” He stopped, looked at her. “Does that sound like Cam to you?”
    Randa shook her head. It didn’t. “What do you think all that was about?”
    â€œI don’t know. But I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” He picked up his wine glass and emptied it. He refilled both their glasses with the last of the alleged sangria. Finally he was ready to resume. He looked at her.
    â€œA couple of weeks ago, he told me he had seen Tallen.”
    Randa stared at him. The restaurant suddenly seemed eerily quiet.
    â€œHe what ?”
    â€œThat’s what he said. He was adamant about it.”
    Randa was still struggling to understand. “You mean, he saw someone in a crowd who looked like Tallen?”
    Nick shook his head. “No. Tallen. In his apartment. He woke up one night and there was Tallen. He swore it. He saw Tallen, they talked, Tallen told him things . . . We never got to what Tallen told him. By that time, I had stopped him, I just couldn’t listen to it. I told him I was worried about him and I thought he should stop drinking and find a better shrink. He got furious and stormed out of my house.” Nick was quiet for a moment; he looked pained. When he spoke, his voice was different. “That was the last time I saw him.”
    Randa didn’t know what to say, what to do with any of this. Nick shook his head a little, as if coming out of a trance.
    â€œSo,” he continued, “all in all, the liquor store thing just didn’t shock me.”
    â€œYou think he was . . .” Randa couldn’t bring herself to say any of the possible words.
    Nick was nodding. “There’s that tiny line between eccentric and insane . . . Somehow, when nobody was paying attention, he just crossed over.” He looked away, and spoke as if he were talking to himself. “Let’s face it. How long could anyone expect him to keep it up—walking around, pretending to be normal, pretending he lived on the same planet with everyone else, like they . . . like we had any way to comprehend what he’d been through, what he had to live with . . .” He paused for a moment and shook his head. “In my humble opinion,” he continued quietly, “the question we should all be asking ourselves is not ‘How could this happen?’ but ‘Why did it take so long?’ ”
    Randa sat back in the booth, dazed, trying to take it in and wondering how much a pack of cigarettes went for these days. Nick motioned to the waiter to bring them another pitcher of