So Cold the River

was known, the company still made millions bottling and selling it with the charming slogan When nature won’t, Pluto will.

The ads themselves were amazing things, too, perfect images of a time and place and people. Women in flowing gowns, men in suits, and that silly smiling devil always present. Eric was particularly taken with one of a man standing in front of a basin sink and mirror. In the illustration he looked back at himself in what appeared to be true and total horror, and the text beside his head read, What’s wrong with me?

He got to his feet, planning on another Scotch but then thought better of it. Maybe because the room reeled a little around him, maybe because he’d just seen the word alcoholism on those lists. Didn’t want to dance too close to that partner, no.

But he was on his feet, and he felt like he was in search of something.

The Pluto Water. He went into the living room and found his briefcase and opened it, wrapped his hand around the bottle. Still cold. Still oddly cold, in fact. How could water sit in a room for so long and never absorb its temperature? He hadn’t read anything about that quality in his research.

“Curer of ills,” he said, running his thumb over the etchings. The water looked hideous, but millions of bottles had been consumed over the years. Had to be safe. Mineral water didn’t go bad, did it? Then again, wouldn’t anything go bad after so long?

Only one way to find out, but of course he couldn’t do that.

Why not?

For one thing, the water could be tainted, could poison his ass, leave him dead on the living room floor from one tiny taste.

You know that won’t happen. That water is natural, came out of a spring, not a chemistry set.

But there were other reasons, those of the courteous, professional sort, not to crack into an artifact the old man had for some reason left untouched all these years.

It has a cap. You open it, take a sip, put the damn cap back on. Who’s to know?

He felt like a young boy standing in front of the liquor cabinet, pondering his first taste of the sauce. Drink some of it down, then fill it up with water—maybe apple juice for color—and they’ll never know. What the hell was his problem? It was a bottle of old mineral water. Why did he want to know what it tasted like? It tasted, no doubt, like shit.

Scared of it. For some reason, you’re scared of it, you pussy.

It was true, he realized as he stood there staring at the bottle, it was true and it was pathetic, and there was only one way to slap that fear down. He forced the old wires up and loosened the stopper. It was a terrible thing to do—he’d probably just cut the bottle’s value in half by opening it, and it wasn’t even his bottle—but after the whiskeys and the bad conversation with Claire and the realization that for some inexplicable reason he was frightened of this bottle, he no longer cared about that. He just wanted a taste.

There was a sulfuric smell to the water, and he felt mildly repulsed as he lifted the bottle to take a drink. He was almost unable to bear the smell of the stuff; how had so many people actually ingested it?

The bottle hit his lips and tilted and a splash of the contents sloshed over the rim and into his mouth and found his throat.

And Eric gagged.

Dropped to his knees and spat the foulness onto the carpet, the taste more corrupt than anything he’d ever experienced, a taste of rot, of death.

He set the bottle on the floor, spat onto the carpet again as he took a shuddering breath through his nose, and then felt another gag coming on and knew this time it wasn’t going to be so clean, made it halfway into the bathroom before vomiting violently onto the floor. The whiskey scorched through his throat and burned his nostrils and he fought his way to the toilet and hung on to the bowl and emptied again, felt his temples throb and saw his vision go cloudy with tears from the force of it, the terrible exertion.

The next bout was worse, an awful wrenching from deep in his stomach, like somebody twisting a wet towel until the fibers screamed with strain. When he finished, he was facedown on the floor, the tile cold on his cheek.

It was an hour before he left the bathroom. An hour before he felt strong enough to stand. He got out the mop and a bucket and some disinfectant spray and went to work. When the bathroom was clean, he returned to the living room, avoiding the clock that announced it was four in the morning, long past the hour that decent people had found their beds, and picked up the Pluto bottle. The smell rose again, and he clenched his teeth as he fastened the cap, holding his breath until the bottle was in his briefcase.

Curer of ills, indeed.

4

THE NEXT DAY HE took some Excedrin and drank about a gallon of iced tea and waited until evening to eat, and that night he did not allow himself so much as a beer or a glass of wine.

There were no other jobs in play, just the Bradford project, so he spent the rest of the week on research and equipment shopping, considering spending Alyssa Bradford’s advance check on a new camera. He wanted to upgrade partially for the quality improvement and partially to stop using the camera Claire’s father had given him as a present after things bottomed out in L.A. and Eric followed Claire to Chicago. That pretentious bastard. His latest novel had just come out this week. Eric wouldn’t read the book, that was for damn sure, but if he heard of a bad review, he’d absolutely read that.

He didn’t talk to Claire again before his meeting with Campbell Bradford. By the morning after their last phone call, which he awoke to with a headache that clearly intended to linger for a few hours, he wished that he’d told her more. It would’ve interested her, and she would’ve listened. One thing about Claire, she always listened.

But he didn’t call, and she didn’t either. He checked the caller ID every day, and that ritual became maddening—she was his wife, and here he was, checking to see if she might have called.

His wife.

He stopped by the apartment to pick up his equipment the night of his interview with Campbell Bradford and saw the message light blinking on the answering machine, thought perhaps Claire had called, then hated himself for such hopefulness. He didn’t allow himself to even check the message, ignoring the machine while he picked up his camera and tripod and briefcase. When he opened the case to put his recorder inside—always good to have an audio backup—he saw the pale green bottle and felt a wave of nausea. He started to remove the bottle, then changed his mind. Maybe he’d show it to old Campbell and see what sort of response it triggered.

Alyssa Bradford had told him to go by the hospital around seven. He went through the building as quickly as he could, long, fast strides, the camera bag banging against his leg. He hated hospitals, always had. When he found the right room number—712—he discovered the door was closed. Rapped lightly on it with his knuckles.

“Hello?” he said, pushing it open, poking his head inside. “Mr. Bradford?”

There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. The man in it turned to look at Eric, one half of his face lit by a small fluorescent lamp above the bed. Otherwise the room was dark. The sheets were pulled up to the man’s neck, and the face above them was weathered and gaunt, with sunken blue eyes that announced his sickness even more than the hospital room itself. Loose skin hung off a jaw that once would have been hard and square, and though the hands resting on top of the sheets were thin and brittle, they were large. Would have been powerful, once.

“Mr. Bradford?” Eric said again, and the old man seemed to nod.

“Your daughter-in-law said she told you I’d be coming,” Eric said, crossing to the foot of the bed and pulling up a plastic chair. “I hope I’m not here at a bad time.”

No answer. Not a word, or a blink. But the eyes followed Eric.

“I think Alyssa told you what I was going to be doing?” Eric said. He was reaching into his camera bag now, rushing things along because the old man’s unresponsive stare was unsettling.

“I was hoping I could hear some of the stories you’ve got to tell,” he continued as he removed the camera.