The Inner Circle

“Clemmi…”

“Try, Beecher. Just try.”

In the distance, I hear the sirens.

“Please,” she adds as if she’s pleading for my soul.

In no mood to face another set of law enforcement officers, and still hearing Orlando calling me Professor Indiana Jones, I raise my head and quickly glance to the right. It lasts a second. Maybe two. The wind’s made a wreck of Clementine’s hair, but over her shoulder I have a clear view of the bright white dome of the Jefferson Memorial. I pause, surprised to feel my heart quicken.

“How’s it look?” she asks.

“Truthfully? Kinda horrible,” I say, eyeing the curves of the marble stonework. “It’s just the back. You can’t see the good part with the statue.”

“But it’s real,” she says, looking over at the memorial. “And at least you saw it for yourself. Not in a book. Not in some old record. You saw it here-now-in the freezing cold, from the side of a bridge, in a way that no tourists ever experience it.”

My fists still clutch the steering wheel. I keep my head down, again refusing to look outside. But I am listening.

“That was the part I liked,” I say.

“You sound surprised.”

“I kinda am,” I admit as my heart begins to gallop. “I’d never seen it from this angle.”

Turning away from the Jefferson Memorial, Clementine glances my way-just a bit as she peers over her shoulder-and looks back at me. Our eyes lock. She won’t let herself smile-she’s still making her point. But I see the appreciation for the trust.

“She did dump me,” I blurt.

“Excuse me?”

“My fiancee. Iris. You asked before. She did dump me.”

“I figured,” she says. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“But it wasn’t for another guy.”

“For another girl?” Clementine asks.

“I wish. Then I would’ve at least had a good story.”

This is the part where she’s supposed to ask, What happened? But she doesn’t.

My head’s still down. My hands still clutch the wheel. As I relive the moment, she sees the pain I’m in.

“Beecher, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to say it. It really doesn’t matter.”

“She dumped me for the worst reason of all,” I say as the sirens continue to get closer. “For absolutely no reason at all.”

“Beecher…”

I clench my teeth to keep it all in. “I mean, if she fell in love with someone else, or I did something wrong, or I let her down in some unforgivable way… That, I’d understand, right? But instead, she said… it wasn’t anything. Not a single thing. It was just me. I was nice. I was kind. We just… she didn’t see the connection anymore.” I look up at Clementine, whose mouth is slightly open. “I think she just thought I was boring. And the cruelest part is, when someone says something mean about you, you know when they’re right.”

Watching me from the passenger seat, Clementine barely moves.

“Can I tell you something?” she finally offers. “Iris sounds like a real shitwad.”

I laugh, almost choking on the joy it brings.

“And can I tell you something else, Beecher? I don’t think you’re in love with the past. I think you’re scared of the future.”

I lift my head, turning toward her in the seat next to me. When we were leaving St. Elizabeths, Clementine said that the hardest part of seeing Nico was that so much of her life suddenly made sense. And I know I’m overstating it, and being melodramatic, and rebounding something fierce just because we raised the specter of Iris-but ever since Clementine returned to my life… life doesn’t make complete sense. But it definitely makes more sense than it used to.

I turn toward the passenger seat and lean in toward Clementine. She freezes. But she doesn’t pull away. I lean even closer, moving slowly, my fingers brushing her cheek and touching the wisps of her short black hair. As my lips part against hers, I’m overcome by her taste, a mix of caramel and a pinch of peach from her lip gloss.

There are great kissers in this world.

I’m not one of them.

I’m not sure Clementine is one of them. But she’s damn near close.

“You got better since Battle of the Bands,” she whispers as she takes a quick breath.

“You remember that?”

“C’mon, Beecher… how could I forget my first kiss?” she asks, the last few syllables vibrating off my lips.

Within seconds, I’m no longer leaning toward her. She’s leaning toward me.

I’m overwhelmed by her scent… by the way her short black hair skates against my cheek… by the way her hand tumbles down my chest and slides so close to everything I’m feeling in my pants.

Behind us, a flood of red lights pummels the back window. I barely heard the siren from the police car, which is now two cars behind us, trying to get us moving.

Taking a breath, I slowly pull away.

“Feeling any better?” she asks.

“Definitely better. Though also pretty terrified that we’re still on this bridge.”

She offers a quick laugh. But as she settles back in her seat, she knots her eyebrows, offering a brand-new look-a sad silent confession that I’ve never seen before. Like yet another new door has opened-I’m starting to realize she’s got dozens of them-and I finally get to see what’s inside. “We’re all terrified,” she says as we race ahead and leave the bridge behind. “That’s how you know you’re alive, Beecher. Welcome to the present.”

“Please make next… left turn,” the female GPS voice announces through my cell phone over an hour later. “Destination is… straight ahead… on the left.”

“Clemmi, we’re here,” I call out as I hit the brakes at the red light, waiting to turn onto her narrow block. As I’ve done at every stop since the moment we left the highway, I check the rearview. No one in sight.

When we first arrived in the small city of Winchester, Virginia, a huge brick residence hall and an overabundance of kids with backpacks told me we were in a college town. But as with any college town, there’s the good part of the college town, and the bad part of the college town. The closer we weaved toward Clementine’s block, those students gave way to boarded-up row houses, far too many abandoned factories, and even a pawn shop. Let’s be clear: The good part of town never gets the pawn shop.

“Clemmi, we’re… I think we’re here,” I add as I turn onto the long dark block that’s lined with a set of beat- up skinny row houses. Half the streetlights are busted. At the very last second, I also notice a taxi, its dim lights turning onto the block that we just left.

Two years ago, the Archives hosted a brown bag lunch for an author who was presenting a book about the effects of fear and its role in history. He said that when you go down a dark alley and you feel that tingling across the back of your neck, that’s not just a bad feeling, that’s a biological gift from God-the Gift of Fear, he called it. He said when you ignore that gift-when you go down the dark alley and say, Y’know, I’m sure it’ll be okay-that’s when you find real pain.

Next to me, while I’m still replaying our kiss, Clementine is fast asleep in the passenger seat, exhausted from the long ride as her chin rests on her clavicle. It’s late enough and quiet enough that when I listen closely, I can hear the rise and fall of her breathing. But as I squint to read house numbers and pass one home with a door off its hinges, and another with a spray-painted sign across the front that reads PVC pipes only, no copper inside, all I hear right now is God’s biological gift telling me this is not where I want to be.

Behind us, a car turns onto the block, then changes its mind and disappears.