Half World: A Novel by Scott O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page B

ended at the pier. The water beyond rolling and purple-black, striped with thin veins of moonlight.
    “These people aren’t like us,” Dorn said. “You can talk to them and sometimes they sound like human beings, but don’t get fooled. They don’t have families. They don’t have mortgages, kids in school. They’re drunks or dope fiends. Nut cases. I spend all day with these people and none of them is worth a damn.”
    The Lincoln slowed to a stop. More movement in the shadows ahead.
    Dorn turned to Henry. “You don’t believe me yet,” he said. “I can see that. But you’ll come around.”
    Dorn switched on the headlights. Men scattered in every direction, half dressed some of them, wild-eyed and flailing for cover.
    “These people are barely even here,” Dorn said. “Nobody’ll miss them when they’re gone.”

13
    Sometimes she woke and found herself alone. Dawn an hour away, Henry down at his desk in the basement. Ginnie didn’t know if he’d slept, or for how long if he had. An impression from his body on the other side of the bed, cool to her touch.
    She cleaned the basement when he was in the city. She was careful not to disturb anything. She knew that he was writing a history of his time with Weir, their relationship. He kept the pages he had written locked in a drawer in the desk. The sensitive nature of his work. The things the two men knew. This was what she reminded herself while she was cleaning, that the lock had nothing to do with her.
    In Washington, he had been questioned for close to a month, and she could only imagine how difficult it had been. Every evening when he came home during those weeks, he’d seemed a little thinner, a little smaller. The exhaustion stretched across his face. But she knew that this self-interrogation was even harsher. He had no sympathy for himself. He would be relentless in his questioning, ruthless in his assessments. She had been worried for him during the weeks in Washington but she was far more worried now. She had seen Henry driven, she had seen him obsessed, but she had never before seen him like this, filled with anger and fear.
    She’d thought that the move west would give them the space to talk,but Henry was back to another inflexible schedule. He was avoiding her concern, postponing time together while he worked in the city, or in the basement. She saw him now mostly at dinner, or playing with Thomas, and even then he seemed distracted, as if his head was still in one of those other places.
    She wondered if she should force the issue, press him to talk, but that is what they had done, his colleagues in Washington, and she did not want Henry to see her on that side of this, against him somehow. She would give it time. They had time out here, she could feel that.
    Some nights she woke alone with his impression beside her. He’d been there and gone, drawn back to his basement interrogation. On those nights she moved closer to that space, the imprint he’d left, and tried to sleep with at least the thought of him, the memory of his body beside hers.
    What this man had done to him. Ginnie wondered if even she could betray Henry any deeper than Weir had.

14
    A cold night, a harsh wind coming in off the bay, whipping around the streets on the hill. Henry sat in the darkened office, just his desk lamp burning, looking at the page in his ledger marked with the date and a time he kept erasing and rewriting every few minutes. Through the two-way mirror he could see the empty bedroom, dark except for the lamp on the bedside table.
    He heard footsteps on the stairs, then a key in the lock. Dorn came into the office with a burst of cold air, lit a cigarette, sat in his chair beside Henry.
    “They’re a block away.”
    Henry switched off the light. He handed Dorn a pair of headphones, settled his own over his ears, started the recorder.
    They listened to the air hiss of the empty apartment, long enough that Henry began to wonder if Dorn had been mistaken about