Reciprocity Failure

NICK

Morenci had been dying longer than most of the people still living there had been alive, and a dying town knows things a living one doesn’t — chief among them, exactly where a man might go to be alone with a bad idea.

Whole blocks of company housing stood dark now, windows boarded or just left broken, FOR SALE signs bleached so pale in the sun you couldn’t read a phone number off them anymore. Fewer than five hundred people left in a town built for ten times that, and every year a few more of them packed up for Clifton or Safford or somewhere with a future, until what remained felt less like a town than the last few embers of one. Nobody left to notice a light going out. Nobody left to ask why a man was out walking in a storm at midnight, or where he was headed, or whether he meant to come back down. If you were looking for the one right place — high enough, forgotten enough, quiet enough that nothing would happen until it already had — you could do worse than Morenci, in the rain, this late in the season.

The old copper mill sat at the low end of town, past the last of the company houses, and it had been dead longer than the town around it had been dying. Somoto Metal Mining had shuttered the smelter floor the better part of a decade back and simply walked away from it, the way everything in Morenci eventually got walked away from — rusted conveyor housings hunched in the dark like the ribs of something that used to move, five stories of empty brick holding six inches of standing black water where a roof used to be. Up top, a flat roof of tar and gravel, ringed by a low brick wall, the kind of place nobody had any real reason to climb to anymore. Which was, probably, the whole point.

A pair of hands found the last rung of the fire ladder bolted to the mill’s north wall, gripped, and held there a moment, then committed. A man hauled himself up over the lip and stood on the roof, dripping, and let the storm do whatever it wanted with him.

He was forty-four years old, and not long ago he’d been the kind of good-looking that people forgot to really look at — an ordinary handsome, the kind that only gets noticed once it starts changing into something else. He’d lost weight he didn’t have to lose. His shirt hung off him now like it belonged to a bigger, sturdier man, which not that long ago it had. His right arm hung wrong at his side, withered thin below the elbow and shiny with old scar tissue, souvenir of a fire that had reached out of somebody else’s apartment nearly three years back and taken hold of him and never entirely let go.

His name was Nick Parker, and he made his living photographing the dead — the one who came after, framed the wound, checked the light, and moved on to the next room without flinching. It was a habit he couldn’t turn off, even here, even now: some quiet, cataloguing corner of his mind was already composing the shot, deciding where the light fell best did. And some other, less professional part of him, standing on top of a dead building over a dying town with the whole ugly sky coming down at once, thought simply: it was a beautiful place to die. He’d have said so out loud, if there’d been anyone left in this town to say it to.

Three years, now, since the fire. Two and a half since the house, and the mirrors, and the dead woman who wouldn’t stay in the glass. The year after that had been a slow, unglamorous miracle — relearning how to be a person, nights that didn’t end in screaming, more good days than bad. And six months, almost to the day, since something had happened that he still wasn’t in the habit of thinking about directly — something good, which made it worse, that he couldn’t hold onto it.

He didn’t look down right away. He let the sky have him instead — ugly, bruised-looking, low enough to touch.

Then he crossed to the far side, to the low brick wall that ran the perimeter, and looked down five stories at what was left of the works: rusted conveyor housings, a roofless smelter floor standing in six inches of water that had nowhere left in this town to drain to. Past it, past the last dark rooftops of Morenci, the land opened into pale gray hills, mountain-sized, stacked in flat, man-made terraces — the tailings, everything the mine had dug up and crushed and leached the copper out of and then had no more use for, mountain after mountain of rock that had given up the only part of itself anybody ever wanted. Lightning went off somewhere behind them, white and silent, like something trying to get out. Nick knew exactly how that felt.

He sat on the wall and took off his shoes, then his socks, and set them both down beside him — laces tucked under, toes squared to the edge — with more care than a man who’s about to jump has any real reason to bother with.

Then he stood up on the wall.

Something moved in the rainwater pooled at his bare feet — two shapes, there and always staring, familiar in a way that had stopped surprising him days ago. The restless dead from the case. He looked straight down for her and she was there along with the other, the way they always were.

They walked with him now, the dead did. Had for years, really, in one way or another, but now — in puddles, in coffee mugs, in the black backs of his own eyelids, patient and quiet, never quite gone and never quite staying, either. He’d stopped being afraid of them somewhere around the second one. Tonight, for the first time, it occurred to him that he might finally be about to catch up to them, instead of just being followed.

“I hope you haven’t been drinking,” a voice said, behind him.

Nick spun, too fast, arms out for balance on the wet brick.

The man was youngish, maybe mid-thirties, blond, dressed like he’d wandered off the set of an insurance commercial in the middle of a thunderstorm — white button-up, thin black tie, slacks, black work boots, and over all of it a long leather trench coat that hung wrong on him, too dry for how hard it was raining.

“What? Excuse me?”

The man looked down at his watch and thumbed a button on the side of it. It beeped, cheerful, incongruous.

“Lessee. Seven-fourteen. Call it ten minutes on the clock.” He looked up, almost apologetic. “Okay, go ahead, ’cause if you’ve been drinking, the fall probably won’t kill you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Statistics show eighty percent of falls involving alcohol are non-fatal. Body’s too comfortable to panic. And panic’s the thing that kills you.” He said it the way another man might recite a baseball stat, easy, a little proud of himself. “Makes you tense up. And when you hit the ground — crunch — you know.”

“I’m sorry. Can I help you with something?”

“So if you forget to panic, you land better. Bouncy. Flexible. Doesn’t usually kill you, just busts you up some. Going limp, you know? So if you’ve been drinking, you’re looking at maybe three hours in the ER, home in a week. And hey — that’s fine, if that’s the point you’re trying to make tonight.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter, but for you, I’ll make something up.” A small, easy smile. “Name’s Jack, okay?”

He reached into his coat and came out with a playing card, held it up so Nick could see it — the Jack of Clubs — and tossed it across the roof. It skidded to a stop near Nick’s shoes.

“Irrelevant the second you take that step. But sure, we’ll go with Jack.”

“Fine. Whatever. What do you want, Jack?”

“Me? I’m here on a bet.” He waved that away like it was nothing. “Not important, though, is it? What you want is what counts.”

“What I want?”

“That’s the seventh question you’ve asked me, you know that? Sure is a lot of curiosity for a guy about to take the express route down.”

“What do you care?”

“Eight.” Jack didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t, particularly. Look, let’s just get on with it. Come here, step down real quick.”

He shrugged out of his coat and set it aside, and Nick’s whole body went rigid.

“Wait — just wait a minute. Stay back.”

“Relax, it’s not what you think. If I wanted to rush you I’d have done it already, and honestly, you’re not that cute. You’re cutting into my time. Just give me—” he checked the watch again “—eight minutes forty-five seconds. And then I’m gone. Scout’s honor, all that. I’ll stay right here. I won’t try to talk you out of anything. I don’t even want that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to show you how.” Jack’s face screwed up, considering his own words. “How to do it. That doesn’t sound right. How to do it properly. That’s better.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jack pulled out a wallet, thumbed through it, and came out with a folded hundred-dollar bill.

“Tell you what. Hundred bucks, you come down off that wall for two minutes. That’s it.”

Nick hesitated — a quarter second, no more, but it was there, and Jack clocked it.

“No,” Nick said. “Thanks.”

Jack put the money away, unbothered.

“Lesson number one, free of charge. You didn’t take it. But you thought about it. That’s a lack of total resolve, my friend. Even a quarter second of considering it means your mindset isn’t absolute. And doing this properly requires, number one — absolute mindset. Might as well come down.”

Nick looked over the edge — the smelter floor, the standing black water — and then back at Jack, and stepped down off the wall.

“I made a mistake. I have to go.”

He crossed and bent for his shoes and socks.

“The shoes were a nice touch, though,” Jack said. “Shows some thought. Doesn’t say anything, though. What’d you mean by it?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s one of your problems. You think you’re being clever, leaving a message nobody can read.”

“Why do you even want to know?”

“Just answer the question.”

Something in Nick’s chest gave way, small and sudden.

“It was for the group at the Center, okay? It was for the group.”

“Go on.”

"I wanted them to know I couldn’t make it. So I took my shoes off.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I was part of something. They’ll understand.”

Nick turned back toward the ladder.

“Don’t patronize me — Nick.” Jack let the name land deliberately, and Nick froze. “You’ll just find another place to jump from. Be a waste, if you ask me.”

Nick turned to face him.

“How do you know my name?”

“Let’s get a few things straight. “I’ve done my homework. I know you’ve been sitting in a circle of folding chairs at the Center, telling a room full of strangers you walk the old mills at night and can’t find a reason not to.” A small pause. “I’ve read your paperwork, Nick."

“You’ve got a real bad way of talking someone out of it.”

“That’s just it. I’m not here to talk you out of it.” Jack stepped closer, and the smile that came with it wasn’t unkind, which was somehow worse. “I’m here to help you do it more spectacularly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Help you go out with a bang, you know? I’m with an organization. We call it the Suicide Club.”

Nick almost laughed. “I think you need more help than I do. I’ve got my own problems. Let’s just say good night and go our separate ways.”

“Can’t let you do that.”

Jack put himself between Nick and the ladder.

“You don’t get a vote in what I do.”

“At what point,” Jack said, checking his watch again, “during my last six minutes and forty-two seconds of talking, did I say you had a choice in being my assignment? I’ve got a bet. Three minutes eighteen seconds left for you to be dead.”

“You have a bet that I’ll kill myself?”

“What can I say. We get a little overzealous. Twelve grand riding on you. I can’t let you walk away.”

The gun came out of the trench coat so fast Nick barely tracked the motion, and then the barrel was pressed flat against his forehead.

“Whoa — Jack. What are you doing? Put it down.”

“Haven’t killed you yet.”

“I didn’t want — I don’t—”

“You’re scared. That’s fine. You’ve got everything else, but not the nerve. That’s where I come in.”

“You’ve got this wrong.”

“Please. You’re talking to a professional. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. It’s not that I don’t have the guts, Jack. It’s doubt. I’m having doubt.”

Jack shoved him down, face up, onto the wet gravel.

“Bull. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You’ve had one foot out the door for a long time.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You don’t see it yet, but this is perfect. That’s why me and my club exist. We’re the backbone, man. We make sure you get what you actually want. Trust me.”

“I DON’T WANT THIS. I DON’T WANT TO DIE.”

“What have you got to live for? I’m on a clock here.”

Jack pulled the hammer back and put the muzzle to the back of Nick’s skull.

“No — no, wait—”

“You were ready to swan-dive off this roof ten minutes ago. Point of no return, Nick. You’re lying to yourself, same as always.”

“It’s not a lie!”

“BULL. You can’t lie to me. Maybe to yourself. Not to me. I know what it’s like. You can’t fool the reaper, Nick. I’ve seen his face and lived to talk about it.”

He reached down and yanked his own collar open, and there it was — a thick, old scar running ear to ear, pale against his throat.

“Jack, please,” Nick said, and something in his voice cracked open, real or not even he could have said. “It’s true. I want to live.”

“Then prove it. Forty-five seconds.”

And here, for one strange, suspended second, Nick’s mind didn’t reach for his mother — didn’t reach for the fire, or the thing he saw in the mirror two and a half years ago, or Dr. Reyes’s calm, careful voice asking him again whether he was sleeping — it reached, instead, for a parking lot on the Strip at two in the morning, and fifty Norwegian tourists leaning out the windows of a double-decker tour bus with their phones held up, cheering like they’d won something, while Sprigs laughed so hard through her own vows that the Elvis at the drive-thru window had to start them over.

“Little White Chapel,” Nick said, which made no sense at all, and then, “No — sorry. That’s where we got married. In Vegas, six months ago, in the car, at the drive-through window, and there was a whole bus of tourists watching, and she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say I do.”

“And this makes you want to live, why?”

“Because it was the stupidest, best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I didn’t see it coming, and I keep thinking — if I didn’t see that coming, what else don’t I see coming? What if the good stuff just keeps showing up whether I’m looking for it or not?”

Jack looked at his watch. Nodded, once, flat and final as a darkroom timer going off.

“Time’s up.”

He grabbed Nick and flipped him, a knee driving into his back, the gun pressed to the base of his skull now.

“Please,” Nick said, into the wet gravel. “It gives me hope.”

“I don’t believe you. Hope ain’t enough.”

“It is for me.”

A frozen tableau: one man kneeling over another, rain pouring off both of them, a gun resting against the back of a skull.

Jack’s wrist tightened.

Lightning split the sky open, white and total.

Then black.

Thunder cracked, once, hard, exactly like a gunshot.