John Zobel spent his childhood in Massachusetts and Maine and never quite let go. Rumor has it that he graduated from Harvard College in 1981, with a concentration in English, and from Stanford Law School in 1985. John is a partner in the Seattle office of Davis Wright Tremaine, with a practice in commercial litigation. When he's not slaving away at his day job, or preparing his next scene for RCWG, John enjoys distance running, mountaineering, word games, and jigsaw puzzles. He lives in Seattle with his wife and son, two large cats, and a fair amount of rain.
John's first novel, A Slight Change of Plans, was published in 1998. He is currently hard at work on several new projects, including The Relative When. Click on the appropriate link, or scroll down for a small excerpt from each.
from A Slight Change of Plans, © 1998 John Zobel
The lights were off in the foyer but, as he let himself in, Mike could see the moonlit steps of the grand staircase. He left his damp clothes by the door. Liddell would know where to take them.
The big house was still. He made his way to the landing, where the stairs split. Which way had Gray said? Right. To the right. He turned and reached the top. The stairs ended in the middle of a long hallway, lined with doors. Moonlight came through a window at one end. A sense of fatigue swept over him. It would be good to sleep in a bed again. No dogs. No moose.
The nearest door was closed but not locked. He pushed it wide. It was dark inside. He fumbled for the switch, but his hand brushed only textured wallpaper. He gave up, shut the door, and felt his way across the floor. The outline of a sleigh bed loomed before him. He dropped his suitcase, flopped onto the mattress, and landed hard across a pair of legs.
Feet kicked at him. He rolled from the bed and landed in a crouch.
The person in bed was breathing hard. "Don't move. I've got a gun."
It was Liz. He caught her scent in the dark, a tangy, unperfumed, healthy-animal smell.
Keeping his eyes on the shadow in the bed, he crawled away until he reached a wall. His ear struck a door handle. In a single move, he opened it, swung through, and slammed it shut.
A key protruded below the handle. He turned it, panting in the semi-darkness, and his brain began to function again, taking note of small, curious details. Such as, bedroom doors never locked from the outside. The hallway wasn't tiled. And it didn't smell of soap and perfume.
The doorknob rattled. "I know you're in there."
He sagged against the wall, one hand covering his face. The one good thing was that he hadn't picked a closet.
There was a pounding on the door, maybe a kick.
Perhaps there was a window. He could climb out and get down the trellis. He opened his eyes and was shocked to see not merely a window, but a second door on the opposite wall. He strained his eyes, but the apparition was still there. Shared bathroom. With a muttered, "Thank you," to the architect, he pulled open the door and stepped into yet another darkened space. After two faltering steps, he walked into heavy drapes.
The noise from the far side of the bathroom grew louder. He dropped to his hands and knees and scuttled toward the far wall.
A bedside light clicked on. "What the hell are you doing here?" Matt peered at him from under a sheet.
Mike stood and brushed his clothes.
Marsha sat up in the adjacent bed. "What the hell is he doing here?"
"That's what I asked."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't. He just stares like a lunatic."
"Sorry," Mike said. "Sleepwalking. Terrible habit."
Matt squinted. "You're dressed."
"Yeah. I do that. Sorry."
With the lights on, it was easy to locate the exit. He reached the hallway and slammed the door behind him.
Gray stood in the hall, clad in a hideous pair of pajamas. "What do you think you're up to?"
"You told me to take the righthand stairs."
"I told you take a right at the top of the stairs."
Sounds of commotion increased from behind both bedroom doors.
"It won't be long." Mike clenched and unclenched his hands. He darted a glance toward Liz's bedroom. "She's going to figure out I went through."
"My room." Gray pointed. "Quick. Closet."
"Not the closet."
"Do it." Gray moved down the hall and started to pound on Liz's door. "Everything all right, darling?"
In Gray's bedroom, the closet was easy enough to find. Standing in the doorway, Mike had the foolish hope that he could wake up and bring it all to an end, but then he heard footsteps in the hall. He yanked the handle shut. He was settled in among the hanging clothes, and his breathing was coming back to normal, before he realized what he'd done.
His suitcase was beside her bed.
From The Relative When, by John Zobel, © 2006 John Zobel
Most of Maple Street was familiar to Sarah. The little wooden bridge over the single set of railroad tracks, the long gliding hill to the flat section with its warm brick apartment buildings, the trees across the road: all were in their places from a decade before. But the railroad tracks were gone now, replaced by a paved bicycle path. And the apartment buildings looked tired, the trees mostly dead. She had the sense of something having slipped away while they’d been gone.
She turned to ask Dan if he felt the same, but the set of his jaw and the pallor in his cheek scared her off. All through the drive he’d flashed a succession of gloomy expressions. Whatever demons he was wrestling, she didn’t want a part of them, not today. There’d be plenty of room in other days for unhappiness.
Just before the traffic light at Lowell Street, the driveway for Reeve appeared on the left. It had become a one-way street at some point—there was a Do Not Enter sign facing Maple—but it didn’t matter, because a chain link fence blocked drive completely. She turned at the light and found the other entrance, off Lowell. The fence continued around the corner, but across this driveway was a gate with a padlock. A No Trespassing warning, and another sign stapled onto the old wooden "Reeve Elementary School": the familiar blue-and-white logo of Cassell Home Construction.
"How strange." She rubbed her eyes, but the sign was still there. "I didn’t know Joe’s company bought the school. What would he want that for?"
Dan braked in front of the gate. "Joe?"
"Cassell. Joseph Cassell." Her fingers brushed the sapphire. "He’s . . . we’re . . . friends."
"Oh, sure. Cassell Homes." It was hard to read anything in the expression. "I’ve read about them. But they made their reputation rehabbing waterfront property. I didn’t realize they did anything in the suburbs."
"They don’t. Not that I know of." Sarah turned off the engine, got out and walked to the fence. It was a Cassell sign, all right; no imagining that. She rested her chin on top of the fence and stared at the side of the school with its boarded windows. It sat with the patient air of an abandoned toy. In between the school and Lowell Street was the soccer field. She had an instant, snapshot memory of the 600-yard dash, part of the President’s psychotic fitness test, at which she had been perennially inept. Dan had won it every year.
He stood beside her, fooling with the padlock. "Look at this. The gate’s open."
Sure enough, the shackle gaped free. "I don’t know." But she searched the face of the school again. It was mighty tempting.
Dan hefted the lock. "Are you Cassell’s lawyer?"
"Sort of. For some things, not many."
"Well, come on. That must give you some sort of authority. And he’s not likely to press charges, is he? We’ll just walk around the playground."
She knew it wasn’t right. But what harm could come of it? She’d tell Joe at dinner and he’d laugh at the coincidence.
"Okay." She glanced at her watch. Just past two-thirty. "But no more than ten minutes."
The driveway swept around in a broad curve to the left, but Dan led them straight toward Reeve, cutting across the field. Sarah followed, feeling the swish of the long grass against her nylons. The ground seemed dry and level enough that her shoes and ankles would survive. After a few more steps she relaxed and let her feet kick at the fuzzy tops of the grass.
Dan waited in the main parking lot. "Welcome back." His smile seemed genuine.
Sarah looked over at the circle where yellow and black buses had once queued, then up at the tall maples lining the pavement. "It brings you back, doesn’t it? you know, when I woke up this morning this would have been the last thing I figured I’d be doing today."
He stared at a crack in the asphalt. "It just goes to show there’s something to be said for spontaneity." But his expression didn’t match the lightness of his words. Those demons had returned.
Before Sarah could say anything, he vaulted the steps to the main door and rattled it.
"Locked." He pressed his face against the glass. Paper trash had gathered in the corners of the entry.
"Wait a minute." She stepped closer. "You said the playground, remember?"
"Playground, right." He hopped down. "I think it will be easier if we go this way. More pavement, less bushwhacking."
She followed him again, more slowly. Over there, those windows had been Miss Deckman’s classroom. And that shady area just there was the spot where they’d taken a class picture on the last day of school. And against that wall, during recesses in the spring of sixth grade, she had dared to sit and hold hands with Michael Curtin.
Dan stopped in the overgrown grass behind the school, staring at the playground equipment that rose like rusty sculptures. "I thought I’d just imagined that the slide was that tall. It really is high. I don’t think they’d let kids go on it today. Lawsuits."
She pointed to where the kickball diamond had once been. "It was great the way our whole class played together, boys and girls mixed."
"Yeah," he said, "there was that heartbeat between not caring about girls and caring so much it became an obsession. In that heartbeat, we were all friends." He said it mechanically, as if he were reading from a script. "I wonder if the foursquare stripes are still there." He moved toward the school, near the back door to the cafeteria.
She watched him go. How could he say something like that but show no feeling? His behavior was so odd, so detached, and she couldn’t understand why.
Well, poo to him. She stood in the playground and turned, taking it all in. Coming back to Reeve made her feel good about herself at least, centered. It was a wonderful birthday present to herself, totally unexpected.
Near the back entrance Dan stood motionless, as if he’d come across a snake.
"What is it?" she called.
He motioned for her to be quiet. She started toward him on tiptoe, as if the long grass could otherwise make noise. Still he didn’t move, merely cocked his head. On the wall behind him she saw black and red graffiti, the Tolkein-like code adolescents seemed to pick up effortlessly at a time when their penmanship was hopeless.
She was a few yards away when she understood what he’d heard. She stopped and put a hand to her mouth. From behind the double doors to the school, with their peeling blue paint and boarded windows, came a faint but unmistakable sound, the laughter of children at play.
