‘Finished, or still reading?’
‘Finished. Just looking at the end again. That part doesn’t make much sense.’
Alice says nothing.
‘Because if he left you the thumb drive, the part about him walking down the road and throwing away the guns couldn’t be on it.’
Alice says nothing. Since she arrived at Bucky’s place, she has said very little, and Bucky hasn’t pushed her. What she’s done, mostly, is sleep and write on the laptop Bucky now closes and holds up.
‘MacBook Pro. Nice gadget, but this one has been around the block a few times.’
‘Yes,’ Alice says. ‘I guess that’s true.’
‘So in the story Billy took his laptop with him, but here it is. Add the stuff that couldn’t be on the thumb drive and it’s kind of a science fiction – type story.’
The young woman sitting at the kitchen table says nothing.
‘Still, there’s no reason it shouldn’t hold together. No reason for people who read it to think he didn’t just walk away and is living out west somewhere. Or in Australia, he always talked about that. Maybe writing a book. Another one. He always talked about that too, but I never thought it would come to anything.’
He looks at her. Alice looks back. Outside a cold wind is blowing and it looks like snow, but it’s warm here in the kitchen. A knot pops in the stove.
At last Bucky says, ‘Will people read it, Alice?’
‘I don’t know … I’d have to change the names …’
He shakes his head. ‘Klerke’s murder was world-wide news. Still …’ He sees her disappointment and shrugs. ‘They’d maybe think it was a roman à clef. That’s French. I learned it from him. He said it while I was reading this old paperback I picked up at the Strand. Valley of the Dolls, it was called.’ He shrugs again. ‘Just as long as you keep me out of it, I don’t care. Call me Trevor Wheatley or something and put me up in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. As for Nick Majarian, that motherfucker can take care of himself.’
‘Is it any good, do you think?’
He puts the laptop – Billy’s old standby – on the kitchen table. ‘I think so, but I’m no literary critic.’
‘Does it sound like him?’
Bucky laughs. ‘Sweetheart, I never read anything he wrote, so I can’t say for sure, but it sure sounds like his voice. And the voice stays the same all the way through. Put it this way, I can’t tell for sure where you took over.’
Smiles have been in short supply since Alice came back, but she gives him one now. ‘That’s good. I think it’s the most important part.’
‘Did you make that up about me being a bad man, too?’
She doesn’t drop her eyes. ‘No. He said it.’
‘You wrote what you wished had happened,’ Bucky says. ‘The hero of the story walks away into the future toting his suitcase. Now tell me what really did happen.’
So she does.
2
They drive back to Riverhead, stopping on the way for Band-Aids, a roll of gauze, tape, hydrogen peroxide, and Betadine ointment. Alice goes into the Walgreens while Billy waits in the car. At the hotel they enter by the side door. Once they’re in his room, she helps him off with the bomber jacket. There’s a hole in it, and another in his shirt. Not a rip but a hole, and not in the side, as he told her. Farther in.
‘Oh my God,’ Alice says. Her voice is muffled because her hand is over her mouth. ‘That’s not a graze, that’s your stomach.’
‘I guess it is. Or maybe a little lower?’ He sounds bemused.
‘In the bathroom,’ Alice says. ‘If you don’t want to leave a lot of blood around.’
But once they’re in there and she helps him get his shirt off, she sees there is almost no blood coming from the red-black hole. She’s able to cover it with one of the Band-Aids after she’s used the hydrogen peroxide and a little Betadine.
She has to help him back to the bed. He’s walking slowly and listing to the right. His face is sheened with sweat. ‘Marge,’ he says. ‘Fucking Marge.’
He sits down but gasps when his body bends. Alice asks him how bad it hurts.
‘Not too bad.’
‘Are you lying?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Well, a little.’
She touches his stomach to the right of the hole and he gasps again. ‘Don’t.’
‘We have to get you to a hos.’ She stops. ‘We can’t, can we? It’s a gunshot wound and they have to report those.’