She was quiet for a long time, and I thought she was going to walk away without replying. Then, “Andy, I can’t.”
Three words and it was over. I felt it. All the passion of the last six months, the long conversations, the laughter.
Done.
The question as to whether she’d gotten a note as well was answered. “Okay,” I said. “This is what you want?” There was another option, one I’d laid out before, one that would blow up her world and mine. One I’d gladly choose.
She looked at me then, and I wished she hadn’t been wearing sunglasses. I wanted to see her eyes. “It’s what we need to do.”
Then she was gone.
I swallowed hard twice, waiting to the count of five before turning to watch her go. She left the market with a final glance at Sadie, who returned the look before focusing on me. I looked away and saw Mrs. Tross’s narrowed gaze pinning me down from where she sat on a bench across the lot.
I scratched my forehead with my middle finger. Her scandalized expression gave me the steam to get home. When I walked in the door, I realized I hadn’t put the package of mushrooms back.
I hated mushrooms.
You won, blackmailer. Ender of good things. Cowardly, self-righteous note writer.
I milled about the house for the rest of the day, shooting poisonous looks out the window and at my open manuscript on the computer screen in equal measure.
In the cabinet there was half a bottle of good bourbon my agent had sent me after my last book was published. I took it out and sipped straight from the bottle, feeling like the epitome of a tortured writer, a lovestruck fool. I despised self-pity, so I put the bottle back and sat down in the chair before the computer and typed.
And typed.
And typed.
Until my back hurt and I had to piss. I wrote bad words, I wrote really good words.
It didn’t matter. I lanced the story like a wound and let the infection ooze onto the page. Fuck perfection. I wanted completion. I wanted closure.
Finally it was done.
Around nine that night, I called Dad, asked if he’d eaten. He said yes. I told him I wasn’t feeling well and was heading to bed.
I fell asleep roughly sixty seconds after lying down. Comatose.
But I dreamed. Great, vibrant Technicolor dreams. People on acid don’t see things like this.
I was out in my front yard. The sun leaving the sky. Not setting, drawing farther away, like a thrown ball across a darkening field. The Adirondacks grew in height until they towered over everything, became an endless craggy wall. The grass was made of green glass shards, and even though I tried not to move, I started to walk. Then run. My gritted teeth cracked. A mouthful of gravel and blood. Then a sharp bang, like a thunderclap directly over my head, and I sat up in bed, reaching for my bleeding feet before I knew I was awake.
Two in the morning. Heart pumping hard. I waited, unsure if that last sound had been in my dream or not.
A car started up somewhere and drove away. A dog barked. Quiet.
I lay back down, staring up at the black ceiling, letting the sweat on my body cool.
I woke without recalling drifting off again and dragged myself to the kitchen. The last time I drank anything more than a couple of beers had been months ago, and my body let me know it wasn’t a fan of bourbon no matter how expensive it was.
As the coffee brewed, the sound of a siren emerged somewhere in town and came closer, and closer, until it was on the Loop and I was moving to the window for a better look.
A cop car zoomed into view and slid to a stop in front of the Barrens’。 An officer climbed out and started speaking to someone on the sidewalk. Mr. Allen Crane.
Another squad rolled up. And another. Then an ambulance.
I ran out the door.
7
You pace around the house you grew up in. You do this because you have no other place to go.
Not anywhere that’s better. Nowhere the air won’t seem thick and cloistering with your guilt.
Because you did this. Your selfishness brought you here, the starting line so distant in hindsight it’s nonexistent. There is only now. Only the worry of what you’ve caused and its acid heat in your belly.
When I sprinted out of my house and up the street, I didn’t think about it. I just ran, wearing only the athletic shorts and T-shirt I’d slept in. Hair askew, eyes wild, I looked like a madman.
It’s no wonder one of the officers cordoning off the crime scene stopped me short. He was a big man, strong and powerful, and when he grabbed me, I had to stop.
Go back home, sir. You can’t be here.
I took everything in. The early gray light of morning. The strobing flash of red-and-blue lights. Mr. Allen Crane standing off to one side holding the leash of his little dog, who was pissing in the grass between the sidewalk and street.