Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  “Oh.” Gretchen giggled. “I’m out of practice.”

  “Is it helping with your pain?” Abby asked.

  “Umm . . . ,” she said, closing her eyes and humming to the music, “not really.”

  “Can you at least work from home?” Abby asked gently.

  Without opening her eyes Gretchen said, “I might have to consider that. There will still be meetings I can’t avoid, though. Signings. That kind of thing.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” Abby said, reaching out to touch Gretchen’s shoulder. “I’ll have breakfast and coffee ready, and if you just, you know, tell me what to do, maybe I can help out. Like your assistant at the office.”

  Gretchen’s white plastic fork fell to the bluestone floor, but she did not even startle, her head resting on her shoulder, her mouth slightly agape. Abby rose to check on her employer, initially fearing the worst but quickly establishing that she was merely asleep. Abby took a final toke, pinched off the ashy tip, slid the joint into her pocket, then collected their food and utensils and brought them into the kitchen. Returning to the porch a few moments later, she surprised herself by lifting Gretchen up off her chair, a feat that caused her to feel at once incredibly empowered, deeply trusted, and thoroughly heartbroken. Gretchen could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds, Abby thought as she carried her employer into the master bedroom and guided her gently beneath the covers. Probably less.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Gretchen did not stir until after nine thirty, waking with something like a panicked shriek and then scampering into the bathroom.

  “I’m late!” she yelled.

  “Gretchen,” Abby said evenly, knocking lightly on the bathroom door, “I already called your assistant. Told her you were working from home, at least for this morning. It’s okay.”

  The door cracked less than an inch, revealing Gretchen’s sharp naked shoulder leaning into the frame, her back turned to Abby and the shower already running, steam slowly billowing up to fill the little room.

  “Abby,” Gretchen said firmly, finally turning around to meet the young woman’s gaze, “let me clarify something: You work for me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Abby uttered.

  “In thirty-odd years of working as an attorney, how many days do you suppose I’ve worked from home?”

  Abby knew well enough to stay silent.

  “Zero,” Gretchen said, closing the door. “Not one.”

  33

  Teddy was on the telephone with Bart, giving him an update of their progress, when the cabinets arrived, and he let out an unrestrained and triumphant howl before telling Bart he’d call him back. Now the kitchen would finally take form, and with less than ten full days until their deadline. Once the cabinets were installed, why, if he desperately had to, Teddy could damn well drive to Denver or Salt Lake City, physically load the appliances into a trailer, and then haul them up the driveway with a snowmobile, if that was what it took. Hell, he’d get a pack of sled dogs or eight magic reindeer. If push came to shove, he would drink six pots of bittersweet coffee and physically drag them up the driveway himself. And what a punctuation mark that would make at the end of this whole enterprise.

  The cabinetmaker left the warmth of his truck and then stood for some time in the driveway, simply marveling at the house, his breath clouding up into the low-slung sky.

  “Holy shit,” he said as Teddy all but raced out of the garage to shake his hand. “Gorgeous. Just freaking gorgeous.”

  “Boy, are we glad to see you!” Teddy said.

  The cabinetmaker, Jedd, a wiry man about their age, just stood there in his faded blue jeans, Adidas soccer shoes, and an oversize insulated plaid shirt. He lit a cigarette and continued peering up at the house. “That road’s a fucking nightmare, though, brah,” he finally said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Thought I was driving the Khyber Pass.”

  Teddy bit his lip, unfamiliar with that last reference.

  “Almost lost it,” Jedd said, pointing a finger toward the truck. “Came to a corner there and felt the back tires fishtail on me. Jesus, brah. I was shittin’ a fucking brick there for a second. There’s no way you can keep that driveway open all winter. No way.”

  Teddy was hardly listening; all he wanted to do was fling the back door of the truck wide open and load some cabinets on his back like a Sherpa ready to summit the nearest mountain.

  “Look at my fucking hands,” Jedd said, holding them out so Teddy could see them still trembling, two pale aspen leaves in a gale that would not relent. “You guys gotta get some sand on that road. Or a goddamn metal guardrail.”

  “How long you think installation will take?” Teddy put in. “Can we bang this out today?”

  Jedd frowned. “Brah, I just about died back there. Lemme at least finish my smoke here. These hands can’t install shit right now.”

  Teddy paced. Their deadline loomed, like a clockface on the cliffs opposite the house; he could practically hear the seconds ticking.

  At last, Jedd flicked the cigarette butt down the driveway and popped a piece of gum into his mouth. “All right, brah,” he said. “Let’s rock ’n’ roll.”

  The two of them brought in the cabinets, and when it was finally time to hang them in their appointed places, Cole quit painting to help hold steady all that wood and glass. He seemed to struggle with that task, though, his hands juttering, feet tapping, and more than once he almost walked away completely, threatening the safety of all those beautiful cabinets. Teddy yelled at him to focus, and when they did take breaks, he later inspected Cole’s painting to find that he had attacked the job the way a hypercaffeinated kid might: some walls were painted well, yes. But others were slapdash, the corners unpainted, with drips of paint even beading on the trim. When Teddy pointed out these mistakes to Cole, his partner grew agitated, slapping at his own head or biting his fingernails.

  “Hey,” Teddy said quietly, consoling his friend with a half hug, “hang in there, bud. We’re almost there. You need to take a little break? Maybe a nap in the office?”

  “Naw, man,” Cole murmured. “I’m good, Teddy. It’s fine. I’m golden.”

  “Okay,” Teddy said, studying his friend’s face. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Cole wouldn’t meet Teddy’s eyes. His whole body seemed electrified, shivering with voltage under a sheen of sweat, his skin an unnaturally waxy color.

  “Brother,” Cole all but whispered then, “I don’t know how much longer I can push like this.”

  “Me, too,” Teddy said, “but, Cole—we’re so, so close.”

  Now Teddy gave his friend a full-force hug, the sort of embrace shared by two men at the finale of an epic accomplishment with no regard for who might see them or what the hell anyone else thought about anything.

  Cole began quietly sobbing. “I haven’t slept in a fuckin’ week,” he cried. “I can’t even tell what’s real and what’s not. I forgot about the hot springs yesterday, you know? Thought the house was on fire. Sometimes, I’m painting, and the walls look like they’re rippling, like someone just dropped a stone in a pond. Little ripples everywhere, you know? And I try, Teddy, try to smooth out those ripples, but they just keep coming. . . .”

  Teddy held his friend, held his sweaty head in his hands, and rocked back and forth, the way he might have comforted one of his daughters. But mentally, he was doing the math. Could he finish the house without Cole’s help in the time that remained? What was left to do? The painting. There was a significant amount of painting left to do. And the appliances. And then there was also the shipment of furniture.

  “Take the rest of the day off,” Teddy told his friend. “Jedd and I can handle the cabinets. And I’ll figure out the painting. Just, you know, go out to dinner or something, okay?”

  “Dinner,” Cole mumbled. “Yeah, maybe some dinner . . .”
<
br />   “Go on,” Teddy said. “Get some sleep.”

  “All right,” Cole said weakly. “Hey, thanks, Teddy.”

  “Okay,” Teddy said, laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I have to help with the cabinets now. Get some sleep.”

  Jedd was a gifted craftsman, no doubt about that; the cabinets had already been painted white with glass doors, and for certain smaller nooks of the kitchen, he’d sourced some character-rich hickory and created open shelving with walnut pegs that affixed the shelves to the walls. This was a one-of-a-kind kitchen. Everything a gourmand might ever need would be visible and easily accessible on shelves and in cabinets that could never be duplicated, no matter what design magazine someday featured the house.

  A new tension arose, though: how to race against the clock without sacrificing quality. On other jobs, they might have trusted everything to the subs, but mistakes could not be tolerated on this project; there was no room for error. If a single cabinet was damaged in transit, all their efforts would be in vain. And so, transporting the cabinetry into the house became something of a religious endeavor, like two men entrusted with carrying the Ark of the Covenant. Despite the cold, sweat poured off the men’s faces as they concentrated; no walls could be scraped, no floors gouged.

  Teddy had begun to view the house as a temple, though he could not pinpoint what faith it aspired to celebrate. The most obvious religion seemed to be money, but this unsettled him in unexpected ways. How could this beautiful house he had spent so many mornings staring at—the sunrise gleaming golden off the windows and roof, as the hot springs steamed the cool air—how could this structure be nothing more than a homage to wealth? And, if it was, what did that say of their efforts—of them?

  34

  Cole did not take himself into town, did not dine at some fancy restaurant. He did not get any farther than their office trailer, in fact; could not even remember crawling into the narrow bed, after turning on the tiny space heater and simply worming beneath the layers of blankets to shut his bloodshot eyes.

  He woke up two days later in a tangle of foul bedsheets and sleeping bags. Peering over the edge of the bed, he saw what looked like a plastic gallon milk jug half full of bright yellow urine, the smell unmistakable.

  His first thought was not the house, or Teddy, or even poor Bart, out in some Utah hospital. His first thought, his first impulse, was just how to find his next high. His body was rebelling against him, he could feel that, like a sickness, not so much coursing through his veins as squatting inside him, like a ghost dwelling inside his skin, urging him to find more, more, more.

  He stood shakily from the bed and wobbled toward the dresser, where Bart had stashed his supply in that thick Stephen King book. He rummaged through the drawers with greater and greater ferocity. Nothing. The fuck? No pipe, no crystal, nothing! He looked in the mini fridge—nothing. He tore out of the trailer and into the cold night, snow swirling over the ground. The house was lit up, every window aglow, and even from the trailer he could hear the sounds of laughter inside, joyous laughter, of music and playful conversation.

  Now Cole was unsure if he was still sleeping, caught in some dream. The golden cast of the light from the house and the steam rising up the face of the mountain . . . all of it was the stuff of hallucination. Only the realization that he was standing in the snow in his icily soggy socks, the fact that he was shivering against the freezing air—only those sensations grounded him to this reality. He hugged his elbows, blinking against the snow and cold.

  There were children running through the house, too, laughing and dancing. He could see their little heads at the bottoms of some of the windows. It took him a moment to place the music trickling out through an open garage door: fucking Bing Crosby.

  He glanced down the driveway, past the bridge to the parking lot and turnaround, and thought he could see the shapes of several vehicles, slightly obscured by a thick layer of snow. He picked his way up toward the house, gritting his teeth against the cold and the toxic turmoil boiling beneath his skin. The ghost inside him felt like it was beginning to burn now; his flesh felt like paper on fire, his skeleton a brittle wick dipped in jet fuel.

  Inside the garage, at least thirty pairs of shoes were neatly lined up, like the entrance to a Japanese shrine, and nearby a potluck had been arranged on folding tables: containers of pulled pork, baked beans, and macaroni and cheese, bowls of potato salad and coleslaw, bags of chips, jars of pickles, and long coolers filled with bottles of water and soda. A few women who had been merrily engaged in conversation suddenly stopped talking, as if their throats had been cut, and they stood perfectly still, their eyes wide, staring at Cole as he wordlessly trudged past the food, offering a weak smile, and a half-hearted wave. He plodded up the stairs and upon reaching the main floor saw that Teddy must have invited about half of his Mormon congregation to the house in what was surely a painting party, the kind of thing a young couple does upon moving into a new house in order to finish a monumental amount of painting.

  The children were well-behaved, sliding across the slick new wood floors in their stockinged feet, though their fun came to an abrupt halt as soon as they noticed Cole, standing in front of the fireplace, his socks wet, his clothes filthy, his slack face covered by days’ worth of stubble, his hair totally bedraggled.

  Cole continued slowly exploring the house. In the expansive first-floor living room, three women were dressing a seven-foot-tall Christmas tree with white decorative lights and what must have been ornaments from their own home. A baby sat on the wood floor, playing with a wooden star, all painted yellow. Now the stereo played Nat King Cole, crooning out familiar Christmas carols. The women at the Christmas tree stopped their work and looked at Cole. He could see in their eyes something like fear.

  “Teddy?” he managed to croak, trying to tamp down the volatile mix of anxiety, intense craving, and anger. Be cool, he thought to himself. For fuck’s sake, be cool. He felt his fists clenching.

  One of the women pointed upstairs.

  He tried to smooth his shirt, straighten his posture; looked behind him at his own filthy footprints. One of the women was on her hands and knees with a paper towel, doing her best to erase his grimy path.

  Upon reaching the second floor, he followed the jocular laughter of several grown men, thought he could pick out Teddy’s voice among the others. He stood in the doorway and realized with a start that they’d finished painting everything. It was . . . perfect, the house. And essentially done. The final touches would just be the appliances, which, they had been told, were to be delivered the morning of Christmas Eve.

  “Hey,” Cole said, greeting the men somewhat meekly.

  “Cole!” Teddy cried out, before truly registering his friend’s sorrowful state. For a moment, his face fell, his smile retreated, and there was a palpable tension in the room; these friends of Teddy’s were sun-kissed, fit, wholesome family men who enjoyed diversions such as mountain biking and trail running in their spare time, men who had certainly never touched drugs of any kind; a few of them had somehow completely avoided tasting so much as a light beer or coughing on a pilfered cigarette. The silence and tension lasted less than two seconds, but it was real and heavy, before finally, some inner light within Teddy overpowered whatever trepidations he was feeling, and he collapsed the distance between himself and Cole, giving his friend a huge, hearty hug.

  “We made it,” he said, his lips close to Cole’s ear. “We made it, brother.”

  Cole stood there limply, absorbed in his friend’s embrace. He had come into the house looking for more crystal, for his pipe, for the next rush, and now, there he was, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, faces that looked at him with if not half-concealed disgust, then cringing sympathy. The house was warm, the lighting perfect. He looked at the gleaming trim, at the expanse of unblemished walls, through the vast windows, out into the total darkness of the night. Below them was the sound of child
ren’s laughter, and women in gleeful conversation. The Christmas carols on the sound system seemed to swirl the fragrance of the freshly cut balsam fir and the lovingly prepared food.

  Cole collapsed into Teddy’s arms, sobbing. There was nothing for him to say, nothing more for him to do. If this was closure, it felt at once like all-encompassing relief and a total void of meaning. For the past four months, he had done nothing but live and breathe this house. He had killed for this house. Lost himself to a drug for this house, and now, all of that came caroming down the mountain on top of him in a great landslide, a great avalanche of emotion. He could not stop sobbing, even as his body ached and burned, twitched and screamed out for more crystal.

  “Come on,” Teddy said. “Lemme show you around.”

  “Hold on,” Cole whispered. “Let me just, you know, get myself together. I’m all—fucked up.”

  “I know it,” Teddy said. “We got to get you some help.”

  “Can we just stand this way for a minute, please?” Cole asked. “Just to let me . . . you know . . . stop fucking blubbering.”

  “Sure,” Teddy said quietly. “Take your time.”

  Cole wiped his nose on his own forearm, took several long, deep breaths, and then gave Teddy a little nod to indicate he was composed, or at least as composed as he was going to manage in that moment.

  Now the two men moved from room to room, astonished at what True Triangle had created, at how this vision had finally crystallized. Teddy’s friends were clearly also astounded, snapping photos for their Instagram or Facebook accounts, many of them posing in the tiled shower stalls with views of the hot springs or mountains. Teddy didn’t have the heart to warn them against posting the images; besides, Gretchen and these folks were unlikely to have too many social media overlaps.