9 Letters

by Austin, Blake

  “That sounds about right,” he said.

  “But when I’m building something, at least I get to be out there with the rest of my crew. Sitting around all day, this might sound like I’m not being serious, but I am, sitting around all day has got to be one of the hardest parts of the job. Don’t you just find yourself itching to get up? Walk around?”

  “Every day,” Madison said. “I want to get up, walk around. Get some air. Maybe just walk away from my desk and out to my car and never come back.”

  “I was about to ask why you did it,” I said, “But I guess you’ve gotta.”

  Madison nodded.

  I realized I was feeling sorry for a guy with three times my salary.

  But at least I didn’t have to wear a polo shirt.

  I filled my plate with chips and some buffalo wings, and as soon as I could, I ducked over to where Eric and Nicole were standing by the back porch.

  “Luke,” Eric said, smiling. I shook his hand.

  “How’s it going at the studio?” I asked.

  Eric grinned. “Still hitting that record button and dreaming of the big time.”

  “You’ll get there,” I told him. “Just you wait and see.”

  “Everyone’s asking about you,” Nicole said, lowering her voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, you’re the man of the hour,” Nicole said. “Been a long time since Rae’s had a handsome guy over, and no one knows the first thing about you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Eric said. “I’ve been talking you up. Something about swooping in, saving Irina. Fighting off like eight huge drunk guys.”

  “You’re making me sound modest,” I said. “Couldn’t have been less than a dozen.”

  “A dozen huge drunk guys,” Eric agreed. “Beat them all up, threw them out of your bar.”

  “Which you totally own,” Nicole said. “Don’t worry, we’ve been telling them that too. You definitely aren’t just a bartender. You’re like, independently wealthy and own the bar just so you’ve got a place to kick back and drink.”

  “Well I appreciate you all talking up my good name,” I said. “And damn, I wish your stories were true. Independently wealthy, that’s the job for me.”

  “But I’ll tell you something serious, Luke,” Nicole said. “Rae hasn’t been sweet on too many guys since Derek.”

  “Rae and I are just friends,” I said. I didn’t mean it, of course. Just being in the same room as her then…it didn’t matter that she wasn’t next to me. Just that I was in the same space as her was enough. It was reassuring, knowing I could turn my head the slightest bit and there she’d be. As if that calm she radiated could reach me right across the room. Felt good.

  “Sure,” Nicole said. “Anyway, Rae’s been having a rough time since Derek, so I know you’re something special. You gotta know that, too. And if you break her heart we’ll kill your firstborn son.”

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding,” Nicole said.

  “Sort of,” Eric said.

  Nicole’s face went serious again. “I don’t know what-all she’s told you about Derek. But I hope for her sake and yours that you’re nothing like him.”

  “I’ve got a job, don’t I?” I said it with a smile on my face. It worked; the conversation lightened up.

  The next hour I spent introducing myself to a string of alternately interesting and boring folks who wanted to know everything about me. Most of them weren’t as direct as Nicole, but all of them were working on letting me know that I’d better play nice. Since I didn’t have any specific plans to put the moves on Rae, it was actually kind of heartwarming. She had a lot of good friends.

  Someone dimmed the lights, and Rae looked up just in time to catch Nicole walking in from the back porch, birthday cake in hand. It was homemade. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen anyone my age get a homemade birthday cake. Maybe these office people were onto something, maybe they did stuff with their hands all the time, just not at work.

  “Happy birthday to you,” the crowd started.

  Rae’s face went firetruck red, making her freckles all but disappear in the blush.

  “Happy birthday to you...”

  I was singing too, at that point. Everyone was happy and swaying or raising their glasses. I raised mine.

  “Happy birthday, dear Rae-Rae...”

  There was a pounding on the door. Three loud knocks that echoed across the room.

  “Happy birthday to you.” The last line was ragged and confused, because just then the door swung open and a man walked in. Some guy with shaggy hair and a bad goatee.

  Eric was by the door, and his body language said the newcomer wasn’t welcome. I stepped a little bit closer to hear better, but I needn’t bother. The fellow got louder all on his own.

  “Rae,” the guy said, slurring a little. “Happy birthday, babe.”

  The cake was on the counter, candles burning. But Rae was staring at the intruder, her expression gone all dark and shut-down, and wax was melting down onto the cake. It wasn’t too hard to know what was going on.

  “You can’t be here,” Rae said. She had her phone out.

  “Don’t be like that,” Derek said. “I’m just here to wish you a happy birthday.”

  He shoved his way past Eric, and when he got inside, I realized just how big the fellow was. Turns out failed writers come in sizes other than scrawny, and he towered over Eric.

  Eric though, good on him, got back in front of Derek. I went and stood a little bit behind him. Didn’t want to draw attention to myself, because the man was drunk and volatile. If he realized he didn’t know me, he’d put two and two together and get five and assume I was sleeping with Rae. That wouldn’t go down in a way that did anyone much good.

  “I got you a birthday present,” Derek said. “Just, you know, because you’re the only thing that matters.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” Rae said. “I’ll call the cops.”

  Derek looked down at Eric like they were buddies. At some point, they might have been. “She says she’s going to call the cops but she ain’t going to. She never does, never will. You want to know why?”

  “Because she wants you to grow a fucking pair and leave her alone all on your own,” Eric said. I liked him.

  “Because she still loves me,” Derek said. He went for his back pocket, and I started forward, but he pulled out a little wrapped present. “This is for Rae,” he said.

  Eric took it from him, set it on the coffee table. Derek took that moment to try to force his way past the smaller man once again, which is when I stepped in.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He stared at me blankly.

  “Derek, right?” I asked like I was being friendly. “I hear you got a sweet ride. You want to show it to me?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “Come on, let’s just go outside.”

  Then he tried to push me, but I got his arm twisted around and handled him out the door, just like John Lawson had shown me. Glad some good came from tending bar.

  Outside, though, I let him go while we were still in the yard. Because I somehow thought he’d take the hint and leave.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said. “Come on. Just go.”

  “Not your buddy, you redneck fuck.”

  He took a swing at me. All wild, no form. I ducked my head out of the way. Let him start to recover his balance, then gave him a shove in the chest as he overcorrected. He toppled back, fell into the fence. Splintered the already-broken picket.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” I said. Sometimes that rage, it just came on. Didn’t know where from, but there it was. Guess I figured I’d already had enough shit in my life and that taking more from this guy just wouldn’t wash. I folded my arms and stared him down.

  Even drunk, he took the hint, stumbled away.

  “Call yourself a fucking cab!” I shouted after, as he disappeared into the darkened street

  “Up yours!” I heard echoing down the nearly-em
pty street.

  I sighed, pulled myself together. Straightened my shirt, straightened my hat.

  I went back inside and everyone was silent, just kind of looking at me. Rae must have blown out the candles when they were down to nubs, and the top of the chocolate cake had puddles of blue wax.

  Then Nicole and Eric went back to talking, and the room recovered a little bit. Rae was still by the counter, staring into her drink, the poor cake forgotten.

  “Well,” Rae said. “I’m pretty embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “It’s not you, it’s him.”

  She just nodded.

  “Say, he, uh, kind of fell into the fence. Well, sort of through it. You need help fixing that?”

  “Nah, I’ll call somebody.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  I fixed myself about a shot of rum into a plastic cup. Knocked it back, chased it with Coke. Sometimes beer takes too long to calm the nerves.

  “You want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “It was really stupid, staying with him. Everyone says that. Everyone thinks they wouldn’t do it, they wouldn’t stay with some abusive piece of shit like him. But there I went. Being stupid. Three years of stupid.”

  “You weren’t being stupid,” I said. “You loved him. You thought you could fix him. There’s a lot of women think that way. Wasn’t your fault.”

  She knocked back her own drink, poured herself another. “Get out.”

  “What?” I was stunned.

  “You’re not my boyfriend. You don’t know me. You don’t get to talk to me like that. And you don’t get to try to fix me, either. Get out.”

  There isn’t a thing you can say to that. When a girl tells you that you gotta leave her place, it don’t matter if you don’t understand what she’s thinking.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Alright. See you around.”

  I nodded goodbye to some folks, went out the door.

  Eric and Nicole came out after me.

  “It’s alright,” I said.

  “Just give her a couple days,” Nicole said. “She gets angry when Derek’s around. She’s not herself. Give her a couple days, then reach out.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  I walked away.

  I was too drunk to drive, so I was damn glad I parked down the street where no one could see me. I climbed up into the bed of my truck, laid down.

  Counted what stars I could count, there in the city and all its lights.

  It was cold, but that didn’t get to me at all. Maybe I was happier cold, just then. Letting the steel of the truck suck what was left of the warmth from my body, counting my breaths as they appeared in front of my face and drifted off into the night sky.

  When I was a kid, I was going to be a cowboy, then a firefighter. I hit high school, I was going to be a baseball player or a rock star, but I wasn’t any good at that. I was an alright contractor, but I knew better. I’d worked with better builders than me all the time. There was one thing in the world I’d been good at, one thing that came natural to me, that I could see how I was just going to get better and better at it, the more I tried. I’d been good at being a husband.

  I should have been buried with her. Would have been kinder that way. I’d wanted to, too. I’d seen her in the coffin and I’d wanted to just curl up against her, put my head on her breast one last time. Close my eyes, let myself just die.

  But there was my breath, coming out of my face, visible. Proof I’d survived. I wondered if even God knew why.

  After I sobered enough to convince myself it was okay to drive, I got behind the wheel. Didn’t drive home, though. I was just on autopilot, and on autopilot I drove right to Maggie’s, right to that dead-end street. The light wasn’t on, but I could see the glow of her computer. She was up. Unless it was dawn or something, Maggie was always up.

  I made it to the buzzer, and I stood there. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just…just standing. Hoping for thoughts and feelings like a farmer hopes for rain, I guess. Just standing there, a bit buzzed, waiting to see what I was going to do.

  If I’d rang her buzzer, I could probably get her to forgive me. But maybe that wasn’t what I wanted. Then again, maybe it was.

  After five minutes or something, just standing, I walked back to my truck. Got in, drove home.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I slept that night, but only an hour or three. I dreamt of Emily again.

  In the dream, we were old bastards, and we’d lived our lives apart from one another. I was living out of the back of my truck, with a camper shell on it, like I’d thought about doing when I was a kid. She lived in a trailer with someone...it was a dream, the logic didn’t hold up. Maybe she was living with her husband or her kid or a roommate, I don’t know, it sort of seemed to shift around.

  But it was a dream about how I’d rolled up to her place after decades without her. How I’d lived my whole life without her, rootless and wandering. Happy enough, here and there, but mostly alone. Especially the last few decades, I’d been alone.

  I showed up at her trailer door, and I knocked, and she came out. I had daffodils. She took them gladly, and let me in. The trailer was huge on the inside, there were horses running through the halls and I heard a ball game somewhere in the distance, probably on TV.

  “What brings you here?” she asked.

  “I was thinking, I was thinking maybe you’d like to go out with me sometime,” I said. Her hand was wrinkled, her face was wrinkled. Her hair was white and long, mine was long gone. I took my cap off, held it over my heart, and ran my hand over my bald dome. Suddenly stressed that without my hair, she wouldn’t find me handsome.

  “You can take me out, if you’re paying, and you find a place that does steak how I like it.”

  “How do you like it?” I asked.

  “You don’t remember?”

  All the girls I’d ever been with, their memories clouded my brain, and I couldn’t figure out which one belonged to Emily.

  “No,” I said.

  The dream drifted out into strangeness from there, into emotion and sound and sorrow. There were short snippets, of us dancing, of how I’d learned to dance so much better since I’d left her. How glad she was that I’d left her, gotten to learn so much. But all I’d wanted was to be with her. My whole life, all I’d wanted was her.

  You wake up from a dream like that, there’s no getting back to sleep. There’s just sorrow. Loss and sorrow.

  I had dreams like that a lot. Probably would have them the rest of my life.

  The sun came up, eventually, because the damn thing always does. I got myself out of bed. I stared at the shower, but I couldn’t really will myself to get in. If I did, who knows how long I would have just stayed under the water.

  I went downstairs, put coffee in me, and went for the door.

  King walked down the stairs, staring at me and the door.

  “Not today,” I said. “You stay here.”

  He looked away, sad. Well, he was a bloodhound. He kind of always looked sad. But I knew he was as like as not going to tear my place apart while I was gone, and for some reason I didn’t care. It’s just stuff. And I didn’t have it in me to look after him all day. Not that day.

  I drove to the Habitat office and was waiting there at 7am when Morris walked up.

  “Didn’t expect you till next week,” Morris said.

  “I ain’t got nothing else going on today,” I said. My next shift at the bar wasn’t till Saturday. “Figured I’d do some extra work.”

  “Alright,” Morris said. We loaded up his truck. Kansas City was a convenient place to get supplies and a convenient place to have an office, but most of the volunteers were local to the job site. It was always only us, commuting up there.

  We headed out. Country music and wind, they should have done my soul some good. That’s why I was there. But King wasn’t sticking his face in the wind, and even that wouldn’t have been enough. I don’t know. I was just in a mood. Had been
ever since I’d got home from Rae’s party. Something just didn’t sit right with me, I guess.

  One of the homeless-looking guys, Nathan, was there with Judy and Georgia. He wasn’t much good with the tools, wasn’t really good for a hell of a lot.

  I started trying to map out electric conduit, but I couldn’t get my head together. Usually, I’d look at something and it would remind me of Emily and I’d fall into a dark place for a minute. But I didn’t need anything to remind me of Emily, not that day.

  Being alive was enough.

  Then I figured it out. I figured out why I was alive. It was my punishment for letting her die. For being too stupid, too selfish, to see what’d been going on with her. To notice the stomach aches. To notice when she’d gone quiet. She’d been my wife. We’d been in one another’s charge. I’d been responsible for her, the same as she’d been responsible for me. She’d held up her end of the bargain.

  She’d worked two jobs, sometimes. At the library for awhile, shelving books, and then she ended up working nights at El Jeffe’s tacos, the truck that had fed our wedding. All that money she brought in, it’d gone towards tools, towards keeping my damn truck running. I’d been working too, I’d never lived off of her. But she’d put every extra dime to seeing my dream realized. To build up capital.

  Then, when I started making enough for us to get by, I was the one who’d told her not to work. Told her I’d take care of us. She’d agreed quickly enough, but it’d been my idea.

  Which meant there wasn’t enough money to go for insurance.

  What do you need health insurance for when you’re twenty? We had all the time in the world to build up to that.

  She shouldn’t have died for me being stupid. There wasn’t much I was smart enough to know, but I was smart enough to know that. I should be dead and she should be alive. She’d been better than me at most everything.

  Hell, I just played at being a country boy, but I grew up in the city. She’d grown up in the rodeo. She’d been everything. She’d been my better half.

  That’s what was going through my head when I was staring at a piece of paper trying to map out conduits, so I wasn’t doing much good at that.