by Greg Iles
Chartreuse Italian shoes
And time to wear them out
No really, a nice house and a nice car
And a nice girl, not a movie star
A normal kid and some green grass
And a great camera to make them last
All I want is everything
Girl you know it’s true
All I want is everything
But all I need is you . . .
I play without singing for a bit, remembering how Erin used to laugh at the verse about the gold teeth and Italian shoes, and then suddenly get pensive as the rest of the lyric came around. She knew she would never fit into the middle-class scene painted in the second half of that verse, and perhaps also that she would never be all I needed—just as no one person could keep all her demons at bay. Remembering the farewell kiss in her house on the day she died, I sing the last verse.
Two roads lead from this spot
One’s easy, the other’s not
They say pleasure’s born from pain
But I don’t ride that train
I can go East, I can go West
Choose one, and I lose the rest
But for a man who wants it all
This is sure some easy call
All I want is everything
Girl you know it’s true
All I want is everything
But all I need is you
As the last chord fades into silence, a voice from close behind me freezes me in place.
“What are you doing?”
Moving slowly, I lay the guitar on the ground, get up, and turn to face Drewe. She stands just inside the shade of the tent, wearing a black dress, black shoes, black hat, and Ray-Ban sunglasses. She seems a pale apparition of rebuke.
“Saying good-bye,” I reply. “This is what she wanted. I had to do it.”
“You told me you wrote that song for me.”
“I did. But she liked it.”
Drewe says nothing. I glance over her shoulder for a car but see only the empty cemetery lane.
“What did my father say to you?”
“He let me know it was okay I was here.”
“That’s not all he said.”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Her mouth wrinkles in disgust. “More secrets?”
“If you like.”
She sighs, then turns and begins walking away.
“He told me I should do whatever it took to make up with you,” I call out. “That we should get on with living.”
She stops and turns back, squinting her eyes against the sun. “And what did you say to that?”
“Nothing. I don’t think I can make it up to you. I think it comes down to whether you can live with what you know and with me too. Or whether you want to.”
“Do you think anyone could?”
“I don’t know. I think you’re a unique person, Drewe. I think you love me, even if you don’t like me or even respect me right now.”
“And you think that’s something to build a life on?”
“It’s a start. I love you, Drewe. I’ve loved and respected you since we were kids.”
“Then why did you fuck my sister?”
The profanity shocks me, but if anything was ever going to push her to it, this is it. “Because I couldn’t sleep with you.”
“No!” she cries bitterly. “We were sleeping together then! You’d asked me to marry you!”
“And you said we should take a year to be sure.”
“That was for your benefit. I was sure! I thought you might not be, and obviously I was right.”
“I was sure, Drewe.”
“You were sleeping with other women too, weren’t you?”
“No.”
She walks back a little way, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “I hate this,” she says softly. “I hate it.”
“I hate it too.”
“I try to trust people, I want to, but everything is always so—so ugly at the bottom.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is!”
“It’s not true with you. I mean, you’re the exception. And I’m glad you are. It actually gives me hope for the world.”
She pulls off her sunglasses and looks into my eyes. “I’m no exception, Harper.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. No one’s completely pure. Everyone has a past.”
“What are you talking about?”
She hesitates, then pushes on. “What could you learn about me that would shock you the most? That would hurt you the most?”
There is a strange buzzing in my head which prevents my thinking clearly. “I’m not sure I—”
“You’re not the only man I’ve slept with, Harper.”
She takes a quick step back, as though the bald statement has shocked even her. “You don’t believe me?”
“But you said . . .”
“I let you think that because you wanted to believe it so badly, and because it was almost true.”
“Almost true?”
She folds and unfolds the earpieces of the sunglasses in her hands. “When I was in college, the last year before medical school, I hadn’t seen you for almost two years. You called maybe twice that whole time. I’d spent four years doing nothing but studying. I’d just taken the MCAT, and I was sure I’d blown it completely.”
“But you scored in the ninety-eighth percentile.”
“I didn’t know that then, okay? I just hit this down place in my life. I felt like everything had been a mistake. I’d been in love with you for years, was practically living like a nun, yet I was being faithful to a man who was sleeping with women all over the country. It seemed insane. It was insane.”
“Drewe—”
“One night I accepted a date with this boy. We went for pizza and a movie, nothing special, but I liked him. He was in some of my classes, and he made me laugh a lot. Anyway, when he took me home, I asked him to come in.”
“Drewe, you don’t—”
“And while we were kissing,” she says forcefully, “I realized how good it felt simply to be held by another person. And I just . . . didn’t resist anything he was doing. Almost my whole dating life had been spent pushing away hands and saying ‘Please don’t’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ And I was just tired of it. I couldn’t do it anymore. He was kissing me and I realized with sort of a shock that I was wet. And I was wearing a dress and I just—I just did it.”
I have a childish urge to cover my ears with my hands. Drewe watches me with an almost defiant look, her green eyes flashing, as if daring me to criticize her.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask. “It hurts.”
“That I did it? Or that I didn’t tell you about it?”
“I understand why you did it. I’m surprised you didn’t do more of it. But why couldn’t you tell me?”
She shakes her head as though she can’t believe what she’s heard. “I did exactly what you’ve done to me! Tried to spare your feelings.”
“I know that. I get it, okay? I don’t know why it hurts so much. I guess it’s because I always put you on such a pedestal, as if you were more than human. Hell, Drewe, you let people think that.”
“What? When I was young I acted wild so people wouldn’t think I was a prude! When I finally tried to be myself, everyone made me into a saint. I can’t help what people think!”
“Was that the only time?”
She glances at the ground, then back up at me, still defiant.
“God, Drewe—”
“I didn’t sleep with any other men, but I slept with him again. For a couple of days after, I wouldn’t talk to him. But then I did. I slept with him every night for a week. Then I stopped.”
The whole scenario is impossible to comprehend, like someone telling me my mother was secretly married to some stranger. “Why did you stop?”
“I was terrified I’d get pregnant, for one thing. I knew I didn’t love him,
for another. I liked him, but I didn’t love him. I loved you. And I knew the things I was doing with him were things I should wait to do with you. Even though you weren’t showing any signs of commitment to me.”
“The things you were doing?” I hesitate, trying to control my imagination. “What were you doing with him?”
She shakes her head and takes a step toward me. “Just sex. It doesn’t matter.”
“Then tell me. Just intercourse? Or everything?”
“Just intercourse? Isn’t that the worst offense in the scale of guilty behavior?”
“No. I don’t know. Did you—”
“Stop it, Harper! This is wrong. It’s dangerous.”
“I guess it is. Was he—”
“What? Better than you? Bigger than you? Tell me you’re not that juvenile, Harper. Tell me you’re more mature than a seventh grader.”
I whirl away from her and start packing the Martin into its case. As stupid as it is, all I can see is Drewe debasing herself for some faceless guy and loving every minute of it, all at a time when she wouldn’t sleep with me, the man she claimed she loved.
She circles around until she is facing me again. “You know something, Harper? The biggest penis I ever saw was on a cadaver in medical school. You think it was doing that man any good?”
“Just shut up.”
“I won’t! I thought you were different from other men. All this obsession with how many conquests they can make and who has the biggest prick and who can piss the farthest . . . I see it every day, in hospital staff meetings, in politics. Men are like three-year-olds trying to snatch all the toys from each other. Life isn’t about that. You think it hurts to hear I had sex with a man for one week in my life? How do you think I would feel if every girl you ever slept with was lined up in a row? I know half a dozen personally, and the rest would probably fill a school bus! I’m sure they did things for you I couldn’t even imagine. But I don’t want to imagine them. You slept with my sister, for God’s sake. You have a child by her. So don’t stand there looking like a kid who just found out there’s no Santa Claus. I’m the one who’s been wronged. I’m the one who should be apologized to.”
“I tried to apologize!”
“Try again.”
With an idiot’s numb elation, I realize that Drewe isn’t telling me all this because she hates me, but because she loves me. And because she must hurt me a little to make it possible for us to live together again. The truth is, I feel almost relieved. I think I always wished for some little chink in her moral armor, if only to mitigate my own sins against her trust. It’s difficult trying to measure up to someone who not only has impossibly high ideals but also lives by them. Before a window can open for second thoughts I take a step toward her.
She holds up her hands. “Harper, I love you. With all the joy and pain that entails. And right now the pain outweighs the joy. We have a long way to go.”
With two strides she is past me, turning me with one hand, until we stand at the foot of Erin’s open grave.
“I loved my sister,” she says softly, looking down into the hole. “We were more competitive than either of us ever admitted. Erin felt resentments I never let myself see. I was jealous of her sometimes too. Not so much her beauty, but . . . I wanted to be as free as she was. To be able to live without second-guessing myself all the time.”
“She paid a price for that freedom.”
“Yes. But this wasn’t the price. This is obscene. And there’s nothing we can do about it. I blame myself too, for not stopping you and Miles. Erin too. You and Miles led that animal to our house, but it was Erin’s secret that put her within his grasp, wasn’t it?”
I say nothing.
“We weren’t married when you slept with her,” Drewe goes on, still looking down. “That makes a difference to me. Erin could have told you she was pregnant before you married me, even before she married Patrick. She chose not to.”
At last she looks up from the grave and focuses on the granite headstone. “You remember the day we got married? What you promised? Forsaking all others? From this day forward? Till death do us part? Did you really think about what you were saying then?”
“I remember, Drewe. I meant every word.” I try to pull her to my side, but she keeps a stiff elbow between us.
She turns to me, her green eyes bright. “Promises are easy, Harper. Think hard. Love is a terrible compromise if you choose to see it as one. If you’re faithful, I’m the only comfort you’ll ever have.” Her jaw muscles flex with determination. “But I’m special. I’m smart and I’m beautiful and I’m enough for you to live inside forever, if you know how to open me up.”
“I know that. I’ve always known it.”
She looks up and scans the wide expanse of the cemetery. I watch her from the side, her profile regal, her thick auburn hair rippling from beneath the black hat, catching a wisp of breeze. She has never looked stronger or more unattainable than at this moment. As she turns to me, I look down, not wanting to be caught staring. My eyes register a dark glint against the sheen of the coffin.
“You dropped your sunglasses,” I tell her.
“What? Where?”
“Down there.” I point into the grave. “I don’t want to sound superstitious, but maybe we should just leave them.”
“Those aren’t mine.”
“What?”
She points to her throat. Her Ray-Bans lie flat against her black dress, suspended from the high neckline by one earpiece.
The wraparound glasses in the grave lie at the very foot of the coffin. That’s why I didn’t see them while I was playing the guitar. They almost look positioned there, rather than dropped from some distraught mourner’s hand. They stare up out of the hole like a pair of sightless eyes.
“Drewe?”
“I wonder if they’re Mother’s,” she says, stepping to the edge of the grave and bending over.
I catch her arm. “Stop.”
“Ow! That hurts.”
“Stand up, Drewe. Stand up straight.”
“What?”
“He’s here.”
“What?”
“He’s here.”
“Who?”
Then she is looking up into my face with horror.
“Don’t look around,” I tell her, even as I do myself. Every headstone in the field now seems capable of concealing a killer. My eye inventories mausoleums at the speed of light, prioritizing the most dangerous areas.
“He didn’t do the killings,” I hear myself whisper.
“What?”
“He didn’t kill the EROS women. The Indian woman did. He only fired the tranquilizer gun. We’ve got a chance.”
“Harper, he’s dead. How can he be here?”
I’m trying to appear calm, but if Berkmann is watching me, he must see me scanning the headstones with the controlled panic of a soldier walking point in the jungle. “We’re going to have to run.”
“Where?” Drewe asks, her voice thin.
“The Explorer’s parked behind the superintendent’s office.”
“That’s a hundred yards away.”
“I’m going to leave my guitar here.”
She squeezes my hand, hard. “Shouldn’t we take it with us? Try to act casual and get as far as we can? You can drop it if we have to run.”
“We have to run now. He could be fifteen yards away, between us and the truck. Take three or four deep breaths, then break for it when I do. Watch the ground, not the building. Don’t trip.”
“Should I hold your hand?”
“No. If he chases us, I’ll stay behind you. Don’t look back. If he jumps up in front of us, I’ll have to try to kill him. You keep running.”
“Harper—”
“Keep running. My thirty-eight is under the driver’s seat. That’s the only way you can help me if I have to fight. Here are the keys.”
“Oh.”
“Take them. God, I wish your father was still here. We’d kill that son of a bitc
h right now. Okay, get ready. One, two—”
We’re off without ever saying “go,” flying across the grass like locust shells blasted before a prairie wind. With every step I see Berkmann’s powerful body rising from behind a gravestone, scalpel in hand, moving with the speed and inevitability of nightmares. I pump my legs furiously, willing Drewe faster as in my mind Berkmann angles toward her, me running to get between them but not making it as he plunges the scalpel into her stomach—
The superintendent’s office is closer, maybe fifty yards. I hold back, giving Drewe the lead, pivoting my head as I try to scan 360 degrees of threat, knowing he can see me, that he can pick his moment—
“Harper!”
Drewe is down. Something tripped her and laid her out hard on a flat stone the length of a coffin. I yank her up, still looking frantically around us. She cradles one elbow as if it’s broken.
“Can you run?”
“Go!” she gasps.
I start to run, but she jerks me to a stop. “The keys!”
She darts back to the gravestone and begins scouring its surface like someone searching for a contact lens.
“Drewe?”
“I’ve got them! Go!”
Even as the ranks of stones tighten around us, we pick a sure path through them, dodging the little bronzeroofed markers that read “Perpetual Care.” They might as well be land mines. We’re five yards from the office when a dark-haired man in a tan jacket steps out from behind it.
Drewe shrieks and cuts to the right. With adrenaline spurting like hydraulic fluid into my limbs, I empty my lungs in a savage scream and charge. The man shouts my name and brings up one hand, but I see only his throat. I pounce like a wildcat, both hands throttling him as he tumbles backward. The impact knocks out his wind, and I pummel his face with three quick rights before he can recover. Fury and fear flash in his eyes as blood from his broken nose fills the orbits. Feeling him going limp beneath me, I push off his chest with both hands, scramble to my feet, and sprint the last few yards to the back of the superintendent’s office.
Drewe is already inside the Explorer. A sharp thump startles me—then I realize she just unlocked the doors. I leap into the driver’s seat as she clambers across the console to the passenger side. In one continuous motion I crank the engine, throw it into gear, and hit the gas. The tires spin wildly on the gravel before they catch, and we hurtle forward onto the narrow asphalt lane as though shot from a catapult.
