* * *
OUTSIDE JIMMY MALONES, snow had begun to sprinkle. Kyle and Brett talked about how they never remembered it snowing this early in October. Brett had Devil’s Hopyard tucked under his arm and it weighed that side of him down. He passed it over to Kyle.
“I don’t want it,” Kyle said, throwing up his hands.
“You have to read it.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Kyle, you’re in it.”
The manuscript fell from their hands to the ground.
“What do you mean, I’m in it?”
“Your name isn’t used in the part I got to, but it’s you. I can tell. It’s like he wrote this for you.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
Brett bent down and picked up the book.
“Just read it, you’ll understand. And then show it to the fucking police if he’s still bothering you.”
“I talked to the police. They didn’t want to help me at all.”
“They will after you read what I did. Trust me.”
“Do you really think he actually did all the things he wrote about?”
“Isn’t it just as bad if he’s fantasizing about it?”
“Uh no, doing it is worse.”
“I don’t think he actually did any of those things, but he’s very into his character, like he’s gone all method, and he clearly has some big screws loose. Someone like that is just waiting to snap.”
Kyle brought the manuscript closer to his chest to get a better grip. He couldn’t believe it was back in his life.
“Read it to the end, just so I know I’m not crazy,” Brett said, a shriveled-up version of his former self. “After I left William’s place, he called and texted me all night with ludicrous ideas, shit I couldn’t even follow.”
“I told you not to work with him—”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He grabbed Kyle by the collar, pleading. “Please help me get rid of this albatross.”
“Did you tell him Burke & Burke decided not to sign?”
“So I can become Hannibal Lecter’s next victim? No thank you. Just skim it until the last part he finished. I gave you Shane Matthews, c’mon.”
“Thanks so much, that’s the author I originally found.”
“I am a damaged fucker and have treated you like crap and you did not deserve any of it. So there is my apology, Kyle, and if you read the rest of Devil’s Hopyard and help me get rid of this mental patient, I will be eternally grateful and make sure you are given a promotion and a raise.”
Kyle couldn’t stand to look at Brett anymore. Through Brett, he saw how he had appeared over this last week to everyone else. William’s insanity was spreading, infecting every person he came into contact with.
He knew that the only way to help contain an outbreak was to eliminate its source. So he agreed to Brett’s wishes and headed home to sink back into Devil’s Hopyard, hopefully for the very last time.
20
“CAMDEN DESIGNS, HOW can I help you?” Jamie said, picking up her work phone. She hadn’t had the chance—or the funds—to hire a secretary yet. Today she was working from home, not motivated enough to head downtown. After the fight with Kyle, she spent yesterday commiserating with her roommate, Sybil. They had finished a bottle of currant vodka, and at one point, they took to torching Kyle’s pictures in a tiny garbage can. The smell of scorched photos still hung in the air.
“Jamie, this is William … Lansing.”
The back of her neck got hot.
“William…?” She was still a little tipsy from the night before. That would be the last time she’d use Sybil as a crutch.
“I got your number from your Web site,” he said. “I hope it’s all right that I’m calling.”
“I’m sorry Kyle attacked you,” she said, and then started crying. She hadn’t cried yet over him this morning. “I’m sorry he’s such a shit.”
“Could we talk? I mean, in person. There’s something I need to tell you and I’d rather not do it over the phone.”
She spied Sybil dead asleep in bed through the crack in her bedroom door. The girl often dozed past noon.
“What’s it about?” she asked. “I have work to do today.”
“I can meet whenever is good for you. It’s important, it’s about Kyle. I don’t think he’s told you everything about what happened to him freshman year.”
“Kyle is the last person I want to talk about right now,” she said, but that was a lie. She was desperate for someone else to take her side.
“I don’t think you know your boyfriend at all,” William said, his tone urgent.
“You’re telling me.”
“No, I mean what he might be capable of.” There was a tremor in William’s voice, a note of fear that surprised her.
“I’m subletting a place on the Upper West Side now,” he said. “I could come to you, or I could have you over. I’d rather not do this in public either.”
“You’re kinda freaking me out, William.”
“I just want to protect you.”
“From what?”
“There was a girl Kyle was seeing his freshman year. She went missing. Kyle was the last person she was seen with. The authorities never found her. The way Kyle acted the other night was exactly the same as when she vanished. A kind of rage that landed him in a psychiatric institution.”
Jamie couldn’t speak. She tried to form words, but it was too difficult. The fact that she might’ve never known the real Kyle was too much to grapple with. What other lies had he told? How much of him was a mirage?
“Jamie, are you there?”
“I’ll come to you,” she said, quietly.
“Good. I’m at 872 West 98th Street, Apartment 6F.”
“Okay…” Her voice quivered as she hung up the phone.
Before she left, she found a swill of vodka at the bottom of the bottle and tapped it dry.
* * *
JAMIE WAS SURPRISED to see William in a Yankees cap, a T-shirt, and shorts when she arrived at his sublet. She had never seen him dressed down and almost thought she had gotten the apartment number wrong.
“Come in, come in,” he said, and made his way over to the couch, the only piece of furniture in the place.
“How long have you been subletting?” she asked, holding her purse close, somehow feeling safer with it in her arms. If she rooted through it, she could find the can of pepper spray that Kyle insisted she carried when she was out late.
“Just a few days,” he said. His nose had been bandaged up and a grape-colored bruise was spreading under his eyes. The cap was tipped low in an attempt to mask the damage.
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“My time in the army taught me how to fix up injuries. I think it looks worse than it feels. Can I get you a drink? I’m afraid I only have tap water and a bottle of Maker’s.”
“Maker’s is fine,” she said, and followed him into the kitchen as he poured two glasses. The kitchen was eerily empty, just a stained pan left on the counter.
“I had planned on sprucing the place up, but getting attacked has unfortunately taken the wind out of my sails. I didn’t even leave the apartment all day yesterday.”
He directed her over to the couch. They sat down and he put the Maker’s bottle on the floor.
Jamie started welling up, hating herself for being so emotional. “I’m afraid for what you’re about to tell me.”
“I feel like Kyle painted me to be someone I’m not,” he said. “Someone actually more like who he used to be.”
She took a sip of the Maker’s and wedged her pocketbook between her feet.
“Did people think he had anything to do with this missing girl?” she asked, after a deep breath.
“I didn’t … at first,” William said. “I was the one who advocated for him, but seeing him behave in the way he has recently, I don’t know … it’s changed my perception.”
“But why would people think he was responsibl
e?”
“How much did he tell you about that time in his life?”
Jamie filled William in on everything Kyle had confessed to her at Vinyard. William seemed to nod at the appropriate times. Finally, when she was finished, he shook his head.
“That’s only half of it,” he said.
She finished her Maker’s and he made sure to pour her more.
“Kyle and this girl were close,” he said. “Both were in my class, and I’d see them around campus, holding hands, making out. But she dated a lot of other guys too. Kyle would tell me how jealous he was. He was in love for the first time and it started to consume him.”
“Was this before or after he went to jail for selling drugs?” she asked, trying to line things up chronologically.
“Afterward. You said he told you he cleaned himself up—and he did—but not before it got worse for a while. This girl made it worse. She was a user and liked to throw her hookups with other guys in his face. One time he told me, ‘If I can’t have her, no one can.’ He swore to me he’d make sure of that, and then she vanished.”
A window was open and the room got cold, a snow-laced breeze blowing in. Jamie hadn’t unpacked her winter jacket yet, still dressed for fall. She was shivering.
“Are you okay to hear this?” he asked, and Jamie slowly nodded.
“The night she vanished, he showed up at my house. Laura, my wife, and the kids were all asleep. He threw a rock at my window and I met him on the back lawn. He was a wreck, babbling nonstop, talking about the fight they got into. He had a welt on his cheek from the girl’s ring after she punched him; it had gotten that bad. He caught her having a threesome with some townies, these losers they used to score drugs with. He wanted to kill her.”
“Is that what he said?” Jamie asked, breathless.
William nodded. “He did, but then she took off and he couldn’t find her, thank God. He searched everywhere, all of her haunts. I drove him back to his dorm, calmed him down, gave him some pills to knock him out, and went home. A few days later, word began to spread that she had gone missing. Students had seen her having a knock-down, drag-out fight with Kyle the night she vanished. The police were starting to question him. They contacted me because I had vouched for him when he was in jail. But there was nothing I could do. He lost his mind because of it and had to spend a few days in a psych ward. The pressure of it all destroyed him, and I was really worried, never letting myself believe he had anything to do with this girl’s disappearance. So I told the police he was with me that night. That he had a fight with her and came to me to talk about it. It wasn’t a complete lie, since he did come to me that night. I just fudged the times, so they’d suspect him less. The townies soon became the police’s main targets, but nothing ever came of it. I put it out of my mind, and Kyle really did start to change for the better, got himself together, even began doing well in my class. But seeing his rage at the Library—Jamie, it shook me to my core. He was out for blood—”
“I know,” she said, her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear any more.
“He has a problem with obsessing over things,” William said, rubbing her back in a circular motion.
“I know. I’ve told him that.”
“He can hurt those he cares about the most if he thinks we’ve betrayed him. First that girl in college, then me. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
William took the empty glass from her hands and poured more.
“Drink up, it’s okay,” he said.
“Oh, my God,” Jamie said, grabbing the glass back, on her way to becoming wasted. She rubbed her eyes until her mascara stained her tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t answer his calls,” William said, turning her so she faced him. “Just cut him off. Completely.”
“I can’t do that.”
“There’s something else I didn’t tell you, Jamie.”
“What?” she croaked.
“That night he showed up at my house. There was blood on his hands, but he didn’t have any cuts or scrapes. Thinking back … I don’t believe that blood was his own.”
Jamie felt the room spin, as if she’d been placed on a tilt-a-whirl. Her body seemed to spill to the floor, broken. The cold wood massaged her cheeks as her eyes closed, and the darkness of a dream began.
* * *
WILLIAM LAY JAMIE down on the couch, her head propped up on a pillow. While he waited for her to awaken, he let his mind travel to a recent passage he’d written in Devil’s Hopyard. His narrator had entered the shack, a slit of moonlight cutting through the wooden slats. The door shut behind him. He was all alone. Looking down, he had little-kid legs, scrawny things with knobby knees, sneakers that didn’t close, since he’d been wearing them for years and the laces had become frayed. The night passed as he cried himself to sleep. In the morning he woke up starving, missing dinner. It felt like someone was digging a hole in his stomach. He had to relieve himself in the corner like an animal. The sun rose high, a beam of yellow light slicing through, the only evidence of the outside world. Once the moon rose, the door swung open quickly and a pig’s heart was tossed inside. The door shut and locked. He inched over to the pig’s heart, studied it. An hour later he managed to hold it in his hands, tears dripping into his lap. And finally, he took a bite, because his stomach was collapsing, and he had to survive.
* * *
BY NIGHTTIME, JAMIE began to stir. William had a glass of water ready.
“What happened?” She blinked. “I’m so thirsty.”
He held the glass to her lips and helped her tip her head back.
“You fainted.”
“I don’t remember what was a dream and what was real.”
He sat her up, pushed her hair out of her eyes.
“I was telling you that Kyle might be dangerous,” he said, nodding. He counted to ten as he continued nodding.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes following each nod, but then she tried to get up.
“Whoa,” he said, lightly restraining her. “You were out for a few hours.”
She got up anyway. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Aren’t you worried Kyle might just come to your house? Aren’t you afraid he’s angry at you?”
She patted down her hair and checked her breath in her hand, not happy with the results.
“Honestly, I’ve spun my life around Kyle for too long. That’s what I was dreaming about. I was an astronaut orbiting Earth but its face was Kyle, and then my spaceship crashed right into his smile.”
She picked up her purse and headed toward the door. William quickly stood in her way.
“I really think you need to sit. You’re not absorbing what I’m trying to say.”
“William, it’s late—”
He put his hands on her shoulders, staring into her eyes. The purse fell from her hands. He took her back to the couch.
“The next time you see Kyle, you’ll tell him that you’re through. Trust me on this.”
Jamie put her hand on her heart. “I know. I have to.”
He leaned in and kissed her. She pulled away, as if she’d fully awoken.
“I need to go,” she said, scooping up her purse and heading toward the door.
He was on his feet, grabbing her instinctively. She let out a yelp, and he let go right away, looking at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She gripped the doorknob and turned it. She froze for a second as she looked back. He saw in her eyes the same disappointment he’d written about, the moment when another character realized his narrator had a switch you didn’t want to flip. He knew that if his narrator were in his place, he would’ve slammed Jamie into the door before she could swing it open. He would’ve spiked the Maker’s and poured it on a handkerchief, forcing her to breathe it in. That was what his character would do, so why shouldn’t he act the same? But instead, he let her open the door and flee into the hall. He heard the elevator d
ing and she was gone. He retreated to the couch and took a big swig of the Maker’s, surmising that the best thing he could do right now was to knock himself out stone-cold.
21
KYLE STARED AT Devil’s Hopyard. He had positioned himself in his favorite reading chair in the bedroom, a bottle of Four Roses on the side table. The sun went down and still he stared, unable to open to the manuscript and delve back into a madman’s mind. Ever since he read its first line, his life began to crumble: things with Jamie were on shaky ground, Carter had lost patience with him, and his drinking was becoming a problem. He used to swear he’d quit alcohol at forty, but if he kept it up at this rate, forty might not be reachable. His dad had passed shortly after his fortieth birthday, a pickled liver the culprit. He wondered if his destiny was to follow the same trajectory.
He decided to make a change. This bottle of Four Roses would be his last escape. He’d drain it until he finished William’s perverted manuscript, and then he’d pour all the rest of his booze down the drain. He took a taste and opened to a random page in the middle.
I was dragged to the shack like I often was if I chewed too loud or tipped over a glass of milk. She had left awhile ago, never to return, no longer there to save me. I spent too much time waiting by the window for her to come into view. I stopped thinking that mothers existed. When he’d drag me to the shack he had no concern for my skinned knees or torn clothes. He’d get in his mind that I was bad and nothing I’d say or do could change that. I used to try. I used to beg. Now I chose to go limp. Once the door shut and locked, the shack became my home. Sometimes it felt as if I was left there for weeks, but I know at most it had been days. I’d count them through the broken slat in the wall that revealed my only source of light. I’d gotten good at ignoring my hunger. Once the moon rose, an animal’s heart would be tossed inside. I became used to its sinewy taste. I’d plug my nose and pretend it was anything else: a hamburger, hot dogs, chicken fingers, mac and cheese, but it never worked. The truth of a heart cannot be duplicated.
The Mentor Page 16
